Collaborative Practice with Vulnerable Children and Their Families

Collaborative Practice with Vulnerable Children and Their Families focuses on the knowledge and skills needed by professionals who work across disciplines to meet the needs of parents and children experiencing complex difficulties. It establishes the importance of both interprofessional and interagency collaboration. After detailing the characteristics of parents and children who may be in need of specialized services, the authors describe different approaches to service delivery in theory and practice, provide case examples and exercises, and address the developments in interprofessional education for those currently working in the field. They present evidence supporting collaborative practice as a means of achieving better outcomes for vulnerable children and their families, and explore the difficulties in working successfully across agencies and disciplines. A provocative examination focused on the wellbeing of families in crisis and the care they receive, this book: - Introduces terms that are used in collaborative practice - Details the legal mandate for working with families experiencing complex problems - Provides legal definitions of 'children in need' and with a right to receive "targeted" services - Outlines the circumstances that require court action (family law and criminal law) to protect children from "significant harm" Collaborative Practice with Vulnerable Children and Their Families examines the values and ethical standards shared by all professionals who work together to help at-risk children and their families, and serves as a definitive guide to professionals in social work, nursing, general practice, pediatrics and related professions. A volume in the series CAIPE Collaborative Practice Series Series edited by Hugh Barr and Marion Helme

June Thoburn, CBE, LittD, is an emeritus professor of social work at the University of East Anglia (UEA). She qualified as a social worker in 1963 and worked in local authority child and family social work and generic practice in England and Canada before taking up a joint appointment at UEA in 1979. As a founding director of the UEA Centre for Research on the Child and Family and of the Making Research Count collaboration, she has a particular interest in finding innovative ways of helping social workers to use knowledge from a range of sources in their practice. Julie Taylor, PhD, FRCN, RN, MSc, BSc (Hons), is a nurse scientist specializing in child maltreatment. She is professor of child protection in the School of Health and Population Science at the University of Birmingham, with previous chairs at the Universities of Edinburgh (NSPCC Child Protection Research Centre) and Dundee (School of Nursing and Midwifery). For three years (2010-2013) she was Head of Strategy and Development (Abuse in High Risk Families) with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). She is the author of eight books and over 100 academic articles.

Chapter 1 Introduction - Why this book and why now? Chapter 2 - An overview of the characteristics of the children and families. Chapter 3 - Theoretical frameworks underpinning inter-professional and inter-agency practice. Chapter 4 - Working collaboratively within the legal mandate. Chapter 5 - The value base for working collaboratively with vulnerable children and families. Chapter 6 - A guide through the knowledge base on effective services to children and families. Chapter 7 - Collaborative practice in planning, undertaking and disseminating practice-informed research. Chapter 8 - Training for multi-disciplinary practice with vulnerable children and families. Chapter 9 - Conclusion.