Child Protection: An Introduction - Tapa blanda

`[Child Protection provides] a clear explanation of the Department of Health definitions of child abuse and suggests signs which may arouse suspicion. The exercises interspersed within the text would each provide opportunity for lively debate and indeed Beckett encourages this in his ensuing discussion' - Accident and Emergency Nursing Journal

`This book is clearly written and would be a useful reference for professional wishing to gain information about protecting children from child abuse. The author makes extensive use of case examples to illustrate points and this adds to the clear style of the book' - Community Practitioner

`Professionals who have regular contact with children (e.g., teachers, psychologists, or general practitioners) could benefit from the author's very practical approach to indentifying and responding to suspected child maltreatment. In addition to being a useful resouce in itself, this text could be used successfully in a classroom setting with social work students or as a professional development tool for new and experienced child-protection social workers' - Journal of Family Studies

Child Protection provides a very readable introduction to child protection work. It is for social work students, experienced and non-experienced social workers and the whole range of professionals - nurses, police officers, teachers, doctors - who are following up concerns about the abuse and neglect of children. It is based on the author's 18 years of experience in practice as well as his current work as a social work teacher.

The material is presented in a fresh and accessible way. Chris Beckett makes extensive use of case examples to illustrate points and encourage readers to test their own thinking. He provides clear introductions, summaries and conclusions and invites the reader to reflect on what is being discussed and to relate these points to specific situations that might be encountered in practice and everyday life.

Part One outlines the job of a child protection social worker - what it entails and the demand made on social workers

Part Two looks at the different ways in which children can be abused and neglected and considers the indicators and warning signs as well as the long-term consequences.

Part Three considers the causes of abuse and neglect. What leads adults to mistreat their children or fail to provide the care and protection they need?

Part Four explores some of the difficulties and dilemmas involved in child protection social work.

This is an excellent, clear and inspiring book and is a must for anyone embarking on or already involved in child protection work.

Chris Beckett qualified as a social worker in the 1980s, and worked in the field for 18 years, first as a social worker and then as a manager, latterly as the manager of a children and families social work team.  Like most social workers who qualified at that time, he started out as a ‘generic’ social worker, working with a range of service users including children and families, old people, and people with mental health problems and disabilities, but his predominant area of work was with children and families.

He moved into academic social work in 2000, working first at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and then at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.  In addition to his social work text books, he has published academic articles on a variety of topics including the use of military language in social work, the importance of realism as an ethical principle, and statistics from Sweden about child abuse, following the legal ban there on corporal punishment.  His main research area, however, has been decision-making in court proceedings about children, and decision-making about children more generally.

Chris has a parallel career as a writer of literary science fiction. (More information about his fiction can be found at www.chris-beckett.com.)  He won the Edge Hill Short Fiction prize for his story collection, The Turing Test, and the Arthur C. Clarke award for his novel Dark Eden.   He is now a full-time writer.     His view is that ‘academic’ and ‘creative’ writing have more in common than might at first sight appear: in both cases the author begins with a jumble of ideas that seem to him to be in some way linked together, and attempts, in large part by a combination of intuition and trial and error, to impose some shape and structure.

Chris has three adult children, and lives in Cambridge with his wife Maggie and sundry animals.