The Future of Children’s Care: Critical Perspectives on Children’s Services Reform

Front Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
1 Introduction: critical perspectives on children’s services reform
	Introduction
	The chapters in the collection
	References
2 Where now? Children’s rights in England into the 2020s
	Introduction
	Call for a children’s rights-based review
	Children’s services as red tape
	Moving children’s services from local authorities
	Bonfire of children’s rights
	Here we go again – and again and again
	No new funding for children and their families
	Family rights as a means to protect (or evade) children’s rights
	Contracting of care
	Children’s voices and experiences
	Whack-a-mole
	References
3 More of memes than schemes: networked propagation in children’s social care
	Introduction
	Network society
	Proliferation
	Children’s social care
		Reclaiming social work
		High-quality
	MacAlister Review
		Safe and stable
		Other memes
	Memes or schemes?
	Conclusion
	Note
	References
4 Reclaiming social work, the social work complex and issues of bias in children’s services
	Introduction
	Evidence Based Practice and the search for unbiased knowledge
	Social work reclaimed?
	Connections within a complex
	The MacAlister Review and the social work complex
	Conclusion
	Notes
	References
5 Humane social work practice: a more parent friendly system? Hopes and challenges in the 2020s
	Introduction
	Challenges
		Lack of support
		Poor capacity available within the workforce to build relationships
		Feeling sceptical
	Hope
	Ultimately, it all comes down to relationships
	Parent advocacy
	A return to values and an emphasis on the value of lived experience
	References
6 Exploring and re-imagining children’s services in England through a decolonial frame
	Introduction
	The MacAlister Review
	Asylum and immigration
	Adultification and its disappearance in the MacAlister Review
	Punitive age assessments
	A wider context of adultification unaddressed
		Child Q
	Adultification, Black children and their families
	Moving forward on race and children’s services
	Conclusion
	Note
	References
7 Kinship care for England and Wales in the 2020s: assumptions, challenges and opportunities
	Introduction
	The central rhetoric of kinship care in the current reform agenda
	Assumption 1: it is better for the responsibility and care for children to be positioned with families, peer support and charity support rather than with the state
	Assumption 2: kinship care should be recognised as a permanent solution that is a direct alternative to non-kinship foster care and non-kinship adoption
	Assumption 3: children in kinship care are more likely than those in non-kinship state care to achieve better outcomes regarding their well-being, safety and future as adults
	Assumption 4: better supporting kinship care will reduce the number of children needing to be cared for through more costly statutory interventions
	Conclusion
	References
8 If adoption is the answer, what was the question?
	Introduction
	A definition in context
	The good, the bad and the dilemmas
	A future?
	Note
	References
9 Caring for children and young people in state care in the 2020s
	Introduction
	The needs of children in care
	Types of care
		Foster care
		Residential care
	Conclusion
	References
10 Protecting children: a social model for the 2020s
	Introduction
	Background
	Broadening the gaze: the social model of protecting children
	COVID-19: a game changer?
	Illuminating and intensifying underlying tendencies
	Reasons to be cheerful or not?
	Conclusion
	References
11 Conclusion: children’s services reform looking back and forwards
	Introduction
	Missteps on the children’s services policy dance-floor
	Neoliberal models of family support? The potential for a new double shuffle
	Troubling the ‘social workers too quick to wade in’ narrative
	Conclusion
	References
Index