Working with Children and Families books and resources

Supporting Children and Families

Lessons from Sure Start for Evidence-Based Practice in Health, Social Care and Education

Edited by Justine Schneider, Mark Avis and Paul Leighton

Supporting Children and Families gathers together the lessons learned from perhaps the largest scale social experiment ever undertaken in England - Sure Start, the programme designed to improve the emotional development, health and education of children.

Anger Management Games for Children

Deborah M. Plummer
Illustrated by Jane Serrurier

Praise for the author:
'Deborah Plummer uses imagination and empowerment to move children and adults from discouragement to success.'
- The Canadian Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Review

Big Steps for Little People

Parenting Your Adopted Child

Celia Foster

'…all those involved in the adoption of children, old hands and new, will be stimulated and encouraged by this infectious read.'
- from the Foreword by David Howe, Dean of the School of Social Work and Psychosocial Sciences, University of East Anglia

The Bullies

Understanding Bullies and Bullying

Dennis Lines

Is there a particular type of person who becomes a bully? Why do bullies behave like they do? How can we interpret and understand bullying within relationships?
The Bullies attempts to get inside the minds of the bully and victim - the child, the adolescent and the adult - across a wide range of 'closed' situations including the home, school and workplace, prisons and the armed services. By listening to the voices of bullies and victims from all kinds of backgrounds without making judgements, counsellor Dennis Lines provides unique insights into bullying and what makes such domineering and aggressive behaviour so complex. He discusses controversial issues such as genetic predisposition towards abusive behaviour and draws on his counselling knowledge to provide insights on how to understand and treat bullies to change their behaviour.

Caring for Myself

A Social Skills Storybook

Christy Gast and Jane Krug
Photographs by Kotoe Laackman

"This is a resource for young children that is certain to stand the practical tests of time and application! Simple and complete, parents and professionals will find themselves reaching for it time and again."

Child Protection, Domestic Violence and Parental Substance Misuse

Family Experiences and Effective Practice

Hedy Cleaver, Don Nicholson, Sukey Tarr and Deborah Cleaver

This book draws on a wide range of evidence to explore the facts about the relationship between substance misuse and domestic violence and their effect on children, and examines the response of children's services when there are concerns about the safety and welfare of children.

A Child's Journey to Recovery

Assessment and Planning with Traumatized Children

Patrick Tomlinson and Terry Philpot

This book shows how carefully planned and assessed treatment can help traumatized children. It outlines how to set up a process for measuring a child's progress towards recovery. Uniquely, the book describes a practical outcomes-based approach that can be provided by an integrated multi-disciplinary team.

Children with Complex and Continuing Health Needs

The Experiences of Children, Families and Care Staff

Jaqui Hewitt-Taylor

'This book draws on the experiences of a number of families to provide a valuable and deeply moving insight into what it means to raise a child with complex needs. It highlights both the joys and the challenges that families face. In doing so it raises important issues about how services in the UK are currently responding to children with complex needs and their families as well as pervasive disablist attitudes within society. This book will provide students and practitioners from a range of disciplines with a valuable window into families' lives and challenge them to reflect on how they are supporting them.'

Children with Mental Disorder and the Law

A Guide to Law and Practice

Anthony Harbour

Children and young people with complex mental health needs are increasingly being cared for within specialist mental health care settings, either in the community or in in-patient facilities. With rapid social developments, it can be difficult for carers and practitioners to keep track of the law in this area.

The Colors of Grief

Understanding a Child's Journey through Loss from Birth to Adulthood

Janis A. Di Ciacco PhD

Following a life shattering experience, a child enters upon a confusing emotional journey that can be likened to a prism of many colors of dark feelings like sadness and fear, but also warm feelings of love and courage. The way they deal with these feelings has a lasting impact on their life as they grow.

Cool Connections with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Encouraging Self-esteem, Resilience and Well-being in Children and Young People Using CBT Approaches

Laurie Seiler

Cool Connections is a fun, engaging workbook that provides a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach to positively modifying the everyday thoughts and behaviours of children and young people aged 9 to 14.

Costs and Consequences of Placing Children in Care

Harriet Ward, Lisa Holmes and Jean Soper

It costs more to place a child in the care of a local authority than it does to send a child to a top boarding school, and there are substantial variations in costs both between and within authorities.

Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Christiane Sanderson

Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse explains how counsellors can facilitate recovery from domestic abuse within a secure, supportive therapeutic relationship.
There has been growing awareness in recent years of the impact and consequences of domestic abuse, especially the relationship between domestic abuse and mental health. To appreciate the nature of trauma caused by domestic abuse, professionals need to understand its complex nature and the psychobiological impact of repeated exposure to control and terror. This book examines the therapeutic techniques and specific challenges, such as secondary traumatic stress, faced by professionals when working with survivors of domestic abuse. The author stresses the importance of identifying domestic abuse so that it can be addressed in the therapeutic process to aid recovery, and explores issues such as safety and protection, the long-term effects of abuse and the importance of grieving to the restoration of hope.

Developing Advocacy for Children and Young People

Current Issues in Research, Policy and Practice

Edited by Christine M. Oliver and Jane Dalrymple

'The role of an advocate for children is one that I perform myself which is why I have found much of the research presented in this book so interesting... We are all on the same side battling to improve life for children who have, through no fault of their own, been handed a very bad set of cards.'
- from the Foreword by Cherie Booth QC

Disability and Impairment

Working with Children and Families

Peter Burke

Disability and Impairment introduces professionals working with families to the everyday issues faced by disabled people of all ages in family life.
Peter C Burke shows how social attitudes shape the world of the 'disabled family' either positively or negatively and the effects of stigma. He demonstrates the normality of disability - that children are children whatever their label - and the need for a sensitive professional understanding of the impact of both physical and learning disabilities on family members, in order to improve their quality of life.

Effective Grief and Bereavement Support

The Role of Family, Friends, Colleagues, Schools and Support Professionals

Kari Dyregrov and Atle Dyregrov

' …a profoundly significant book on a topic rarely discussed and little researched, dealing with sudden or unexpected death. The authors have brought together the latest knowledge in the field, and explore how social networks and professionals working with the bereaved can help. This is an important book for all of us, who will sadly one day experience this... it is a must read for those in the field and those suffering.'

Extreme Parenting

Parenting Your Child with a Chronic Illness

Sharon Dempsey

'[A] valuable addition to the literature on chronic paediatric illness... The book provides an in depth understanding of the path through chronic illness, illustrating the obvious effects on the child, but also the parents, siblings and the family as a whole across the spectrum from the psychological and social to the physical... There is much to be learnt from this book and it deserves careful reading.'
- from the Foreword by Hilton Davis, Emeritus Professor of Child Health Psychology, King's College London

Feeling Like Crap

Young People and the Meaning of Self-Esteem

Nick Luxmoore

We use the word all the time, but what exactly is self-esteem, and how do young people develop it? Feeling Like Crap explores how a young person's self is constructed, and what might really help that self to feel more valued and confident. Through accounts of his individual and group work with young people, Nick Luxmoore demonstrates how listening to, engaging with and being respectful of young people can provide the support they need to help them repair their sense of self and offer them new possibilities and directions in life.

Getting Wise to Drugs

A Resource for Teaching Children about Drugs, Dangerous Substances and Other Risky Situations

David Emmett and Graeme Nice

Getting Wise to Drugs is a resource for use with children aged between eight and twelve years. It comprises exercises centred on illegal drug use, medicine use and safety, solvents, alcohol, tobacco, crime and other anti-social and risky activities.

Great Answers to Difficult Questions about Adoption

What Children Need to Know

Fanny Cohen Herlem

Why was I abandoned?
Why did my parents adopt me?
What if I want to meet my biological parents?
Children who find out they are adopted have many questions that are difficult for a parent to answer. This book explores children's thoughts and feelings and provides parents with guidance on how to respond to difficult questions.

Great Answers to Difficult Questions about Divorce

What Children Need to Know

Fanny Cohen Herlem

Is it my fault that my parents are getting divorced?
Do I have to choose between my mum and my dad?
Is it normal to feel angry with my parents?
When faced with their parents' divorce, children have many concerns and questions that are difficult for a parent to answer. This book explores children's thoughts and feelings and provides parents with guidance on how to respond to difficult questions.

Grief in Children

A Handbook for Adults
2nd edition

Atle Dyregrov

Praise for the first edition:
'This is a very user-friendly book. It is presented in a way which enables the reader to browse or go direct to a certain section, but at the same time is engaging enough to sustain one's interest to read the whole book.'

Grief in Young Children

A Handbook for Adults

Atle Dyregrov

'This insightful text will be of great help to all who care for pre-school children - parents, kindergarten teachers, ministers of religion, police, welfare workers - the list is endless. If they learn the values reflected in this small book, then bereaved children everywhere will grow up with far fewer hang-ups about the only certainty in life.'
- from the foreword by Professor William Yule

The Integrated Children's System

Enhancing Social Work and Inter-Agency Practice

Hedy Cleaver, Steve Walker, Jane Scott, Daniel Cleaver, Wendy Rose, Harriet Ward and Andy Pithouse

The Integrated Children's System (ICS) was developed to support effective practice with children and families and improve decision making and planning for children in need. This book outlines what the ICS is and how it works, and assesses the effectiveness of a number of pilot studies, offering guidance for others using and implementing the system, which is being rolled out nationally.

Kids Need...

Parenting Cards for Families and the People who Work With Them

Mark Hamer

What is the difference between children's 'needs' and 'wants'? How should parents respond to the demands of their children? Do all children need the same things?
Kids Need… cards present a creative approach to exploring children's needs and parents' knowledge. Each card features a child's 'need', for example 'a room of their own', 'pocket money', 'to make mistakes' or 'to be criticized', and participants are invited to place cards under one of the three header cards: 'Kids Need', 'Kids Sometimes Need' and 'Kids Don't Need'. The cards are designed to be flexible and adaptable, and can be used to encourage general discussions, as therapeutic tool, or as an aid to the assessment of parenting skills.

Kinship Care

Fostering Effective Family and Friends Placements

Elaine Farmer and Sue Moyers

Children are frequently cared for by relatives and friends when parents, for whatever reason, are unable to care for their children themselves. Yet there has been very little information about how well children do when placed with kin or how safe they are in these placements.

Listening to Children

A Practitioner's Guide

Alison McLeod

'Listening to children' is one of those feel-good phrases that always features in childcare literature as if it were self-evidently a good thing. Often, however, there is a lack of critical attention to what it really means: How does one listen? How can one evidence that listening has taken place?

Malpas the Dragon

Ann Cattanach
Illustrated by Michael Renouf

Malpas the dragon flew all around the world, breathing fire, screaming, moaning and farting. He made everybody afraid.
Malpas was treated badly by his parents. They taught him to be a very rude, angry dragon, but this meant that he was also unloved and lonely. Every day he cried stone tears that he sent to his only friend, Haley. But Haley knew the tears were special. She gave them as gifts to lonely children to help warm their hearts.

Managing Children's Homes

Developing Effective Leadership in Small Organisations

Leslie Hicks, Ian Gibbs, Helen Weatherly and Sarah Byford

Managing Children's Homes focuses on leadership, effective management, the allocation of resources, and ensuring positive outcomes for young people in residential care.
The book develops an interdisciplinary understanding of what needs to be taken into account when establishing and maintaining good practice on behalf of young people living in children's homes. The authors explain the considerable variation in quality achieved by children's homes and how this relates to management style, working environment and staff structures. The skills and qualities that make effective managers of homes are explored. These, along with factors such as the provision of resources, are investigated to demonstrate how to attain a successful children's home environment and longer-term achievement for looked-after children.

Mental Health Interventions and Services for Vulnerable Children and Young People

Edited by Panos Vostanis

This book provides a model which offers guidance on effective and appropriate therapeutic interventions and services for vulnerable children and young people (commonly children who have experienced trauma, abuse, domestic violence or neglect).

Morals, Rights and Practice in the Human Services

Effective and Fair Decision-Making in Health, Social Care and Criminal Justice

Marie Connolly and Tony Ward

People respond passionately to issues of human rights, partly because they frame our expectations of fair treatment, equity and justice. Increasingly, work within the human services is influenced by rights-based discourses. Knowledge about the nature and scope of human rights and their attendant moral assumptions are essential theoretical resources for human service workers faced with the ethical complexities of daily practice.

Music Therapy with Children and their Families

Edited by Amelia Oldfield and Claire Flower

In the past, music therapy work with children typically took place in special schools without the family being present. More recently, music therapy has become a widespread practice, and this book reflects the variety of settings within which music therapists are now working with children together with their families.

Narrative Approaches in Play with Children

Ann Cattanach

Narrative play is a way of communicating with children using imaginative stories and narratives to share and make sense of life events. This book describes using narrative play therapeutically with children who have lived in multiple families, children who have problems with social understanding and children who have learning difficulties.

Nurturing Attachments

Supporting Children who are Fostered or Adopted

Kim S. Golding

Nurturing Attachments combines the experience and wisdom of parents and carers with that of professionals to provide support and practical guidance for foster and adoptive parents looking after children with insecure attachment relationships.

Overcoming Loss

Activities and Stories to Help Transform Children's Grief and Loss

Julia Sorensen
Illustrated by Maryam Ahmad

Overcoming Loss is a photocopiable resource that addresses childrens' feeling of loss, which can arise from changing communities, schools, moving house, divorce or the death of a parent or grandparent. Children are limited to a vocabulary of broad emotions like 'happy', 'sad' and 'angry', and are often unable to articulate their grief in words. This can impair their long-term emotional development.

Parental Learning Disability and Children's Needs

Family Experiences and Effective Practice

Hedy Cleaver and Don Nicholson

Parents with a learning disability face a high risk of losing their children, and current support for them is inadequate. This book, based on original research, looks into current social care practice and the support systems available to parents with learning disabilities, evaluating their effectiveness and examining their impact on the families affected.

Play Therapy with Abused Children

2nd edition

Ann Cattanach

Praise for the first edition:
'Ann Cattanach writes with enormous empathy and warmth, and with a refreshing lack of sentimentality … [This] is an unpretentious and optimistic book, and a very positive addition to recent publications.'

Playing, Laughing and Learning with Children on the Autism Spectrum

A Practical Resource of Play Ideas for Parents and Carers
2nd edition

Julia Moor

Praise for the first edition:
'An approachable and practical edition that will be welcomed by parents and carers alike. I know how hard it can be to find "How to" resources for parents. Well here is a gem.'
- Children, Young People and Families

A Practitioners' Tool for the Assessment of Adults who Sexually Abuse Children

Jeff Fowler

This book is a practical tool for the assessment of adults who sexually abuse children.
It examines the impact of sexual abuse on children, enables professionals to evaluate the risk presented by adults who have sexually abused children, and provides a framework for the assessment of parents or carers and their ability to protect their children. The book includes checklists that practitioners can use to interpret the information they collect, and is illustrated with a central case study that demonstrates how the assessment profile can be used.

Promoting Social Interaction for Individuals with Communicative Impairments

Making Contact

Edited by M. Suzanne Zeedyk

All humans have an innate need and ability to communicate with others, and this book presents successful approaches to nurturing communicative abilities in people who have some type of communication impairment.

Psychological Processes in Deaf Children with Complex Needs

An Evidence-Based Practical Guide

Lindsey Edwards and Susan Crocker

'This volume offers a broad perspective on psychological processes in children with complex needs. Armed with this valuable tool, professionals, parents, and educators will be much better prepared to offer deaf and hard of hearing children the support and opportunities they deserve.'
- from the Foreword by Marc Marschark

The Pursuit of Permanence

A Study of the English Child Care System

Ian Sinclair, Claire Baker, Jenny Lee and Ian Gibbs

Children in public care complain that they have too many placements. Professionals agree but little is known about the reasons for this instability or how it affects different groups of children. The Pursuit of Permanence explores this core issue for children's services.

Residential Child Care

Prospects and Challenges

Edited by Andrew Kendrick

Residential Child Care draws on the latest research to offer guidance for developing best practice, policy and improved outcomes for children and young people.
Contributors examine important aspects of residential care work, and address the concerns about the poor outcomes for young people leaving care and the role of residential child care as a positive choice within the range of care services. Key issues addressed include promoting well-being and development for young people; tackling potential discrimination in residential policy and practice; responding to areas of discord in residential child care; and underpinning themes relating to residential child care, such as staff development and support.

Safeguarding Children and Schools

Edited by Mary Baginsky

Safeguarding Children and Schools explains how schools are able to contribute to keeping children safe from harm and promoting their welfare, in line with Government Every Child Matters guidelines.

Social Skills Games for Children

Deborah M. Plummer
Illustrated by Jane Serrurier

Praise for the author:
'Deborah Plummer uses imagination and empowerment to move children and adults from discouragement to success.'
- The Canadian Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Review

Speaking about the Unspeakable

Non-Verbal Methods and Experiences in Therapy with Children

Edited by Dennis McCarthy

'The imaginative therapies described in this book offer a welcome counter-balance to medical trends dominating the current practice of children's therapy. Inspired practitioners experienced in listening to buried, altered or muted voices of traumatized children invite us into their consulting rooms to witness the unique ways the soul speaks in images, movement and sound.'
- Nor Hall, Ph.D. psychotherapist, theater artist and author of The Moon & the Virgin and Those Women

'This book is an offering to all our senses enabling us to delve into the powerful sphere of the implicit, making tangible aspects of self that have been difficult to reach in more traditional psychotherapeutic practices. I highly recommend this book for all readers, as a therapeutic tool, a guide to understanding your child's play, or to stimulate your own self-expression. Accept the offering and receive a gift that will inspire your thinking as well as your creative sense.'
- Suzi Tortora, Ed.D. registered dance therapist and the author of The Dancing Dialogue: Using the Communicative Power of Movement with Young Children .

Trauma, Drug Misuse and Transforming Identities

A Life Story Approach

Kim Etherington

Looking at the life stories of ex-drug misusers in their own words, this book offers insights into the nature of addiction and how it can be tackled. It examines the links between early childhood experiences and drug misuse and also shows pathways to recovery and transformation.

Understanding 10-11-Year-Olds

Rebecca Bergese

Understanding 10-11-Year-Olds introduces the challenges that face children as they start to make their transition from childhood into adolescence.
Children at this age begin to express independence and confidence in their capability that may extend beyond their direct experience. Adults caring for their well-being need to monitor the new dimensions in the child's life, such as competitiveness and its impact on relationships at school and at home. Rebecca Bergese guides the reader through the broad range of emotional and social challenges experienced by children as they are encouraged to take on greater responsibility.

Understanding 8-9-Year-Olds

Biddy Youell

Understanding 8-9-Year-Olds describes how children grow and change as they move further away from reliance on home and family, out into the world of school and community.
Children of this age develop preferences as well as opinions based on their experience of new relationships and activities. For many children, it is a period of relative calm as they develop through new skills while accumulating knowledge. Biddy Youell looks at the ways in which eight and nine year olds experience their world and highlights some of the difficulties that may hinder their emotional, social or educational development.

Understanding Looked After Children

An Introduction to Psychology for Foster Care

Jeune Guishard-Pine, Suzanne McCall and Lloyd Hamilton

Understanding Looked After Children is an accessible guide to understanding the mental health needs of children in foster care and the role of foster carers and support networks in helping these children.

Understanding School Refusal

A Handbook for Professionals in Education, Health and Social Care

M. S. Thambirajah, Karen J. Grandison and Louise De-Hayes

School absenteeism is a huge problem in education and this book focuses in particular on children who experience 'school phobia' or 'school refusal' as opposed to those who choose to truant.
School refusal is a crippling condition in which children experience extreme anxiety or panic attacks when faced with everyday school life and this handbook aims to explore and raise awareness of the problem of school refusal in children and young people, and provide plans and strategies for education, health and social care professionals for identifying and addressing this problem.

Working with Young Homeless People

Phil Robinson

Young homeless people are ordinary young people trapped in an extraordinary situation. This accessible guide provides information and advice on how to understand the needs of these young people, and how to ensure they are supported effectively.

Young Children's Rights

Exploring Beliefs, Principles and Practice
2nd edition

Priscilla Alderson

Praise for the first edition:
'There is much to be commended in Alderson's book, … It is written with clarity and passion and adopts a child-centred perspective, and most of Alderson's points are well backed up with appropriate, illustrative, research and practice examples. …'

Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood

International Research and Practice

Edited by Mike Stein and Emily R. Munro

The transition from care into adulthood is a difficult step for any young person, but young people leaving care have a high risk of social exclusion, both in terms of material disadvantage and marginalisation.

Children, Families and Violence

Challenges for Children's Rights

Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe

This book examines the risk factors surrounding children at risk of experiencing and perpetrating violence, and looks at the positive role that children's rights can play in their protection.
The authors propose that violence in childhood is not spontaneous: that children are raised to...

A Creative Guide to Exploring Your Life

Self-Reflection Using Photography, Art, and Writing

Graham Gordon Ramsay and Holly Barlow Sweet

An award-winning psychologist and professional photographer join forces in this unique creative guide to exploring and understanding your life: who you are, what you value, and what you wish to achieve.

Educating Difficult Adolescents

Effective Education for Children in Public Care or with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties

David Berridge, Cherilyn Dance, Jennifer Beecham and Sarah Field

Educational achievements for children in care are significantly poorer than for the general school population. This book explores why this is and how to enable children in care to succeed in the classroom.

Frameworks for Practice in Educational Psychology

A Textbook for Trainees and Practitioners

Edited by Barbara Kelly, Lisa Woolfson and James Boyle

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A Multidisciplinary Handbook of Child and Adolescent Mental Health for Front-line Professionals

2nd edition

Nisha Dogra, Andrew Parkin, Fiona Gale and Clay Frake

Praise for the first edition:
`Presenting the fundamentals of child psychiatry in an enjoyable and easily read format, this book is an introduction to child mental health. It begins by looking at child development and attachment theory, moves on to the nature and prevalence of child mental...

Quick, Easy and Effective Behaviour Management Ideas for the Classroom

Nicola S. Morgan

Every teacher knows that the foundation of a good learning environment is effective behaviour management. Without the right attitude, resources and techniques, behaviour problems can disrupt classes, consume the teacher's time and subsequently affect the education and well-being of all the...

The Social Worker's Guide to Children and Families Law

Lynn Davis

The Social Worker's Guide to Children and Families Law is an accessible, jargon-free guide to the key elements of the law that concern practising social workers in children and families teams.
This resource for everyday practice includes explanations of the fundamental concepts of parental...

Supporting Young Parents

Pregnancy and Parenthood among Young People from Care

Elaine Chase, Ian Warwick, Abigail Knight and Peter Aggleton

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Therapy To Go

Gourmet Fast Food Handouts for Working with Child, Adolescent and Family Clients

Clare Rosoman

This convenient collection of handouts provides a wide range of ready-made activities for all kinds of therapists working on a professional level with child and adolescent clients and their families.

What You Need to Know About Cannabis

Understanding the Facts

David Emmett and Graeme Nice

Does cannabis really trigger schizophrenia? Is it true that cannabis is a non-addictive drug? What's the difference between hash and skunk?
According to the UN's estimate, 160 million people around the world use cannabis; that's roughly 2.5 per cent of the world population. Despite these...