Social Work and Child Abuse: Still Walking the Tightrope? (The State of Welfare)

While social work practice with child abuse is a well documented topic, Social Work and Child Abuse actually challenges and changes the focus of existing literature. Instead of concerning itself with the ways in which the task of preventing and detecting child abuse, both physical and sexual, can be more effectively undertaken, this book presents a critical analysis of the task itself as it is currently conceived in the light of the 1989 Children Act. Merrick argues that it is the simultaneous duty to prevent and detect child abuse and also to rehabilitate children with abusing parents/caretakers which will at times produce situations where social workers are focused to a greater extent on any one of these statutory duties at the expense of the others.