Abstract

Direct Work with Family Groups is full of great ideas to aid engagement, assessment and enable positive change through direct work with family groups.

Working with families can be a challenging experience. This book looks at the personal skills needed to engage families, both at home and in the community. It provides guidance on how to assess and manage the needs of individual family members, whilst also being mindful of potential risk factors. With easy to use activities and resources, this book will inspire you to think about creative new ways to plan and carry out your work.

Based on tried and tested techniques, this is a must-have for social workers and social work students, as well as child protection workers, therapists, counsellors and child and family centre workers. It is the perfect complement to Direct Work with Vulnerable Children, also by the same authors.

Audrey and Helen have produced a real treasure trove of practical, easy-to-use ideas that really work with children and their families. Conscious that vulnerable people are likely to have experienced hardship and disadvantage, their ideas are rooted in the reality that children and adults may initially be resistant to professionals' offer of help and support. The book is a 'must have' addition for practitioners who work in the field of child protection and welfare.
David Shemmings OBE PhD, Professor of Child Protection Research, University of Kent

Audrey Tait is a Senior Practitioner with the Children and Families Practice Team, City of Edinburgh Council. She has over 20 years' experience working with children in social work settings and for the last 6 years has been delivering a training course, Communicating with Children, for the City of Edinburgh Council's Children and Families Department.

Helen Wosu is an independent Social Worker and holds an MSc in Advanced Social Work Practice from the University of Edinburgh. She currently undertakes kinship care assessments as well as child development and child protection training.

There has been a lot of rhetoric in recent years about reclaiming direct work with children and their families against a backdrop of bureaucracy, business processes and a lack of emphasis or focus in training or education. The authors utilise their extensive experience to provide workers with an informed, practical roadmap for engaging with family groups to enhance outcomes for all children and their families. This practical book provides a plethora of ideas and materials to guide people through this and in so doing provide a resource that encourages us to achieve the reality of direct work rather than accept the continued rhetoric. It will be widely used by ever-busy frontline workers wanting to re-focus their practice.
Martin C Calder, Social Work Trainer, Consultant and Author
This book provides lots of very practical suggestions for practitioners regarding the kind of things they should be thinking about and looking for when entering a child's home. It looks at building relationships with the family and finding imaginative and fun ways to engage and build some consensus on what is needed for the child or children and how we can best achieve it together. What comes across is a healthy sense of professional curiosity and the notion that being yourself and being prepared to take some risks in your engagement with families - as long as it's accompanied by a good level of self-awareness and critical reflection - will make successful outcomes more likely. Audrey and Helen's work is not just useful and informative but fun to read. I hope that others too will enjoy the book and find something to inspire and inform their direct practice with families.
Andy Jeffries, Service Manager, Children's Practice Teams, The City of Edinburgh Council