Abstract

Putting Analysis into Child and Family Assessment bridges theory and practice, and provides clear guidance to improve assessments in child and family social work.

It addresses the issues of central concern to child and family social workers, including analytical assessment, outlines how to avoid common pitfalls, provides strong theoretical foundations, and demonstrates how the theory can be translated into practice. With reference to common and specialist assessments, the book covers every stage of the assessment process: planning and preparation, hypothesising, involving children, and making, recording and reviewing decisions. It features practice tools, case studies and practice development sessions and activities. This third edition has been fully updated with recent policy changes and new research findings.

This book will be valued by practitioners, managers, trainers and lecturers looking for a grounded resource which provides practical guidance on how to improve assessments.

Praise for second edition: As social workers are striving to push back the excessive levels of bureaucratisation and increase the space for professional practice, this excellent book offers easily understood ways to improve critical reasoning skills and will be useful for individuals, teams, and agencies.
Professor Eileen Munro, Social Policy Department, London School of Economics

Ruth Dalzell has social work skills in field work, family placements and youth justice gained during 12 years of direct social work practice with children and families and has considerable experience in individual and group work with children, young people and adults. At National Children's Bureau for nine years she instigated, managed and delivered practice development projects, consultancy, policy activity, conferences, seminars and training courses and developed a well-regarded network for children's services managers and planners. Ruth has published widely on practice development issues for children's services. She now works as a consultant.

Emma Sawyer has worked as a social worker, manager and trainer, she has extensive experience of working with children and families with complex and challenging needs. Whilst working for National Children's Bureau, Emma published several resources on how services can best work together to support parenting more effectively.

It provides an excellent review of a wide range of evidence and theorizing and touches on many key theoretical issues, but it combines this with practical implications and tasks to support students or experienced workers to develop their skills and knowledge. In doing so it provides a great introduction to assessment - while indicating where readers can go if they wish to explore issues in greater depth or find more evidence in relation to a particular issue.
Donald Forrester, Professor of Child and Family Social Work and Director of the CASCADE Centre for Children’s Social Care, Cardiff University
The third edition of this excellent resource is most welcome. Putting Analysis Into Child and Family Assessment takes a clear and practical approach to a crucial yet complex area of practice. Practitioners and trainers alike will find this a really valuable support to best practice.
Duncan Helm, Senior Lecturer, School of Applied Social Science, University of Stirling
This book is undoubtedly a brilliant starting point...overall, this book is a very useful addition to the social-work literature and in particular to those writing assessments within the court environment.
Mark Sloman
Seen and Heard, Volume 26, Issue 2
Putting Analysis Into Child and Family Assessment (3rd ed) by Ruth Dalzell and Emma Sawyer, continues to be the kind of book that I use on a regular basis. It is written and presented in a way that provides a great example of how to analyse in practice. Set within a contemporary social work policy and practice context, it identifies and examines the key elements of analytical assessments separately and in relation to each other. It offers accessible theory, research and evidence, models, tools and exercises that allow practitioners, students, tutors, practice educators and trainers to reflect upon their practice and continue to develop and build upon their knowledge base. An excellent resource.
Ruth Neville, Principal Lecturer in Social Work, University of Huddersfield