This text offers a clear and balanced introduction to social work with children and young people who are looked after away from home. The book explains the context in which children are looked after, the range of services available, and the research evidence, laying the groundwork for developing good practice skills. It emphasises the importance of listening to children and to issues of disability and ethnicity. Theoretically informed but practice-oriented throughout, this is a much-needed guide to social work with children in care for students, practitioners, educators and policy-makers.

Author Biography

NIGEL THOMAS is Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, where he previously taught on and directed the social work programme and also led the Postqualifying Child Care Programme for Wales. Before becoming an academic he was for many years a social work practitioner and manager. He is the author of Children, Family and the State: Decision-Making and Child Participation (published by Palgrave Macmillan in hardcover and the Policy Press in paperback) and he is co-editing the forthcoming An Introduction to Early Childhood Studies (Sage).