encounter in trying to help children (and themselves) recover. In addition, the book has an ambitious brief and,while a wide range of consequences of CSA are discussed, important issues are sometimes dealt with in adisappointingly cursory way.

Nevertheless, in this book, Smith succeeds in placing protective carers center stage in the recovery processand in doing so in no way allocates blame to them, but rather emphasises with consistency their potential forstanding up for their children and guiding them (and themselves) through the crucial journey of regaining theirsense of self and self-esteem.

LIZA MILLER

UKCP Registered Family Therapist10 Saint Oswalds RoadFulford, York Y01 4PF, UK PII S0145-2134(99)00138-6

Family Group Conferences in Child Welfare, by Peter Marsh and Gill Crow. Blackwell, Oxford, 1998.£14.99.

Drawing on the findings of research carried out in four social services departments in England and Wales,the authors examine the benefits and costs of the process, evaluate outcomes, and consider the obstacles thatstand in the way of effective implementation: They review areas for further research and speculate about thecontribution that Family Group Conferences might make to other welfare work such as youth justice,education welfare, and child health.

The Family Group Conference, initially developed in New Zealand, is a model for decision-making in childwelfare involving the wider family network in partnership with social agencies. The Conferences are convenedby an independent coordinator, who arranges a meeting of extended family and professionals in order toconsider the welfare of a child, and to agree on an appropriate plan addressing the needs of the child. Thepreparatory phase of inviting and involving participants is followed by three key stages: information giving,private family time, agreeing on the formulated plan. If no agreement is reached, then other approaches mustbe used. Within this structure each Family Group Conference in unique to each family and pays respect todifferent views and cultures both in the practical arrangements and decision-making.

The chapters on implementation and process make clear the very high levels of skillful persistence andimaginative endeavor that are needed to get the scheme off the ground. Particularly difficult arrangementshave to be made with colleagues both within and external to social services. Successful implementation is alsohighly dependent on the interpersonal, group, and negotiating skills of the independent coordinator, who hasno assessment or service role but manages the practicalities and the process.

The authors attach much importance to the contribution of research. A short chapter reports favorable researchevidence from other countries where the experience of Family Group Conferences has on the whole been positive.The British study covered 80 Family Group Conferences held in four pilot projects involving 99 children from 69families. Information was drawn from the Conferences, from 12-month follow-up, and from interviews withcoordinators, social workers, and other professionals. Individual project evaluations included personal interviewswith families. The study examined the distinctive characteristics of Family Group Conferences, the effectivenessof the process, and whether the various participants were satisfied and would be likely to use it again. The findingsare promising in that the great majority of participants, including the families themselves, considered theConferences had successfully addressed the needs of the child and found an acceptable solution. Most Conferencesagreed on a workable plan which was successfully implemented and protected and benefited the children over the12-month experimental period. Almost all the professionals involved expressed positive views, but one third ofsocial workers appeared reluctant to use the Conference model.

Although disclosure of sensitive personal information is crucial to the work of the Conference, thediscussion here is slight. Difficult issues around the use of third party information and obtaining consent todisclosure of information are largely overlooked.

To the extent that an honest and trusting relationship can be built up under the difficult conditions of theConference, participants are enabled to see family problems with a clarity and sense of perspective that otherforms of meeting cannot provide, and are thus placed in a better position to appreciate the child’s needs andthe possible value of alternative courses of action. There is the further advantage that through the exchangeof views families may come to share in and identity with the eventual decision, thereby creating a basis forconstructive work in any subsequent plan. Two provisos should be entered here. First, considerable skill is

Book Reviews 303

required to achieve a genuine exchange of views, and there may be a tendency for the participants to avoidpotentially sensitive topics of discussion and to restrict their comments to non-emotive and superficialsubjects: If this happens, parental involvement will have little solid content and may leave families withmisleading impressions of what social workers and others believe.

Secondly, the importance of good faith on the part of social workers and other professionals cannot beoverestimated. It would be tempting easy for steps to involve family members to degenerate into more or lesscynical manipulation, designed to bring about an ill-considered acceptance of the Conference decision inwhich the family members have had no real part.

Despite the author’s strong personal commitment to the model and favorable research findings, theyconclude that because of difficulties of implementation the use of Family Group Conferences will not bewidespread. They might also have noted that in order to gain a balanced understanding of the causes of childwelfare problems we have to understand the ways in which given social, economic, and environmentalcircumstances affect the quality of family life and the relations between parents and children, and how thesein their turn are influential in shaping the outlook and even the personalities of the children. If this view isacceptable, it follows that the problem which brings the child to the Conference is the most recent link inwhole chain of causal processes. It also follows that the work done with individual children during and afterthe Conference cannot be sufficient in itself to bring about major changes in the overall quality of family andcommunity life. To say this is in no way to diminish the potential value of such interventions, but only to arguethat they must be supported by action on another plane to improve our social arrangements and bring about“the regeneration of family and community life” (p. 165).

As the search continues for non-judicial procedures appropriate to the needs of vulnerable children, thepublication of this detailed account of a partnership based approach is both timely and thought-provoking.

KATHLEEN MURRAY

Centre for the Child & SocietyUniversity of GlasgowLilybank House, Bute GardensGlasgow G12 8 RT, UK PII S0145-2134(99)00137-4

Developing Good Child Protection Practice: A Guide for Front Line Managers, by Sara Noakes, BarbaraHearn, with Sheryl Burton and Jane Wonnacott. National Children’s Bureau, London, 1998.

This is a guide for first line managers of staff who are new to child protection work. It aims to help managersdevise a systematic way of developing the competence of social workers in this very complex field of practice.The basis for the guide evolved from a Department of Health funded project which aimed to identify how staffdevelop competence and confidence in child protection work and to design an integrated framework for goodpractice. Mangers in five local authorities have been involved in piloting the guide and their comments havebeen incorporated into the final text.

The guide identifies three main aspects in the professional supervision of social work staff; management,support, and education, and acknowledges that the managerial function usually dominates the process at theexpense of the other two. What this guide aims to do is examine the importance of the learning function ofsupervision and focus more on the worker’s needs not solely those of the organization.

In the highly pressurized world of child protection social work, I fear that the time available to both themanager and the social worker to devise and implement the development plan during the staff members firstyear in post as suggested in the guide is unlikely to be found. The expectation that evidence of the worker’sperformance via live observation by the supervisor and supplementary written evidence including the askingof multiple choice questions seems more realistically in the remit of the practice teacher or tutor of apost-qualifying course than the front line manager.

Although the guide is, to my mind, overly ambitious in the goals it sets for managers and newly qualifiedstaff it is nevertheless extremely valuable for the clear way in which it sets out the principles of practice inchild protection work. The section on “Essential underpinning knowledge to understand the social work role”gives a concise yet comprehensive exposition of what it is that child protection social workers must know inorder to do their job. Furthermore it locates the social work function firmly in the tradition of face to face workwith the family rather than as case manager whose job is to acquire the services of other people to work withthe child and family instead of being directly involved themselves.

304 Book Reviews