Background: The current literature has established that prejudice in child protection cases with parents with intellectual disabilities continues to persist. However, complexities of these cases are not well-understood from the perspective of child protection workers. This study aimed to identify the needs of child protection workers and their…

Social workers are constantly predicting the future. In England and Wales there is a legal duty on them to do so, as the 1989 Children Act requires workers to assess not only whether children "have" suffered significant harm, but also whether they are "likely" to do so. Similarly, in Northern Ireland social workers are required…

Children and families from a refugee background seem to escape the technical view usually adopted by educational and health practitioners, which is based on a mixture of diagnostic tests and special needs policies. This approach struggles to cope with the multiple needs -- in terms of health, culture, language, and learning -- involved in taking…

This is a first mixed-methods study, which created, adapted and tested the feasibility of a training programme targeted at parents, community professionals, specialist teachers and volunteers to provide advice on developmental stimulation for children with visual impairment in their homes in rural and urban settings of Malawi. The study followed…

Relevance of the problem stated in the article, conditioned by the fact that the successful adaptation of orphans in a foster family requires specialized knowledge and skills, as well as the need of professional support. Therefore, this article aims at substantiation of the effectiveness of the developed pilot program psycho-pedagogical support of…

In West Africa, advisory services for family farms have been promoted to better address producers' needs. The paper aims to show that these services can be understood as a system whose functioning is strongly determined by the financing mechanisms, the governance mechanisms put in place, the quality of human resources delivering advice, and the…

The paper draws on a study aiming to work with practitioners' perspectives to support involvement through family services. Data were collected from a cluster sample of practitioners conducting father groups in south-west England. The paper focuses upon working with their perspectives. Two issues in their perspectives were associated with…

There is consensus within child welfare services that the provision of timely and effective support to families in the community is of critical importance in terms of protecting children. "Family support" is a term used to refer to a broad range of activities aimed at supporting the functioning of families. It is generally accepted that…

This book of objectives, one of a series designed to provide a competency-based analysis of employment categories in human services, deals with the core competencies necessary for family support workers. Addressed in the individual sections of the volume are the following skill areas: communication skills, self-awareness, community involvement,…