Empirical research with social workers exploring their understandings and use of codes or ethical theories in practice remain underdeveloped in the UK. This article, based on the British Association of Social Work commissioned Enquiry into the role of the social worker in adoption with a focus on ethics and human rights, provides an important contribution in this context.

In this article, the authors provide children’s insights into their own life experiences and individual identities. The data was collected during an ethnographic research in one of Estonia’s SOS Children’s Villages (SOS CV).

The main argument in this article is that the rationale for the state’s growing interest in children (in particular those children who are considered a social problem) and the emerging social policy solutions, i.e., foster care, are driven by particular political and economic agendas which have historically paid little attention to the needs of these children and young people.

This PhD thesis focuses on the perceptions of children in care whilst they are still in care and subject to youth justice supervision. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with 19 children in care attending various Youth Offending Teams in the North West of England. 

This open access research paper examines the influence of children, birth parents and foster carers on the matching decision from a practitioner's perspective.

This snapshot summarises the findings from the responses of 474 16-25 year old care leavers who completed the Your Life Beyond Care (YLBC) survey in 6 local authorities in England - an overall response rate of 30%. This snapshot gives an insight into how care leavers really feel about their lives.

This theoretical-empirical study is based on two particular case studies of families bringing up children from institutional care in Slovakia.

This open access paper draws on empirical research into the outcomes of care proceedings for a randomly selected sample of 616 children in England and Wales, about half starting proceedings in 2009–2010 and the others in 2014–2015. The paper considers the challenges of achieving and assessing “good outcomes” for the children.

In this study, the authors examined adolescents' emotional security and insecurity (preoccupation and disengagement) determined by dimensions of interparental conflict (IPC). These results have implications for researchers and for practitioners when addressing family reunification for adolescents in residential care (RC) or risks in community samples.

This article will consider the extent to which the protection of child trafficking victims under the jurisdiction of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 is sufficient to fulfil the legal positive obligations imposed by EU Law.