Despite urgent calls for improvement, the high level of mental health needs among children and young people growing up in state care remains a persistent concern. (more…)
The impact of long-term state care on the mental health of children
Category: Children and families
Time to think and write
Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, Associate Professor in Global Childhoods and Welfare reflects on using a period of research leave to focus on thinking and writing about the dominant critiques of children’s rights in the Global South. (more…)
Working with Children who have Experienced Neglect
By Victoria Sharley, Senior Lecturer in Social Work with Children and Families, University of Bristol and Alyson Rees, Professor in Social Work, Cardiff University
Neglect is the most common reason for a child to be on a child protection plan in the UK – in 2021 this amounted to over 27,000 children (NSPCC, 2022). (more…)
The Discharge of Care Orders – a study of England and Wales
By Jessica Roy, Lecturer in child and family welfare and Jo Staines, Associate Professor in youth justice and child welfare
One of the most significant state sanctioned interventions in England and Wales is removing a child from the care of their parents. When children are placed on a care order, it limits the powers a parent has to make decisions about their child and may mean that the child moves to live with foster or kinship carers, or to a residential children’s home. Placing a child on a care order has a lasting impact on the child and their family and is rightly the subject of much political and social debate. (more…)
Situating Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Purple Hibiscus’ in the child welfare policy context in Nigeria
Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, illuminates a succession of horrific crimes committed by one man against his children and his wife. Its publication in the UK in 2003 coincided with the passage of the Child Rights Act in Nigeria. Reading Purple Hibiscus against this policy and legal backdrop raises numerous questions about child welfare policies and practices in Nigeria. (more…)