Nigel Parton
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 272837 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Nigel Parton |
| NOMBRES | Nigel |
| APELLIDO | Parton |
| FIRMA | PARTON N |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Huddersfield |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0317-7237 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 58 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 403 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 58 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1985 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Closing an Eight-Year Chapter
After eight years, my term as Editor-in-Chief of Social Sciences has come to an end [...]
Into the Second Decade
The year 2023 saw Social Sciences enter its second decade after launching in 2012 [...]
Critical Child Protection Studies
Until the last few years of the twentieth century, there was very little critical analysis surrounding child protection policies and practices [...]
Recognising common developments and trends across Western child welfare systems
Based on observational data, individual interviews (N = 22) and focus groups (N = 8) with practitioners in Italy, Norway and Slovenia, this study applies a grounded theory approach in exploring frontline practitioners’ experiences of supporting families involved with child welfare services. It was anticipated that there would be significant differences between the countries regarding practitioners’ understandings of families’ needs and problems, …
Comparative Research and Critical Child Protection Studies
This article argues that two interrelated factors have played important roles in the emergence of academic analyses of child protection policies and practices: the evidence of growing strains and crises in child protection systems over the last forty years; and the development of comparative research on different systems. The latter has demonstrated that child protection policies and practices vary between different countries such that the differ…
Critical Debates and Developments in Child Protection
I would like to begin by thanking all of the authors who have contributed to this Social Sciences Special on “critical debates and developments in child protection” for their hard work and timely dedication in responding so positively to the requests and timelines made of them [...]
The contemporary refocusing of children’s services in England
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the changes in child protection policy and practice in England over the last 30 years, in particular to critically analyse the nature and impact of the “refocusing” initiative of the mid-1990s. Design/methodology/approach Policy analysis. Findings While the period from the mid-1990s until 2008 can be seen to show how policy and practice attempted to build on a number of the central pr…
The Politics of Child Protection
From Every Child Matters and the Munro Review, to changing shifts in thinking from Coalition government; the child protection system has seen dramatic political and policy developments over recent yea
Social Work, Child Protection and Politics
This Critical Commentary reflects on how the author's personal and professional experiences have both mirrored and fed into the changing policy and practice contexts in England over the last forty years. A central part of the argument is that the way public and political debates have been constructed has meant there is a very intimate relationship between social work and child protection such that the former almost fails to have an existence outs…
Global Child Welfare and Well-Being
Global Child Welfare and Well-Being Susan C. Mapp New York, Oxford University Press, 2011 262 pp. + viii, ISBN 9780195339710, US$39.95 (paperback) The ambitious aim of the author of this book is ma
The Munro Review of Child Protection
Over the last 40 years child protection systems in all Advanced Western Societies have been subject to high profile criticisms and regular major reviews. In many respects the Munro Review of Child Protection (2011) in England, is very different to those which have gone before. This paper summarises the main findings and recommendations of The Review and locates it in its immediate policy and practice contexts. The paper also begins to identify so…
Reflections on ‘governing the family’
The purpose of this article is to critically reflect on recent developments and debates about child protection policy and practice in advanced Western societies, with particular reference to England. It includes a discussion of the scandal associated with the death of ‘Baby Peter’ and the political reactions to it, together with an analysis of the Munro Review of Child Protection. In the process it considers why the profession of social work is c…
Child Protection Systems
?Child Protection Systems is a comparative study of the social policies and professional practices that frame societal responses to the problems of child maltreatment in ten countries: USA, Canada, England, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway. Focusing on the developments in policy and practice since the mid-1990s, this volume provides a detailed, up-to-date analysis of the similarities and differences in how ch…
Social Work on Trial
This thoughtful and challenging book builds on Ian Butler and Mark Drakeford's earlier work on the nature of ‘scandals’ and their influence on public policy (Butler and Drakeford, 2005). However, rather than taking a more distant ‘telescope’, as before, the aim here is to use a ‘microscope’ to examine in very fine detail one particular major public policy scandal. The focus is upon the events and processes that took place between the second week …
Child Protection and Safeguarding in England
This paper critically reflects on policy developments and debates in England in relation to child protection and safeguarding over the past twenty years. It argues that the period from the early 1990s to late 2008 saw policy change in significant ways. The state developed a much broader focus of concern about what constituted risk to children and what the role of professionals should be in relation to this; increasingly, the emphasis was upon ‘sa…
‘From dangerousness to risk’
England is in the process of introducing the most radical changes to children's services since the Second World War. The ‘Every Child Matters’ Change for Children programme aims to integrate services in order to enhance prevention and early intervention and thereby improve the outcomes for all children while paying particular attention to the most disadvantaged. It places a particular importance on professionals sharing information and has introd…
Child-Centric Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Fragmentation of Child Welfare Practice in England
The ways in which government supports families and protects children are always a fine balance. In recent years, we suggest that this balance can be characterised increasingly as 'child-centric', less concerned with families and more focused on individual children and their needs. This article charts the changes in families and government responses over the last 40 years, and the way this is reflected in organisational and administrative arrangem…
Social work, politics and society
When Rebels Become Stakeholders
Preface Introduction: Democracy and the Puzzle of Orderly Social Change The Context of Social Change: Interfacing Society and State in India Continuity and Change in Indian Politics: An Inter-generational Analysis The Elements of Political Agency and the Limits of Consensus Political Competition, Social Cleavages and Institutionalisation of the Party System Re-inventing the Nation: The Dialectics of Nation and Region in India Poverty, Welfare and…
From Seebohm to Think Family
This paper critically reflects upon the changes in the role, tasks and aspirations of local authority social work with children and families in England since the publication of the Seebohm Report in 1968. In particular, it analyses how far the current changes related to the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, The Children's Plan: Building Brighter Futures and the Think Family report will have the effect of either furthering or und…
Challenges to practice and knowledge in child welfare social work
Reflections from the ‘frontline’
Purpose – In the context of current developments in children ' s services in the UK and increased emphasis on workforce development, the authors describe a survey of successful completers of a Post-qualifying (PQ) Child Care Award Programme, one of 18 such programmes in England that ran between 2001 and 2006/7. The survey ' s aims were twofold: first, to gather the respondents ' overall evaluations of their PQ training and information about their…
Professional Risk and Working with People
The ‘Change for Children’ Programme in England
Following the Children Act 2004 and the launch of the ‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ programme, England has embarked on the most ambitious changes in children's services for over a generation. While the government presented the changes as a response to the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbié, they are much more than this. They build on a number of ideas and policies that had been developed over a number of years, which em…
A Look at Contemporary Child Welfare and Child Protection Policy and Practice
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Governing the Family
Drawing on original research this book provides a challenging and instructive analysis of the nature of the heated and often contradicting arguments of recent years about how to reform the child care system, and the emergence of a central concern with child protection. It provides a unique insight into the political influences on the 1989 Children Act and the issues it attempted to address, the bargains that were struck in the process of it becom…
Changes in the Form of Knowledge in Social Work
This paper examines the changing form of knowledge in social work over the past thirty years and its implications for theory and practice. In particular, it considers the impact of new systems related to a range of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the shift from a narrative to a database way of thinking and operating. In doing so, it attempts to identify a series of key challenges and questions which need to be considered…
Risk, Advanced Liberalism and Child Welfare
The purpose of this paper is to analyse and reflect upon the current state of child welfare policy and practice and how this has changed over recent times. In the process it aims to make a contribution to the current debates on ‘the refocusing of children's services’. A central part of the argument is that new strategies have emerged which do not have as their central focus either meeting the needs of children or responding to child abuse, but th…
Child Protection and Safeguarding in England
This paper critically reflects on policy developments and debates in England in relation to child protection and safeguarding over the past twenty years. It argues that the period from the early 1990s to late 2008 saw policy change in significant ways. The state developed a much broader focus of concern about what constituted risk to children and what the role of professionals should be in relation to this; increasingly, the emphasis was upon ‘sa…
Rethinking Professional Practice
Drawing upon social constructionist and postmodern perspectives, together with recent feminist debates about ‘the ethics of care’, this paper reflects upon the productive ways in which contemporary social work can be thought about, organized and practised professionally. It argues that an emphasis on: process; plurality of both knowledge and voice; possibility; and the relational quality of knowledge are key elements in taking these issues forwar…
Social Work, Child Protection and Politics
This Critical Commentary reflects on how the author's personal and professional experiences have both mirrored and fed into the changing policy and practice contexts in England over the last forty years. A central part of the argument is that the way public and political debates have been constructed has meant there is a very intimate relationship between social work and child protection such that the former almost fails to have an existence outs…
Challenges to practice and knowledge in child welfare social work
Some thoughts on the relationship between theory and practice in and for social work
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of the discipline of social work and to argue that perhaps its central and unique characteristic is the way theory and practice are closely interrelated. In doing so it suggests it is important to locate social work in its particular social, political and historical contexts and to identify some of the key factors which have influenced not only its development but its forms. Social work is identi…
Child-Centric Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Fragmentation of Child Welfare Practice in England
The ways in which government supports families and protects children are always a fine balance. In recent years, we suggest that this balance can be characterised increasingly as 'child-centric', less concerned with families and more focused on individual children and their needs. This article charts the changes in families and government responses over the last 40 years, and the way this is reflected in organisational and administrative arrangem…
The ‘Change for Children’ Programme in England
Following the Children Act 2004 and the launch of the ‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ programme, England has embarked on the most ambitious changes in children's services for over a generation. While the government presented the changes as a response to the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbié, they are much more than this. They build on a number of ideas and policies that had been developed over a number of years, which em…
Every Child Matters’
Concepts of Risk in Relation to Organizational Structure and Functioning within the Personal Social Services and Probation
The main argument of this paper is that personal social services, including probation, at both a policy and practice level are increasingly focused on issues of risk. We postulate that risk assessment, risk management, the monitoring of risk and risk‐taking itself are rapidly becoming the dominant raison d'être of such agencies, thus supplanting ideologies of meeting need or welfare provision. In turn they have become key to priority setting and …
From Seebohm to Think Family
This paper critically reflects upon the changes in the role, tasks and aspirations of local authority social work with children and families in England since the publication of the Seebohm Report in 1968. In particular, it analyses how far the current changes related to the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, The Children's Plan: Building Brighter Futures and the Think Family report will have the effect of either furthering or und…
Child protection, family support and social work
This paper provides a critical appraisal of the Department of Health Research Studies in Child Protection and their recommendations for policy and practice. It argues that there are a number of conceptual and methodological problems and a failure to thoroughly articulate and represent the tensions and complexities of child protection work, particularly at the point of allegation and initial referral. In the process it fails to fully appreciate th…
Women, the family and child protection
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Comparative Research and Critical Child Protection Studies
This article argues that two interrelated factors have played important roles in the emergence of academic analyses of child protection policies and practices: the evidence of growing strains and crises in child protection systems over the last forty years; and the development of comparative research on different systems. The latter has demonstrated that child protection policies and practices vary between different countries such that the differ…
The contemporary state of child protection policy and practice in England and Wales
The contemporary refocusing of children’s services in England
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the changes in child protection policy and practice in England over the last 30 years, in particular to critically analyse the nature and impact of the “refocusing” initiative of the mid-1990s. Design/methodology/approach Policy analysis. Findings While the period from the mid-1990s until 2008 can be seen to show how policy and practice attempted to build on a number of the central pr…
Reflections from the ‘frontline’
Purpose – In the context of current developments in children ' s services in the UK and increased emphasis on workforce development, the authors describe a survey of successful completers of a Post-qualifying (PQ) Child Care Award Programme, one of 18 such programmes in England that ran between 2001 and 2006/7. The survey ' s aims were twofold: first, to gather the respondents ' overall evaluations of their PQ training and information about their…
A Look at Contemporary Child Welfare and Child Protection Policy and Practice
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
The contemporary politics of child protection
This paper outlines and analyses the main political factors that have had an influence on the current state of child protection policy and practice. These often contradictory influences are crucial to understanding the tensions that pervade this area of work and which lie at the heart of the Children Act 1989. It argues that the emergence of contemporary child protection work can be characterised by an increased emphasis on individual rights, leg…
Recognising common developments and trends across Western child welfare systems
Based on observational data, individual interviews (N = 22) and focus groups (N = 8) with practitioners in Italy, Norway and Slovenia, this study applies a grounded theory approach in exploring frontline practitioners’ experiences of supporting families involved with child welfare services. It was anticipated that there would be significant differences between the countries regarding practitioners’ understandings of families’ needs and problems, …
Public Inquiries, Legalism and Child Care in England and Wales
The aim of this paper is to examine the contribution of public inquiries to the reform of child care law and practice in England and Wales in the 1980s. Particular attention will be paid to the most recent inquiry, the Cleveland Report (Secretary of State, 1988). We wish to argue that a consensus has evolved on what must be done which is characterized by its reliance on what we call legalism. Evidence for this development is found both in the pro…
Politics Of Child Abuse
‘... the most comprehensive account to date of the discovery and identification of child abuse and its consolidation in Britain as a social problem ... informative and compelling ... an important study not only of child abuse but also of the sociology of a social problem.... The Times Higher Education Supplement
Children in care
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Unhappy Families
Women, the family and child protection
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Public Inquiries, Legalism and Child Care in England and Wales
The aim of this paper is to examine the contribution of public inquiries to the reform of child care law and practice in England and Wales in the 1980s. Particular attention will be paid to the most recent inquiry, the Cleveland Report (Secretary of State, 1988). We wish to argue that a consensus has evolved on what must be done which is characterized by its reliance on what we call legalism. Evidence for this development is found both in the pro…
Understanding Child Abuse
Sexual Abuse, the Cleveland Affair and the Private Family
Well in advance of the publication of the Carlile and Henry Reports in December 1987, a new and quite different child abuse scandal exploded into the public domain. The Cleveland affair, as it has often been called, represented quite different anxieties. If previous inquiries demonstrated that welfare professionals, particularly social workers, failed to protect the lives and interests of children and intervened too little too late into the priva…
Social Work, Social Regulation and the Family
The Children Act 1989 can be seen as the fruition of heated arguments during the 1980s about how British society should respond to the problems related to child abuse and child care. It was an attempt to address some of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues concerning the relationship between the child, the family and various state agents. In introducing the Bill for its second reading into the House of Commons on 27 April 1989, Dav…
Co-ordination, Management and Social Assessment
The Butler-Sloss Report saw the central reasons for the crisis in Cleveland as residing with failures in inter-agency cooperation and poor inter-professional understanding. As a consequence, the cases were not managed sensitively and the respective expertise of the different professionals was not applied appropriately. The solution did not lie simply in changing the law for this was unlikely to provide the more detailed checks and balances that w…
The Children Act 1989
When the Lord Chancellor introduced the Children Bill into the Lords at its second reading on 6 December 1988 he said: The Bill, in my view, represents the most comprehensive and far reaching reform of child care law which has come before Parliament in living memory. It brings together the public and private law concerning the care, protection and upbringing of children and the provision of services to them and their families. ( Hansard , HoL, 6 …
A Contemporary Political Economy of Child Protection
The central purpose of this final chapter is to draw some overall conclusions from what has been an essentially detailed and perhaps overly descriptive analysis of recent policy statements and legislative developments in child care. All the time I have had in mind the likely significance such changes might have — for the experiences of practitioners and family members; for our understanding of changes in social policy more generally; and for deba…
Child Care, Prevention and Partnership
The 1970s was a decade of significant change for social work with children and families. It opened amid important organisational change and considerable optimism about what could be achieved. The Seebohm Report (Seebohm, 1968), together with the Local Authority Social Services Act (1970) which followed, established the personal social services as a central element of state welfare provision. It very much reflected the interests of the social work…
Child Abuse, Authority and Risk
Perhaps the major factor which contributed to concern about child care policy and practice during the 1970s arose from a series of child abuse inquiries. The Maria Colwell Inquiry (Secretary of State, 1974) signalled the beginning of modern political, public and professional interest in child abuse (see Parton, 1979, 1981). Public inquiries proved crucial providing the impetus for introducing new administrative and management procedures for ident…
Governing the Family
Drawing on original research this book provides a challenging and instructive analysis of the nature of the heated and often contradicting arguments of recent years about how to reform the child care system, and the emergence of a central concern with child protection. It provides a unique insight into the political influences on the 1989 Children Act and the issues it attempted to address, the bargains that were struck in the process of it becom…
The contemporary politics of child protection
This paper outlines and analyses the main political factors that have had an influence on the current state of child protection policy and practice. These often contradictory influences are crucial to understanding the tensions that pervade this area of work and which lie at the heart of the Children Act 1989. It argues that the emergence of contemporary child protection work can be characterised by an increased emphasis on individual rights, leg…
Child Protection
Neglect as Child Protection
This paper identifies the central tensions and contradictions in relation to current policies and practices for child neglect. It demonstrates how these arise directly from the political context of the work and how this has changed over recent years. In the process children, their parents and the professionals concerned are left vulnerable and potentially exposed. It concludes by suggesting how we can reframe policy and practice in this area of w…
The contemporary state of child protection policy and practice in England and Wales
Child protection, family support and social work
This paper provides a critical appraisal of the Department of Health Research Studies in Child Protection and their recommendations for policy and practice. It argues that there are a number of conceptual and methodological problems and a failure to thoroughly articulate and represent the tensions and complexities of child protection work, particularly at the point of allegation and initial referral. In the process it fails to fully appreciate th…
Orthodox Approaches to Child Abuse Risk
Central to current thinking and embedded in policy guidance is the assumption that child protection work is fundamentally concerned with the identification of 'high risk'. As we argued in Chapter 2, the primary focus of research and the development of policy and practice since the early 1970s has been increasingly concerned with the development and refinement of policies, practices and technologies concerned with identifying 'high risk' and there…
Child Protection and Family Support
1. Child Protection and Family Support: Current Debates and Future Prospects Nigel Parton 2. The Re-Focusing of Children's Services: The Contribution of Research Mike Little 3. Implementing the Family Support Clauses of the 1989 Children Act: Legislative, Professional and Organisational Obstacles Jane Tunstill 4. Policing Minority Child Rearing Practices in Australia David Thorpe 5. Relating Outcomes to Objectives in Child Protection Policy Jane …
Concepts of Risk in Relation to Organizational Structure and Functioning within the Personal Social Services and Probation
The main argument of this paper is that personal social services, including probation, at both a policy and practice level are increasingly focused on issues of risk. We postulate that risk assessment, risk management, the monitoring of risk and risk‐taking itself are rapidly becoming the dominant raison d'être of such agencies, thus supplanting ideologies of meeting need or welfare provision. In turn they have become key to priority setting and …
Risk, Advanced Liberalism and Child Welfare
The purpose of this paper is to analyse and reflect upon the current state of child welfare policy and practice and how this has changed over recent times. In the process it aims to make a contribution to the current debates on ‘the refocusing of children's services’. A central part of the argument is that new strategies have emerged which do not have as their central focus either meeting the needs of children or responding to child abuse, but th…
Constructive Social Work
Recent years have witnessed increased international interest in the relevance of social theories associated with postmodernism, social constructionism and narrative approaches for social work. The central aim of this unique book is to demonstrate how such ideas can make a direct and positive contribution to social work practice. The innovative approach is affirmative and reflexive and emphasis is given to dialogue, process and plurality of knowle…
Some thoughts on the relationship between theory and practice in and for social work
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of the discipline of social work and to argue that perhaps its central and unique characteristic is the way theory and practice are closely interrelated. In doing so it suggests it is important to locate social work in its particular social, political and historical contexts and to identify some of the key factors which have influenced not only its development but its forms. Social work is identi…
Political science (44 obras) · Sociology (39 obras) · Law (36 obras) · Psychology (33 obras) · Social Work Education and Practice (24 obras) · Child Abuse and Trauma (22 obras) · Child Welfare and Adoption (21 obras) · Medicine (19 obras) · Child protection (18 obras) · Law (18 obras)