Anna Gupta
Biographic Data
| ID | 4005627 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Gupta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna |
| FAMILY NAME | Gupta |
| SIGNATURE | GUPTA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Holloway University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6655-3327 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 155 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Social Work and Social Activism
What makes peer support supportive? A scoping review of multidimensional parent advocacy support in child welfare
Parents advocates provide a range of diverse supports not adequately captured in current support definitions. • Fourteen unique support domains are identified that highlight the important contribution of parent advocates and their lived experience. • The breadth and depth of parent advocate support needs to be more fully recognized in practice and research, including its contribution to positive outcome achievement. Parent peer advocacy is an inc…
A socio-ecological exploration of suicidal ideation among people with care experience
People who have lived in foster families or children’s homes face a range of adversities, including a higher risk of suicidal ideation and behaviour compared to those without care experience. Social work and care systems lack standard suicide prevention guidance tailored to young people in care and care leavers. Qualitative research to investigate factors influencing suicidal ideation among this group in depth is scarce, as well as cross-national…
The meaning of care
Do they have a voice? Perspectives on participation and democratic values in child and youth welfare
Children and families with no recourse to public funds
This paper reviews 26 reports into deaths and serious abuse of children in families who were subject to the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule. Our analysis illustrates vulnerabilities caused by exclusionary policies, exacerbating social deprivation and isolation experienced by the children and families and making it more difficult for professionals to respond in ways which safeguarded children's welfare. Drawing upon a social model for prot…
Beyond participation
Racially Minoritised Young People’s Experiences of Navigating Covid-19 Challenges
This article explores the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on racially minoritised children and young people. It draws on a study that investigated the factors that impacted the well-being and resilience of Black and Asian children and young people in the UK during the pandemic. The study employed a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews and focus groups with Black and Asian children aged twelve to ninetee…
When left is right
Both inhibitory control and typological similarity between two languages feature frequently in current research on multilingual cognitive processing mechanisms. Yet, the modulatory effect of speaking two typologically highly similar languages on inhibitory control performance remains largely unexplored. However, this is a critical issue because it speaks directly to the organisation of the multilingual's cognitive architecture. In this study, we …
Parenting through the lenses of risk and othering
The construction of parents' cannabis use in the context of child protection has far‐reaching implications for how their parenting is perceived and assessed and for the decisions made regarding their children's lives. Yet little is known about the meanings various stakeholders in child protection processes attribute to parents' cannabis use. This paper aims to explore constructions of parents' cannabis use in child protection court proceedings an…
Using the Capability Approach in Social Work with Children Experiencing Post-Separation Parental Stalking
This article analyses Finnish children’s experiences of post-separation parental stalking as a form of domestic violence and explores how the capabilities approach (CA) can help social workers understand the issue and support children. The data consist of thematic interviews with eighteen children and young people (aged 4–21 years) whose father or stepfather has stalked their mothers after separation. The theory-driven data analysis was carried o…
Reordering family practices in an unequal and disorderly world
Using findings from The Role of the Social Worker in Adoption – Ethics and Human Rights: An Enquiry , commissioned by the British Association of Social Workers, the following article presents a number of emerging themes regarding post-adoption contact and support in the UK. Three hundred individuals and 13 organisations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland contributed to the enquiry and the data were analysed thematically. Within …
Social Work under Covid-19
This article presents a thematic analysis of 100 articles which appeared in ‘SW2020 under COVID-19’ online magazine, authored by people with lived experience, practitioners, students and academics. The magazine was founded by an editorial collective of the authors of this article and ran as a free online magazine during the period of the first UK COVID-19 lockdown period (March–July 2020). It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from …
Cross-national insights into social workers’ multi-dimensional moral agency when working with child abuse and neglect
This paper analyses social workers’ moral agency in addressing child abuse and neglect. We argue that ethically sound social work requires the capacity to exercise strong, multidimensional moral agency. The contribution is based on a qualitative interpretative meta-synthesis of four studies representing different forms of child abuse and neglect in varied contexts. Drawing on our analysis, we identify three thematic categories of moral considerat…
Post-pandemic
COVID-19 has shone a light on the many inequalities scarring our landscape. As we look to the future, a consensus is emerging around the need to reject the highly individualistic focus of previous decades and to build back fairer by tackling the ‘causes of the causes’ of so many of our social ills. What might this mean for ‘child protection’, where a focus on individual families and individually generated risks has dominated? We suggest that this…
Reflections on social work 2020 under Covid-19 online magazine
Social Work 2020 under Covid-19 was a free online magazine conceived just before the UK’s Covid-19 full lockdown began, in late March 2020. It ran for five editions until 14 July 2020. In this time it published close to 100 articles from academics, people with lived experience, practitioners and students. It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from the last three groups of contributors than traditional journals. This article draws on…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
The Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection
This article aims to present a Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection (PAPCP). The increasing scholarly recognition of the damaging impact of poverty, inequality and the neoliberal politics of ‘risk’ on child protection policy and practice, has highlighted the need for a justice-based and poverty-aware analytical framework for child protection social work. In order to create such a framework, we build upon Krumer-Nevo’s Poverty-Aware Paradig…
Social Workers’ Reflections on Ethics in Relation to Adoption in the UK
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. The Enquiry engaged with a range of stakeholders and explored their perspec…
On hope, loss, anger, and the spaces in between
This article explores the findings of a study on the role of the social worker in adoption with a focus on ethics, concentrating on the perspectives of adopted people, birth parents, and adoptive parents. Their reflections challenge policy attempts that are framed around “new beginnings” for children. The focus on hope in such policy projects fails to understand that hope inevitably coexists with anger and loss. The concept of ethical trespass, w…
Protecting Children
Protecting Children
The state is increasingly experienced as both intrusive and neglectful, particularly by those living in poverty, leading to loss of trust and widespread feelings of alienation and disconnection. Against this tense background, this innovative book argues that child protection policies and practices have become part of the problem, rather than ensuring children's well-being and safety. Building on the ideas in the best-selling Re-imagining Child Pr…
Bringing back the social
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to move away from a sole focus on assessing and dealing with individualised risk factors in order to more fully engage with and understand the social determinants of many of the harms that are manifest in families. Design/methodology/approach It draws from a number of research studies being conducted by the authors and a literature on psycho-social approaches to social suffering. Findings…
Working with PREVENT
‘Radicalisation risk’ and the associated practice and organisational responses to it are accepted, rather uncritically, as legitimate activity for statutory social workers. Yet, the policy backdrop driving much of this development has not been matched by practice debate or learning about how best to work with these cases. The 2015 PREVENT Duty mandates social workers and many other practitioners ‘to pay due regard’ to possible radicalisation conc…
Poverty, exclusion and child protection practice
The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers h…
Let’s stop feeding the risk monster
This article explores how the child protection system currently operates in England. It analyses how policy and practice has developed, and articulates the need for an alternative approach. It draws from the social model as applied in the fields of disability and mental health, to begin to sketch out more hopeful and progressive possibilities for children, families and communities. The social model specifically draws attention to the economic, en…
Black African Children and the Child Protection System
This paper explores black African children's experiences of the child protection system in the UK. The central focus of the paper is a review of the available literature on the social circumstances and environmental influences affecting many black African families involved in the child protection system; specific parenting practices and care-giving environments; and their experiences of social work and other professional interventions aimed at sa…
Poverty, exclusion and child protection practice
The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers h…
Giving poverty a voice
This article explores family members’ perspectives on child protection interventions within the current neoliberal and punitive policy and practice contexts. The material is drawn from the ‘Giving Poverty a Voice’ social worker training project, a collaborative project involving family members and activists from ATD Fourth World (the international anti-poverty organisation), academics in the field of social work and practitioners, including socia…
The Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection
This article aims to present a Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection (PAPCP). The increasing scholarly recognition of the damaging impact of poverty, inequality and the neoliberal politics of ‘risk’ on child protection policy and practice, has highlighted the need for a justice-based and poverty-aware analytical framework for child protection social work. In order to create such a framework, we build upon Krumer-Nevo’s Poverty-Aware Paradig…
Change for children? The challenges and opportunities for the children’s social work workforce
Children’s services are currently undergoing their biggest changes in a generation. The government is seeking to create a more coherent, seamless configuration of services, with a view to securing improved outcomes for all children. However, there is a current crisis in the recruitment and retention of a range of child welfare professionals, including children’s social workers, which must be addressed in order for this ambitious agenda to be achi…
Poverty and child neglect – the elephant in the room
There has been much discussion in the past few years about how social workers in England should respond to cases of child neglect, with calls to take more children into care and speed up the process towards adoption. In this article it is argued that current dominant discourse framed in terms of individual pathology disregards the substantial body of knowledge on the effects of poverty and the complex interrelationships between poverty and neglec…
Reclaiming Humanity
This paper explores how the Capability Approach (CA) can inform a critical analysis of child protection policy, with particular reference to poverty, parenting and maltreatment. The CA, originally developed by the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, is an approach that has been used widely in a range of disciplines and policy domains. Here, we outline the CA and examine how it can inform our understanding of the impact of the current polic…
On hope, loss, anger, and the spaces in between
This article explores the findings of a study on the role of the social worker in adoption with a focus on ethics, concentrating on the perspectives of adopted people, birth parents, and adoptive parents. Their reflections challenge policy attempts that are framed around “new beginnings” for children. The focus on hope in such policy projects fails to understand that hope inevitably coexists with anger and loss. The concept of ethical trespass, w…
Working with PREVENT
‘Radicalisation risk’ and the associated practice and organisational responses to it are accepted, rather uncritically, as legitimate activity for statutory social workers. Yet, the policy backdrop driving much of this development has not been matched by practice debate or learning about how best to work with these cases. The 2015 PREVENT Duty mandates social workers and many other practitioners ‘to pay due regard’ to possible radicalisation conc…
R e B ‐ S
The family courts in E ngland and W ales are being significantly reformed in line with the coalition government's aim to speed up the process and increase the numbers of children being adopted from care. In S eptember 2013, the C ourt of A ppeal handed down a judgment, R e B ‐ S ( C hildren) [2013] EWCA C iv 1146, that has wide‐ranging implications for professional practice and decision making in care proceedings. The judgment challenges the poli…
Post-pandemic
COVID-19 has shone a light on the many inequalities scarring our landscape. As we look to the future, a consensus is emerging around the need to reject the highly individualistic focus of previous decades and to build back fairer by tackling the ‘causes of the causes’ of so many of our social ills. What might this mean for ‘child protection’, where a focus on individual families and individually generated risks has dominated? We suggest that this…
Poverty and shame – messages for social work
This article discusses the work of a project bringing together academics, practitioners and family members living in poverty with experience of child protection services, to develop a training programme for social workers on work with families living in poverty. The project involves a series of workshops and in this article the theme of the first workshop – ‘poverty and shame’ – is explored. The content of the discussions is analysed and implicat…
Social Workers’ Reflections on Ethics in Relation to Adoption in the UK
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. The Enquiry engaged with a range of stakeholders and explored their perspec…
What about my dad? Black fathers and the child protection system
This article explores social work practice with black fathers within the child protection and family court systems through the analysis of case studies involving black fathers whose children ‘nearly missed’ the chance to live with them. Drawing upon theories of social justice, this article explores the construction of black men as fathers and contextualises the discussion in relation to gender, race, poverty and immigration issues, as well as the…
Beyond participation
Bringing back the social
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to move away from a sole focus on assessing and dealing with individualised risk factors in order to more fully engage with and understand the social determinants of many of the harms that are manifest in families. Design/methodology/approach It draws from a number of research studies being conducted by the authors and a literature on psycho-social approaches to social suffering. Findings…
The meaning of care
Parenting through the lenses of risk and othering
The construction of parents' cannabis use in the context of child protection has far‐reaching implications for how their parenting is perceived and assessed and for the decisions made regarding their children's lives. Yet little is known about the meanings various stakeholders in child protection processes attribute to parents' cannabis use. This paper aims to explore constructions of parents' cannabis use in child protection court proceedings an…
Using the Capability Approach in Social Work with Children Experiencing Post-Separation Parental Stalking
This article analyses Finnish children’s experiences of post-separation parental stalking as a form of domestic violence and explores how the capabilities approach (CA) can help social workers understand the issue and support children. The data consist of thematic interviews with eighteen children and young people (aged 4–21 years) whose father or stepfather has stalked their mothers after separation. The theory-driven data analysis was carried o…
Reordering family practices in an unequal and disorderly world
Using findings from The Role of the Social Worker in Adoption – Ethics and Human Rights: An Enquiry , commissioned by the British Association of Social Workers, the following article presents a number of emerging themes regarding post-adoption contact and support in the UK. Three hundred individuals and 13 organisations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland contributed to the enquiry and the data were analysed thematically. Within …
Black African Children and the Child Protection System
This paper explores black African children's experiences of the child protection system in the UK. The central focus of the paper is a review of the available literature on the social circumstances and environmental influences affecting many black African families involved in the child protection system; specific parenting practices and care-giving environments; and their experiences of social work and other professional interventions aimed at sa…
Change for children? The challenges and opportunities for the children’s social work workforce
Children’s services are currently undergoing their biggest changes in a generation. The government is seeking to create a more coherent, seamless configuration of services, with a view to securing improved outcomes for all children. However, there is a current crisis in the recruitment and retention of a range of child welfare professionals, including children’s social workers, which must be addressed in order for this ambitious agenda to be achi…
R e B ‐ S
The family courts in E ngland and W ales are being significantly reformed in line with the coalition government's aim to speed up the process and increase the numbers of children being adopted from care. In S eptember 2013, the C ourt of A ppeal handed down a judgment, R e B ‐ S ( C hildren) [2013] EWCA C iv 1146, that has wide‐ranging implications for professional practice and decision making in care proceedings. The judgment challenges the poli…
African Parents Must Know
The author of African Parents Must Know is a qualified solicitor and experienced social worker, who draws upon her personal and professional knowledge and experience. She has written this book for African parents, particularly those who have recently arrived in the UK. In the introduction, Williams describes the book as a ‘one stop reference manual’ for African parents who are bringing up their children in a new and different country. Her objecti…
Poverty and shame – messages for social work
This article discusses the work of a project bringing together academics, practitioners and family members living in poverty with experience of child protection services, to develop a training programme for social workers on work with families living in poverty. The project involves a series of workshops and in this article the theme of the first workshop – ‘poverty and shame’ – is explored. The content of the discussions is analysed and implicat…
What about my dad? Black fathers and the child protection system
This article explores social work practice with black fathers within the child protection and family court systems through the analysis of case studies involving black fathers whose children ‘nearly missed’ the chance to live with them. Drawing upon theories of social justice, this article explores the construction of black men as fathers and contextualises the discussion in relation to gender, race, poverty and immigration issues, as well as the…
Poverty and child neglect – the elephant in the room
There has been much discussion in the past few years about how social workers in England should respond to cases of child neglect, with calls to take more children into care and speed up the process towards adoption. In this article it is argued that current dominant discourse framed in terms of individual pathology disregards the substantial body of knowledge on the effects of poverty and the complex interrelationships between poverty and neglec…
Giving poverty a voice
This article explores family members’ perspectives on child protection interventions within the current neoliberal and punitive policy and practice contexts. The material is drawn from the ‘Giving Poverty a Voice’ social worker training project, a collaborative project involving family members and activists from ATD Fourth World (the international anti-poverty organisation), academics in the field of social work and practitioners, including socia…
Let’s stop feeding the risk monster
This article explores how the child protection system currently operates in England. It analyses how policy and practice has developed, and articulates the need for an alternative approach. It draws from the social model as applied in the fields of disability and mental health, to begin to sketch out more hopeful and progressive possibilities for children, families and communities. The social model specifically draws attention to the economic, en…
Reclaiming Humanity
This paper explores how the Capability Approach (CA) can inform a critical analysis of child protection policy, with particular reference to poverty, parenting and maltreatment. The CA, originally developed by the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, is an approach that has been used widely in a range of disciplines and policy domains. Here, we outline the CA and examine how it can inform our understanding of the impact of the current polic…
Bringing back the social
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to move away from a sole focus on assessing and dealing with individualised risk factors in order to more fully engage with and understand the social determinants of many of the harms that are manifest in families. Design/methodology/approach It draws from a number of research studies being conducted by the authors and a literature on psycho-social approaches to social suffering. Findings…
Working with PREVENT
‘Radicalisation risk’ and the associated practice and organisational responses to it are accepted, rather uncritically, as legitimate activity for statutory social workers. Yet, the policy backdrop driving much of this development has not been matched by practice debate or learning about how best to work with these cases. The 2015 PREVENT Duty mandates social workers and many other practitioners ‘to pay due regard’ to possible radicalisation conc…
Poverty, exclusion and child protection practice
The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers h…
Protecting Children
Protecting Children
The state is increasingly experienced as both intrusive and neglectful, particularly by those living in poverty, leading to loss of trust and widespread feelings of alienation and disconnection. Against this tense background, this innovative book argues that child protection policies and practices have become part of the problem, rather than ensuring children's well-being and safety. Building on the ideas in the best-selling Re-imagining Child Pr…
On hope, loss, anger, and the spaces in between
This article explores the findings of a study on the role of the social worker in adoption with a focus on ethics, concentrating on the perspectives of adopted people, birth parents, and adoptive parents. Their reflections challenge policy attempts that are framed around “new beginnings” for children. The focus on hope in such policy projects fails to understand that hope inevitably coexists with anger and loss. The concept of ethical trespass, w…
Reflections on social work 2020 under Covid-19 online magazine
Social Work 2020 under Covid-19 was a free online magazine conceived just before the UK’s Covid-19 full lockdown began, in late March 2020. It ran for five editions until 14 July 2020. In this time it published close to 100 articles from academics, people with lived experience, practitioners and students. It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from the last three groups of contributors than traditional journals. This article draws on…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
The Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection
This article aims to present a Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection (PAPCP). The increasing scholarly recognition of the damaging impact of poverty, inequality and the neoliberal politics of ‘risk’ on child protection policy and practice, has highlighted the need for a justice-based and poverty-aware analytical framework for child protection social work. In order to create such a framework, we build upon Krumer-Nevo’s Poverty-Aware Paradig…
Social Workers’ Reflections on Ethics in Relation to Adoption in the UK
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. The Enquiry engaged with a range of stakeholders and explored their perspec…
Cross-national insights into social workers’ multi-dimensional moral agency when working with child abuse and neglect
This paper analyses social workers’ moral agency in addressing child abuse and neglect. We argue that ethically sound social work requires the capacity to exercise strong, multidimensional moral agency. The contribution is based on a qualitative interpretative meta-synthesis of four studies representing different forms of child abuse and neglect in varied contexts. Drawing on our analysis, we identify three thematic categories of moral considerat…
Post-pandemic
COVID-19 has shone a light on the many inequalities scarring our landscape. As we look to the future, a consensus is emerging around the need to reject the highly individualistic focus of previous decades and to build back fairer by tackling the ‘causes of the causes’ of so many of our social ills. What might this mean for ‘child protection’, where a focus on individual families and individually generated risks has dominated? We suggest that this…
Reordering family practices in an unequal and disorderly world
Using findings from The Role of the Social Worker in Adoption – Ethics and Human Rights: An Enquiry , commissioned by the British Association of Social Workers, the following article presents a number of emerging themes regarding post-adoption contact and support in the UK. Three hundred individuals and 13 organisations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland contributed to the enquiry and the data were analysed thematically. Within …
Social Work under Covid-19
This article presents a thematic analysis of 100 articles which appeared in ‘SW2020 under COVID-19’ online magazine, authored by people with lived experience, practitioners, students and academics. The magazine was founded by an editorial collective of the authors of this article and ran as a free online magazine during the period of the first UK COVID-19 lockdown period (March–July 2020). It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from …
When left is right
Both inhibitory control and typological similarity between two languages feature frequently in current research on multilingual cognitive processing mechanisms. Yet, the modulatory effect of speaking two typologically highly similar languages on inhibitory control performance remains largely unexplored. However, this is a critical issue because it speaks directly to the organisation of the multilingual's cognitive architecture. In this study, we …
Political science (27 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (19 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (18 works) · Social Work (17 works) · Public relations (16 works) · Child protection (14 works) · Child Abuse and Trauma (13 works)