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Recognizing and Helping the Neglected Child: Evidence-Based Practice for Assessment and Intervention

This book forms part of the ‘Safeguarding Children Across Services’ series, edited by Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward, which aims to improve both recognition and response to child abuse. As the title implies, it is aimed at practitioners working with children and promises to include a systematic review of the relevant literature as well as to challenge the reader to reflect on their practice. Working with child neglect presents immense challenges. A text that can assist practitioners to navigate through the complexities of recognition and subsequent intervention would therefore be invaluable. This book starts by tackling one of the biggest challenges by encouraging acceptance of neglect as ‘a fluid concept’ (p. 18), rather than seeking a singular definition. The authors examine factors associated with child neglect and provide concrete suggestions for ‘what to look for’ in potentially neglectful parents. This is followed by a discussion of the ‘signs of unmet need’ in children, with measurable indicators for practitioners. The authors include relevant evidence from a variety of cross-cultural studies and offer different perspectives on identifying vulnerabilities and recognising neglect across both childhood and adolescence. This section in particular has direct applicability to practice and encourages reflection on both current cases and families worked with in the past. Although I was reading with the specific aim of reviewing the book, I couldn’t help but think of real families, real situations and ways things could be done better. One of the biggest strengths to this text is how it sparks the imagination, motivating creativity of response to situations of neglect. Chapter 4 includes alarming evidence of factors that inhibit professional response to neglect. It helpfully considers the distinct barriers for health, education and social work professionals, as well as the general public. Although there is a useful focus on improving recognition and response, the emphasis on multi-agency working is unsurprising and could come across as ‘old news’. However, the authors do outline a suggested model of intervention by promoting PRACTICE: SOCIAL WORK IN ACTION VOLUME 24 NUMBER 5 (DECEMBER 2012)