Working with Children and Young People

LISA ARAI Senior Lecturer, School of Health and Social Care, Teesside University, UK SARAH CRAFTER Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Human Development and Culture, University of Northampton, UK ALISON DAVIES Counsellor and full-time PHD Student with the Open University, UK PAM FOLEY Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Health and Social Care, Open University, UK DAN GOODLEY Professor of Psychology and Disability Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK WOOK HAMILTON Project Manager for Young People in Focus - a national charity supporting practitioners who work with young people through research, training and publications AMANDA HOLT Senior Lecturer in Criminal Psychology, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, UK GAIL JACKSON Social Worker TRACY KELLY-FREER Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Worcester, UK and EYPS Assessor and Forest School Leader GERISON LANSDOWN Founder Director of the Children's Rights Alliance for England; international children's rights consultant and advocate in children's rights; Honorary Fellow of UNICEF-UK and co-director of CRED-PRO KATHERINE RUNSWICK-COLE Research Associate, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and former early years teacher PETER SQUIRES Professor of Criminology and Public Policy, University of Brighton, UK PETER UNWIN Senior Lecturer, University of Worcester, UK

A timely reader of interest to a wide academic discipline base, providing a critical account and new theoretical perspectives on practical issues arising in working with children of all ages and their families. Uniquely, it brings together discussion of early years with later childhood, including adolescence and transitions into adulthood.

Traditional ways of working with children and young people are giving way to new practices. Where practice solutions previously tended to be imposed on children and young people, professionals are now looking to engage them as vital partners in actively negotiated and co-constructed models of working.

Combining social ecological and social constructionist perspectives drawn from a range of academic and practice disciplines, Working with Children and Young People explores and interrogates how ideas about childhood, policy and professional discourses change over time and, in turn, affect the issues faced by young people and their families. In particular, this important text:

• develops a critical and reflective approach to knowledge and practice explored vividly across a wide range of practice settings
• presents a new vision, where the focus is centrally on the child or young person and where dominant ideas are challenged
• explores how key concerns, such as professional power and children's rights, embed themselves in working relationships.

Working with Children and Young People provides an innovative critical framework for all students on vocational and professional courses involving work with children and young people. It also offers illuminating reading for practitioners working with the 0–18 age group, whether in the statutory, voluntary or private sectors.