Book review
Title: Changing children's services; Working and learning together
Author(s): Pam Foley and Andy Rixon
Year: 2008
Edition: 1
Number of pages: 312
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 9781847420602
Price: £19.99
Reviewer: Claire Smith, Senior Lecturer Working with Children, Young People and Families, Newman University Co
Review date: 10 December 2008
More information about this book
At a time when services are continually, it seems, portrayed by the media as failing to work together to meet the needs of children and families, and thus facing never-ending cries for change, this book is an appropriate text for all professionals and students working in children’s services. Rixon opens the book with a chapter on the difficult issue of working with change, and how practitioners feel about their professional status, and the constant restructuring that they undergo, along with uncertainty over job roles. Leverett in chapter two discusses the role of parents and carers in their child’s upbringing and how services need to work with parents for the benefit of the child. Stone and Rixon in chapter three explore the notion of integrated working, and the difficulties that arise. They also tackle the multitude of terminology that has arisen in view of multiagency working and given some clear clarification on such terms, which is extremely useful. In chapter four, Jones and Leverett examine the policy into practice element, and the reality of implementing national policies in day-to-day practice. The latter part of the book evaluates whether multiagency working is happening in practice, and training implications involved in multiagency working.
The chapters are very relevant and interesting, although they are rather long. However, they are split into subsections so it would be easy to dip into parts of chapters rather than students having to read lengthy chapters. I also found the ‘Key Points’ box at the end of each subsection excellent for drawing points together as the reader went along rather than waiting until the end of each chapter. Likewise, the ‘core questions’ box at the start of each chapter offered some clarity over exactly which questions the reader could expect to be answered throughout the chapter. The ‘thinking points’ scattered throughout chapters were also good, and could be used in teaching sessions to start a discussion with groups of students. Some of the diagrams were also very clear and useful, and will help visual learners to grasp some of the complex ideas. In several of the chapters, there was a blue box in the left hand margin which highlighted a key word (commodification, epistemology Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, and legitimate knowledge are just a few examples) and gave a brief explanation. This was very useful, and extracting them to the margin next to where the word was used in context, made the explanation stand out. I feel that a few more of these throughout the book would have been better. The ‘practice boxes’ were interesting but more could have been done with these. These could be made into more practical exercises if they had been linked to the ‘thinking points’.
I would use the book with undergraduate students studying for the Working with Children, Young People and Families programme. In particular, I will be adding it as essential reading for students studying the modules in multiagency working and working with uncertainty. These modules are aimed at levels five and six for which I think this book would be most appropriate as they would at least have some grounding in the different agencies working with children and families and the concept of joined up working in level four. I would not recommend this book for those in the early stages of their studies (e.g level four or below) as some of the ideas introduced in the book are quite complex and may confuse a student who does not have a basic grounding in the concept of multi agency working.
