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Social Work newsletter - November 2009. Go to the newsletter archive.

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JKP Social Work Newsletter
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Social Work Newsletter

Welcome to the Jessica Kingsley Publishers Social Work Newsletter. This monthly newsletter includes interviews, articles and opinion pieces from JKP authors as well as relevant news stories and conference dates. We welcome your feedback and please do let us know of any forthcoming conferences or events that you would like us to mention.

You can find details on how to contribute or give feedback, as well as opt out of these emails, further down the newsletter.

To see a full list of our titles on Social Work please click here.

Exclusive Interview with Gordon Jack

Gordon Jack

Gordon Jack is the co-author of The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers, published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. He has more than 30 years' experience in social work practice, education and research with children and families, and is currently Reader in Social Work at Durham University.


How did you first become involved in social work?

I think I probably have to blame my mother for that. I come from a family of five children, but despite the demands that this obviously placed on her, my mother has always found time to do regular voluntary work with disadvantaged or vulnerable groups of children and adults as well. I suppose this is where the seeds of my future social work career were sown.

What inspired you to write your new book ‘The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers: Hitting the Ground Running’?

I had been involved in social work education for many years, so I was well aware of the difficulties social workers face in the early stages of their carers, when they are trying to manage the pressures of their day-to-day work at the same time as continuing their professional development. Together with Helen Donnellan I was responsible for the delivery of a post-qualifying child care social work programme in the far south west of England, and we were interested in finding out more about how newly qualified practitioners were coping during the transition from student to established professional. Having completed the study, which involved a series of interviews with social workers (and their managers), we realized that the results carried a number of important messages, and that there were very few resources available to help newly qualified social workers in the early stages of their careers. The book is intended to fill this gap in the literature.

What do you think are the main challenges currently facing newly qualified child and family social workers?

The social workers in our study told us that the transition from the protected environment of being a student to that of a qualified worker was often extremely challenging, at both a professional and a personal level. In particular, they found it difficult to cope with the change from an emphasis on developing their learning and achieving ‘best practice’ as a student, to the demands of heavy workloads and an emphasis on meeting deadlines and seemingly endless record-keeping (often involving cumbersome IT systems) as a qualified worker. Whilst help with the practicalities of managing individual cases through supervision was appreciated, many newly qualified staff found that the need for critical reflection on their practice, as well as recognition of the emotional demands of the job and the importance of continuing professional development, were not so well recognised.

If you could give a newly qualified social worker one piece of advice what would it be?

I think it is important for newly-qualified social workers to understand that they won’t be able to develop a successful and satisfying career, in which they can make a sustained and positive contribution to the well-being of the children and families they are working with, unless they make sure that they look after themselves. It is also important that their employers are providing appropriate supervision and support arrangements and opportunities for continuing professional development that recognize the person within the developing professional.

Copyright © Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2009

The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers: Hitting the Ground Running

The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers: Hitting the Ground Running by Helen Donnellan and Gordon Jack is released this month and is now available for purchase. See the below link for more details.

More details of the book



A tribute to Ann Cattanach, Play Therapist and JKP author who passed away earlier this month.


JKP first published Ann Cattanach’s work in the early 1990’s, by which time she was an established play therapist, confident in her ability to help young children who had suffered abuse, and knowing she wanted to share the skills she had. Play Therapy with Abused Children, published in 1993, was a profoundly moving book, and deeply affected everyone at JKP who worked on it. Without any hint of prurience, she took the reader into the lived experience of the abused child, and offered the professional reader wise paths to reaching and helping the child find healing and recovery. When I asked her how she could bear to do such costly work, and to hold such pain, she simply laughed and pointed to herself, and said `I eat’.

The experience of publishing such a book, and the example of the author who wrote it, was without doubt one of the key influences in how JKP went forward from there, and that the company identified itself so strongly as publishing and wanting to focus on publishing `books that made a difference’. Ann’s later books without question `made a difference’, and the people who worked with her at JKP continued to learn from her too. Her books were not only wise and sensitive, but intellectually rigorous, and asked a great deal of the reader – not so much in terms of understanding as of courage and integrity. It was a great personal pleasure when these were put forward for a PhD, just recognition for someone who had contributed enormously to her field. She will be very much missed.

Jessica Kingsley

JKP News


The Daily Mail have featured an extract of Telling Tales About Dementia: Experiences of Caring Edited by Lucy Whitman. Read it here.

Social work in the news - some of the articles in the media this month

Community Care have featured an article on children's care home fees being cut.

Children and Young People Now have published a story on how looked-after children are raising concerns about their care.

The Guardian has featured a piece on social care budgets becoming personal.

The Independent has published a feature on whether dementia patients should have their hospital stays cut.

We are pleased to announce that you can now follow us on Twitter and find us on Facebook!

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This month's author feature by JKP author Mary Wilkinson

Mary Wilkinson



Editing a national disability newspaper for over 20 years brought me into contact with many disabled people who had fought through hardship and discrimination to become leaders in their field and were now determined to improve opportunities for others and change public attitudes to disability. One or two of them, like Jack Ashley, the deaf Labour politician, or Peter White, the blind broadcaster, had written autobiographies, but by 2005 these were quite out of date. Much had been written about disability from a medical, academic or social science stand point, but no one had looked at disabled leaders as a group, told their stories, shown how they came to achieve what they did and how the modern history of disability has been played out in their lives.

I chose nine people who had come from different directions in terms of disability, social class, education and career decisions. Varied as they were, they also had much in common. Discrimination, for example, was no respecter of persons: Tom Shakespeare, the aristocratic dwarf, was as stared at and ridiculed as Bert Massie, hobbling on his crutches in the backstreets of Liverpool. But they all met it head on. Massie, a quick-witted Scouser, learnt to get what he wanted through knowledge, diplomacy and humour, which eventually took him to the Disability Rights Commission as its chair. Shakespeare has played on the negative attention; he became a juggler, of balls and ideas, a maverick academic and an accomplished communicator. Mat Fraser, with his short arms and flipper hands, chose to highlight the ‘freak’ label as a rock musician and performer before becoming an actor, while Phil Friend turned his disability into an asset, building a training and consultancy service that promoted the business case for employing disabled people. Andrew Lee, helped by his parents and self-advocacy, overcame the bullying and low expectations associated with learning difficulties to become the director of a voluntary organisation and a prolific spokesperson.

When Rachel Hurst took to a wheelchair, she little expected that the wheelchair would become her identity; the injustice spurred her to become a campaigner for disabled people’s human rights, first in the UK and then in Europe and at the UN. Similarly, Lord Ashley, when he became the first deaf MP, turned his attention to social injustice, campaigning for many causes, such as thalidomide compensation, vaccine-damaged children, deaf people. His parliamentary pressure group, he believes, ‘gave disabled people access to the corridors of power.’ Peter White and Tanni Grey-Thompson responded differently. Both high achievers, they never allowed their disability to stop them reaching their goal. White became the BBC’s first blind broadcaster and Grey-Thompson was (until Beijing) the UK’s most medalled Paralympic champion.

Limited as the sample may be, these leaders show the diversity of views and approaches in the disability world. Their common achievement is that they have helped to mainstream disability, influencing policy and thinking.

Copyright © Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2009

Defying Disability: The Lives and Legacies of Nine Disabled Leaders

Mary Wilkinson is the author of Defying Disability: The Lives and Legacies of Nine Disabled Leaders®. See the below link for more details.

More details of the book

Content links

JKP Social Work books

The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers: Hitting the Ground Running

The Survival Guide for Newly Qualified Child and Family Social Workers
Hitting the Ground Running
Edited by Zoë van Zwanenberg

Click for more details

Leadership in Social Care

Leadership in Social Care
Edited by Zoë van Zwanenberg

Click for more details

The Child's World

The Child's World
The Comprehensive Guide to Assessing Children in Need
2nd edition
Jan Horwath

Click for more details

Young People in Love and in Hate

Young People in Love and in Hate
Nick Luxmoore

Click for more details

Learning Through Child Observation

Learning Through Child Observation
2nd edition
Mary Fawcett

Click for more details

Just Care

Just Care
Restorative Justice Approaches to Working with Children in Public Care
Belinda Hopkins

Click for more details

A Short Introduction to Attachment and Attachment Disorder

A Short Introduction to Attachment and Attachment Disorder
Colby Pearce

Click for more details

Creative Coping Skills for Children

Creative Coping Skills for Children
Emotional Support through Arts and Crafts Activities
Bonnie Thomas

Click for more details

Quality Matters in Children's Services

Quality Matters in Children's Services
Messages from Research
Mike Stein

Click for more details

Safeguarding Children in Primary Health Care

Safeguarding Children in Primary Health Care
Edited by Julie Taylor and Markus Themessl-Huber

Click for more details

Safeguarding Children Living with Trauma and Family Violence

Safeguarding Children Living with Trauma and Family Violence
Evidence-Based Assessment, Analysis and Planning Interventions
Arnon Bentovim, Antony Cox, Liza Bingley Miller and Stephen Pizzey

Click for more details

Fostering a Child's Recovery

Fostering a Child's Recovery
Family Placement for Traumatized Children
Mike Thomas and
Terry Philpot
Foreword by Mary Walsh

Click for more details

Telling Tales About Dementia

Telling Tales About Dementia
Experiences of Caring
Edited by Lucy Whitman

Click for more details

Email us with your news, events or feedback at news@jkp.com or visit our website for more on our books.

Please feel free to forward this message on to anyone who might be interested, or want to join our mailing list.

Useful Dates for your Calendar

What Where When Link
Learning Disability Today London 2009 Business Design Centre, London 25/11/2009 Conference info
JKP author Lucy Whitman's book launch event for Telling Tales about Dementia Waterstones, Camden 28/11/2009 Book launch info
Devolution and Divergence: Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom City Hall, Cardiff 30/11/2009 Conference info
The Task Force and Beyond: Rising to the challenges Central London 03/12/2009 Conference info
Social Work Research: A World of Possibilities San Francisco, CA, USA January 14 - 17, 2010 Conference info