Ten top tips for placing children in permanent families

BAAF’s new Ten Top tips series aims to gather together, distil and disseminate social work practice wisdom. It will tackle a range of fundamental topics in adoption and fostering, presenting each one in a quick reference format, and providing social workers with a framework for best practice in their day-to-day duties.

Ten Top Tips for Placing Children in Permanent Families is the first titles to be published in this series. It explores the issue of child placements, with an emphasis on evidence from practice and experience. It provides clear and concise accounts of what works and what does not, and includes the views of children and families.

Each of the ten chapters explores a key theme – such as finding a family, agreeing a support plan, and promoting openness- in an accessible, straightforward and highly readable style. Checklists are included throughout that provide clear guidance on issues to be considered as well as suggestions of actions to be taken. There are relevant research studies and further reading at the end of each chapter.

Ten Top Tips for Placing Children in Permanent Families contains a breadth of high level, quality information that will be particularly useful for newly qualified social workers, or social workers new to working in the UK. Established practitioners will be able to use the book for quick reference and reinforcement of practice, as well as a prompt for further thought and exploration. Above all Ten Top Tips will remind social workers of the importance of approaching basic day-to-day tasks and duties in a rigorous, thoughtful and conscientious way.