Jenny J. Pearce

Thom, Betsy

Sales, Rosemary

This book provides a critical analysis of ways in which risk assessment and management are defined and applied in policy, theory and practice in relation to children and young people. It explores the complexities of balancing responsibility for protecting the young with the benefits of risk-taking and the need to allow experimentation.

Growing Up with Risk

Patricia Hynes

Silvie Bovarnick

Human trafficking constitutes one of the most serious human rights violations of our time. However, many social work practitioners still have a poor and incomplete understanding of the experiences of children and young people who have been trafficked. In Trafficked Young People, the authors call for a more sophisticated, informed and better developed understanding of the range of issues facing trafficked young people. In the first work of its kind to combine an up-to-date overview of the current policy context with related theoretical concerns and practitioner experiences, Pearce, Hynes & Bovarnick demonstrate how the trafficking of children and young people should be regarded as a child protection, rather than an immigration concern. Drawing on focus group and interview research with 72 practitioners and covering the cases of 37 individuals, Trafficked Young People explores the way child care practitioners identify, understand and work with the problems faced by people who have been trafficked. The book looks at how practitioners interpret and use definitions of trafficking in their day to day work; at their experiences of exposing the needs of trafficked children and young people and at their efforts to find appropriate resources to meet these needs. Trafficked Young People will be of interest to practitioners working in support housing and social work, along with solicitors and sociologists, particularly those working within discourses of child agency, self determination and victimhood. With its emphasis on the legal and policy framework, and integrated throughout with case histories, practitioner interviews and recommendations for best practice, Trafficked Young People is essential reading for anyone working within a Social Policy Development context.

Breaking the Wall of Silence

Trafficked Young People

Work with sexually exploited young people can be rewarding yet difficult. They can be hard to access, often presenting challenging behaviour. Sometimes it is painful to hear their life stories, whether these include abuse through the Internet or exploitation experienced through having been trafficked into and within the country. Jenny J. Pearce draws on young people’s voices to explore the difficulties that arise for researchers and for practitioners when working with sexually exploited young people. While child protection interventions must guide social work, she argues that other agencies such as health, education, housing and training each have a role to play in supporting a sexually exploited young person. Challenging the uncritical acceptance of the child as victim, the book suggests ‘therapeutic outreach’ as an approach to working with sexually exploited young people that can complement child protection procedures, support practitioners in the field and enhance the young person’s sense of autonomy and responsibility during their transition to adulthood. The book advocates the relationship between practitioners and the young people they aim to support to be one of the most important resources in practice. Young People and Sexual Exploitation will be essential reading for anyone interested in preventing the sexual exploitation of children and young people. It will be particularly relevant for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers in the fields of social policy and social work, child and family work, child protection and youth work.

Jenny J. Pearce

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