While social work practice with child abuse is a well documented topic, Social Work and Child Abuse actually challenges and changes the focus of existing literature. Instead of concerning itself with the ways in which the task of preventing and detecting child abuse, both physical and sexual, can be more effectively undertaken, this book presents a critical analysis of the task itself as it is currently conceived in the light of the 1989 Children Act. There have been a number of public inquiries, often after tragic deaths, in which social workers have been severely criticised and as a result the social work profession itself has been stigmatised. Social Work and Child Abuse argues that it is the simultaneous statutory duty of social workers to prevent and detect child abuse and also to rehabilitate children with abusing parents/caretakers that at times will produce situations in which social workers are focused to a greater extent on any one of these duties at the expense of the others. This leaves them vulnerable to the periodic charge that they are either intervening to too great or too little an extent. Social Work and Child Abuse will be essential reading for all professionals in social and probation work, and students in social work, social policy and criminology.