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Book review: Social Work with Troubled Families

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorKathy Hampson
DOI10.1177/0264550516668425b
Date01 September 2016
Published date01 September 2016
Subject MatterBook reviews
PRB668425 376..381
Book reviews
379
challenge is undertaken within the context that challenge is for the coachee’s per-
sonal benefit.
Journal readers may contextually find it more difficult to work with the con-
cept that it does not matter to a coach if the coachee is honest as, ‘it is for
clients to make sense of their lives, not the coaches’ (p. 77). Whilst fundamental
in coaching, probation practitioners are required to assess and analyse their
probationers. However, my experience, like Clare’s, is that this unconditional
positive regard (p. 78) is one of the components which makes coaching such an
important and valuable approach to supporting change and the development of
hope.
Summarizing, I think readers will find the difference in context between coaching
and probation practice a genuine challenge. For me, this challenge was funda-
mental to informing my decision to move on from the probation service and start my
own social enterprise. Probation practitioners who read this book may equally feel
the fundamental challenge Clare lays down: ‘at the heart of our commitment is
wanting the very best for every single one of our clients: not the best for the system,
but the best for them as people’ (p. 19). For readers who align with this sentiment, I’ll
repeat the discussion Clare and I had a few weeks before I read the book when
Clare commented, ‘I want more people to join us in our world’. Reading this book
might just be a prompt for some to do so. For others it is a timely opportunity to
review practice values and fundamentals and re-examine their relationship with
probationers.
Social Work with Troubled Families
Keith Davies (ed.)
Jessica Kingsley; 2015; pp. 192; £28.99, pbk
ISBN: 978-1-84905-549-9
Reviewed by: Kathy Hampson, University of Birmingham, UK
This book offers a timely and thorough analysis of a range of issues surrounding the
current government’s flagship ‘Troubled Families Programme’ (TFP). Comprising
seven chapters authored by a diverse selection of writers, the book has been able...

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