Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

What can we learn from inquiries into cases of fatal child abuse? Beyond Blame offers a new way of looking at such cases and shows that it is possible to draw important lessons from them. The authors, all three experienced in child protection work, summarise thirty-five major inquiries since 1973, setting them in their social context and discussing the implications both for practical work in the field and for future inquiries.
They stress the need for those who work day to day in child protection to develop and apply a more sophisticated level of analysis to assessment and intervention. They identify common themes within abusing families, in the relationships between members of the professional networks, and in the interactions between the families and the professionals.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword by Professor Olive Stevenson
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The Wider Context
• Tragedies Revisited
• The Families
• The Meaning of the Child
• Inter-professional Communication
• The Professional Networks
• The Assessment Process
• The Family-Professional Systems
• The Case as a Whole
• Beyond Blame
• Appendix: Summaries of the Cases
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Reder, Duncan, and Gray adopt a nonblaming position to understand events leading to and the behavior of families and professional workers in child abuse fatalities. The authors (psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker) are members of a child mental health team at Charing Cross Hospital Department of Child and Family Psychiatry (UK). Through their review of 35 fatal child abuse inquiry reports published between 1973 and 1989 in England, the authors attempt to contribute to professional practice by systematically describing the wider social context, the families, the meaning of the child, interprofessional communication, professional networks, the assessment process, family-professional systems, and the case as a whole. This analysis is an insightful clinical consideration of abusive and neglectful families, despite the extreme and atypical nature of the cases and the often limited materials available in published inquiry reports. An appendix includes detailed genograms of the 35 cases. The bibliography is contemporary for British publications, but dated for US works. Name and subject indexes. Preprofessional; professional.