Andrew J Whittaker

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• PhD FRSA
• Professor (Full) at London South Bank University

The Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group of the European Social Work Research Association (DARSIG) dedicated a pre-conference event at the 2023 European Conference for Social Work Research in Milan, Italy, to the application of innovations using big data and machine-learning algorithms in social work risk assessment and decision-ma...

The SAGE Handbook on Decision Making, Assessment and Risk in Social Work provides a comprehensive overview of key strands of research and theoretical concepts in this increasingly important field. With 49 chapters and four section summaries, this Handbook describes the ‘state of the art’; discuss key debates and issues; and gives pointers on futur...

Objectives: This paper evaluates a collaborative intervention between public health professionals and local social media administrators, in which the social media site Facebook was used with a view to strengthening engagement with and, dissemination of, core messages and building trust and resilience within local communities during the COVID-19 pa...

The growing popularity of social media and its ubiquitous presence in our lives brings associated risks such as the spread of mis- and disinformation, particularly when these may be unregulated in times of global crises. Online communities are able to provide support by enabling connection with others and also provide great potential for dynamic in...

In this chapter, Reluctant Gangsters Revisited, Andrew Whittaker and Tiron Harvard observe that although, to date, there have been no longitudinal studies of street gangs in the UK, research he and his team undertook in 2018, in Waltham Forest in the same area where John Pitts had undertaken a similar study in 2008 enabled them to trace the changes...

‘Risk’ has become a central concept for social work practice in countries with more developed social welfare systems. As argued by Hazel Kemshall and colleagues, ‘risk’ has often replaced ‘need’ as the main driver for social work interventions as societies seek to avoid harm to citizens. This shift of focus raises a tension between care (support fo...

In most child protection jurisdictions, a case of child death or serious injury through the actions or inaction of a parent or carer is responded to with an inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death of the child. A key objective of such inquiries is to discern what may have been done by public agencies to prevent the child’s death or ser...

Introduction In the UK, there has been considerable controversy about the existence and nature of street gangs. Early debates focused upon whether gangs were a response to inner city poverty and structural disadvantage (Pitts, 2008, 2012, 2016) or a social construction based upon media portrayals of young people, particularly young black people, in...

There is increasing interest in decision making in social work. Much of the attention has been on individual professional judgement rather than on group decisions processes. This paper outlines key theoretical approaches from diverse fields of knowledge for conceptualising professional group decision processes in child and family social work, as a...

This general issue has the themes of connection and identity, with contributions from authors in the UK, Sweden, Italy, Canada and the US. The theme and tone for the special issue is set by the winner of the Clare Winnicott prize for a student essay, Emilie Wright, with her article entitled, 'A message of hope: the challenges of relationship-based...

This article explores young women and girls’ participation in gangs and ‘county lines’ drug sales. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with criminal justice and social service professionals found that women and girls in gangs often are judged according to androcentric, stereotypical norms that deny gender-specific risks of exploitation. Gangs c...

This study is an evaluation of the Trauma Informed Group Work Programme developed by the Lewisham Youth Offending Service. It was commissioned by the London Borough of Lewisham with funding from the Youth Justice Board.

Social workers must make ‘justifiable’ decisions, but ‘intuition’ is also important in assessment, decision making and working with risk. We discuss intuition within professional judgement as being part of our cognitive faculties; emotionally-informed reasoning processes connecting workers with clients and families; and intuition making use of inte...

Social media provide novel opportunities for street gangs to operate beyond their traditional borders to sell drugs, recruit members and control their territory, virtually and physically. Although social media have contributed to the means available to street gangs today, it does not mean that every gang agrees on their use. Drawing on different pe...

Editorial.

Independent expert's report analysing professional decision making in the case of Mason Jet Lee for a Coronial Inquest held in the Coroner's Court, Queensland, Australia.

The aim of the current study was to understand how gangs have changed in the past 10 years since Pitts’ (2008) study in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The study undertook interviews with 21 practitioners working on gang-related issues and 10 young people affected by gangs or formerly embedded in them. Two focus groups involving 37 participan...

Editorial for Journal of Social Work Practice

Now in it's fourth edition and thoroughly updated to ensure all content is mapped to the new 2018 NMC standards, this book is a practical and readable guide to undertaking a research project plan or a literature review for final year assessment. The book guides readers from start to finish, beginning with choosing a nursing topic and developing qu...

Presentation at Fulbright Scholarship event in July 2019 with Dr Brian Gilchrist, Long Island University, New York. Expert panel discussion included Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor), Commander Dave Musker PhD (Met Police gang lead), Professor Simon Harding (West London University) and Alastair Macorkindale (Community Safety Manager, Waltham Forest Coun...

Context - Increased awareness of child abuse has recently led to increased referrals in the UK at a time of public sector resource constraints. Frequent staff turnover has meant that many frontline social workers are relatively inexperienced but must make complex decisions quickly. Finding effective ways in which social workers can learn to make sa...

This book comprises peer-reviewed contributions on current issues in professional judgement and decision making processes in social work.

The paper explores how social media presents international challenges for young people using the example of a recent study of gangs in London. It examines how social media presents opportunities for creativity in lives that are often restricted but it is being used as a means of coercively controlling young people drawn into drug market activities....

Faith-based abuse relating to the practice of witchcraft and spirit possession is a controversial and not well-understood form of child abuse. From its ‘discovery’ in the UK as a cause of abuse, serious injury and death for children, in 2000 to the present, the recent history of witchcraft and spirit possession involves some high-profile cases, inv...

The study of ‘risk’ in social work involves complex interplay between human behaviour, emotion, evidence of fact, professional values and organisational systems. This book brings together contributions from key social work researchers and theorists from the UK, USA, New Zealand and Italy, writing with a focus on aspects of risk within social work....

Gang cultures in Waltham Forest are changing. When the classic Reluctant Gangs study was completed ten years ago, the focus was upon postcode territories that needed to be defended from outsiders. Gang members described an emotional relationship with their local area, leading one young respondent to say that he would 'defend anyone who lived in his...

Background and purpose: Increased awareness of child abuse has recently led to considerable increases in the levels of referrals in the UK at a time of public sector resource constraints. Frequent staff turnover has meant that many frontline social workers are relatively inexperienced but must make complex decisions quickly. Finding effective ways...

This chapter looks at issues facing girls in gangs. It looks at the role women and girls play in gang lifestyle , the challenges faced such as sexual exploitation as well as the positive impact the presence of women and girls can have on gang culture.

Purpose: The increasing interest in professional judgement and decision making is often separate from the discourse about "risk," and the time-honored focus on assessment. Method: The need to develop research in and across these topics was recognized in the founding of a Decisions, Assessment, and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG) by the Euro...

Child protection social workers must make difficult decisions in real life circumstances that often involve limited knowledge, uncertainty, time pressures and powerful emotions. These circumstances can pose a significant challenge to reasoning skills, especially when the cost of errors and poor judgment can be unacceptably high. The current study e...

Recent work has highlighted concerns over the future supply of the specialist cancer nursing workforce and its ability to meet the growing need for cancer care. There are few opportunities to progress into specialist nursing roles that offer support & development and there is no national or strategic framework for this. One group of acute trusts ha...

La présentation aborde les questions suivantes : 1. Comment les processus de raisonnement se développent chez les travailleurs sociaux en fonction de leur expérience ? 2. Est-il possible d’apprendre à des novices à voir à travers les yeux des experts ?

This conference paper addresses the following questions: 1. How do child protection social workers’ reasoning processes develop as they become more experienced? 2. Can we teach less experienced practitioners to see through the eyes of experts?

This paper was to practitioners and managers and addresses the following questions: 1. What is intuition? 2. How do we develop intuitive expertise? 3. Should we trust our emotions? 4. When should we trust our intuition?

The presentation addresses two questions: 1. What reasoning processes do social workers use when forming professional judgements and making decisions? 2. How are these influenced by the organisational setting?

The paper shares the results of a study about how young people perceive risk in their lives. It was a survey of 148 children in three schools within a London borough. Young people found two areas of their lives that were particularly worrying, which were gangs/groups of young people and bullying. Four of ten participants (42%) said that they were a...

The Troubled Families (TF) programme is a national initiative launched in 2011 that aims to identify and work with families defined as ‘troubled’. An in-depth case study was undertaken using biographical data from eight ‘troubled families’ in one London borough. Intensive accounts of their lives were collected and analysed to illustrate the histori...

The potential of a researcher development initiative (RDI) programme to develop capacity within the social work discipline will be explored from my personal perspective as a former participant in one of the earlier RDI programmes. Having undertaken the programme after entering an academic post from practice, I hope to illustrate some of the challen...

Defensive practice has received attention through the Munro review of child protection, which has identified that current organisational cultures increase the likelihood of defensive practice. Whilst the wider socio-political climate that gives rise to defensive practice has been explored within the literature, little attention has beenpaid to the...

This discussion paper will examine the lessons from the Munro Review relevant for looked after children. Although the Munro Review focuses on child protection, we will argue that some of its key principles have relevance for understanding looked after childhoods. The Munro Review provides an analysis of the current state of the child protection sys...

Child protection social workers must make difficult decisions in real life circumstances that often involve limited knowledge, uncertainty, conflicting values, time pressures and powerful emotions. These circumstances can pose a significant challenge to reasoning skills, especially when the cost of errors and poor judgment can be unacceptably high....

Defensive practice has received attention through the Munro review of child protection, which has identified that current organisational cultures increase the likelihood of defensive practice. Whilst the wider socio-political climate that gives rise to defensive practice has been explored within the literature, little attention has been paid to the...

British social work is haunted by the memories of children known to social services who have died. The anxieties experienced by child protection social workers derive from a variety of sources, ranging from daily exposure to powerful emotions within the families and other professionals that they work with to an awareness of a history of public inqu...

Understanding sensory needs is fundamental for social work and care management practice. Social workers are trained to reflect on their own practice, make useful application of theory and promote anti- discriminatory practice at all times. This book will assist students in identifying people who have a sensory need and enable them to have the knowl...

The aim of the project was to conduct a comprehensive review of the current offender health workforce in the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority. The overall aim was to ensure that offender health workforce planning informs education provision, commissioning and staff development that delivers a future workforce of the right size and struct...

Four decades of public inquiries into child deaths and mental health tragedies have had a significant impact on public perceptions of social work. The recent death of Baby Peter has led to intense and high profile media criticism of social workers and the social work profession. For example, a tabloid newspaper launched a petition to sack all of th...

Background: Previous campaigns to combat stigma emphasise the need for people who do not have mental health problems to behave in a non-stigmatising socially inclusive way towards those who do. Less attention has been given to the role of people with mental health problems in the construction of stigma or the impact it has upon them. Aim: To enhanc...

Research skills are central to successfully completing the social work degree. This title will help students develop those skills and apply them to all aspects of their work. Detailed information is included on a variety of research methods, such as focus groups, literature reviews, questionnaires and interviews, which are fundamental to students'...

A number of quantitative studies of people with severe mental illness show that, as with the general population, supportive social relationships are associated with well-being but the nature and causation of this association are unclear. To enhance services' contribution to the social support needs of their clients, this study explores the associat...

This study compares the social support network of a diagnostically heterogeneous group of community mental health service users recently discharged from acute inpatient units, with that of a mental health service user comparison group with no history of hospital admission. Social data were elicited by a structured interview schedule (the Social Net...

This article describes single-session systemic work with families using a 'reflecting team' in a local authority family centre context. The model draws upon solution-focused approaches, reflecting team ideas, narrative approaches and research into single sessions to provide a responsive, early intervention service to colleagues in a local social wo...