In a week where George Osborne claimed in a speech to supermarket workers that he would make work pay as "the benefit system is broken; it penalises those who try to do the right thing", the Tories could not have found a more fitting poster boy in Mick Philpott for...

Today is World Social Work Day, but given the dire state of public services, many might reach a conclusion that there is little to celebrate. This year's theme of 'Promoting Social and Economic Equalities' does not sit comfortably with vulnerable people who are being told by...

The journalistic sport of 'fishing expeditions', where rather than reporting on a specific event that has actually happened, stories are created from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, covert recordings, or by trawling for case studies, is nothing new. It is, however, being used to particularly pernicious and skillful effect in...

Few would argue with the government's aim to 'sort out' Shameless-style 'troubled families', busy making their neighbour's lives miserable, and draining the public purse of a reported £9 billion per year in consequent expense.

All well and good. Apart from one small problem - the 120,000 troubled families...

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has four children. As a wealthy man, perhaps it is fortunate that he has no need to rely on child benefit to feed them.

IDS wants to see child benefit capped at two children per family, believing that there is a booming industry...

Prince Harry and Kate Middleton may be less than thrilled at the public's interest in their lack of holiday attire but their plight, and that of many other celebrities who might crave more powerful privacy laws, can be keenly felt lower down the social orders too, and sometimes with far...

Bright, beautiful and ambitious, Warrington teenager Shafilea Ahmed wanted to be a barrister. The only chance she got to appear in court was as a murder victim.

When the 17-year-old Shafilea went missing on 11 September 2003, it was her teachers who reported her missing seven days later. Her parents,...

As much as we like to the sneer at the comic-like quality of The Sun newspaper, as many a Prime Minister has discovered, its status as the highest circulation daily newspaper in the UK means that you ignore its influence at your peril. And indeed, as the Leveson...

Social workers don't kill the children who die in their care, but they can find themselves in the firing line when a child tragically dies because of parental abuse.

The public, quite rightly, expect social workers to protect children from harm, and often perceive a social work complicity when a...

As a society, we seem to ignore our young people, unless they're either rioting, roistering through town centres, or being raped.

The case of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, where nine men were found guilty of 21 counts of sexual abuse over a two-year period, raises a number of...

At 81, Rupert Murdoch is lucky enough to be blessed with rude health, a billionaire's bank account and a younger wife with a decent right hook.

This week's excellent Panorama documentary on elderly care showed that not all older people in this country are so...

The philosophy of social pedagogy is largely alien to the UK's care system, yet as social workers mark World Social Work Day, it is a good time to consider how much we could learn from how the profession operates overseas.

Social pedagogy involves taking a holistic approach to a...

Just because education secretary Michael Gove MP was adopted, doesn't mean that every child in care should be.

Although the secretary of state for education was an obvious choice for Number 10''s press office to deliver the latest - albeit largely regurgitated - policy on adoption, his own family background...

The proposed cuts to disability living allowance raise troubling moral questions for social workers, many of whom will ultimately be responsible for implementing these welfare reforms.

As the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) this week publishes a revised version of the longest established code of ethics, which has underpinned...

Give journalists a break. At the moment, their name is mud. They are probably about as popular as social workers.

The Leveson inquiry has prompted the kind of scrutiny into their activities to which they normally subject others.

There has been a sustained debate within social work about the nature...