Review by 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.
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
