Profile

Areas of expertise

• Family support and child protection
• Skills for statutory social work
• Therapeutic work with children
• ICT and social work

Biography

I began my career in social work as a member of a generic local authority social work team and I soon came to specialise in work with children and families. During some twenty years as a social worker I worked in family support and child protection work, I was a fostering and adoption specialist and, most recently, I worked in the voluntary sector, undertaking therapeutic work with children who had been maltreated, often sexually abused, and undertaking independent assessments for the courts.

I moved to my current post as a lecturer in social work in 2002. Since then I have undertaken PhD research into the complex relationships between professional therapists and safe carers in helping their sexually abused children. I have taught on all aspects of social work with children and families, including child development and child care law.

Current interests include the interaction between what is often referred to as ‘safeguarding’ work and initiatives for family support that are more user led. It seems that social workers need some quite distinctive skills to operate in child protection and in other statutory settings. I have recently completed a textbook about these skills, published April 2010. This book considers the core skills needed in all social work settings when the legal obligations of local authorities mean that social workers must engage with people who have not initiated the contact, and may wholly or partially resist the intervention. It considers how such work may fit with the core values of social work.

I'm also working on a textbook, with Professor Ian Shaw, considering the impact that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is having on social work. This will consider the impact of ‘professional’ uses of ICT (such as systems for record keeping and assessment), the impact of ‘citizen’ use of ICT (such as by birth parents to trace and contact their adopted children), and the use of ICT in social work training and professional development.

I am interested in the processes involved in undertaking assessments in child care work – including the impact of ICT – and am currently planning a comparative study of different approaches to assessment work.

Research

PhD supervision interests

Family support; child protection; therapeutic work with children; gender and social work with children and families; adoption and fostering; social work in statutory settings; social work and ICT.

Publications

Recent Publications

Hill, A. (2012 in press) 'Help for children after child sexual abuse: Using a qualitative approach to design and test therapeutic interventions that may include non-offending parents', Qualitative Social Work.

Hill, A. and Shaw, I. (2012) 'ICT and Social Work Education' in Lishman, J. (ed) Social Work Education and Training. London: JKP.

Hill, A. and Shaw, I. (2011) Social Work and ICT. London: Sage.

Hill, A. (2010) Working in Statutory Contexts. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hill, A. (2009) ‘Factors influencing the degree and pattern of parental involvement in play therapy with sexually abused children’, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 18, 455-474.

Hill, A. (2009) ‘Combining professional expertize and Service User expertize: Negotiating Therapy for Sexually Abused Children’, British Journal of Social Work, 39, 261-279.

Hill (2009) ‘Book Review: Schofield, G. and Simmonds, J. (eds) - The Child Placement Handbook: Research, Policy and Practice’, British Journal of Social Work, 39, 1184 - 1185.

Hill, A. (2006) ‘Play therapy with sexually abused children: including parents in therapeutic play’, Child and Family Social Work, 11, 316-324.

Hill, A. (2005) ‘Patterns of non-offending parental involvement in therapy with sexually abused children: A review of the literature', Journal of Social Work, 5 (3), 339-358.

Hill, A. (2003) ‘Issues facing brothers of sexually abused children; implications for professional practice’, Child and Family Social Work, 8, 281-90.

Hill, A. (2001) ‘'No-one else could understand'; Women's experiences of a support group run by and for mothers of sexually abused children’, British Journal of Social Work, 31, 385-397.