Legal Updates

Working with Young People – Legal Responsibility & Liability
Carolyn Hamilton, The Children’s
Legal Centre
ISBN 094610946X, £24.95

STAR RATING: 4/5

Now in its sixth edition, this guide continues to perform the valuable task of charting a course through the legal pitfalls associated with working with children and youth work, writes Ed Mitchell.

But for this accessible book, much important work with children would have remained on the drawing board inhibited by legal anxiety. For example, the book is worth buying for the practical guidance on residential trips alone.

This edition also includes a lot of new material largely concerned with children’s rights. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but the selection of the material is a bit perplexing as it leaves out important areas. To include leaving care services but to leave out welfare benefits means proper advice can not be given to a care leaver who falls outside the leaving care regime.

The book remains an indispensable manual about the legal risks associated with working with children but, as an advice guide for young people, its coverage is too patchy.

Ed Mitchell is a solicitor, editor of Social Care Law Today and is Community Care’s legal expert