Book review: Residential Child Care: Collaborative Practice. Ian Milligan and Irene Stevens

In 1994, Barbara Kahan wrote in her book Growing up in groups about 'the need for greater collaboration and common acceptance of good practice' (p xi). Milligan and Stevens have taken up this baton in their book Residential Child Care: Collaborative Practice. The book confronts the difficulties residential child care faces in its relations with other professionals. What is exciting about this book is that although it is about residential child care it is not solely directed at residential child care workers. It communicates with all the professional disciplines involved in nurturing and educating troubled children. This is as it should be. Professional collaboration, as the authors suggest, is not only about taking up a singular professional role in a joint project, but also concerns being informed about, and understanding, the aims, roles and professional attitudes of others in a collaborative venture. The authors argue cogently that if residential child care is to take its place – in the authors' view, its necessary place – in the spectrum of child care provision, then all those from the different professional disciplines who are involved with looked-after and accommodated children need to be trained to work as co-operative partners.