Paperback: In England in 2007, Peter Connelly, a seventeen-month old little boy - known initially in the media reporting as 'Baby P' - died following terrible neglect and abuse.
Fifteen months later, his mother, her boyfriend and the boyfriend's brother were sent to prison.
But media attention turned on those who worked to protect children, especially the social workers and their managers, who became the focus of the reporting and of the blame.
Five years later they are still harassed by press reporters.
The Story Of Baby P (2014) tells what happened to 'Baby P', how the story was told and became focused on the social workers, its threatening consequences for those who work to protect children, and its considerable impact on the child protection system in England.
This is the first book to draw together all evidence available on this high profile case and will make a unique and crucial contribution to the topic.
It will make essential reading for everyone who is concerned about child protection and the care of children and about the media's impact.
About the author: Professor Ray Jones is a registered social worker with over 40 years of practice and management experience in residential care and community social work within local authorities and a major national child care voluntary organisation. From 1992 to 2006 he was director of social services, and then director of adult and community services, in Wiltshire, leading a top three-star rated service with an annual spend at 2014 equivalent costs of £250m and over 3,000 employees.
He was the first chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and has been deputy chair, and then chair, of the British Association of Social Workers. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Bath and at the University of Exeter, an honorary fellow at the University of Gloucestershire, and is an academician of the Academy for the Social Sciences, and a fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and of the Royal Society for the Arts.
Ray has been an advisor to numerous government policy and research committees. From 2009-2013, he was the independent chair of Bristol's Safeguarding Children's Board, from 2010 - 2012, the chair of Salford's Safeguarding Children Improvement Board, and from 2011 to 2013, chair of Torbay's children's improvement board. He currently oversees, reporting to the minister of state, child protection improvement for the Isle of Wight, Sandwell and Devon.
He was also a European Community advisor to the (then new) Slovenian government on the development of welfare policies and has more recently been a consultant with the Russian-European Trust for Welfare Reform, working with senior policy makers and social services directors within Russia.
Ray is the author of six books and over 100 published papers, is a frequent media columnist and commentator, and has undertaken research on adolescents and social work, neighbourhood work, child protection decision-making, direct payments for disabled people, 'troubled families', health and social care teams, and serious case reviews. His most recent book, published in June 2014, by Policy Press, is The Story of Baby P: Setting the Record Straight.
He has been a trustee and chair of the Marlborough Brandt Group, which has linking and health, education and economic development programmes in The Gambia, a trustee of Wytham Hall, which works with homeless people in London, and of Quarriers, the major Scottish social care charity. He is currently chair and a trustee of the Social Work Awards, which recognises the achievements and contributions of social workers in England.
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