In this issue

Abstract

We start 2020 with two articles from eminent social work academics. The first article is by our former Editor, Karen Broadhurst writing with Claire Mason. Broadhurst and Mason's article, Child removal as the gateway to further adversity: birth mother accounts of the immediate and enduring collateral consequences of child removal, is based upon in-depth qualitative interviews with 72 birth mothers. The article develops their theoretical work on the collateral consequences of child removal (Broadhurst and Mason, 2017) by demonstrating how the experience of having children repeatedly removed has cumulative and enduring impacts on the lives of these mothers. Broadhurst and Mason set out five recommendations for immediate practical action that services can make. One of these is the lack of understanding of the experiences of these mothers within the housing and welfare systems. This is a crucial area that Tracey McMahon (2019) has recently highlighted in her report for The Griffins Society. It is also central to the work McMahon does for the organisation New Beginnings. 1 Another recommendation chimes with my own findings of the importance for the mothers to share their collective experiences in order to counter the stigma and shame that child removal brings (Morriss, 2018). This article by Broadhurst and Mason is a must read and for that reason we have made it free to access. The second article in the issue is by Paul Michael Garrett and is a very interesting critical commentary of the connections between the work of Hannah Arendt and social work theory and practice. Garrett identifies seven dimensions as significant-or as he puts it, 'why now is a good time to read Hannah Arendt'. These include Arendt's scrupulous attentiveness to the sensitivity of words; and her contributions on 'lying in politics'. Garrett then concentrates on Arendt's theorisation of the 'private', the 'public' and the 'social'. He concludes that her work is fundamentally unaligned with more critical forms of theorisation underpinning critical and radical social work.