Chris Beckett qualified as a social worker in the 1980s, and worked in the field for 18 years, first as a social worker and then as a manager, latterly as the manager of a children and families social work team. Like most social workers who qualified at that time, he started out as a generic social worker, working with a range of service users including children and families, old people, and people with mental health problems and disabilities, but his predominant area of work was always with children and families.He moved into academic social work in 2000, working first at Anglia Ruskin Univer...