This book offers a critical introduction to professional ethics for social workers. It recognises that social work is largely a state sponsored activity and therefore poses issues in political theory. The traditional values and rules of practice ethics are explained using plentiful examples. The critique is followed by an innovative concept of social work and its relationship to the state. A new approach to practice ethics is developed based on four cardinal principles of respect, justice, citizenship and discipline.

In 1994, Robert Black was convicted of the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of four young girls, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of thirty-five years. He died in HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland, in January 2016, aged sixty-eight, unmourned, and entirely unrepentant of his repellent crimes.These bald facts, horrific as they are, do not begin to scratch the surface of the truth about Robert Black, a Scottish-born serial killer who undoubtedly committed further murders for which he was never tried, both in this country and on the Continent. In this ground-breaking...