Useful books

A couple of books have been brought to my attention:

• School Refusal in Adolescence (Parent, Adolescent and Child Training Skills) by Martin Herbert - a highly accessible and practical guide is designed for anyone working with children, adolescents and their families.

and

• In "Can't Go, Won't Go" Mike Fortune-Wood looks at the scale of the problem and how families are treated by a range of statutory authorities.Interspersed with moving accounts from families who have struggled with school refusal, sometimes over a decade or more, this important and ground-breaking book sign-posts the need for better communication and strategies from service providers from schools to psychologists. It suggests that the current trend to either medicalise or demonise children who refuse to go to school will only add to society's problems as well as damaging the individuals concerned. Fortune-Wood goes on to document an alternative approach; that of removing children from school to home educate them, suggesting that far from leading to disaster (as professionals often predict) this can become a life enhancing decision.

Further books on the subject can be found in our book shop.