Audio

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at why drug addiction is on the increase. The number of women taking drugs has always lagged behind the number of men, but research shows that the ratio of girls to boys aged just 11 who've admitted using drugs is roughly the same. It's also claimed that the number of children placed on the child protection register because their parents have a drugs problem now exceeds those children listed because their parents drink.

Four Radio 4 programmes in a series about the health and wellbeing of the seven ages of humanity, presented by Connie St Louis. These four programmes explore the adult years between the ages of 40 and 60.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at the stereotypes surrounding social workers, in light of a new six part documentary which follows a year in the life of social workers from a children’s services unit in Bristol. Host Jenni Murray is joined by Annie Hudson, Head of Children's Services with Bristol City Council and Clare Phipps, a social worker with the Looked After Children Team. Jenni asks them how we can change public perceptions of what seems to be one of the most vilified professions in the country.

Geoff Watts explores the almost universal experience of living with pain and the different ways we react and cope with it in three programmes. The first programme in the series looks at the range of experience of human pain and how scientists understand it. The second programme discusses acute pain. In the third programme the process of coping with pain is examined. Geoff Watts discovers how pain management clinics are using a huge variety of different techniques, including medication, art therapy and acupuncture, to help chronic sufferers live as normally as possible.

This podcast is part of the Glasgow School of Social Work Research Seminar Series. In this podcast Susan Batchelor talks about victimisation in the lives of young women who commit violent offences.

A talk by Mike Naulty, Associate Dean, School of Education, Social Work and Community Education, University of Dundee, given at "Personalisation and community capacity", a joint seminar and workshop by Perth and Kinross Council and University of Stirling Partnership, University of Stirling, 04/12/2009.

This BBC radio programme looks at carers and asks what a future government could do to improve the support offered them.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series asks if children who get taken into care should be looked after by strangers or by members of their own family. The Children's Act says children should be looked after by family members - if they want to take on the responsibility and are deemed suitable. But on Woman's Hour, the Family Rights Group says family and friends are too often ignored or rebuffed by social services. If the family does get approved they don't always get the financial support they need.

Four Radio 4 programmes in a series about the health and wellbeing of the seven ages of humanity, presented by Connie St Louis. These four programmes explore the teenage years. The first programme looks at the hormonal changes that are the hallmark of the teenage years, the second looks at teenage behaviour and the third at how adolescents relate to those around them. The final programme of the series looks at the later stages of adolescence.

This episode of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed series includes a segment on gangs and looks at what happens when a violent gang tries to refashion itself as a political movement. David Brotherton, Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice is co-author of 'The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang', an account of his experience of the notorious New York branch of an American super gang and its decision to go straight. He joins Laurie Taylor to discuss. The segment is first in the audio clip.