The combination of a need to ‘confront’ parents about difficult issues and a lack of official guidance, research and professional attention to how they should do this appears to have contributed to a style of practice that often appears unhelpfully confrontational. In light of the gaps noted above, there is an urgent need for more attention to be given to how social workers talk to parents and to what constitutes good practice. At the level of theory, child and family social work might benefit from approaches such as that of MI (Miller and Rollnick, 2002). As noted above, understanding the nature of resistance and finding ways of reducing it is central to MI. This makes it appear a particularly promising approach for use in discussing child welfare issues with parents.