Children and Teenagers Who Set Fires

Tamsin Winter, author of Being Miss Nobody and Jemima Small Versus the Universe

It's a handbook that provides intelligent, highly effective, practical approaches to understanding young people who set fires. Foster writes with warmth and passion giving insightful, sensitive advice grounded in a caring, child-centred philosophy that will be beneficial to anyone who works with vulnerable young people. A must-read for educators everywhere. This book has the power to save lives.

Professor Theresa A. Gannon, Director of CORE-FP, University of Kent

Joanna Foster has done a wonderful job of producing a highly accessible text that introduces the reader to best practice in fire safety work with children and young people. This book is highly engaging to read and should be essential reading for those tasked with the difficult job of addressing fire setting in children and young people.

Roz Morrison, Criminal Justice Specialist

What a wonderful read. The author's warmth, care, love and commitment to this important area of work is evident in every word on the page. The book is informative and provides a great deal of insight into the area of fire setting. This book generously provides practitioners with practical tools, confidence and inspiration to undertake work in this area. The exercises are brilliant in their simplicity and in my view are transferable to a variety of other disciplines. A superb book.

Children and teenagers who set fires is an absorbing and accessible introduction to understanding juvenile firesetting. Part manual, part paean to her roots in the Welsh Valleys, Joanna Foster's first book is a well-judged and acutely observed insight into an area that she has worked in for many years and clearly loves. All fire and rescue services have some form of juvenile firesetting intervention programme; Joanna used to manage the London Fire Brigade team before striking out on her own a few years ago. It is not an area that gets a lot of attention - it is not mentioned once in the State of Fire and it is unlikely to be in any of the individual fire and rescue service inspection reports either. It is a specialist corner run by dedicated staff who should all read this book... This book has a naturally limited audience but really it should have wider appeal. Children need adults who are kind, caring and above all able to help them navigate the complexities of life. Joanna's book provides the tools to help practitioners be their guides.