Independent social workers provide a wide range of services across health and social care, but this paper concentrates on the expert witness role in complex (and usually contentious) care proceedings concerning child protection and child welfare. In such cases the local authority will have intervened in a family because of concerns about child protection and/or neglect, and the children involved are likely to have been placed in foster care on the basis of emergency protection orders and interim care orders. Parents often dispute the validity of the concerns of the local authority, and are often highly defensive and/or hostile to the local authority social worker and the local authority as a whole. Many cases are complicated by the parents having complex psychosocial histories including combinations of: being abused as children, adverse experiences themselves of the 'care' system', learning difficulties, volatile interpersonal relationships, and drink/drug problems. (However, a significant minority of parents who become involved in contested care proceedings manifest few or none of such problems).