Rick Hood is a registered social worker and Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at Kingston University. He studied modern languages at Cambridge University and spent a number of years doing youth and community work in Germany and France before training and practising as a social worker in South London. Most of his teaching and research has been in the field of children's social care, covering topics such as complexity, inequality, assessment and decision-making, reunification from care, interprofessional working, domestic abuse and child protection, and the inspection of services.