Evaluation of a Distance Learning,Post Graduate Advanced Award in Social Work Programme for Child and Family Social Work Supervisors and Mentors

This paper discusses open and distance learning and supervision in child and family social work, and presents the results of an evaluation by students of a distance learning, post graduate certificate programme for first‐line managers and supervisors in child and family social work. The programme also leads to an Advanced Award in Social Work. Eighteen students returned a postal questionnaire designed to gain their experiences of studying on the programme and their views about its different elements and its outcomes for themselves, their work, their organisations and service users. Most respondents thought that there were more advantages than disadvantages to studying by distance learning and to studying part‐time while working full‐time, but that self‐discipline is required and that workload constraints and difficulties in taking study time away from work impinged on their studies. More than half rated as good or very good the support provided by their mentors. Reported outcomes of studying on the programme included increased self‐confidence, enhanced supervisory practice, greater involvement of service users in service provision, and increased attention to gaining service user feedback. Key messages regarding the organisation of distance learning programmes are outlined, and pedagogical issues in post qualifying social work education are discussed, including the role of the mentor and the training needs of experienced staff or those working in specialised roles.     

Improving child welfare services with family team meetings: A mixed methods analysis of caseworkers' perceived challenges

Various forms of family team meetings have been increasingly employed in child welfare systems to empower families and provide effective individualized services through community partnerships. However, many family team meetings often fail to achieve their intended goals mainly due to ongoing challenges that team members face. Using data from a survey of caseworkers, this study examined dynamic processes of family team meetings to improve child welfare service outcomes, specifically focusing on caseworkers' perceived challenges. Also, responses to an open ended question were reviewed using content analysis to identify similar or different challenges encountered by diverse team members. Survey data were analyzed using path analysis and found that logistical barriers tended to decrease both family and stakeholder engagements, which in turn made child welfare services less accessible, less utilized, and less effective for children and families. Content analysis revealed that caseworkers perceived disagreement/conflict and knowledge deficits about child welfare as common challenges for all team members. This paper concludes with practice implications suggesting ways to minimize challenges identified and maximize the effectiveness of a family team meeting.     

The challenges of child welfare involvement for Afro-Caribbean families in Toronto

There is a growing and robust child welfare literature on service users' perspectives. However, little attention is paid to the experiences of Afro-Caribbean mothers and youth as service users. The author argues that this lack of attention is problematic given that the literature consistently shows an overrepresentation of Black children in the child welfare system. This article reports on some of the findings of a study that was conducted in Toronto with Afro-Caribbean service users about their experiences in the child welfare system. Findings reveal themes that are common to both groups of service users: mothers and youth, though some themes are unique to each group. Themes generated from interviews with service users show the challenges of structural inequalities and the complexities of racism, classism, sexism and cultural differences on child welfare involvement for Afro-Caribbean families in Toronto. Interviews with child welfare workers also revealed themes that supported service users' perspectives. The article concludes by arguing that research is needed to explicate the relationship between structural inequalities, including culturally different parenting practices on the experiences of Afro-Caribbean services users in the child welfare system in Toronto. Such exploration has the potential to reduce the number of Afro-Caribbean children entering the child welfare system.     

ASSESSING THE NEEDS OF TRAUMATIZED CHILDREN TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES

This paper is about the development of an outcomes‐based treatment approach in work with traumatized children and of an assessment model to measure progress. In particular, it shows how a spider diagram is used to give a powerful, visual representation of a child's progress. The work described has been carried out by SACCS — an independent UK organization providing treatment based in residential and family settings for children who are severely traumatized by abuse and neglect. This trauma has had a massive impact on their development socially, physically, emotionally, academically and spiritually. The children have complex needs which are extremely difficult to work with. However, the potential for recovery from their injuries remains. I will use a single case study of a child to illustrate the process of assessment and measurement of recovery. The treatment approach used is broadly psychodynamic. The concept of an outcomes‐based approach and the measurement tool described also has widespread relevance in social care.     

The Parent Concerns Questionnaire: evaluation of a mothers' self report instrument for the identification of problems and needs in child and family social work

The measurement of problems and needs is a major issue for policy and practice in social work and social service provision. There has, furthermore, in recent years, been an increasing emphasis on gaining an understanding of users or clients' views of needs and service provision. However, there have been few attempts to develop practitioner and ‘client friendly’ ways of gaining information on problems and needs, either on an individual basis, or through the collection of aggregated data which can be used by local authorities as a whole. Where these have taken place there has been little attempt to assess their reliability or validity. This paper reports on the design and development of the Parent Concerns Questionnaire, an instrument designed to obtain the views of mothers in general, and depressed mothers in particular, in families subject to child and family care intervention. The paper reports on the reliability and validity of this instrument, which is presented as appropriate for use, both with families containing depressed mothers and other families subject to child and family care intervention. It may be used to examine problems and needs both on an individual family‐by‐family basis, and through the aggregation of data, on an authority‐wide basis. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family Therapy for Child and Youth Mental Health: A Scoping Literature Review

Early intervention in childhood years is an important part of successful therapies for children and adolescents living with or at risk of mental illness. Family therapy acknowledges the role of family relationships, interactions, and family systems in child and youth mental health. To explore the effectiveness and delivery of family therapy in order to inform current family therapy practice in Australian public mental health services, a scoping literature review mapped key concepts of the past 11 years of family therapy research. Current gaps were noted within the following key concepts: family therapy settings and definitions, the influence of family factors on outcomes, transparency of intervention methods, and the training of family therapists. Further research could be undertaken to address current gaps in the literature, specifically: assessment and intervention processes; typical length of time for a series of family sessions; frequency of sessions; and theoretical foundations linked with most effective outcomes, as identified by clinicians, children, and their families. This research would provide a better understanding of best practice and evidence‐based family therapy practices that work for children and their families to inform family therapy practice in Australia and beyond. This scoping literature review identified that there is a noteworthy variation in the way brief family therapy is provided, both in terms of the duration and frequency of sessions, as well as the theoretical underpinnings employed. Further research is warranted to explore different service contexts and brief versions of family therapy delivery and the outcomes for the children and their families.     

Role-played interviews with service users in preparation for social work practice: exploring students’ and service users’ experience of co-produced workshops

Abstract

Within a Theory and Practice of Social Work module, prior to embarking on practice placements, social work students practised professional communication skills with people who had used social work services. They undertook role-played interviews with service users about real issues, which had led individuals to seek assistance in the past. Using principles of co-production, the workshop was developed in partnership with members of the University’s social work service users and carers’ group. Care was taken to safeguard service users’ well-being, as well as developing an effective learning opportunity. Drawing on evaluations by students and feedback from service users, this paper discusses the process of planning and delivering the workshops, as well as perceived outcomes for both groups. Findings indicate that students valued the opportunity to engage with service users, gaining key learning about their own practice skills. Service users described a boost to self-esteem through contributing to students’ learning. The workshop provides an example of how service user involvement in social work education has evolved from a primary focus on sharing personal testimonies to active participation in student skill development. It underlines the importance of investment in service user involvement to achieve an appropriate context for such projects to develop.     

Is implementation fidelity associated with improved access to care in a School-based Child and Family Team model?

Effective child and family centered service planning is crucial to addressing vulnerable children's needs. However, there is limited evidence about what facets of these processes improve service use and outcomes. The current study used a Poisson random effects hazard model to test correlations between fidelity to NC's Child and Family Support Team model and time to service receipt, using case management data for 3396 children served by that program during the 2008–2009 school year. Students were more likely to receive recommended services more quickly when caregivers and the students attended planning meetings, when their plans included services for caregivers, and when child and family team leaders followed up after meetings to verify service receipt. Contrary to the Child and Family Support Team theory of change, match between student needs and the lead agency of the meeting was not associated with the odds of quicker service receipt, nor was attendance by natural supports. Findings from this study demonstrate the potential effectiveness of using case management systems to measure service planning process fidelity, as well as how results thereof can both inform process improvement and potential refinements to models’ theories of change.     

Assessment of Children in Need in a Post-Soviet Context: Reflections of Child Protective Workers in Estonia

Child protective worker perspectives and principles are known to affect practitioner–-client interaction. However, there is little research on the principles underpinning workers’ assessment activities in transitioning post-Soviet societies where child protection is a relatively new field. This article presents the findings of a small-scale, qualitative study that explored the perspectives and principles that Estonian child protective workers utilize to inform their assessments. The respondents (N = 20) provided examples of real-life cases that reflected their assessment perspectives. The results indicated that too often workers’ assessments demonstrate an over-reliance on an authoritarian, deficit-based approach that does not sufficiently include family or child perspectives. Such an approach may suggest the lingering influence of philosophies that informed family policy during the Soviet occupation. Workers with advanced training in social work and strength-based practices were more likely to focus on family strengths, build collaborative relationships with parents and children, and report successful outcomes in their cases. This study underscores the potential influence of previous Soviet occupation on child welfare practices in Estonia and also the need for further training of the nation’s child protective workers.     

Caregiver Needs Following Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse

Caregiver support is vital in improving outcomes for child sexual abuse victims; however, the disclosure can significantly affect caregivers, thus impacting their ability to meet their children’s needs. To maximize the support from caregivers, their own needs following disclosure need to be met. This study investigated the impact of child sexual abuse disclosure and associated needs as identified by caregivers. Sixty needs assessment forms were collected from families who accessed a parenting support pilot program run in New Zealand. These forms were completed by nonoffending caregivers during an assessment session with their counselor and consisted of both open-ended and Likert scale questions focusing on both the needs of the child and the family. Caregivers identified a range of impacts of the disclosure on their children, themselves, and other families members and the related support that may be needed. In particular, caregivers identified that they needed support with child behavior management and with their own coping. The findings suggest that interventions with caregivers following disclosure of child sexual abuse may be a valuable adjunct to therapy provided directly to the child.     

Does fathers' involvement in services affect mothers' likelihood of reunification with children placed in foster care?

Social science literature shows associations between fathers' involvement with their children and beneficial developmental outcomes of those children. A related but smaller body of research in the child welfare services arena has found measures of father involvement to be positively associated with beneficial child welfare outcomes, including child's reunification with parent after placement in foster care. However, the pathway by which father involvement affects reunification likelihood has not been determined. This study builds on the existing body of literature by testing a theoretical basis for the relationship between father involvement (measured as service use) and mothers' reunification in a model controlling for family structure. I find that fathers' involvement in services improves mothers' likelihood of reunification, independently of family structure. Results suggest that agency efforts to involve fathers in services make sense both when the aim is to prepare the father for possible custody, and when the aim is to reunify the mother.     

Domestic violence: analysis of a community safety alarm system

This paper presents the findings of an analysis of the trial period of a local authority community alarm system adapted to protect adult and child victims of domestic violence and enable them to remain living in their own homes. The system was augmented as a response to government guidance on promoting interagency initiatives to tackle the crime of domestic violence. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to seek the perceptions and experiences of referrers, service users and potential service users in the context of the administration, resource implications and cost‐effectiveness of the new system. The evaluation discovered that potential service users were anxious about police and social services involvement in relation to child care. The system was considered to be protective, enabling women and children to remain in their own homes, and relatively cheap to operate. It has the potential to provide a deterrent to perpetrators and enhance interagency cooperation in protecting children, subject to further refinement and longer‐term evaluation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An innovative child welfare pilot initiative: Results and outcomes

Successful family reunification is achieved only about 50% of the time when children are in foster care. Parents' ability to access and complete court ordered services are paramount in determining whether the family can achieve reunification. However, the research on how to best facilitate service access and utilization are sparse. A matched sample of 100 families with no prior child welfare involvement and at least one child in out of home care were selected from Department of Children and Family closed administrative case files. This study compared 48 families who received traditional child welfare services to 48 families who received a Family First model intervention (PFFP) from a large urban public child welfare agency. The independent variables were the elements that distinguished the Family First model from traditional child welfare services and included the number of caseworkers for the life of the case, caseload size, and service needs met through community partnerships. The dependent variables were the stability of the children's out of home placement, the time to reunification, the length of agency involvement, the stability of reunification at one year follow up, subsequent substantiated child maltreatment reports one year after the cases were closed, the distance a placement location was from the home of the family at intake, the match between identified needs and the timely access of services. Hierarchal regression and survival models were constructed to examine elements of the intervention for their impact on family outcomes. The results suggested that a community partnership model that incorporated family engagement, enhanced service provider accessibility, reduced caseloads, one caseworker for each family, are associated with successful reunification outcomes. Moreover, the intervention families were more likely to have their needs met with clinical or economic services, experienced fewer days in out-of-home placement, shorter involvement with the agency, reduced placement moves and were more likely to be reunified sooner compared to the group who received standard child welfare services. At one year follow up, the intervention families also had fewer substantiated child maltreatment reports and children were more likely to be living in the parental home. Implications for policy, research and practice are presented.     

Parent-worker relationships in child welfare social work: a Belgian case study

The involvement of parents within child and family social work has become an important research topic during the past few decades. Within this research, a lot of attention is paid to partnership, which is recognised as a dominant concept in current thinking about the parent–worker relationship in present-day practice. The debate on parent–worker relationships, however, seems to be mainly focussed on the individual relationship between the parent and the social worker. Based on a historical analysis of policy documents on a Belgian child and family welfare service, this article offers a historical and sociopolitical contextualisation of the current debate on the parent–worker relationship. The analysis reveals that sociopolitical ideas about the responsibilities of the state, the community and the private family have induced a continuous reflection on which children and parents should be seen as the most appropriate clients for a particular service, as well as an ongoing development of diagnostic instruments to legitimise inclusion and exclusion of families within child and family social work. Consequences for parent–worker relationships in child and family social work are discussed, as well as some implications for future research on child and family social work practices.     

Adults Rule? Children,Advocacy and Complaints to Social Services

This article sets out results from a Welsh Assembly government‐funded study of complaints involving children and their use of advocacy services commissioned by local authorities in Wales. As this is the first study of its kind in Wales there is no baseline against which to compare the findings, hence we discuss the data in the context of a wider UK research literature and in relation to two key themes. These are (a) the number of complaints to social services involving children and the main characteristics of these complaints, particularly the involvement of an advocacy service and (b) the views of children about making a complaint and their experience of independent advocacy. The article reveals the adult‐dominated nature of the children's complaints system and the limited involvement of advocacy in supporting children who make a complaint. The pressing need for a more child‐focused approach that gives authentic voice to children and their rights is the key conclusion drawn from the evidence gathered in this study.     

Significant harm: making professional judgements

Judging whether a child is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm has become a critical task for professionals working with children and their families in England and Wales. Yet little guidance is available about what the phrase means in its entirety and how it should be applied in practice. This study set out to examine how the phrase was used in practice by a selected sample of experienced health and social work staff. The evidence collected suggests flaws in the general approach adopted by professionals to identification and assessment in child protection cases. The data indicate a heavy concentration of attention on the weaknesses of families being assessed rather than their strengths and on parents rather than children. Problems are identified in responding effectively to long-term, chronic abuse such as emotional abuse and neglect. The study recommends changes in practice based on these findings which have been implemented by a wide range of practice agencies within the study area. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Walking the tightrope of a mental health act assessment

This article is an attempt to capture something of the atmosphere of a Mental Health Act assessment, and was inspired by a recent article by Professor Harry Ferguson on child protection (2010). Here, the focus is on adult mental health practice and, in particular, on Mental Health Act assessments which may take place in any location including police stations, hospital wards or care homes. The following article mainly concentrates on assessments that take place in the service user's home. The Mental Health Act 2007 replaced Approved Social Workers with Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) in England and Wales; prior to this change the role was, as the name stated, entirely performed by social workers and they remain the predominant profession within the ranks of AMHPs.     

An international classification system for child welfare programs

A major challenge in child welfare is whether a program (or service) developed and successfully implemented in one jurisdiction, especially another country, will attain the same outcomes for children and families in another jurisdiction? This paper presents the “DCE Classification System” (Defining, Classifying, and Evaluating), a classification system that facilitates cross-jurisdiction comparisons of child and family services. The paper reviews the cross-national research literature in child and family services as well as literature on classification schemes and typologies. As an example of the issues that arise when importing a promising program, we briefly highlight the exporting and importing of family group conferencing. After tracing the history and development of the DCE Classification System, the paper describes the proposed classification scheme, and provides a brief example of how researchers and practitioners can use the classification system for cross-national comparisons of client outcomes and program costs. Finally, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, as well as possible benefits for child and family practices.     

Assessing Capacity to Change in High‐Risk Pregnant Women: A Pilot Study

Pre‐birth risk assessment is a process by which circumstances affecting an unborn child can be identified and support for mother and infant embedded. This mixed methods study describes a community‐based pre‐birth assessment and care pathway that utilised the Parents Under Pressure (PuP) programme to assess parenting capacity and provide support pre‐ and post‐birth for ‘at risk’ women. Sixty‐eight pregnant women referred to children's social care services were allocated to the pre‐birth assessment and care pathway (n = 35) or to routine care (n = 33). Standardised measures of psychological distress, social support and alcohol measured change for the women in the assessment and care pathway. Twenty women who provided pre‐ and post‐data reported significant improvements on all measures except alcohol use. Safeguarding outcomes at 12 months were obtained for both groups using administrative data. Forty‐two per cent of the infants whose mothers received the pre‐birth assessment and care pathway showed an improvement in child protection status compared to 14 per cent of the routine care infants. Safeguarding status deteriorated or stayed the same in 52 per cent of the routine cases compared to 26 per cent of those receiving the pathway. Qualitative data revealed that the pathway was acceptable and helpful to service users and service providers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘Describes a community‐based pre‐birth assessment and care pathway that utilised the Parents Under Pressure (PuP) programme’

Key Practitioner Messages

• The current project found that a community‐based pre‐birth assessment and care pathway with high‐risk pregnant women was feasible and acceptable for practitioners and service users.
• The pathway began mid‐pregnancy and support was provided following the birth of the infant for up to 12 months.
• Over 40 per cent of infants whose mothers were allocated to the pre‐birth risk assessment pathway showed improvements in child safeguarding status at 12 months.