Conceptual analysis of critical moments in Victoria Climbié's life

Victoria Climbié was a West African child sent to Europe in the care of her aunt, Kouao. She died as a consequence of cruelty and neglect at the hands of her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend, Manning, in particularly extreme circumstances. A major inquiry by Lord Laming into the failings of the statutory services revealed widespread problems and made many recommendations to government. Drawing on the Victoria Climbié Inquiry Report, the paper aims to describe and understand Victoria's states of mind during her time in England. The report contains many clues to the meaning of what happened, but their significance for learning from the entire tragedy is missed. The paper explores why professionals found it impossible to see what was happening, despite the evidence being available. Both Victoria's states of mind and those of the professionals who came into contact with her are analysed in terms of defences against extreme mental pain. The importance of the right kind of training and organizational support being available for child protection staff is discussed.     

The Victoria Climbié case: social work education for practice in children and families' work before and since

Based on their research into the Victoria Climbié Inquiry, the authors outline an analysis they undertook of literature which had made substantial comment on either the inquiry itself and/or the subsequent inquiry report. An overview of 18 publications is provided, with four categories of themes emerging. These themes are outlined and then connected with concerns the authors of the current paper identified in journal papers written 10 years or more ago. It is argued that the gap between recognition that society needs competent, well‐trained and skilled social work and other professionals to safeguard the lives of children and families and understanding of what education, training and employment support mechanisms are necessary in order for workers to become and remain well‐trained, skilled and effective, remains as wide as ever. The paper concludes with an outline of teaching approaches the current authors have adopted in pursuit of the kinds of learning opportunities they believe need to be put in place to improve professional practice in children and families' work. These include creative use of child abuse inquiry reports themselves, role plays and simulations and workshops designed to enhance critical reflection skills.     

Child protection social work and men's abuse of women: an Irish study

This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of the response of social workers within a community care setting, in a large Dublin suburb, to cases involving men's abuse of women. This research aims to focus on what child protection workers do regarding this abuse, and what they say about what they do, thereby giving readers a sense of the action taking place in this social work team. The data, generated from both qualitative and quantitative methodological research, reflects this aim, as it taps into the working model of responses to men's abuse of women held by social workers, and identifies what influences that, thereby reflecting the realities and constraints of everyday work. At the time the research was carried out (2000), the results confirm that the prevalence of cases involving men's abuse of women on this team was in line with international findings. This research revealed an absence of a team policy, an agreed definition of intimate violence in this context and agency practice guidelines, and illuminated how these gaps act as a deterrent to effective intervention. This paper explores some of the ethical and practical dilemmas that may arise for child protection social workers intervening in cases where the abuse of women by men is present. Recommendations arising from this research identify a need for a clear policy and best practice guidelines for social work staff in relation to this abuse.     

'Thoughtful' practice: child care social work and the role of case discussion

Since the publication of Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbé there have been a number of insightful and thoughtful papers into the professional context and circumstances that surrounded this tragedy. Those papers highlight the insufficient thought given to the psychosocial dimensions of Victoria’s situation, their impact on professional practice and the support needs of practitioners. This paper explores the tensions between ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ in contemporary practice and draws on psychodynamic concepts to inform our understanding of why individuals and organizations behave in repetitiously compulsive ways. A case discussion model is outlined and its potential for addressing the psychodynamic demands facing practitioners and front‐line managers is considered.     

Performing child protection: home visiting, movement and the struggle to reach the abused child

Social work and child protection literature, policy and practice discussions largely ignore the core experience of doing the work. Little attention is given to where it is performed, and in particular, the practice of home visiting and the emotions and challenges of accessing children it gives rise to. Although it is the methodology through which most child protection goes on, the home visit is virtually ignored, as the emphasis in policy and practice texts is increasingly on what happens in the office, at the computer and in inter-agency collaboration. Examining scenes from home visiting practices and child death inquiry reports – Baby Peter, Victoria Climbié and Jasmine Beckford – the paper identifies the core problem of contemporary child protection as being social workers (and other professionals) not moving in rooms or around houses to meaningfully engage with, touch or examine children. Analysing practice through the sociology of 'mobilities' and psychodynamic social work theory, the paper provides new ways of understanding social work experience as forms of embodied movement. It uses the concept of 'containment' to suggest ways in which practitioners can be supported to use their bodies to move more and better in performing child protection to the benefit of children, other service users and themselves.     

CHILD PROTECTION: PARADOXES OF PUBLICITY,POLICY AND PRACTICE

Recent media coverage of child abuse in Victoria is critically analysed. Parallels are drawn between the substance and style of newspaper coverage of child abuse cases in the late nineteenth century ‘first wave’ of the child rescue movement and that in the late twentieth century ‘second wave’ of the child rescue movement. The twin themes of vengeance and voyeurism are clearly evident in both periods. The classic late nineteenth century concepts of Freud and Durkheim are drawn upon to illuminate the psychological and sociological sources of these themes. The current Victorian child protection system is used as a case study to explore the paradoxes for policy and practice which arise in part from the publicisation and associated politicisation of child abuse. These paradoxes include the redirection of resources from prevention and treatment to investigation services.     

The Psychological Consequences of Abuse for the Child

The consequences of child abuse for the emotional health and development of the child have been largely disregarded in theory, in practice, and in research. The few studies which have investigated this aspect of the child abuse problem report detrimental psychological consequences. These research findings combined with more general psychological theory and research on personality development provide a basis for predicting the psychological consequences of abuse for children. Documentation of deficits in the emotional development of abused children has important policy and practice implications for intervention and treatment.     

International Perspectives on the Use of Community Treatment Orders: Implications for Mental Health Social Workers

Substantial changes to mental health law and policy have occurredthroughout the Western world during the last decade. The drifttowards control, particularly in the form of Community TreatmentOrders (CTOs), has profound implications for the role of mentalhealth social workers, yet this issue is rarely discussed inacademic literature. This paper seeks to redress this gap inknowledge by examining aspects of law, policy and practice usingthree case studies: Victoria, Australia; Ontario, Canada; andregions of the UK. The paper begins by critically reviewingselected literature on CTOs, revealing competing claims aboutefficacy and their impact upon service users¹ and practitioners.A discussion of policy and practice contexts in the three jurisdictionsis then presented and supported with a typology, to illustratecontrasts and comparisons. In their conclusions, the authorsassert that mental health social workers often have a crucialpart to play in the implementation of CTOs but that this isnot always acknowledged in law and organizational policy. Socialworkers’ roles and responsibilities need to be more explicitlyidentified in mental health law. At the same time, there shouldbe a continuing debate about how such coercive powers fit withcodes of ethics and practice standards, at national and internationallevels.     

Emotional abuse and neglect: a time for reappraisal

This paper explores, from a UK perspective, issues surrounding policy and practice in cases of neglect, which inevitably involves emotional abuse. It does not address cases of emotional abuse in which neglect does not occur. The paper argues that there is a sufficient body of knowledge on the necessary conditions for healthy child development and factors associated with psychological/ emotional disorders in childhood for social workers to be more proactive in work with such cases. There is, however, a need for this evidence to be assembled and organized in ways which will be useful to social workers. Nonetheless, intervention in such cases is unlikely to become more effective unless some of the reasons for the'neglect of neglecf are better understood and addressed. In the second part of the paper, a range of factors influencing such work is considered, related to the professional, organizational and legal context within which social workers in the UK operate.
The paper draws on an ESRC funded project, which ended in 1995, of social workers' judgements in cases of child sexual abuse and neglect     

Social worker or social administrator? Findings from a qualitative case study of a child protection social work team

This paper reports on data from a qualitative case study of child protection social work in one local authority. Ethnographic methods were used and constructionist grounded theory employed to collect and analyse 329 pages of historical documents about the local authority child protection service, 246.5 hours of observations of social work practice and 19 interviews of social workers and their team managers. By interpreting the experiences of the social workers through the conceptual debates about the changes in the field of social administration, the social workers could be seen to want to perform a traditional form of social work but were required to perform a contemporary form of social administration. The aims and purposes of this form of practice could be considered to be distinct from those of social work as understood by the social workers, and as such, the social workers experienced the practice environment as constraining and often felt disillusioned. This paper conceptualizes these forms of practice, contributing to the debates about what practice is and how we are to analyse and categorize it for the purposes of influencing the institutions that create and maintain contemporary practice.     

Child welfare workers who are exhausted yet satisfied with their jobs: how do they do it?

In response to a study of Canadian child welfare workers that unexpectedly found participants scoring high on a measure of emotional exhaustion (burnout) and, at the same time, high on overall job satisfaction, this paper reviews research that has investigated these constructs in the social work literature as well as in selected studies from sociology, social psychology, management and women’s studies. The review reveals that some previous studies also report the coexistence of high levels of emotional exhaustion and strong job satisfaction in child welfare and social worker samples. Several studies have suggested that individual characteristics, including finding reward in helping others, having a commitment to the mandate of child welfare and believing that one’s labour is ‘making a difference’, contribute to satisfaction with child welfare work in spite of work overload and emotional exhaustion. Attributions regarding causes of exhaustion, coping strategies and goal orientation may also attenuate the expected negative effects of emotional exhaustion. Considerable evidence supports the positive influence of variables organizational managers can control, including job autonomy, supportive supervisors, workload, promotional opportunities and perception of personal safety. The degree to which this phenomenon is associated with female socialization and the ‘ethic of care’ underlying social work is discussed. Implications for child welfare research, practice and policy are offered.     

Relationships matter: the problems and prospects for social workers' relationships with young children in care

One of the key lessons learnt in the UK from the Laming Inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié was the importance of social workers developing consistent and long-term relationships with young children in whose lives they are involved. This issue is now informing policy developments, including the proposed Social Work Practices which, based on a similar model to General Practitioner practices, aim to provide a lead professional to act as a parental figure and an advocate for every child in care. This paper begins by confirming the importance of developing relationships between social workers and young children, but questions the ability of the new policy developments to facilitate these. Drawing upon data from research involving interviews with social workers, the paper outlines the factors which hinder social workers' relationships with young children and argues that while the new proposals address some of the more surface structural and organizational factors, they do not address the deeper factors regarding attitudes, values and emotional competence which are crucial if social workers are to successfully build relationships with young children in care.     

Addressing common forms of child maltreatment: evidence‐informed interventions and gaps in current knowledge

This paper reviews interventions for preventing the occurrence and recurrence of major types of child maltreatment. We begin with an overview of the challenges of establishing evidence‐based interventions to prevent child abuse and neglect in many countries, and underscore the importance of this need with child maltreatment incidence rates in the USA, and how much each type and subtype contribute to child out‐of‐home placement. Next, we identify the well‐supported, supported and promising interventions for each child maltreatment type and subtype, according to their level of research evidence using an evidence‐based clearing house. The paper closes with a discussion of the implications for practice, evaluation, policy and agency management, including intervention knowledge gaps that showcase areas that need additional practice research.     

Risk, Advanced Liberalism and Child Welfare: The Need to Rediscover Uncertainty and Ambiguity

Correspondence to Professor Nigel Parton, School of Human and Health Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH. Summary The purpose of this paper is to analyse and reflect upon thecurrent state of child welfare policy and practice and how thishas changed over recent times. In the process it aims to makea contribution to the current debates on ‘the refocusingof children's services’. A central part of the argumentis that new strategies have emerged which do not have as theircentral focus either meeting the needs of children or respondingto child abuse, but the assessment and management of risk. Inselecting such a focus, such developments are in danger of overlookinga central characteristic of policy and practice in terms ofthe pervasiveness of uncertainty and ambiguity. Not only dothese characteristics need to be reorganized, but they needto be built on in order to take our thinking and practices forward.     

Family involvement in decision making in child protection and care: four types of case conference

Since the early 1980s the child protection and care system of Victoria, Australia, has seen the elaboration and diversification of decision making forums, with variable levels of participation by parents and older children. This paper identifies four forums which occur at different stages of the protective process and are held under different auspices and with different membership and purposes. This paper describes and compares these mechanisms with a view to clarifying their distinctive contributions and commonalities, and elaborates issues relating to how 'family' is conceptualized, underlying tensions in protective worker-family relationships, the process of participation, and the management of multiple case planning processes. The paper discusses problems that arise as multiple mechanisms become institutionalized within the same child protection system, and some limitations of participatory case planning in producing systems change.     

Service user participation in diverse child protection contexts: principles for practice

Promoting the participation of children and parents in child protection practice is one of the most complex and sensitive areas of social work practice. Increasingly, child protection legislation and policy in many parts of the world enshrines ideals of service user participation. Yet, with the exception of extensive discussion about family group conferencing, the principles and methods for achieving participatory practices in child protection work remain underdeveloped. We use the term 'child protection' to refer to a broad spectrum of child and family welfare services aimed at prevention of (or intervention to address) child abuse and neglect. This spectrum of services includes intensive family support, family support, domestic violence, statutory child protection and child and family advocacy services. In this paper, we present findings from the first phase of a 3-year study into participatory practice in child protection. In this paper, we present findings from a qualitative analysis of interviews with 28 child protection practitioners across five domains of child protection work. Our analysis reveals three core principles of participatory practice underpinning these practitioners' accounts as well as contextual differences among them. We conclude with a discussion of the educational implications of our findings.     

New Towns in Australia: Some Planning Problems1

A recommended new cities programme was presented to the Australian government by the Cities Commission in 1973. The proposal has fairly ambitious aims for decentralization of the Australian population into planned growth centres. These growth centres were seen to offer solutions to some of the problems of the larger Australian cities. This paper discusses the aims of the new cities policy and suggests that encouraging population decentralization will face some serious difficulties. The difficulty of planning innovations in a rapidly growing centre is also discussed.     

Parenting through the lenses of risk and othering: Constructions of parental cannabis use in child protection court proceedings

The construction of parents' cannabis use in the context of child protection has far-reaching implications for how their parenting is perceived and assessed and for the decisions made regarding their children's lives. Yet little is known about the meanings various stakeholders in child protection processes attribute to parents' cannabis use. This paper aims to explore constructions of parents' cannabis use in child protection court proceedings and position them within a political and social context. A qualitative data mining method was used to examine 32 Family Court judgements in care proceedings that involved parents using cannabis in England and Wales. The analysis of the judgements revealed that most portrayed parents' cannabis use as a negative, deviant and harmful activity. Three constructions of cannabis use were identified: cannabis use as a risk to children, cannabis use as proof of parents' deficits, and cannabis use as (responsible) self-medication. The discussion considers the findings in light of two social and political processes that underpin child protection policy and practice: the adoption of a risk perspective and the manifestation of othering processes. Implications for policy and practice highlight the importance of developing a critical framework for responding to parental cannabis use.     

Reconstructing child welfare through participatory and child‐centred professional practice: a conceptual approach1

The ‘child’ in child welfare/protection is seen as a dependent waif and an object of interest, on whose behalf adults speak and act. An alternative perspective has argued for child‐centredness, and includes concepts of child liberation, rights and citizenship. Policymakers and practitioners who may accept the underlying principles may be concerned about the appropriateness and applicability of such principles in relation to practice with children and their parents in child welfare/protection cases. This paper discusses a conceptual framework for research that aims to explore participatory and child‐centred professional practice by critically evaluating and developing, for professional practice, the practical meanings of ‘participatory’ and ‘children as citizens’. We do not present research outcomes based on empirical data; instead, we present our conceptual framework as the first stage of research in progress into participatory and child‐centred professional practice.     

From Post-Mortem to Preventive Medicine: Next Steps for Research on Child Witnesses

We propose five directions for future child witness research, inspired by recognition of the day-to-day realities of the legal system and the opportunities of psychology to react proactively to challenges child witnesses face. These directions include (1) the refinement of developmentally sensitive questioning aids that increase completeness without increasing suggestibility, (2) the development of approaches to non-disclosure and recantation, including understanding of the reasons underlying non-disclosure and the potential for building rapport and increasing trust, (3) the construction of interventions that meet mental health needs of child-victim witnesses without creating false memories or tainting testimony, (4) a focus on details of children's narratives that are often lacking, including temporal information and emotional reactions, and (5) expanding our attention beyond child sexual abuse allegations in criminal court and considering the many contexts in which child witnesses are questioned, including areas in which preferences rather than memories are elicited.