Locus of Control, Coping and Proto Prevention in Child and Family Care

Despite a sustained emphasis that appropriate responses aremade to children and families in need, recent policy documentsexpress a concern about the high thresholds for receipt of children’sservices preventing many high-need families from accessing help.Where this is the case, families are liable to have to fallback on their own resources. This raises the question: how dothese families, particularly mothers (frequently the primarycare-givers), cope? Locus of Control (LoC) has been shown tobe a significant factor in the confidence, and capacity, ofindividuals to respond to their external environment. This articlefocuses on applicants for children’s services who didnot meet the thresholds for service receipt, focusing on theircoping strategies in the light of the LoC of the women. Thefindings show that LoC did have an impact on coping strategies,and, in particular, points to the greater likelihood of avoidancestrategies in those with an external LoC and of stress underminingActive Coping by those with internal LoC, in the absence ofservices. These are discussed in the light of prevention, recentlyconceptually extended to include activities by the families,as well as the provision of services.     

Realizing the potential of a strengths-based approach in family support with young people and their parents

This paper on a strengths-based approach (SBA) to practice is based on empirical research with stakeholders involved in an intensive support programme for young people at risk and their parents in Ireland. The Youth Advocate Programme (YAP) model provides wraparound support to respond to their needs by focusing on their competencies and their coping skills and building networks of community-based supports. The model includes parents or carers in the suite of support offered by advocates. An SBA to practice has been discussed for some time in academic literature and practice guidance. However, it tends to be considered primarily in relation to social work practice, and there is ongoing ambiguity as to what it actually involves in day-to-day engagement with individual family members. Insightful, rich accounts of SBAs as part of routine practice provided by young people, parents and practitioners form the basis to this paper and detail how these approaches support the development of hope-inspiring relationships and promote positive change. Relevant literature and research situates the debate on the experience of using SBA, the wider challenges faced by families, the impact of SBA in practice on those receiving the support service and its potential for use in the wider continuum of children and family services.     

Attachment and Coping Strategies in Middle Childhood Children whose Mothers Have a Mental Health Problem: Implications for Social Work Practice

Mental health has implications for the quality of relationshipswithin a family, particularly between parents and children,but also between other family and non-family members. Previousresearch has investigated parental reports of attachment infamilies with mental health problems, but relationship representationsas experienced by these children, especially in middle childhood,have not been so frequently investigated. An understanding ofchildren’s representations of attachment relationshipsand the different coping strategies that may result is importantfor social work practice when offering support, not only tothe children, but also other family members. Methods of investigatingattachment, such as the Separation Anxiety Test, have been usedto understand the relationship issues, fears and coping strategiesof other vulnerable children, and this study was designed specificallyto investigate relationship issues in middle childhood childrenwhose mothers had previously been hospitalized with mental healthproblems. We found that these children tended to be less emotionallyopen and secure, and generated fewer adaptive coping strategiesthan children whose mothers had never had mental health problems.Other themes also emerged from the interviews, such as a senseof trust in the parent–child relationship and the ‘containment’of fears. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Irish Social Workers in Britain and the Politics of (Mis) Recognition

The article focuses on the perceptions of Irish social workersworking in ‘children and families’ settings in Britain.These respondents cannot be seen as representative of all Irishsocial workers in Britain, yet they do provide insights intofive significant themes: the approach to ‘race’and ethnicity in social work education; Irish identities inBritain; racism and stereotyping; children and families whoare Irish Travellers; and an agenda for the future. The discussionconsiders some of the issues raised in the context of what hasbeen referred to as the ‘politics of recognition’.     

A Study of Families' Expectations and Experiences of a Child Guidance Clinic

Summary Recently there has been considerable debate concerning the useof child guidance/psychiatric services. There is a lack of consumerstudies in this area, despite opinion that such studies areessential in the evaluaton of these services. This paper considersthe expectations and experiences of ten families who attendedtheir local child guidance clinic. These families had attendedthe clinic for no more than six appointments before termination.Most parents had expectations which conflicted with those ofclinic staff. The only three families whose expectations concurredwith clinic practice had had previous experience of the ‘helpingprofessions’. Overall less than half the families feltthey had been helped and this seems related to the differencesbetween their expectations and experiences. The clinic's andthe families' opinions concerning the helpfulness of clinicintervention do not always coincide, nor do their reasons fortermination. Ideas for preparation of families prior to attendingthe clinic and for modification of treatment by clinic staffare considered.     

High Thresholds and Prevention in Children's Services: The Impact of Mothers' Coping Strategies on Outcome of Child and Parenting Problems--Six Month Follow-Up

High thresholds characterizing the provision of Children’sServices have become increasingly apparent in recent years,and concerns that these thresholds mean that high need familiesdo not receive a service have been expressed in key policy documents.This is despite a commitment, in policy and practice, to Preventionas an underlying theme for services. When referral is followedby a failure to access services, the coping strategies of theparents, in particular the mother, who is generally the primarycaregiver, become of particular practical importance. Thesecoping strategies are also of theoretical interest, being akey element of the newly developed concept of Proto Prevention,which extends our previous understanding of this area. Thispaper focuses on the coping strategies of families who wereunsuccessful applicants for Children’s Services, and asks:Which coping strategies were most effective in securing positiveoutcomes? It was found that the direct actions of the mother,and avoidance strategies such as denial or acceptance had littleeffect. However, seeking social support was associated withmore positive outcomes in child development and parenting, anddenial and disengagement with an increase in depression symptoms.The implications of these findings, for policy and practice,are discussed.     

'The Tip of the Ice Berg': Children's Complaints and Advocacy in Wales--An Insider View from Complaints Officers

This paper is based on findings of a Welsh Assembly Governmentfunded review of children’s independent advocacy servicesin Wales with reference to their involvement in complaints madeby children, or by their parents or carers on their behalf,about local authority social services. It draws, primarily,upon qualitative interviews with local authority children’scomplaints officers, whose task is to receive complaints orconcerns, field these to appropriate social services staff,maintain oversight of their progression and keep complainantsinformed of developments. The paper describes the challengesthat complaints officers perceive children encounter in movingcomplaints forward, especially in a context where independentadvocacy services are involved and where these services areviewed with some suspicion by social services staff. It suggeststhat complaints officers play a pivotal part in managing thesometimes contested and complex interface between service providerand child and may do so from a position of limited authorityand influence. The role of complaints officers in engaging withcomplainants and their advocates, and with those colleaguesimplicated in complaints, has rarely been the topic of research.This paper provides accounts from these key staff that helpilluminate the tensions and difficulties that can enter thechildren’s complaints process.     

Children's understanding of mental ill health: implications for risk and resilience in relationships

Research shows that having a parent with a mental health problem has associated risks for children, but some families seem very resilient and do not always suffer these difficulties. In order for social workers to be able to support the development of resilience in families who appear to be at risk, we need to understand what factors may ameliorate some of these risks. Research seems to suggest that children who can conceptualize their parent's mental health problem as something 'outside' their representation of that parent as an attachment figure are likely to have better outcomes than children who see the mental-health problem as part of, and embedded within, their representation of that parent. However, in order to develop an understanding of how this conceptualization affects attachment relationships and outcomes, we need to know what children understand by mental ill health. We also need to consider how this conceptualization might be changed, and it appears that parents, other attachment figures and other support figures may play a key role here. This paper provides a selective review of the research area and discusses the mechanisms which may govern this complex process. The review concludes with recommendations for future research and practice.     

The Resource Worker Project: Evaluating a Specialist Social Work Service for Severely Disabled Children and their Families

Please address reprint requests and correspondence to Caroline Glendinning at the Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, Heslington, York Y01 5DD. Summary Accumulated research evidence revealed the continued fragmentationof support services for families caring for a severely disabledchild; while parents themselves repeatedly reported the lackof a comprehensive source of information and advice. The resourceworker project was designed to assess whether the levels andcoherence of services to the families of severely disabled childrencould be improved through the intervention of specialist socialworkers. The activities of the social workers were extensivelydocumented and multiple methods of data collection were usedto evaluate their intervention, in comparison with a matchedgroup of families who continued to receive the normal genericservices. According to a number of ‘outcome’ measures—forexample families' use of services, facilities and professionalexpertise; the incidence and severity of stress among parents;the mental and physical well-being of various family members—changesoccurring as a result of the intervention were, apparently,neither large scale nor consistent. Nevertheless parents werevirtually unanimous in their positive and enthusiastic appreciationof the help and support they had received. The implicationsof these findings for the evaluation of social work interventionare discussed; and attention is drawn to the importance of evaluatingintervention of this kind, as the long term support of familieswith severely dependent members is likely to place increasingdemands on social work and social services resources in thefuture.     

Gaining Access to Data Sources in Statutory Social Work Agencies: The Long and Winding Road

This paper details a researcher’s experience of gainingaccess to three statutory social work agencies in order to conducta study examining how social workers respond to family supportcases and how parents and carers experience the interventionof social workers in these cases. The stages in gaining accessare outlined, the gate-keepers involved at each stage are identifiedand some of the difficulties encountered are highlighted anddiscussed. The paper concludes that researchers need to givegreater priority to access considerations and that social workagencies need to give greater priority to co-operation withresearchers.     

More Nuanced Universal Services for New Parents: Avoiding Assumptions of Homogeneity

Abstract

Universal services focus on prevention and providing the support to parents that will help them meet the challenges of parenthood and deal with problems before they become entrenched. Many countries now have good universal services available for new families, and significant advances have been made in recent years to recognize the importance of the early years in the optimal development of the child. This article is based on a qualitative study of transition to parenthood. The study explored the experience of 25 first-time mothers in socioeconomically diverse circumstances in New Zealand. Eleven partners of these women also participated. Mothers were interviewed three times, first in late pregnancy, then 3 and 12?months after giving birth. Partners were interviewed once, mid-way through the baby’s first year. The article focuses on how participants experienced service support. It illustrates some of the diverse needs of new parents, and explains ways in which prevention services might become more responsive to parents’ expressed needs. The authors offer a case for stronger interplay between universal services and informal systems of support, and the development of a new generation of universal services that act as enablers of natural support hubs for new families within their own communities.     

Anti-oppressive Social Work Practice with Women in Prison: Discursive Reconstructions and Alternative Practices

Correspondence to Shoshana Pollack, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5. E-mail: spollack{at}wlu.ca Summary An anti-oppressive practice (AOP) framework emphasizes issuesof power and oppression within the provision of social workservices themselves as well as within the lives of clients whohave been marginalized and oppressed (Preston-Shoot, 1995; Garciaand Melendez, 1997). AOP seeks to deindividualize clients’problems in order to see them within the wider social contextof their lives. In addition, this framework attempts to moveaway from an ‘expert’ model of service deliverytowards one that is more inclusive of clients’ experiencesand that incorporates a recognition of coping and resistenceto oppression. In this paper I discuss how an AOP frameworkcan contribute to our understanding of and interventions withwomen in prison. In particular, I will focus upon how we canbetter understand and respond to women’s mental healthissues and the experience of imprisonment. Peer support servicesare examined as an example of AOP programming for women in prison.     

The Significance of Past Abuse to Current Intervention Strategies with Depressed Mothers in Child and Family Care

Correspondence to Professor Michael Sheppard, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 7EW, UK. Summary There is now considerable evidence that a high proportion offamilies subject to child and family care social work interventioncontain depressed mothers. There is also evidence that the presenceof clinical depression is associated, amongst these clients,with child abuse. Vulnerability to both depression and childabuse have been traced back to the early child-care experiencesof those who are currently parents, expressed in child abusein terms of intergenerational transmission, although it is alsoclear for both that further factors also contribute to thisvulnerability. Despite the link between maternal depressionand child abuse, we have little evidence about the processesand mechanisms, based on social workers judgements about thesituation, by which families with depressed mothers are morelikely than other clients to be involved with intervention forchild abuse. This paper seeks to ‘map’ the pathwaysand the intermediate mechanisms which provide the link betweenthe experience of past abuse and social workers interventionstrategies. Drawing on theoretically significant factors, itfocuses on the following variables: the experience of past abuse,the mother's attributed character, attachment and bonding, childbehavioural problems and intervention strategy. The paper demonstratesa number of significant ‘paths’ through which familiesbecome subject to one or other intervention strategy. It showsthat, while an emphasis on needs assessment is to be welcomed(Department of Health, 1999), they need to be considered (i)within a theoretical framework which helps social workers makesense of, and respond to situations and (ii) through an understandingof longitudinal dimensions (key factors in mothers' earlierlife) which are aspects of this theoretical understanding.     

Temporal Discrimination and Parents with Learning Difficulties in the Child Protection System

This article shows how time works against parents with learningdifficulties in the child protection system and Children Actproceedings. The prevailing wisdom, embedded in policy and theliterature, is that delay in care cases is bad for the childand may jeopardize his or her future. This paper shows how thepressure to avoid delay might itself be harming some families,especially parents with learning difficulties. Drawing on interviewswith social work practitioners undertaken as part of a largerstudy, the authors describe the various forms of temporal discriminationthat impact on this group of disabled parents. They concludethat procedural time limits make it harder for parents withlearning difficulties to meet the standards and expectationsenforced by Children’s Services and the courts.     

Risk, Mental Disorder and Social Work Practice: A Gendered Landscape

Whilst the importance of gender for social work practice, riskand mental health has been recognized theoretically for sometime, few attempts have been made to explore this area empirically.This paper presents findings from a mixed-methods study of socialwork practice in relation to mental health service users perceivedto be ‘high-risk’. Findings suggest, first, thatthe concept ‘high-risk’ was gendered because theprimary focus in social work practice was on the risks posedby male service users to others. Second, female social workersin the present study were found to have more female serviceusers from their caseloads who had been defined as ‘high-risk’compared with their male counterparts. The paper goes on toexplore this apparent congruence between female social workersand female service users and highlights how the management ofrisk could be considered gendered because it reflects a worker’s(perceived) capacity in cultural terms to ‘decode’the nature of the risks that their clients face as genderedsubjects. The paper demonstrates how the intersections betweenrisk, mental disorder and social work practice can thereforebe understood as a gendered landscape. It concludes by highlightingthe implications of these findings for social work practiceand research.     

Identity Development and Grieving: The Evolving Processes for Parentally Bereaved Women

This paper is a report of the findings from a qualitative researchstudy that explored how the death of a parent influences femaleadolescents, with particular focus on women’s evolvingidentity development. A sample of eighteen women was recruitedfor the study. Findings highlight that constructing a relationshipto the deceased, shifting family dynamics and the ebb and flowof grieving influenced identity development. The women’sdevelopment allowed them to more fully recognize their parent’ssubjectivity and, in turn, allowed them to see more aspectsof themselves. The active process of ‘re-membering’(Myerhoff, 1982) the deceased through a variety of activitiescontributed to identity development. Implications for socialwork practice will be discussed.     

The motives of foster parents, their family and work circumstances

Summary In foster care research the focus is generally placed on thechildren, not on the parents who perform the foster care. Inthis article the focus is on foster parents of 10-11 year-oldchildren. They were interviewed about their motives for becomingfoster parents, which were linked to their family and work circumstances.Among the 21 foster families in the study, four different butequally frequent reasons or motives for taking care of fosterchildren from the very beginning could be distinguished: relativeswho feel responsibility for a certain child; couples who wantchildren and do not think they can have children of their own;families where the mother wants to be at home taking care ofbiological as well as foster children instead of having unskilledemployed work outside the home; and parents with grown-up childrenwho want to fill the 'empty nest' by becoming foster parents- combined with a family business at home or close to home.Changing family and work patterns in Sweden do not seem to haveinfluenced foster families as much as families in general. Theworth of acquiring more knowledge about the families involvedin foster care of children and young people in order to improvefoster care and reduce breakdowns of care is discussed.     

Social Work, New Public Management and the Language of 'Service User'

The purpose of this paper is to offer insight into the possibleconsequences of language developed at the political level byan authoritative body for the purpose of designing social policythat is then adapted as discourse in social care. The focusis on the UK government’s policy toward the language of‘service user’ in the context of New Public Management(NPM). It begins with a brief introduction on the importanceof language. Next, it outlines the move towards NPM and changesthat have facilitated the shift from ‘client’ to‘service user’, presenting some of the implicationsthese changes have had on social work in Britain. Finally, itdetails the possible detrimental effects of labelling language,and discusses research from other countries on preferred termsof reference for individuals who use health and social careservices.     

Depressed Mothers' Experience of Partnership in Child and Family Care

Summary Partnership is a key dimension of social work practice in childand family care, reflecting the significance attached to workingwith parents. While, however, considerable attention has beenfocused on the role of the social worker in encouraging partnership,rather less attention has been focused on the capacity of themothers to engage in partnership. Depression, known to affecta considerable proportion of mothers in this client group, is,because of its debilitating psychological effects, of considerablepotential significance, yet its effect on partnership has notbeen examined. This article focuses on exactly this issue. Findingsshow that depression has highly significant relationships witha number of facets of partnership. It shows also that partnershipmorale and quality of consultation mediate between depressionand, respectively, participation in decision making and involvementin decision implementation—action by the mother to helpresolve the situation. Depression and partnership are, furthermore,related in a complex way to the authority role invoked in casesof children ‘at risk’. The data indicate that theelements of low self-esteem, vulnerability to criticism, andself-blame are key factors in the mother's capacity to workin partnership. Social work practice must take these into account,requiring very high degrees of sensitivity and skill in workingwith mothers. Indeed, unlocking these pernicious cognitionsmay frequently require specialist techniques, such as the useof cognitive behaviour therapy. Overall, being ‘socialworker for the child’ means also being ‘social workerfor the parents (in particular the mother)’, who may wellrequire high levels of encouragement.