The Influence of Child Protection Orientation on Child Welfare Practice

Summary This article reports the findings of the second part of a two-partresearch project examining the potential for social workersto make changes in their work with families and children. Whilstsocial workers in the United Kingdom have been encouraged toshift from a child protection to a child welfare orientationin their practice, such changes have been hampered by professionaland organizational concern to manage risk. The research exploresthe influence of a child protection orientation on practicein child welfare cases. The findings, from two file analysesand interviews with 26 social workers, indicate that such aninfluence is indeed apparent. This is evidenced in two ways;first patterns of practice in child welfare cases are similarto those in child protection cases. Secondly, while the majorityof social workers express an attitudinal desire to move towardsa child welfare orientation, they still prioritize the managementof risk in their practice. It is argued that social workersneed permission from their employing organizations to make changesin their practice. This, in turn, requires such organizationsto state clear goals in line with a child welfare orientationand develop holistic strategies to achieve these.     

Leading Practice Improvement in Front Line Child Protection

Front line child protection managers are a vital conduit foreffective outcomes for children, young people and their families.However, little is known about the change processes that theyneed to implement to effectively intervene in such a complexcontext to support improved practice. This article describeshow organizational action research and Organizational LinkageTheory were used to establish an in-depth understanding of theinhibitors and facilitators of the implementation of an outcome-focusedmanagement model in three child protection offices. This analysisidentified that five interrelated compensatory processes actedto offset the impact of the implementation inhibitors. This,in turn, enabled direct service staff to experience an increasedcapacity to undertake effective service activities. This articleexplores each of these compensatory processes and makes a numberof suggestions for how child protection managers and their organizationsmight seek to embed them.     

Human Rights Abuse in Aspects of Child Protection Practice?

This article examines some aspects of child protection practice in various Australian states. It does so from a parent's perspective through the framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). Australia was a signatory to both the Declaration and Convention at their point of inception. Of particular interest are articles 5 and 12 of the Universal Declaration and articles 5 and 9(3) of the Convention. The tentative conclusion is that the states cited in this article are from time to time in breach of these articles. The potential Australian Charter of Rights offers a way forward as a guide to development of legislation and service systems that will ensure the rights of children and parents while maintaining child wellbeing as a top priority.     

Am I Still a Social Worker? Reflections on Child Protection Practice

Social workers alone appear to be held accountable for failures in child protection. However, social workers operate within a broader contextual environment. The protection of children does not occur in a vacuum, divorced from social and political influences. This discussion examines this issue and considers critical influences that appear to have eroded the social work perspective on child protection.     

Children’s Participation in Child Protection Practice in Ghana: Practitioners’ Recommendations for Practice

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) includes provisions to ensure that children and young people participate in decisions affecting their lives. Ghana ratified the convention in 1990 making a commitment to review its child protection policies and legislation in compliance with provisions in the UNCRC. Yet, national policies and legislation do not include practical guidelines to promote children’s participation in the child protection process. Thus, this qualitative study presents findings from in-depth interviews with 15 child protection practitioners on their views about some practical guidelines to promote children’s participation in child protection. Data from the interviews were subjected to constructivist grounded theory analysis. The study findings revealed the age of the child, separate room for children, creating a friendly environment and education as some important factors for practitioners to consider in promoting participatory practices for children. Child protection policies and legislation in Ghana should include these suggestions to ensure that children’s views are heard in the child protection process. To realize the overarching goal of achieving active child participation in child protection, further research may focus on the views of parents and children on how to develop culturally relevant strategies to promote child participation.     

Discourses of Child Protection and Child Welfare

Correspondence to Gordon Jack, University of Exeter, Department of Social Work and Probation Studies, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ Summary The history and dominance of the discourse of child protectionand its influence over social work practice with children andfamilies is discussed in the light of recent research into theoperation of child protection systems in the UK and elsewhere.The often negative effects of current approaches on professionals,parents, and, particularly, children are highlighted. The issuesof confidentiality and empowerment appear to be of central importancefor current debates about the welfare of children and youngpeople. Three strategies for change are outlined and discussed. It isargued that a fundamental challenge to the child protectiondiscourse is required. Parallels are drawn with the changeswhich occurred in attitudes and responses towards football supporters,following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. The dangers and shortcomings of the present reliance on a diseasemodel of ‘abuse’, with its focus on individual pathology,are analysed. Support is provided for the development of a newdiscourse, which acknowledges the social contexts within whichallegations of ‘abuse’ arise, and without whichsocial work will continue to be restricted to a procedurallydominated conservative orientation to child welfare.     

Assessing Child Protection Risk

Correspondence to Lorraine Waterhouse, Lecturer, Edinburgh Centre for Social Welfare Research, 23 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN. Summary The article outlines a set of child protection criteria usedby social workers for the evaluation of risk in sexual abusecases. The criteria were distilled from research findings basedon a sample of 51 child sexual abuse cases drawn from ChildProtection Registers in Scotland in 1987/89. Criteria dividebetween two types: primary (child care) criteria which concentrateon assessing circumstances prevailing within the family home;and secondary (disclosure) criteria which serve to either substantiateor refute disclosure. Primary criteria include attitude of non-abusingparent to alleged perpetrator; access between referred childand alleged perpetrator; type of abuse; age of child or youngperson; attitude of alleged perpetrator to allegations; andparental attitude to social work investigation. Secondary criteriainclude belief or disbelief of child; psychological symptomsin child; physical signs of abuse; children's attitudes towardsremaining at home; and criminal or psychiatric history includingalcohol or drug abuse. In practice the criteria tend to be usedlike a set of building blocks: tall towers represent higherrisk; low towers lesser risk. Given the enormous stakes involvedin child protection decisions, front-line practitioners wereunder considerable pressure to ‘play it safe’.     

Decision Making in Child Protection

Correspondence to Dr Ray Jones, Director of Social Services, Wiltshire County Council, County Hall, Bythesea Road, Trowbridge, Wilts BA14 8LE Summary A survey was undertaken of 701 decisions in ‘child protection’;and ‘child-care’ cases within one local authority.Decision making at four filter points in case career was analysed.Filter 1 was when the case was initially referred to socialservices, Filter 2 was when consideration was given to holdinga case conference, Filter 3 was when a case conference was held,and Filter 4 was the review case conference following the initialcase conference. The major risk factors which determined decisionswere highlighted, and these were different at each filter level.The percentage of children who remained within the ‘childprotection system’ after decisions were taken at eachfilter level was analysed and recorded. The research found that,based on the risk factor weightings given by the independentauditors, workers were appropriately discriminating between‘child protection’ and ‘child-care’cases.     

The Supervision of Child Protection Work

Correspondence to Alan Rushton, Course Director, M.Sc. in Mental Health Social Work, Social Work Department, The Maudsley Hospital, 101 Denmark Hill, London, SE5 8AZ, UK Summary It has frequently been recommended that statutory child protectionservices in Great Britain need greater provision of specialistsupervision to support front line social workers. This qualitativestudy, based in social services departments in London, usedthe focus group method to explore the provision of supervisionby team managers in a very pressurized work environment. Thestudy highlights the difficulty of protecting adequate supervisiontime but shows how supervisors can use their skills to conductcase related discussion concerned with developing professionalskills. ‘Inquisitorial’ and ‘empathic-containing’functions are identified and an approach is proposed for combiningthem in training courses for child protection supervisors. Thepaper recommends that supervision training needs to be expanded,to be more precisely targeted, and that outcomes need to berigorously and appropriately assessed.     

Liberty and Respect in Child Protection

Correspondence to Sally Holland, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT, Wales, UK. E-mail: HollandS1{at} cf.ac.uk Summary The paper begins by introducing Isaiah Berlin's concepts ofpositive and negative liberty and the application of these conceptsto child protection. There is discussion of some recent debateson the social and political context of state social work andchild protection in particular. The authors then consider, inturn, the experience of children, parents and social workersin the child protection system. There is also a considerationof partnership and rights. The conclusion is that opportunitiesfor statutory child protection to be liberating are limited,but that there is more potential than the most pessimistic accountsmight allow. Rather than libertarian child protection, socialworkers can aim for child protection practice that is respectful.The paper concludes with some principles for respectful practice,based on the ideas of Richard Sennett. Most importantly, Sennett'sideas recognize the importance of relationships in social welfareand acknowledge the context of inequality within which socialwork takes place.     

Gender and the Child Protection Process

Correspondence to Dr Elaine Farmer, Centre for Family Policy and Child Welfare, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, Block F, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 ITN, UK. Summary In the debates about finding a new balance between child protectionand family support, there has been silence on the issue of theimpact of gender on child protection work. Using data from oneof the studies in the Department of Health (1995) child protectionresearch programme, this article examines the impact of genderat each stage of the child protection process. It shows thatmothers have tended to be under-represented in relation to offersof service and over-included in respect of agencies' effortsto control them. When social work practice in cases of physicalabuse by men focuses exclusively on mothers, this allows men'sviolence to their female partners to be ignored. This practicehas been sustained in recent years, even though the child protectionsystem itself developed in response to public anxiety aboutchild deaths caused by men.     

Determinants of Substitute Child Care Practice

Correspondence to Dr Matthew Colton, Department of Social and Administrative Studies, Barnett House, Wellington Square, Oxford CX1 2ER Summary The first part of this paper attempts to examine the factorswhich help to define foster and residential care practices.The discussion is informed by a comparative study of fosterhomes and Children's Homes, which was reported in the previousissue of this journal (BJSW 18:1). Overall, care practices inthe foster homes compared very favourably with those observedin the Children's Homes. It is argued that this finding owesmuch to the bureaucratization of Children's Homes. The secondsection considers the implications of my work for policy andpractice in the field of substitute child care. Use is madeof the insights provided by the preceding section to suggestways by which the major shortcomings identified by empiricalresearch might be ameliorated. This statement includes an argumentin favour of a significant expansion of family placement forolder children in public care, and a proposal for a child-orientedalternative to the sorts of Children's Homes visited.     

Child Protection: Balancing Paternalism and Partnership

Correspondence to Martin C. Calder, Child Protection Unit, Salford Social Services Department, Avon House, Avon Close, Little Hulton, Manchester M38 OLA Summary There have been a great many protracted and heated debates aboutthe practice of state intervention and control of family lifein recent years. Indeed, the Children Act (1989) was draftedafter the Cleveland Inquiry highlighted the lack of consulationwith parents and the lasting effects of ill-considered intrusioninto family life, and embraced the philosophy of partnership.Social workers operating in the child care and child protectionareas need to balance the contradictory notions of paternalismand partnership, in the knowledge that they will be pilloriedby the popular press when they get it wrong. This paper attemptsto contrast the two concepts in their philosophical and socialwork contexts, and moves on to recommend frameworks for helpingto balance them when they are operationalized. It is essentialto consider this particular debate in the wider political andeconomic contexts, particularly where uncertainty and the lackof resources are ever-present features.     

Variations in Registration on Child Protection Registers

This paper outlines some of the limitations of the annual datareports on child protection registrations provided in Englandand Wales and reports the findings of a study into patternsof variation on child protection registers. Previous studiesof variations on child protection registers have usually examinedvariations between particular categories of registration, orfocused upon the aggregated numbers of children registered inlocal areas. Unlike the limited official data, this study examinedthe actual periods of time that children remained registered.It found that there were significant variations by gender, ageand local authority, in the periods of time registered. Thepaper concludes by raising questions about the range and natureof information that might usefully be collected about children,the merits of integrating data-sets, and the uses to which suchdata might be put.     

Black African Children and the Child Protection System

This paper explores black African children’s experiencesof the child protection system in the UK. The central focusof the paper is a review of the available literature on thesocial circumstances and environmental influences affectingmany black African families involved in the child protectionsystem; specific parenting practices and care-giving environments;and their experiences of social work and other professionalinterventions aimed at safeguarding and promoting the needsof African children. This paper examines these themes to elucidatethe factors that contribute to the provision of effective, culturallycompetent interventions with black African children at riskof significant harm. It suggests that there are a number oftensions inherent for professionals in working with culturallydiverse African families such as reconciling different beliefsand behaviours concerning child-rearing practices; affirmingthe parenting practices of these families in the engagementprocess; adopting a strengths-based orientation whilst at thesame time safeguarding and promoting the welfare of vulnerablechildren. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implicationsfor practice.