What do social workers and children do when they are together? A typology of direct work

There is renewed interest in the place of direct work and relationship‐based practice in social work. This paper explores the day‐to‐day direct work that happens where children and young people are ‘looked after’ at home, from the perspectives of children, social workers and those supervising practice. It is based on interviews with eight children and 25 professionals about their experiences. In this paper, I highlight that despite barriers, direct work, which is characterized as meaningful by children and professionals, happens and that the relationships formed between children and social workers are an important precursor to and an outcome of direct work. The research was undertaken in Scotland, and although the legislation, policy and guidance differ from other jurisdictions, the messages about direct work are relevant for practice in other countries.     

Strengths of caregivers raising a child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder

Birth, foster and adoptive parents raising a child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder know their children best and are well positioned to inform professionals how to help alcohol‐affected children. Telephone interviews with 32 parents were conducted to explore strengths of caregivers raising a child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and responses analyzed using concept mapping methodology. Four themes emerged from 74 unique responses: ‘change parenting strategy for different children’, ‘use non‐verbal, sensory and physical strategies’, ‘stay patient and understanding’ and ‘locate and maintain external supports’. Results were compared and contrasted with the existing literature. Although many responses were consistent with the literature, strengths previously unreported by caregivers in the literature included cultural practices, communication, generalizability of skills, soothing music and use of a service dog.     

Making meaningful connections: using insights from social pedagogy in statutory child and family social work practice

Reports into incidents of child death and serious injury have highlighted consistently concern about the capacity of social workers to communicate skilfully with children. Drawing on data collected as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded UK‐wide research project exploring social workers' communicative practices with children, this paper explores how approaches informed by social pedagogy can assist social workers in connecting and communicating with with children. The qualitative research included data generated from 82 observations of social workers' everyday encounters with children. Social pedagogical concepts of ‘haltung’ (attitude), ‘head, heart and hands’ and ‘the common third’ are outlined as potentially helpful approaches for facilitating the intimacies of inter‐personal connections and enhancing social workers' capacity to establish and sustain meaningful communication and relationships with children in the face of austere social, political and organisational contexts.     

Psychosocial and relationship-based theories for child and family social work: political philosophy, psychology and welfare practice

Psychosocial perspectives on children’s development are allied to theories that recognize the ‘self’ as essentially a social entity. The quality of relationships that children experience in their social environment have a profound effect on their socio-emotional development, personality formation and social competence. To this extent, psychosocial theories of children’s development and wellbeing can provide child and family social workers with a powerful framework within which to analyse, assess and practise. However, it is also recognized that the character of child welfare practices and policies are influenced by prevailing political climates. A simple dichotomy is described between political philosophies of the right and left; libertarianism and communitarianism; individual freedom and collective action. It is argued that the present swing to libertarian individualism has brought about major changes in the policy and practice of much child and family social work, including a preference for theories that emphasize people’s psychological independence, rationality and personal responsibility. In such a climate, child and family social work becomes more legalistic, orientated towards principles of justice rather than welfare, and towards rights and responsibilities rather than personal relationships and social competence. Psychosocial developmental theories, with their emphasis on the importance of social relationships and the emotional interconnectedness of people in community, fare less well under the rigours of psychological individualism and free-market economics. The paper concludes that if children’s psychosocial development and competence are a product of their social history, practices that psychologically ‘disembed’ people from their relationship environment are unable to consider children’s needs within a coherent, well-grounded theoretical framework. If child and family social work is premised on helping children develop social understanding and emotional wellbeing, theory and practice are best served by taking a psychosocial perspective.     

Cognitive-Behavioural Social Work with Children

Correspondence to: Dr Tammie Ronen, The Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel Summary The paper aims to explore the complex and important links betweeninterventions with children, cognitive therapy, and social work.Although children comprise about half of the referrals to socialwork services, they do not generally receive direct treatmentin these settings. Social workers are involved with childrenin the roles of mediator or counsellor and as the supervisorwho is concerned with the placement of the child in appropriatesettings. When the need for direct therapeutic interventionarises, children are usually referred to educational or clinicalpsychologists. Social work as a profession has been foundedupon a psychodynamic approach; however, social workers havealways been concerned with effective treatments, the definitionof clear goals, and the clarification of client needs. Thesefeatures link social work to cognitive-behavioural therapy.Cognitive therapy, although not frequently used with children,is presented in this paper as a means for conducting directinterventions with children which fulfil social work's basictargets and needs.     

What do we know about child neglect? A critical review of the literature and its application to social work practice

Child neglect is a difficult and complex area of practice for social workers and other childcare professionals. To work effectively, practitioners need a good grasp of relevant literature and research – a point underlined by the moves to incorporate ‘research mindedness’ and ‘research literacy’ into social work education, training and practice. This paper aims to contribute to the debate around research literacy by looking in more detail at the research and knowledge base informing work with neglected children and their families, and considering the ways in which this can be applied in practice. In the first part of the paper, we provide a critical overview of the main aspects of research knowledge, summarizing ‘what we know’ currently about child neglect. Next, we look at some of the difficulties associated with this body of knowledge and at some of its limitations. Having noted these concerns, however, we go on to suggest ways in which the research evidence can be used in mainstream social work. We draw out some of the consequences for work with children and with their parents as well as considering the implications for social workers and their agencies.     

‘Street‐level Bureaucracy’ Revisited: The Changing Face of Frontline Discretion in Adult Social Care in England

This reassessment of the continuing significance of Lipsky's (1980 ) work on ‘street‐level bureaucracy’ for frontline decision making is based on a retrospective review of the author's research on assessment practice in adult social care in England. The studies span the past two decades during which time successive governments have restructured and modernized social services departments. When these were established in 1970, they represented the high watermark of bureau‐professionalism – a mode of administration which dominated social welfare at the time Lipsky was writing. The subsequent dismantling of bureau‐professionalism calls into question the validity of his findings, and the author draws on her own research to assess conflicting views about the impact of social care reforms on the discretion which social workers exercise as street‐level bureaucrats. She concludes that the distinct types of discretion to emerge from her findings, represented in a taxonomy, are shaped by the differing micro environments of frontline practice which, in turn, affect the relative force of managerialism, professionalism and user empowerment in countering the defensive exercise of discretion described by Lipsky. Whilst her analysis affirms the continuing significance of Lipsky's analysis, it also points to the need for some revision to accommodate major shifts in welfare administration since the publication of his work. She highlights the potential relevance of these insights for investigating the next planned transformation of adult social care, personalization, as well as for the implementation literature more widely.     

‘Undeserving’ mothers? Practitioners’ experiences working with young mothers in/from care

Although teen pregnancy is on the rise in Canada, and while adolescent mothering in general has received considerable recent attention from researchers, there is a paucity of information about the particular experiences of young women who become mothers while in government care. Emerging out of a study guided by a grounded theory methodology to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines the experiences and perspectives of government‐based social workers who work with young mothers in/from care. Our findings indicated that social workers reflect prevailing middle class values, including norms about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting, and centred around the belief that adolescent pregnancy is, in and of itself, bad. One of the most significant ramifications of workers’ values was their belief about the inevitability of ‘the cycle’: of children in care begetting children who ultimately came into care. Ironically, though workers and young mothers were both preoccupied by the concept of ‘the cycle’, and each were determined to break it, the two groups had very different ideas about what the cycle was all about and what perpetuated it. Unfortunately, this disjunction in perspectives, along with major recent shifts in the direction of child welfare policy and practice and related constraints in the resources at workers’ disposal, conjoined to create significant barriers to what workers and young women both recognized as supportive practice with youth in care.     

Emotional kinship care and neutral non‐kinship care — the struggle between discourses

In this paper, social workers' ideas of kinship care and non‐kinship care as foster placement alternatives for vulnerable children are analysed and discussed. The study is based on group interviews with Swedish social workers, using a discourse analytic approach. The interviews took two vignettes of children who needed an immediate and long‐term placement because one of the parents had killed the other parent, as their point of departure. Domestic violence is a common social problem across countries, and controversies about placement alternatives become even more apparent when discussing lethal violence. The analysis revealed three main discourses: ‘emotional kinship care’, ‘neutral non‐kinship care’ and ‘a real family’. The emotional kinship care discourse also revealed two competing sub‐discourses: ‘emotions as glue that binds’ and ‘emotions as obscuring a child perspective’, displaying a struggle concerning the advantages and risks that social workers connected to kinship care. In this paper, the results and their implications for vulnerable children are discussed.     

“The Poor Carer”: Ambivalent Social Construction of the Home Care Worker in Elder Care Services

In this article, we examine the social construction of the home care worker from the perspective of various professionals in the elder care sector in Ireland. The research, using the Grounded Theory method, involved focus groups with 31 participants comprising health and social work professionals as well as care agency managers and policy planners. The social construction of the elder care worker is characterised by ambivalence. We connect the concept of ambivalence at the micro level of human relationships to structural factors that are driving the ambivalence. Ambivalence towards home care workers is shaped by structural factors including the precariousness of care work, the commodification of time, and the stipulated personalisation of services. The irreconcilable contrasts between portrayals of care workers as both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are indicative of deep contradictions in the expectations that contemporary care systems direct at paid caregivers. Ambivalence arises from the commodified and dispensable status of care workers, and fundamental transformations in their training, working conditions and pay are required to move away from this ambivalence and towards care workers’ equal status with professionals in the care sector.     

Care, control and change in child care proceedings: dilemmas for social workers, managers and lawyers

This paper draws on findings from an interview‐based study of the ways that local authority social workers, social services managers and lawyers work together in child care cases in England. The study shows how stressful social workers can find care proceedings, and how much they look to the lawyers for support. It also shows how the lawyers’ involvement can bring new stresses and dilemmas. The managers are especially likely to resent ‘over‐involvement’ (as they see it) from lawyers, but lawyers are quick to defend their role and responsibilities. The paper shows how the complex, multifaceted dimensions of care, control and change interweave with professional differences in care proceedings: care for children, parents and social workers; struggles for control against the court, the other parties and sometimes the other professionals on one's own side; and responsiveness to change set against wariness about ‘lawyers’ deals’ and undue risk to children. The paper concludes that the valuing of difference, rather than its avoidance or suppression, is at the heart of effective inter‐professional work. It calls for greater recognition of this in current initiatives to promote interdisciplinary working in children's services in England.     

Emotion and relatedness as aspects of the identities of adolescents with severe learning disabilities: contributions from ‘practice‐near’ social work research

This paper considers social and personal/individual approaches to researching identities of adolescents with severe learning disabilities; suggesting that vital components of emotionality and relatedness are largely missing from research and consequently from literature informing social care professionals. This leaves untapped, rich information and communication resources for research which may improve understandings of the experiences of a socially excluded group of young people. A psychosocial view of adolescent identity development, ‘subjectivation’, offers a way forward and a case study on ‘Billy’, drawn from a ‘practice‐near’ observational study, helps to illustrate this. Observation allows the researcher to be sensitive to the subtle ways in which identities of young people with severe learning disabilities are constructed, often with a sense of fragility and uncertainty. Continuities of experience between the young people and the rest of the adolescent community may be seen, but also the impact of living with impairment can be thought about in relation to the particular psychosocial circumstances of each young person. Knowledge of these processes enhances social work practice by encouraging workers to be sensitive to, and healthily curious about, the multiple ways in which identities of young people with severe learning disabilities are shaped in relationship with those around them and the wider social field.     

Seeing flowers through the mist: how social workers in disability services retrospectively view their educational experiences related to case management in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This article is principally designed to examine social workers’ retrospective views on their past educational experiences with case management in disability services to supply a deficiency that very little literature attention has been paid to how prior professional education shape their case management practice. Using qualitative methods, 13 social workers selected by purposive sampling were invited to participate in in-depth interviews. The qualitative data were analysed to generate some themes. Three themes found are “from ‘rarely heard of it’ to ‘remember it being referred to’”; “buy a lottery ticket before starting a field placement”; and “Ambiguity”. These themes indicate that social work education related to case management was lagging behind, which may exacerbate social work’s polarisation and lead to social workers’ confusion about their professionality. As a result, an urgent need for greater knowledge of case management in university education and in-service training should be addressed in Hong Kong.     

农民工随迁子女教育公平的财政实现机制探析

农民工随迁子女的教育公平是现代城市化进程中社会公平的重要内容与客观要求。教育公平主要通过教育资源的优化配置实现每个受教育者能享受到均等的教育,它包含教育机会公平、教育过程公平和教育质量公平。公共财政理论认为,教育属于准公共物品,这也是财政支持资源相对匮乏的农民工随迁子女的义务教育的理论依据。但由于其特殊性,应建立完善的政府间经费分担机制与财政监督机制。从财政支持农民工随迁子女教育公平的现状来看,教育机会公平显失、教育过程公平脆弱、教育质量公平任重道远。上述问题的根源在于农民工随迁子女财政教育经费投入不足、经费分担机制缺乏且不合理、缺乏专门的预算制度等。因此,针对上述问题,探寻完善财政实现机制,成为当前保障农民工随迁子女教育公平的必然选择。     

The impact of ‘being assessed’ by a disabled children's team: a personal reflective account

The body of ‘service user’ literature confirms the value of parental perceptions of child and family social work and the insight parents and others can offer. This paper lends my voice to the literature regarding parental perceptions, inspired by the work of Pamela Davies, who provided a personal account of the impact of a child protection investigation. This paper draws upon my experiences of being a father of two ‘disabled children’ and undergoing an assessment of need. This paper seeks to draw attention to issues of choice, power imbalances and the role of expertise. My personal experience of undergoing an assessment was that it was an emotionally fraught process, for the duration of the assessment, our family stress increased and we had a sense of having to ‘battle’ for the support we needed. As such, my personal experience fits well with the wider body of literature, which highlights the increased stress of caring for children with additional needs, the challenges of ‘fitting’ disabled children into the frameworks used to assess all children and the difficulty for parents and professionals in distinguishing between ‘normal’ parenting responsibilities and the additional responsibilities of caring for a disabled child.     

Play therapy with sexually abused children: Including parents in therapeutic play

This paper draws on the author’s experience as a member of a team of social workers undertaking play therapy with sexually abused children. It outlines the theoretical rationale that informed the development of practice in which parents were included in therapeutic play sessions with their children. It goes on to examine two cases that illustrate some of the issues. Finally, this paper begins to develop a critique of practice that involves parents, highlighting potential limitations and proposing a series of questions for further research.     

Play Therapy with Rosy

Summary Rosy is typical of many problematic children in residentialsettings as well as natural homes. What is perhaps not so typicalin social work practice is play therapy, an intervention thathas been acknowledged as having contributed to a significantimprovement in Rosy's behaviour and emotional stability. Certainconditions are necessary—a suitable playroom; assuranceof regular sessions; a play therapist who is, at least to someextent, freed from her own unconscious preoccupations so thatshe can work effectively on the child's needs without interjectingher own. The aim of this paper is to present a synopsis of thetheoretical background, to outline some practical considerations,and to quote from my work with Rosy as a living example of playtherapy in the hope that others will be stimulated to considerplay work as a viable method of intervention with some children.Rosy's play sessions lasted a little over a year, many othercases require less time.     

Communication skills in child protection: how do social workers talk to parents?

Communication skills are fundamental to social work practice, yet there is little research on the skills that workers have or how they use them. This study analyses 24 taped interviews between social workers and an actor playing a parent (a ‘simulated client’). Two child protection scenarios with different levels of seriousness were used. On average, social workers asked many closed questions and often raised concerns. They used few reflections and rarely identified positives. In all but one interview, social workers were rated as achieving clarity over issues of concern; however, they tended to demonstrate low levels of empathy. The responses of the simulated client were rated for resistance and information disclosure. The factor that most strongly influenced simulated client responses was empathy. Empathic social workers created less resistance and increased the amount of information disclosed by clients. This was not associated with failure to identify and discuss concerns. Empathy, therefore, appears to be central to good social work communication in child protection situations. Given the comparatively low level of empathy expressed by most participants, development of skills in maintaining empathic communication while raising child protection concerns appears a priority. Practical, theoretical and training implications are discussed.     

From parental engagement to the engagement of social work services: discussing reductionist and democratic forms of partnership with families

Social work has moved from a child protection discourse towards a child welfare discourse that views the relationship between social workers and families as a partnership. Partnership with families in the field of child protection and child welfare, however, mirrors diverse ideological motives of social policy, civil society and practice. We engage in a theoretical discussion of different interpretations of partnership. We draw a primary distinction between reductionist and democratic forms of partnership with families. In a reductionist approach, social workers activate parents in order to realize the goals set by social work. A democratic approach to partnership refers to a shared responsibility between social workers, parents and children. In this approach, effective partnership is not something to be realized as an outcome, but a point of departure that implies a joint search for meaning and an experiment with which social workers engage. This engagement presents ‘non‐participation’ not as problematic but as an essential element of participation. The focus then shifts from a methodical approach to partnership – how to activate people to participate in the care process – to the question of how the engagement of social workers can be constructed together with families.