Inter‐agency joint protocols for safeguarding children in social care and adult mental‐health agencies: a cross‐sectional survey of practitioner experiences

Parental mental illness, substance misuse and domestic violence are common risk factors for the maltreatment and neglect of children. Safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility, including professionals working primarily with adults. In the UK, Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) were established to ensure that all agencies work together to safeguard children. Many LSCBs developed multi‐agency joint protocols to enhance collaboration, but there is limited evidence of their effectiveness. This paper reports findings from a cross‐sectional survey of practitioner self‐reported experiences of joint protocols, which was conducted in one inner London borough, to evaluate their impact on professional practice. A self‐complete questionnaire administered to all professionals in adult mental‐health and children's social care services in the borough yielded a response from 119 practitioners. The survey found that the protocols had been widely disseminated and provided clear guidance to practitioners. Practitioners perceived that they had increased awareness of the risk factors for safeguarding children and some had used the protocols to help them gain access to services for their clients. Practitioners also perceived that they had improved inter‐agency working between children's social care and adult mental‐health services. However, respondents indicated that positive interpersonal contact with practitioners from other agencies was equally important in promoting joint working and inter‐agency collaboration.     

Social workers in multidisciplinary teams: issues and dilemmas for professional practice

This paper draws on the findings of a project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, examining how child and family multidisciplinary teams learn and work together. It outlines the approach taken by the research team before going on to explore New Labour policy around ‘joined‐up thinking’. The paper focuses on the role of social workers in the teams and uses qualitative data to explore the experience of social workers in relation to four key issues: models of professional practice, status and power, confidentiality and information sharing, and relations with external agencies. We argue that these are complex and contested issues that are challenging for the workers concerned. We conclude that whilst joined‐up working is complex and demanding, social work is well situated to meet the challenge, and that social workers in multidisciplinary teams are committed to making them work.     

The assembly of active participation by parents of children subject to a multi‐agency model of early intervention in child and family services

The Common Assessment Framework provides a model of early intervention, which is familiar in local authorities throughout England, and asserts a participatory framework of child and family engagement. This paper is based on a qualitative study of parents and children who were subject to a multi‐agency process of early intervention in children's social care in a local authority in the Midlands of England. I advance the concept of assemblage to consider the basis of an active service user participation as rather more a struggle to achieve than something that has been granted by practitioner agencies. Interview extracts are used to show the enrolment and assembly of participation as a process of service users developing their active human agency in a multi‐agency setting. The article explores the assembling of skills in administration and management of meetings and plans, accessing knowledge and expertise through service user networks, and challenging professional expertise and institutional space while developing personal qualities of confidence and voice as a means of marshalling an effective participation in a multi‐agency setting.     

From policy to practice: the implementation of a new framework for social work assessments of children and families

This paper describes a two‐year study conducted in 24 English councils to evaluate the implementation of the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families. The Framework promotes a holistic, multi‐agency approach towards the assessment of children in need. The study was carried out in two phases. Phase one explored how councils implemented the Framework and accompanying assessment records. Phase two used a variety of methods to assess the impact of the Framework on practice, including an audit of completed assessment records, postal questionnaires to practitioners and managers in social services and partner agencies, and a qualitative study of 52 cases which included interviews with parents, children over 10 and social workers. A time record was used to gather information on the time social workers spent on the various elements of the core assessment process. The study suggests that councils had to overcome a number of organizational and other barriers in order to implement the Framework. However, the Framework and supporting materials appear to have provided the foundations to improve the quality of social work recording and promote interagency working, and have strengthened the involvement of children and families in the assessment process.     

The proof of the pudding: What difference does multi‐agency working make to families with disabled children with complex health care needs?

More than 20 years of research with disabled children, young people and their families has highlighted the need for the different professionals and services that support them to work more closely together. The British policy and legal framework for ‘joined up working’ has never been stronger. However, there has been an assumption that multi‐ or inter‐agency working will inevitably be a ‘good thing’ for families. This paper discusses findings from a 3‐year research project which looked at both the process and impact of multi‐agency working on families with a disabled child with complex health care needs. Interviews with 25 parents and 18 children and young people who used six developed, multi‐agency services were carried out. Findings suggested that the services had made a big difference to the health care needs of disabled children but were less able to meet the wider needs of the child and the family – particularly in relation to social and emotional needs. Multi‐agency working appeared to make some positive, but not significant, differences to the lives of families.     

The Common Assessment Framework: the impact of the lead professional on families and professionals as part of a continuum of care in England

This paper utilizes data gathered as part of an exploratory study to assess the costs and impact of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), to examine the impact that the lead professional role had on families and workers. The study found that both families and workers believed the lead professional to be central to the CAF process, providing a range of support, coordinating multi‐agency responses to need and acting as a single point of contact between families and workers. The paper highlights the need for consideration to be given to inter‐agency working, data sharing, training for workers and the capacity implications for those taking on the role. The extent to which the lead professional might be more integrated into the continuum of support for vulnerable children and families is also examined. The paper highlights the need to consider the lead professional's role in not only preventing the need for more intensive services, such as those provided by statutory social work, but also maintaining outcomes achieved once a child protection plan is closed, or a child is reunified with his or her birth family after a period of being in care. The implications of the findings for policy and practice are discussed.     

Barriers to collaboration on behalf of children with challenging behaviours: a large qualitative study of five constituent groups

Inter‐agency collaboration is seen as an effective way to support children and families with multiple and complex needs. Children in out‐of‐home care, especially those exhibiting challenging and disruptive behaviour, often require the services of multiple agencies. Ninety‐two South Australian stakeholders experienced in supporting children in out‐of‐home care were interviewed about their experience of collaborative practice, using the specific example of supporting children with extremely challenging behaviour. Participants were teachers, foster parents, child welfare workers, child mental health professionals and residential care workers. Thematic analysis revealed several tensions inherent in such collaboration. Results are discussed in terms of their unique implications for managing challenging behaviour, and suggestions are made for improving collaborative approaches to behaviour and multi‐agency practice.     

Social work with African refugee children and their families

This article explores the issues and dilemmas that arise when social workers attempt to work with African refugee and asylum seeking children and their families. There is a complex interplay between social workers’ skills and knowledge in this area and the prevailing social attitudes towards these groups of service users. By initially setting the context of mass movement of peoples from situations of danger in their countries of origin, the discussion highlights the key issues and shows the tensions of practice intervention in this area. Drawing on a small‐scale research study with social workers and discussions with immigration officers and workers in voluntary agencies working with refugees and asylum seekers, the article draws some conclusions about the lessons that can be learnt in order to improve practice.     

Emotion in responses to the child with ‘additional needs’

The work that is done with children and young people by the practitioners of health, education or social care forms part of their experience of growing up, and can have a profound impact on their future outcomes. Children may find themselves ‘impotent at the hands of powerful others’, particularly where their behaviour causes concern. This paper reports on a key theme from the author's doctoral research, demonstrating the ways that the emotion‐laden interactions between practitioners in multi‐agency children's services, children and parents, affected the diagnosis, treatment, communication and outcomes for children's well‐being, as defined within Every Child Matters. Exploring the emotion within interactions permits a different perspective on ‘need’, and finally, the paper argues for a more careful and emotionally reflective practice from those who work with children.     

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.     

Safeguarding children: challenges to the effective operation of core groups

Founded on an evaluative review of core group practice in a northern metropolitan borough of England, this paper highlights the tensions and difficulties that might inhibit the quality of post‐registration services to children and their families. Insights from the empirical data as well as theoretical literature have been explored in the light of current and developing policies. This exploration is focused on inter‐agency coordination; inter‐professional relationships; and partnership with parents and children. The recruitment and retention of social workers, the potential contribution of Children's Trusts, as well as unconscious processes relating to child abuse and child protection, are all given consideration.     

Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children

Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “insider” accounts of social workers' direct encounters with children. The framework employed was based on an adaptation of Goffman's concepts of “framing” and “footing,” which were integrated into an analytical process designed to theorize social workers' critiques regarding the nature of their communication with children. Three detailed case exemplars are used to demonstrate the potential of this methodology to explore the “delicate” agency required by social workers in the practice of authentic communication in complex professional inquiries with children. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical issues associated with utilizing reflexive methodologies in professional contexts.     

Assessing families and other client systems in community-based programmes: development of the CALF

Programmes providing services to children and families often face the challenge of assessing not only the child referred, but also the child’s family system and its individual members. Recognizing that household/family members can cause, contribute to or affect a child’s problems requires that human service agencies utilize assessment tools capable of assessing family members across the lifespan. The literature references many assessment tools used by clinical programmes in mental‐health settings that are not well suited to use in social service agencies with multidisciplinary staff at different skill levels. As a response to this dilemma, the authors have developed the Collaborative Assessment of Life Functioning (CALF), a user‐friendly tool that assesses various areas of life functioning. Based on Maslow’s motivation theory, person‐in‐environment and systems theories, the CALF can be used with various client systems. This paper describes the development of the tool, its purpose and use, the importance of assessment tools in the helping process and considerations for agencies wishing to use an assessment tool like the CALF. The authors also discuss the applicability of the CALF in human services and social service agency settings and with diverse client populations.     

On the margins of the child protection system: creating space for relational social work practice

In the UK, a threshold divides between two categories of children, child protection (CP) and child in need. Each category tends to be treated as a homogeneous entity, despite containing heterogeneous levels and forms of risk and need. CP practice, accompanied by regulation, protocols and procedures, aspires to achieve a coordinated multi‐agency response to identified concerns with available resources targeted towards this category. However, it is well known that those children assessed as falling just below the CP threshold can still have high levels of need and risk, requiring a level of social work involvement beyond the low‐resource and low‐oversight model that generally accompanies a child in need categorisation. This paper probes an approach to practice, which divides levels of risk within the child in need category enabling adequate, coordinated support and oversight to be provided for children and families with complex needs. Evidence from our study evaluating this approach suggests that a simple protocol provided a clear process within, which social workers and agency partners felt confident and safe to practice outside of the formal CP framework. The protocol prevented drift and helped to create a space within, which relational social work practice flourished.     

Ambiguity and Cooperation in the Implementation of Adult Protection Policy

Using a classification of public policy developed by Matland, we examine implementation of policy on adult protection as outlined in ‘No Secrets’, the government's guidance to local agencies. This policy appears to exemplify a ‘high‐ambiguity/low‐conflict’ model. Detailed interviews with staff charged with developing multi‐agency procedures, in local authority departments, health authorities, the police and the voluntary sector, confirmed the ambiguity of the policy and the uncertainty experienced by staff as a consequence. However, the interviews also revealed a number of areas of conflict, particularly as people gave precedence to their own professional norms and organizational priorities over partnership working.     

Playing with sound: The therapeutic use of music in direct work with children

Children rarely have the language or the cognitive development to process and convey their experiences solely through words, so spontaneously complement these with symbolic forms of expression and communication, such as play, metaphor and a variety of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic imagery. Consequently, social workers need to supplement verbal methods of assessment and intervention with more symbolic modes of communication and engagement when working directly with children. The play therapy literature has been a key source of guidance and the expressive arts therapies, such as art and drama therapy, are now well represented in the literature and training of social workers in ‘direct work with children’. However, principles and practice from music therapy are under‐represented. The writer, who is a social worker, psychotherapist and musician, shares her reflections on introducing techniques and theoretical approaches from music therapy into her own therapeutically orientated direct work. Suggestions are made as to how other practitioners (both musically trained and not) could develop the use of music as a further ‘tool’ in their direct work with children.     

Families on the brink: the effectiveness of family support services

This paper presents findings from a study of the costs and effectiveness of family support services offered to 40 families with a high level of need, in two neighbouring local authorities in North Wales. It describes the level and type of services offered by different agencies in each of the authorities, estimates the costs of these services, and assesses outcomes for the families receiving them after three months. Information is also provided about families’ experience of the support they received, and the kind of help they would have liked. Parents’ well‐being and family functioning were found to improve over the intervention period in both authorities, although only to a limited extent. Improvements were greater among those who were living with partners, and less among families identified by social workers as having financial difficulties or problems with drug or alcohol abuse. Respondents who rated their problems as very severe showed less improvement. The pattern of service provision and the costs involved turned out to be similar in both authorities, so it was not possible to reach conclusions about the relationship between services and outcomes. However, a number of themes emerging from the data are discussed, including the role of day care services in supporting families with young children, the impact of poverty and deprivation on parents’ ability to provide good care for their children, and the importance of an interagency response to children's and parents’ needs. The article also includes a discussion of problems encountered in undertaking comparative outcomes‐based research and cost‐effectiveness analyses in the social welfare field.     

Identifying and assessing cases of child neglect: learning from the Irish experience

Although child neglect is arguably the most prevalent form of maltreatment in the western world, studies of social work practice in cases of child neglect are limited. This paper seeks to add to the body of knowledge by describing a small‐scale study completed in the Republic of Ireland of social work assessments in cases of child neglect. The findings are based primarily on an analysis of case files, but reference is also made to practitioners’ and managers’ responses to a postal questionnaire and focus groups. The study findings highlight that social workers interpret the assessment task and process in different ways. Variations in the interpretation of the task appear to be influenced by workload pressures, resources and local systems, with teams focusing either on immediate safeguarding issues or on both safeguarding and the longer‐term welfare of the child. Individual variations amongst workers irrespective of team were more apparent in the way practitioners approached the assessment task. For example, practice varied regarding which professionals and family members were contacted as part of the assessment, the type of communication workers had with children and carers, and the use the social workers made of information on case files. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of the team in determining the focus of assessments and the subjective factors which impact on the way the individual social worker works with children, families and other professionals.     

Burnout in Chinese social work: Differential predictability of the components of the Maslach Burnout Inventory

Burnout is a worldwide phenomenon among social welfare workers. This study examined how burnout affects student social workers and professional social workers. It first examined the construct validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory‐General Survey (MBI‐GS) scale, using data from two Chinese samples (848 student social workers and 748 professional social workers). The original three‐factor model was regarded as superior to other competing models. Investigation of the second‐order factor model indicated that exhaustion and cynicism are core components but that personal efficacy is not. The research also revealed the differential predictability of the three subscales of the MBI‐GS. Our expectation that differential patterns of effects could be predicted was largely supported. Professional efficacy plays a key mediating role in the relationship between student social workers’ professional identity and their satisfaction with fieldwork, while social workers’ cynicism is the main mediator in the relationship between their professional identity and turnover intention. Therefore, identifying at‐risk students and professional social workers to undertake appropriate intervention strategies that focus on both their professional identity and different dimensions of burnout may be an effective way to prevent students’ dissatisfaction and reduce social worker turnover.     

Room to move? Professional discretion at the frontline of welfare‐to‐work

Outcomes of social policies have always been mediated by the discretionary agency of front‐line staff, processes which nevertheless have received insufficient attention in policy evaluation and in the social policy literature more broadly. This article takes the case example of the policy reforms associated with the Australian government's welfare‐to‐work agenda. Drawing on two discreet research projects undertaken at different points in the policy trajectory, the practices of social workers in Centrelink – the Commonwealth government's primary service delivery agency involved in welfare‐to‐work – is examined. Centrelink social workers have been and remain one of the core groups of specialist staff since the Department's inception in the late 1940s, working to improve the well being of people in receipt of income security. Their experiences of the recent past and their expectations of the future of their professional practice as welfare reform becomes more entrenched are canvassed. In summary, the discretionary capacity of the Centrelink social workers to moderate or shape the impact of policy on income security recipients is steadily eroding as this group of professionals is increasingly captured by the emerging practices of workfare.