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.     

Criteria for Welfare: Needs or Earnings?

The Report of the Poverty Commission followed Australian practice and recommended that payments to pensioners and beneficiaries be based on their needs. Two other recent reports, the Woodhouse Report on compensation for accidents and sickness, and the Hancock Report on National Superannuation, suggest an entirely different set of criteria—earnings and earnings-related contributions. It is argued that the latter proposals would discriminate inequitably between different groups of beneficiaries and that Australia should continue on a needs basis moving forward to a guaranteed minimum income scheme.     

Justice for children? Child protection and the crimino-legal process

Changes in the crimino-legal process during the last few years have blurred the boundaries between criminal justice and children's welfare in child protection. These developments have, however, received relatively little critical attention within contemporary discourses surrounding child protection. This paper draws upon primary and secondary research findings to explore the appropriateness and effectiveness of current forensically led responses to child abuse. In particular, it questions the adequacy of existing operational constructs of justice in child protection, arguing the case for a far more comprehensive notion of 'justice for children' than presently prevails. Research evidence is reviewed suggesting that current crimino-legally driven practices fail to achieve even the limited objectives of criminal justice, let alone the higher goals of promoting children's welfare or attaining 'justice for children'. Finally the paper explores how these findings may inform and be informed by current debates and practice in social work. While a range of policy and practice remedies are suggested, these, it is argued, must be framed with recognition of the tensions and dilemmas underlying social work in a complex and uncertain social world.     

After Safety,What is the Goal of Child Welfare Services: Permanency,Family Continuity or Social Benefit?

Child welfare services have multiple goals, including child protection, family continuity, and achievement of legal permanency so children can end their involvement with child welfare services and have a lifetime family. These goals are not all achievable to the same extent in all cases. American child welfare policy has, in the last few years, become more definitive about the priority of child protection above family preservation. Now, situations which involve safety risks that are too great do not require any efforts at reunifying children to their biological homes. Less clear in American child welfare policy and practice is the value to be placed on other factors – particularly when a child cannot return home and will need an alternative adoptive family. Practitioners often emphasize family continuity – that is, the opportunity to maintain contact with the biological parent and extended family members – as a key decision making consideration. Yet, family continuity does not necessarily predict a successful transition to adulthood that is healthy for children or provides social benefits to the community. This paper explores the rationale for expanding child welfare decision making criteria by adding longer-term outcomes and the likelihood that children will eventually generate social benefits.     

A Framework for Cultivating and Increasing Child Welfare Workers’ Empathy Toward Parents

ABSTRACT

Much emphasis has been placed on child welfare workers’ skills and attributes when working with parents involved in the child welfare system; however, few studies have examined the potential benefits of using an empathic approach to interacting with parents. Child welfare workers may have negative perceptions of parents involved in the child welfare system and might have a tendency to reflect these attitudes and value judgments in their practice. The lack of empathic understanding and communication between workers and parents impacts service implementation and the success of family interventions. Increasing the workers’ ability to empathize with parents can enhance their relationship while increasing parent participation in services and ultimately family reunification. This article will discuss specific ways to cultivate and increase child welfare workers’ empathy for parents by enhancing workers’ emotional response and self/other-awareness, ability to perspective take, emotion regulation, and their ability to make appropriate decisions. Implications for application to practice and training are discussed as is the need for future research to validate the proposed framework for increasing child welfare workers’ empathy toward parents.     

The End of the Welfare State?

This paper critically examines claims of a new consensus on welfare and the end of the welfare state. We first review the concept of welfare consensus, concentrating on the idea of welfare pluralism, in particular the relatively neglected distinction between national minimum (base) and extension ladder (superstructure). We then examine these concepts in the 1990s under Conservative and New Labour governments. Important changes to welfare pluralism are noted. There have been changes in the character of means-tests, with the national minimum replaced by a series of residual minima, which represent fundamental changes to structural incentives governing the social division of welfare and work. The line between state and non-state provision has been blurred and there have been moves to achieve universalism in the private sector. It is possible to tentatively classify Labour's principles and fledgling policies into three categories: essential continuity with the Conservatives, reversing Conservative policies and extending Conservative policies. However, it is difficult to detect the degree of consensus because a new flexible language is beginning to pervade social policy, with the result that the welfare state is being redefined, notably in areas of full employment, citizenship and conditionality. It is possible to detect, in our terms, moves towards turning Beveridge inside out and from the Marshall towards the Beveridge welfare state. It is clear that the welfare state is being redefined, but reports of its death have been much exaggerated.     

Has the Nordic Welfare Model Been Transformed?

The Nordic welfare model is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Using Denmark we show how a universal welfare state model is gradually being transformed into an emergent multi‐tiered welfare state. Whereas the Danish pension system's having become multi‐tiered in the 1990s, with private schemes – collective and individual – supplementing public schemes is well documented, scant attention has focused on more recent developments in other areas of the welfare state. This article shows how the multi‐tiered welfare state spread in the 2000s to policies for families, the unemployed and the sick. Although Denmark still offers universal coverage in core welfare state areas, the increased use of occupational and fiscal welfare as well as changes in public schemes has gradually transformed the nation into a multi‐tiered welfare state that is more dualistic and individualistic, with participation in the labour market becoming still more important for entitlement to benefits. These profound changes have taken place in such a way that although core characteristics are still in place, new structures and understandings of the welfare state are also developing. Thus classical typologies need revision, so that they include more focus on this combination of universality and institutional attachment to the labour market. Moreover, measures of what welfare comprises should include not only public but also private elements.     

Happiness Vs Contentment? A Case for a Sociology of the Good Life

Despite the enormous growth in happiness research in recent decades, there remains a lack of consistency in the use of the terms happiness, satisfaction, contentment and well‐being. In this article I argue for a sociologically grounded distinction between happiness and contentment that defines the former as positive affect and the latter as positive reflection. Contentment is therefore understood as a fulfilling relationship with the self and society (to borrow from G.H. Mead's terminology) and happiness involves pleasurable experiences. There is a history of similar distinctions in philosophy and psychoanalysis, but much of the contemporary discourse fails to distinguish between individual and collective definitions of happiness. This article will argue that happiness and contentment ought not to be treated as competing approaches to the good life, but as complimentary forms of emotional experience. Further, I argue that the current interest in happiness can be linked to larger culture shifts involving neoliberalism and individualism.     

Measuring Infant‐Mother Attachment: Is the Strange Situation Enough?

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of a new procedure for assessing infant-mother attachment. Sixty children (34 in child care) and their mothers were seen in the Strange Situation (SS) at 17 months and in a new attachment assessment, the California Attachment Procedure (CAP), which does not involve mother-child separations, at 18 months. Overall, children were more likely to be classified as secure in the CAP (83% vs. 67%), but this was particularly true for children with experience in routine nonmaternal care. Of the children in nonmaternal care who were insecure in the SS, 91% were secure in the CAP, whereas of the maternal-care children who were insecure in the SS, only 44% were secure in the CAP. Attachment security in the CAP was more highly correlated with observed maternal sensitivity than was attachment security in the SS, particularly for children in nonmaternal care.     

Essential Partnership: Child Welfare Officers’ Perceptions of Cooperation With Rabbis in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Community in Israel

ABSTRACT

This article describes collaborations between child welfare officers and rabbis in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel. The study is based on interviews with 10 child welfare officers who intervene in ultra-Orthodox communities. The analysis of the interviews showed that cooperation with the rabbis was essential for reducing the community's hostile resistance to interventions by the child welfare officers, who were perceived as threatening to community values. On the other hand, the child welfare officers had to cope with conflicts between religious values, the law, and professional perceptions. The discussion of the findings highlights the need for understanding the cooperation in terms of boundaries and power. Future research is needed to explore further the issues raised from the perspectives of the rabbis and the families involved.     

Social Workers' Implementation of Client Participation: What Factors Make the Difference?

ABSTRACT

Client participation is both a value and a strategy in social work, involving clients in decisions influencing their lives. Nevertheless, the factors encouraging its use by social workers in social services have received little research attention. This article reports on a study drawing on Goal Commitment Theory to examine, for the first time, four categories of variables that might predict its implementation: background variables (intervention method, age, experience, education, supervision); personal resources (self-esteem, mastery); organizational variables (superiors' support, organizational commitment); and situational factors (previous client participation, perception of client participation).

A sample of 661 Israeli social workers completed questionnaires. Hierarchical regression analysis and t-tests revealed that intervention method, mastery, superiors' support, and both situational variables contributed significantly to explaining the variance in client participation. Moreover, social workers valued client participation significantly more than they used it. The implications for researchers and professionals in social services are discussed. Proper training could increase social workers' awareness of client participation and provide tools for implementation. Policy makers should set standards for its use and evaluation, and require its inclusion in all interventions. Further research investigating clients and managers of social services could provide a broader picture of the factors impacting client participation.     

Commitment of Private and Public Agency Workers to Child Welfare: How Long Do They Plan to Stay?

ABSTRACT

Method: Child welfare professionals completing training to work in foster care were asked about reasons for taking their child welfare position, commitment to their agencies, and commitment to child welfare. Analyses compared responses from new public agency foster care workers (N = 100), public agency workers making lateral transfers to foster care (N = 64), and new private foster care workers (N = 105).

Results: Private agency foster care workers were less committed to their agencies and to child welfare and more likely to have taken the position because it was the only one available.

Conclusions: The practice by public child welfare of outsourcing foster care services to private agencies needs to be evaluated. This practice may not benefit children in care and may create organizational problems for agencies.     

Child sexual abuse: a marker or magnifying glass for family dysfunction?

A report of child sexual abuse leads to a multi-agency investigation that often reveals other maltreatment and dysfunctional behaviors within the family. Due to recent developments in this field, the emphasis of the investigation has shifted to the child’s history rather than information from the parent or accused, or the presence of injuries. In the last 10 years Children’s Advocacy Centers have become a central component to the investigation of child sexual abuse and provide a means for long-term follow-up of referred families. The idiosyncrasies of this investigative and advocacy system have provided an in-depth view of the families of sexually abused children.Four family types emerge: safe and secure, safe and insecure, unsafe and enmeshed, and unsafe and insecure. The characteristics of child sexual abuse, the response to the child’s disclosure of abuse, and the prognosis for the child victim vary among the different family types. An innovative long-term program of wrap-around services for sexually abused children and their families provides counseling, peer activities, family mentoring, and child mentoring while tracking the symptoms and behaviors of the child victims. The identification of a child victim of sexual abuse can be a tragic crisis and an opportunity for intensive and timely intervention.     

Support in the Workplace: Buffering the Deleterious Effects of Work–Family Conflict on Child Welfare Workers’ Well-Being and Job Burnout

ABSTRACT

We examined the impact of work–family conflict (WFC) on worker well-being and job burnout, as well as the role of social support in the workplace as a potential buffer against the influence of WFC. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses in a cross-sectional sample of 361 public child welfare workers indicate that WFC was related to reduced well-being and increased job burnout, whereas supervisory support moderated the relationship between WFC and well-being. Findings from this study hold implications to workforce management practices aimed at improving worker well-being in human service and child welfare organizations. Human resource management policies designed to manage worker schedules should aim to facilitate workers’ ability to meet work and family demands through programs such as flexible work schedules and telecommuting. Recommendations for future research on WFC and worker well-being are discussed.     

How Good a Deal Was the Tobacco Settlement?: Assessing Payments to Massachusetts

We estimate the increment in Massachusetts Medicaid program costs attributable to smoking from December 20, 1991 to 1998. We describe how our methods improve upon earlier estimates of analogous costs at the national level. Current costs to the Massachusetts Medicaid program approximate the payments to Massachusetts under the tobacco settlement of November 1998. Whether these payments are viewed as appropriate compensation for Medicaid costs over time depends upon the rate of increase in future health care costs, the rate of decline in smoking, the proportion of smoking that should be attributed to the actions of the tobacco companies and the likelihood the state would have prevailed at trial. The costs to the Medicaid program are dwarfed by the internal costs to smokers themselves.     

Welfare reforms and the Refugee Resettlement Strategy: an opportunity to achieve meaningful employment outcomes for New Zealanders from refugee backgrounds?

Despite employment being consistently identified as a key factor in successful refugee resettlement, people from refugee backgrounds in Aotearoa New Zealand are overrepresented in unemployment statistics. Of those who do gain employment, few secure work that is adequately remunerated and commensurate with the person's skills and qualifications. This paper explores whether the two recent government-driven initiatives, the welfare reforms and the New Zealand Refugee Resettlement Strategy, provide an opportunity to address these issues. Based on previous research, the authors identify the main employment barriers facing people from refugee backgrounds. They argue that while the welfare reforms and the Refugee Resettlement Strategy are underpinned by a desire to see more people in employment, for real change to occur, an integrated holistic approach is needed. This approach needs to include additional resourcing for government-funded specialist one-on-one employment programmes that are available in all regions where refugees are resettled. These programmes combined with access to fully funded English language tuition and work experience and internship opportunities would help reduce the barriers people from refugee backgrounds face when seeking employment.