Joint Reviews: Judgement Day and Beyond

Correspondence to Jill Humphrey, Adoption and Family Finding Unit, 3 Unthank Road, Norwich NR2 2PA, UK. E-mail: jill.humphrey.socs{at}norfolk.gov.uk Summary Joint Reviewers are the central regulators of social servicesauthorities in England and Wales. This article explores howreviewers arrive at their judgements about the performance ofsocial services authorities and how these authorities respondto Joint Review reports and recommendations. It also offersa framework for evaluating the costs and benefits of Joint Reviewswhich enables us to appreciate the ambivalence which local authoritystaff harbour towards their central regulators.     

Adopted Children in Care

Correspondence to David Howe, School of Economic and Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ. Summary Four local authority social services departments were surveyedto determine the number of adopted children who were currentlyin their care. The biographical characteristics of these childrenand the reasons for them entering care are reported. The adoptivedimension is discussed as a possibly relevant factor in theassessment and treatment of these children and their families.It is concluded that appropriate practice in this field requiresspecialist skills and understanding.     

Children in Need and their Families: Outcomes of Referral to Social Services

Jane Gibbons. Social Work Development Unit. University of East Anglia. Norwich NR4 7TJ. Summary The Children Act provides a clear remit to local authoritiesfor the provision of services to children in need and theirfamilies. Increased service provision needs to be supportedby evaluation of effectiveness. The paper describes an attemptto develop instruments for this purpose. In a sample of 122families containing children under 14 who were referred to socialservices departments, indicators of family needs, services receivedand their outcomes were used to examine whether services werematched to needs; and whether they had any effect on familyproblems in the short term.     

Assessing Adoptions in Difficulty

Correspondence to Dr David Howe, Lecturer in Social Work, University of East Anglia, School of Economic and Social Studies, Norwich NR4 7TJ. Summary Although most adoptions are judged a success, a small numberof families and their adopted children run into behaviouraland relationship difficulties. The Post-adoption Centre, London,is a specialist agency which works with a number of client groups,including adopters and their families. The assessments madeby the Centre's counsellors of adoptive families were analysed.Two dimensions defined the counsellors' assessments. One recognizeda strong developmental perspective and owed much to the recentwork of David Brodzinsky. The other emphasized the complex emotionalinteractions that can take place between parents and child.Because of its originality and ability to refine the qualityof assessments, the analysis concentrates on the second dimension.When the developmental and interactional perspectives are combined,five assessment themes emerge. These are described and illustratedwith case examples.     

Abuse of Elderly Men and Women among Clients of a Community Psychogeriatric Service

Correspondence to Gail Wilson, Department of Social Science and Administration, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Summary This paper reports on a study of elder abuse among clients ofan outer London community psychogeriatric service. Staff reportedelder abuse in their caseloads over a period of one year. Reportedcases were linked with referrals. Rates of abuse for differentstaff and for different age and ethnic groups were calculated.Women were very much more likely to be abused than men and wereless likely to be abusers. Clients were frequently reportedas abusing their carers. Staff reporting rates varied widely.Training and the time available to win the trust of clientsappeared to be important variables. The staff response was limitedby lack of managerial support and by lack of developed strategiesfor dealing with abusive situations. Separation was the mostcommon response to physical violence in the home. Financialabuse was mainly dealt with by social services. Staff abusewas largely ignored.     

Joint Reviews: Retracing the Trajectory, Decoding the Terms

Correspondence to Dr Jill Humphrey, School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK. E-mail: j.humphrey{at}uea.ac.uk Summary Joint Reviews of social services authorities in England andWales are heading for their fifth anniversary. In spite of theirprolific publications record and their high-profile status inthe worlds of practice and politics, there is little recordof their existence in the relevant academic journals. This isintended as an introductory article to begin to rectify thisomission. It is informed by a year-long study of the Joint Reviewteam. My aim is twofold: to retrace the historical developmentof Joint Reviews under three successive governments, and toexplore the nature of Joint Reviews by decoding the meaningsof their constituent terms. The underlying argument is thatJoint Reviews represent a new species of regulation that hasbeen essential to the realization of a new mode of accountabilitybut that the complexity of this new accountability has spawnedsome confusion and conflict among stakeholder audiences.     

Sexual Abuse by Men who Work with Children: An Exploratory Study

Correspondence to Dr Matthew Colton, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK. Summary This paper reports findings from an exploratory study on sexualabuse by men who work with children. As a first step towardsfilling a major gap in the relevant research literature, in-depthinterviews were carried out with a small sample of men servingprison sentences for sexually abusing children in their trust.The paper focuses on their accounts of their life histories,including their experiences of prison treatment programmes,and provides a detailed picture of their thinking, feelingsand motivations. In revealing how the men construct their ownsense of masculine identity within social and professional contextsthat are dominated by a heterosexual, white male hegemony, thepaper challenges purely psychological explanations of why mensexually abuse. It concludes that sexual abuse in organizationalsettings is less likely to be challenged if masculinity is notfocused on as an issue of power.     

Current Issues in Child Protection: An Overview of the Debates in Contemporary Journals

Correspondence to Celia Doyle, School of Behavioural Studies, Nene College, Northampton NN2 7AL Summary This article provides an overview of the current debate andconcerns in child protection work as reflected in current, mainlyBritish, academic and professional journals. Some of the concernswhich have been expressed during the past twenty years are stillpart of contemporary discourse. These include the divide betweenphysical punishment and abuse, child fatalities, assessment,procedures, intervention and prevention. Some more recent themeshave also emerged, in particular ritual abuse, the links betweendomestic violence and child maltreatment, children as witnessesand the plight of children with disabilities and young corers.Perhaps the most prominent feature is the overwhelming pre-eminenceof articles about child sexual abuse. Physical neglect remainson the sidelines while emotional abuse, as the main or soleform, merits barely a mention.     

Competing Orientations in Child Abuse Management

Summary This case study illustrates some of the problems which occurwhen different professionals are involved in the managementof child abuse cases.     

The Association between Child Abuse and Attempted Suicide

Summary A recent survey by the authors has demonstrated that attemptedsuicide is common in parents, particularly mothers, who abusetheir children. However, the nature of the association betweenchild abuse and attempted suicide is complicated. Here somepossible types of association are suggested. In management ofchild abuse, special note should be taken of a history of attemptedsuicide in the parents because, in some cases, it suggests apoor prognosis. Similarly, young children of parents who attemptsuicide should be assessed in case they are at risk of abuse.     

Narrating Love and Abuse in Intimate Relationships

via email: heather.fraser{at}rmit.edu.au Summary In this article, I use discourse analysis to explore the relationshipbetween love and abuse. I argue that Anglo-American social workhas been reticent to theorize love; and that when it does, theborders separating love from abuse are usually assumed to berelatively stable and readily apparent. After nominating someof the reasons for and repercussions of dichotomizing love andabuse, I suggest that knowledge about intimate abuse will expandif more attention is given to the study of love. I promote theuse of feminist discourses because they provide valuable insightsabout the operations of power in love relationships. Drawingideas from both structural feminism and post-structural feminism,I encourage social workers to move their analytical attentionback and forth between the micro-politics of intimate relationshipsto the wider cultural contexts within which they are staged.I conclude with the assertion that social workers will be betterplaced to understand the dilemmas that many ‘ordinary’women confront in their everyday lives, if they critically analysethe intersections of love and abuse.     

Moving beyond Litigation and Positivism: Another Approach to Accusations of Sexual Abuse

Correspondence to Professor Lena Dominelli, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 IBJ. Summary The Current polarized debated about false memory and reclaimedmemory with regard to child sexual abuse have trivialized thesignificance of experimental knowledge and contributed to thesilencing of the voice of the victim-survivor. They have alsoenabled the alleged abuser to avoid confronting those elementsof his behaviour which are problematic for others and discouragedpreventative approaches by locking the protagonists into adversarialpositions. We argue that this need not be the case if therapeuticrelationships can operate outside of court driven proceedingsand be aimed at responding to the needs of the victim-survivorto have their experience of abuse validated and of the allegedabuser to work on non-abusive ways of relating to others.     

Work Satisfaction in Probation and Social Work

Correspondence to Professor Martin Davies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ. Summary The design and preliminary development of a research instrumentintended to provide comparable measures of work satisfactionwithin different social work settings is described. The resultsof administering it to two separate samples of social workersand probation officers are presented. It appears that probation officers feel themselves more highlyregarded by members of the general public and are less likelyto say they are badly paid; they enjoy more job autonomy; rathermore social workers tend to feel alienated at work, but mostbelieve that they have better chances of career advancementthan is the case in the probation service. There are broad similarities between the two work settings sofar as work with clients and attitudes towards colleagues areconcerned; it is argued that the emergence of these similaritiesis methodologically reassuring because it suggests the stabilityof the data overall, and therefore increases the likelihoodthat the findings regarding agency differences are a valid reflectionof social reality in each setting.     

Literature Review: An Abuse of some Substance?

Summary The intention in this review is to examine a small selectionof the literature on substance abuse and to assess to what extentit is a new phenomenon and a problem calling for legislativeaction. This intention accounts for the slightly capriciouschoice of title for the contribution.     

The Cognitive Interview--A Useful Tool for Social Workers?

Correspondence to Helen L. Westcott, Public Policy Department, NSPCC, 67 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RS. Summary Interviewing techniques embodied in the Cognitive Interview(CI) are introduced with a view to assessing their potentialfor interviews conducted with child abuse victims. The techniquesare summarized and literature pertaining to their developmentpresented. Two studies examining use of the CI with child witnessesare discussed, before the general applicability of the CI forsocial work interviews with abused children is assessed. Itis concluded that the CI does offer possibilities, but thatfurther research into the CI which is more specifically designedwithin the social work context is-needed.     

Problems in the Perinatal Prediction of Child Abuse

Summary The aim of this paper is to consider and comment criticallyupon the recommendation by some eminent authorities that effortsbe made to design and implement procedures to predict the abuseof children. My view is that this move toward prediction—‘sponsored’largely by American paediatricians—is less of a new departurethan an extension of the dominant conceptual tradition wherebychild abuse is seen as analogous to a disease. However, in spiteof its basis in a medical model, it is clear that the idea thatthe abuse of children can be accurately predicted has greatappeal for many social workers. I shall argue, however, thatserious obstacles stand in the way of prediction; that theseobstacles are insufficiently appreciated by the advocates ofprediction; and that—consequently—social workers(and others) should temper with scepticism their enthusiasmfor these developments.     

The extent and nature of known cases of institutional child sexual abuse

Summary The sexual abuse of children by persons who work with them -institutional abuse - is a focus of major concern among policymakers, practitioners and the public. Despite this, knowledgeabout it remains limited. This paper presents findings froma study of institutional abuse cases referred to social servicedepartments or the police in eight local authority areas. Whilesuch cases were relatively uncommon and constituted a smallproportion of all child protection referrals, some involvedlarge numbers of victims and abusers. Institutional abuse casesin the present study shared some characteristics with the majorityof (intrafamilial) abuse cases, but there were also importantdifferences, such as the proportion of male victims and theextent to which abuses used techniques of targeting and entrapment.Contrary to media representations, the institutional abuse reportedhere was not just a problem of children's homes, social workor the public sector, but occurred in a wide variety of settingsand sectors and was perpetrated by a range of occupational groups.If all children are to be protected, then policy and practicemeasures to prevent abuse need to be directed towards a muchwider range of institutions.     

Young Men Living Through and with Child Sexual Abuse: A Practitioner Research Study

to andrewdurham{at}warwickshire.gov.uk Summary This paper uses a post-structural framework to examine the experienceand impact of child sexual abuse on the lives of seven youngmen aged between 15 and 24. The study highlights the importanceof survivors' perspectives and of allowing children and youngpeople to speak for themselves and theorize their own experiences.The study's sensitive methodology allowed the young men to besupported throughout the research and feel able to impart hiddenfeelings and anxieties which they had held on to for significantperiods of time. The research showed how the perpetrators tookextensive measures in targeting and gaining access to and silencingthe boys they sexually abused. Through purposefully constructedrelationships, the boys were made to feel responsible and guiltyabout being abused and therefore found it extremely difficultto tell. A social context of patriarchal relations, with genderconstructions characterized by compulsory heterosexism and homophobiasignificantly exacerbated the experiences of the young men.This context was shown to create circumstances and ‘normal’power relationships that allowed the abuse to happen, creatingmany opportunities for the abusers to justify their actionsand further silence their victims.     

Child Abuse, Social Anxiety and Welfare

Summary This article attempts to locate the ‘moral panic’concerning child abuse within the context of broader changesin the material conditions and ideological forces in Britainin the early 1970s. It argues that the development of a senseof social anxiety amongst certain sections of the populationand the appeal of the New Right were crucial in the processof establishing the problem as the major issue for social workers.As a consequence social workers have been constrained into amore punitive and interventive relationship with children andfamilies, particularly the poor. The analysis illustrates thatthe way social workers experience role conflict and tensionin this area of their work reflects much wider historical andcultural confusions and contradictions.     

The Abduction of Credibility: A Reply to John Paley

Correspondence to Liz Kelly, Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, Ladbroke House, 62-66 Highbury Grove, London, N5 2AD Summary This response takes issue with John Paley's paper ‘SatanistAbuse and Alien Abduction’ (this issue) in a number ofareas: his definition of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA); the parallelshe draws between SRA and alien abduction; his assertions thatthere is no evidence of SRA and that accounts of SRA can beviewed as urban legends; and his ‘temporal lobe connection’conclusion.