Children's and young people's experiences in various residential arrangements: a longitudinal study to evaluate criteria for custody and residence decision making

Summary The child's welfare or the child's best interest is, in manycountries, the court's paramount consideration for determiningcustody and residence of a child after parental separation ordivorce. This longitudinal study evaluates the custody criterionchild's relationships and residence preferences. Based on aqualitative study design including interviews with childrenand parents, the experiences of 62 children of separated ordivorced parents in various residential arrangements are analysed.The main findings are: (i) a residential arrangement in accordancewith the child's relationships and residence preferences accordswith the child's welfare and represents a positive living situationwith loved people in the family and social environment; (ii)the personal relationships of the child are in no way static,but demonstrate a noticeable dynamic as they change under theinfluence of internal and external factors. Therefore a timelychange of residence, which occurs in accordance with the changedemotion preferences of the child, is beneficial; (iii) a residentialarrangement contrary to the child's relationships and residencepreferences represents for the child involved a difficult situation,which can lead to one of three different processes: adjustment,a trajectory of suffering or initiatives to change the livingsituation. This means that some children adjust, others experiencetrajectory processes of suffering, and those in the remainingcases act as competent social agents, who can autonomously representtheir own interests and pursue them in order to initiate orcontribute to a change of their residence. Findings of the studyare discussed, and suggestions are offered for substantive andprocedural laws to guarantee the child's welfare in custodyand residence settlements and for further research.     

Parents' Views on Social Work Interventions in Child Welfare Cases

Correspondence to Trevor Spratt, Lecturer in Social Work, School of Social Work, The Queen's University Belfast, 7 Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, Northern Ireland. E-mail: T.Spratt{at}qub.ac.uk Summary This article reports findings from the third part of a three-partresearch project examining the potential for social workersto shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientationin their practice. Whilst social workers in the UK have beenencouraged to make such changes, they have been hampered byconcerns to manage risk. Findings reported from the earlierparts of the project, indicated that there was potential fora substantial proportion of child protection work to be redesignatedas child welfare work, but that where this was achieved in practice,there was evidence of the continued influence of child protectionprocesses as social workers sought to manage the risks inherentin child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out toascertain the views of parents who were subject to child welfareinterventions. The findings indicate that while parents feelapprehension with regard to contact with social workers, inthe majority of cases successful relationships are formed. Itis argued that social workers display considerable skill inmonitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families andthat the subtleties involved in such activity are not capturedby official measures of governance which concentrate on moreabstract indicators of performance.     

Swimming with Dolphins: The Assessment Framework, New Labour and New Tools for Social Work with Children and Families

Correspondence to Dr Paul Michael Garrett, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: paul.garrett{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary Local authorities, in England, implemented the Framework forthe Assessment of Children in Need and their Families in April2001. The Framework is the first ‘official’ standardassessment model intended for use in the initial assessmentof all ‘children in need’ under Part 111, section17 of the 1989 Children Act. This new ‘conceptual map’needs to be understood in terms of previous policy documentsand earlier technologies of intervention related to child protectionand, more broadly, child welfare. However, it also needs tobe more expansively perceived, fixed and located as it relatesto other elements in New Labour's political ‘project’.The Framework's preoccupation with an ecological approach toassessments and with questionnaires and scales are likely tohave major implications for social work practice and for micro-engagementswith children and families.     

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.     

Search for an Indicator of Effective Child Protection in a Re-analysis of Child Homicide in the Major Western Countries 1973-1992: A Response to Lindsey and Trocme and Macdonald

Correspondence to Professor Cohn Pritchard, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1 BJ England Summary An analysis of child homicides published in the British Journalof Social Work, demonstrated major falls in child deaths inEngland and Wales between 1973 and 1988. The results were seenas one indicator of improved child protection (Pritchard, 1992a).That study, and a reply to a critique by Creighton (1993), werechallenged by Lindsey and Trocmé (1994) and Macdonald(1995). This paper is a response, and takes advantage of thecriticisms and new data to present evidence which confirms thatthere have been reductions in child homicide in England andWales between 1973 and 1992 and that the Anglo-Welsh improvementswere the best of all the major Western countries.     

Keeping Social Work Honest: Evaluating as Profession and Practice

Correspondence to Ian Shaw, School of Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales Cardiff, 50 Park Place, Cardiff CF1 3AT Summary The central argument of this paper is that social work needsa radical alternative to existing options for evaluating practice.Social workers at present are offered three choices. They areinvited to choose between applying research, conducting researchor adopting specific forms of empirical research-based practice(for example Everitt et al., 1992; Thyer. 1993; Fuller and Petch,1995). We touch briefly on reasons why we believe none of these optionsprovides an adequate grounding for social work, referring especiallyto the growing call for social work to find new purpose throughan empirical, research-based practice. If alternative approachesare to be persuasive, they must be fashioned from the materialsof a new approach to research on social work practice—‘one that is exploratory rather than confirmatory, buildinga model of evaluation from the practitioners' own accounts ratherthan superimposing an ideal model’ (Elks and Kirkhart,1993, p. 555). The major part of this paper is taken up withevidence from research of this kind. The model of evaluatingin practice with which we conclude the paper is simultaneouslytrue to social workers' accounts of their practice, while offeringa critical starting point for evaluating and refashioning thatpractice.     

Notes on Theory and Practice in Social Work: a Comparative View

Please address reprint requests to Robert van Krieken, Department of Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. Summary There are still a number of problems surrounding the relationshipbetween theories of social work practice and that practice itself.This paper examines the factors underlying those problems andemphasises their roots in the failure to examine the diversityof social work theories and practices. We refer to one attemptto resolve the problems—the distinction between ‘practicetheory’ and ‘theory of practice’—pointout some difficulties with it and suggest an alternative, three-folddistinction within theorising: between (a) materialist socialtheory, (b) strategic practice theory and (c) working concepts. As an example of how those distinctions can be used, we thenbriefly discuss the work of Oskar Negt and its introductioninto the Dutch welfare context, as it was the issues raisedby that which stimulated the ideas in this paper. We concludeby arguing that only this kind of perspective on theorisingcan produce ideas which are of real use to progressive socialwork practitioners.     

Regulation in Child Protection--Policy Failure?

Correspondence to Mai Walton, Department of Applied Social Studies and Social Work, University of Keele, Keele, Staffs. ST5 5BG Summary This paper examines child protection policy formulation andimplementation. It suggests that policy has been incrementallyformed in an expedient fashion to suit the political and organizationalstatus quo. It draws upon models of issue ascendancy, policyanalysis and inspection, and argues that child protection policyis regulatory in nature yet lacks the prerequisites normallyfound in regulation. It examines perceived policy failure anddemonstrates that this results from partial policy formulationand lack of clarity in objectives.     

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.     

Beyond Retroduction? -- Hermeneutics, Reflexivity and Social Work Practice

Correspondence to Susan White, University of Manchester, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Williamson Building, Oxford Road, Manchester Summary Over the last three decades qualitative research methodologieshave been in the ascent within social science. Yet social workevaluation studies have tended to be quantitative in nature,conventially relying upon the generation of criteria againstwhich interventions are retrospectively judged. The generationof such criteria inevitably depends upon pre-suppositions, whichin themselves go unresearched. As a consequence the .sense makingactivities on which social work interventions depend are renderedimmune from critical analysis. This reflects a broader tendencyfor social work to cling to naive realist epistemologies, whichare arguably obsolete within the interpretive paradigm in whichits activity is properly located. By examining the debates withininterpretive social science, this paper argues for an approachto social work assessment which avoids the pitfalls of naiveobjectivism and the nihilism of anarchic relativism, whilstretaining creativity, imagination and hope.     

Have Child Protection Efforts Reduced Child Homicides? An Examination of Data from Britain and North America

Correspondence to Duncan Lindsey, School of Public Policy and Social Research, Department of Social Welfare, University of California, Los Angeles, 247 Dodd Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1452, USA. Summary In a recent British Journal of Social Work article examiningtrends in child homicide statistics collected by the World HealthOrganization (WHO), Colin Pritchard attributes a reduction inchild homicides in England and Wales to improved effectivenessof child protection services. However, further analysis of theWHO data show that the decrease in England and Wales is dueto an unusual single-year drop in homicide rates, and that thereis no evidence of a long-term downward trend. Examination oftrends in Europe and North America show that there are no consistentpatterns in fluctuations in child homicide rates, and in particular,no evidence that fatality statistics have been influenced bythe rapid expansion in child protection efforts.     

Understanding Adolescent Female Prostitution: A Literature Review

Correspondence to Dr Jill Jesson. Aston Business School, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B47 7ET. Summary Sexual behaviour and sexuality are currently topical issuesof concern for child care social workers. Social workers arespending more and of more of their time with children who comeinto care because of sexual abuse, or who have an involvementin the ‘rent’ scene or Prostitution. In additionmany teenage young women come into care because of social orparental concern over their lsquo;promiscuous’ behaviour.The review of research on adolescent prostitution offers severalexplanations for involvement in prostitution. which vary accordingto the discipline of the author. Explanations vary from pathologicaland personal psychology factors to the wider social aspectsof the family and local environment. This literature reviewwas used as a basis for research which examined the incidenceof female prostitution for a social services department. Thisis a relatively new field of interest and consequently thereis very little British research published on the issue of adolescentprostitution, or on under age (16) prostitution. There is nopublished research on girls in care and prostitution. We needto know much more about the reality of young people's livesbefore social workers can offer a meaningful response.     

Modernity, Postmodernity and Social Work

Correspondence to Prof. David Howe, School of Social Work, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ. Summary For so long in search of a common base, there are early signsthat social work's intellectual outlook is fragmenting. Theunity that was once sought in both theory and practice as wellas policy and organziation is being abandoned. A child of modernity,social work now finds itself in a postmodern world, uncertainwhether or not there are any deep and unwavering principleswhich define the essence of its character and hold it togertheras a cohernt enterprise. The article outlines some of the characteristics of modernityand postmodernity, relating them to the rise of social work,its formation within modern society, and its current conditionin what many observers believe is a postmodern world. Thereare three ‘visions’ within which people look toleam the ’truth‘ of things, including matters offact and matters of value: those centred in God's word (revelation);those centred in the minds of men and women (reason); and thosede-centred and dispersed withing language, meaning and culture(relativism).     

An Unacceptable Role for Social Work: Implementing Immigration Policy

Correspondence to Dr Beth Humphries, Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, Cartmel College, Lancaster, LA1 4YL. E-mail: b.humphries{at}lancaster.ac.uk Summary Social work has always had a role in policing the boundariesof welfare, and under New Labour there has been a decisive shiftto an increasingly narrow and negative practice. This articletakes social work’s involvement in internal immigrationcontrols as an example of the profession’s complicityin implementing social policies that are degrading and inhuman.It argues that social work has adopted a reactionary and uncriticalview of policy, and asks whether there might be a more progressivefuture for the profession.     

Survival Analysis in Social Work Research

Correspondence to Dr Richard Pugh, School of Social Relations, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK. E-mail: spa08{at}keele.ac.uk Summary Survival analysis is a method of analysing any data set thatconsists of time to event where the data set is not temporallycompleted. That is, where not all of the initial events havebeen succeeded by the end events. Its major advantage is thatit allows the researcher to model the data using the whole set.Although widely used in other disciplines, with a few exceptions,it has received relatively little attention in social work.This paper provides a review of the method and illustrates itsapplication in a study of child protection practice.     

'The Social Worker as Bad Object': A Response to Marguerite Valentine

Correspondence to Nigel Thomas, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales, Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP. Summary Valentine's article in the British Journal of Social Work (Vol.24, No. 1, February 1994) examined the processes whereby socialwork agencies defend against feelings of blame introjected bysocial workers as a result of public projections of fear andanxiety about child abuse. One of these processes is claimedto be the increasing regulation of practice, exemplified bythe Childrens Act 1989. While welcoming Valentine's generalargument, this article argues that it contains a fundamentaland serious misreading of the Children Act.     

Working with Parental Substance Misuse: Dilemmas for Practice

Correspondence to Dr Brynna Kroll, Department of Social Work, University of Exeter, Richards Building, St. Luke’s Campus, Heavitree Road, Exeter EX1 2LU, UK. E-mail: brynna.kroll{at}plymouth.ac.uk Summary The impact of parental substance misuse on child welfare isnow being increasingly recognized. Drug and alcohol problemsfeature in a substantial proportion of families where thereare child-care concerns and raise issues about engagement, confidentiality,assessment and inter-agency practice. This article exploressome of the dilemmas faced by social welfare professionals whowork with substance misusing parents. Based on a qualitativeanalysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with a wide rangeof practitioners from both adult focused and child and familysettings, in both the voluntary and statutory sector, a varietyof emerging themes will be discussed and linked to those fromother studies. The problems of working with denial, the tensionscreated by different agency objectives and protocols and theway in which children can often fall through gaps in serviceswill be highlighted, as will the way in which some professionalshave sought to resolve the dilemmas they encounter. This willthen be used as a basis for beginning to look at constructiveways forward in relation to training, interprofessional andinter-agency communication and service delivery.     

Traditional Support Systems: Are They Sufficient in a Culturally Diverse Academic Environment?

Correspondence to Dr Adital Ben-Ari School of Social Work, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel 31905. Summary The present study explores the relationship between perceivedsocial support and well-being among students of the three mainpopulations living in Israel: Israeli-born Jews, Israeli-bornArabs and Russian immigrants. More specifically, it comparesthe well-being of these three groups and examines to what extentperceived social support actually contributes to their well-being.The sample comprised 278 undergradute students in the schoolsof social work and nursing at one of the major universitiesin Israel. Three instruments were used. Well-being was measuredby both the Brief Symptoms Inventory Scale (Derogatis, 1979)and the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck and Steer, 1987). Perceivedsocial support was assessed by the Multidimensional Scale ofPerceived Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988). The findingsshow that the Arab students are significantly more distressedthan their Jewish and Russian counterparts on all measures ofwell-being. At the same time, their perceived social supportis significantly higher than that of the Jewish students (bothIsraeli-born Jews and Russian immigrants). Stepwise linear regressionanalysis revealed that while perceived social support was amajor contributor to the explanation of well-being among theIsraeli students, it did not surface as a significant explanatorypredictor of well-being among either Arabs or Russian immigrants.The significance of the findings is discussed within the theoreticalframeworks of stress and social support theories as well asmodernization and immigration processes.     

Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? Examining the Relationship between Child Neglect and Poverty

Correspondence to Dr Dominic McSherry, Institute of Child Care Research, 5a Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, UK. E-mail: dominic.mcsherry{at}qub.ac.uk Summary The chicken and the egg conundrum neatly reflects the way inwhich the debate over the relationship between child neglectand poverty/social deprivation has developed over the last fewdecades. Some would argue that child neglect is the manifestationof a neglecting society that permits child poverty to exist,that is poverty leads to child neglect. Others contend thatit is the way that neglecting parents think, behave and interactwith other people that ultimately leads them to live a lifeof social deprivation and to neglect their children, that isparental characteristics lead to poverty and child neglect.However, these seemingly opposing perspectives can be resolvedif we consider that this relationship, like the ultimate resolutionto the chicken and egg conundrum, is circular and interdependent.     

Children in Secure Accommodation

Correspondence to Professor Robert Harris, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Department of Social Policy and Professional Studies, The University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX. Summary This paper describes the characteristics of a sample of children(N = 399) being held in secure accommodation in eleven localauthorities prior to the implementation of the Children Act1989. It is argued that secure accommodation cannot be divorcedfrom other aspects of child care policy and practice; that anyconfidence that problems of excessive or variable usage canbe removed by more restrictive legislation is largely misplaced;that when social workers resort to secure accommodation it isoften through a combination of ‘worry’ about anunpredictable child and uncertainty as to what else to do; andthat since not all children in secure accommodation wish toleave it (and the more secure accommodation constitutes goodquality child care the more children are likely to want to stay)a ‘rights’ framework, though necessary, is not asufficient moral or conceptual basis for developing secure accommodationpolicy and practice.