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.     

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.     

Using the Assessment Framework to measure parental mood: an investigation of the reliability of the Adult Well‐Being Scale

The adoption of evidence‐based practice in social work has been widely promoted in recent years and with this, a growing emphasis on the evaluation of practice using well‐validated and reliable measurement processes. The Department of Health's ‘Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families’ in the UK includes quantitative measures that form part of a systematic assessment of the needs of children and their families that includes assessment of parenting capacity and parental emotional state. The measure selected to assess parental mood was originally known as the Irritability, Depression and Anxiety Scale, and has been renamed within the Assessment Framework as the Adult Well‐Being Scale. This instrument is designed to assess depression, anxiety, and inward and outward irritability. However, there has been relatively little contemporary evaluation of the reliability and validity of the measure, and the extent to which it measures the four constructs it is designed to assess. This research therefore conducted extensive analyses of the reliability, validity and underlying factor structure of the Adult Well‐Being Scale. The four subscales did not demonstrate sound psychometric properties. At best a total score may be used as an indicator of ‘overall psychological distress’.     

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.     

Social work with middle‐class Spanish families: The challenge of the work–family conflict

In the current economic crisis, middle‐class families often find themselves immersed in a process of downward social mobility. These are families in which both spouses work, and where many relational conflicts begin in the sphere of work–family reconciliation and the allocation of household responsibilities. This article presents the results of a research study we conducted on middle‐class families in Spain. We focus specifically on the problems associated with work–family reconciliation and gender, and the mitigating role played by social support. Based on our results, we want to call the attention to a prevalent and ‘new’ conflict in family‐based practice social work in Spain: the work–family conflict.     

Beyond Symptoms: Crime Prevention And Community Development

Crime and crime prevention are currently ‘hot’ political and social issues. Fuelled by public calls for ‘solutions’, the responses by politicians and planners are typically ‘quick‐fix’ with emphasis on management of particular problems as, and where, they arise. We argue for longer term strategies aimed at dealing with the political, social, economic and cultural factors associated with crime. In doing so, we explore the potential of community development to contribute to crime prevention, particularly ‘community’ or ‘street’ crime and violence. Theoretical and practice intersections between community development and certain crime prevention approaches are identified – notably those which link crime and violence with dis‐empowerment, poverty, inequality, exclusion, the learning of violence within families and communities, and lack of opportunity for children and young people to develop their potential. We conclude that there is plenty of evidence to support the view that community development processes should be used more frequently in crime prevention programmes.     

Family relations, adjustment and well-being in a longitudinal study of children in care

The article reports on a longitudinal study of children placed in a children's home during the first two years of the 1980s. The 26 children placed when younger than 4 years of age and staying more than 4 weeks were followed up 3 and 9 months after leaving the children's home and 5, 10, 15 and 20 years later. The children's family relations, including early attachments and later parental relationships and the perception of who is their family, have been one of the predominant themes in the recurrent studies. None of them had lived with both parents after leaving the children's home and 20 of them had been in foster care for periods or permanently. At the time of the last study the children were young adults, aged 20–25. They are categorized in three rather distinct categories, one for those with a ‘good’ and one for those with a ‘moderate’ social adjustment and well‐being and one for those with a ‘bad’ social adjustment and well‐being insofar as involvement with drugs, criminal behaviour and legal sanctions are concerned. Their contacts and relationships with birth parents and foster parents and the perception of who is their family are analysed by use of attachment theory and developmental psychopathology.     

The implications of dialogicality for ‘giving voice’ in social representations research

Social representations research is often undertaken by scholars who seek to ‘give voice’ to knowledge(s) that are held by socially disenfranchised individuals and groups. However, this endeavour poses a number of problems in practice, not least because it assumes that the ‘voices’ voiced by individuals and/or groups in social research will be unambiguous and uniform, and unchanged by the research encounter. Despite the growth of attention to the critical potential of social representations theory, there remains a lack of scholarship on the relationship between the theory's emphasis on the relational, or dialogical, nature of social life (the Ego‐Alter‐Object relation) and the implications of this for critical research. In this article, I argue that the dialogical epistemology from which social representations research must depart incites reflection upon (i) the design of empirical studies, which must equally attend to both ‘Ego’ and ‘Alter’, and (ii) the researcher‐researched relationship, which may itself be best viewed as an Ego‐Alter interaction. I make the case for adopting dialogical epistemology in critical social psychology, and argue that this is essential to undertaking ethical social research. I conclude by suggesting that claims to ‘giving voice’ have little place in critical social psychology in general, and social representations scholarship in particular.     

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.     

‘Not a good person’: family stigma of mental illness from the perspectives of young siblings

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine family stigma as one form of the stigma of mental illness in child and youth mental health. Presented are the outcomes of a thematic content analysis of in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews conducted with seven (n = 7) young siblings, ages 13 to 21 years old, with a brother or sister identified as having a mental‐health issue. The focus of the interviews was on the ways the siblings experienced their other sibling's mental health and how those experiences shaped their sense of self and family. From the analysis, young siblings had predominately negative experiences, struggled with making sense of their brother or sister and the family as ‘flawed’ against the mental illness as ‘bad’ and experienced considerable family stress and overt family stigma. Current practice theories fail to consider the complexity of these factors and, in doing so, fail to adequately explain the nature and extent to which stigmatization occurs for immediate family members. The importance of peer support and understanding stigma in social work practice with children and their families is discussed.     

Multi‐agency information practices in children's services: the metaphorical ‘jigsaw’ and professionals quest for a ‘full’ picture

As there are a number of high‐profile public inquiries into child death tragedies, ‘information sharing’ has now become a moral and political imperative across England and Wales for improving the welfare and protection of children. This paper discusses multi‐agency information practices, at the stage of referral, which were observed and documented in the day‐to‐day practice of child protection work. Drawing on transcribed, professional narrative accounts, a ‘jigsaw’ metaphor is used to describe the process of piecing information together to ascertain a ‘full’ picture of children and families lives. However, these accounts highlight that there is something of a mismatch between the jigsaw, as articulated in the conceptual abstract accounts, and jigsaw practices operating on the ground. It is argued that abstracting professional information practices from situated contexts creates impoverished understandings of these practices. Thus, reported findings in this paper highlight the inherent complexities of jigsaw practices in the ‘everyday’ of child protection work, which challenges objectivist assumptions about a stability of meaning, and further highlight that the ‘endpoint’ of reaching a ‘full’ picture of a child's life is not fixed, nor does it have the same meaning for all professionals, but rather it is a complex process involving sense‐making, translation in context and organizational relevance.     

What social workers do in performing child protection work: evidence from research into face‐to‐face practice

Little research has been done into what social workers do in everyday child protection practice. This paper outlines the broad findings from an ethnographic study of face‐to‐face encounters between social workers, children and families, especially on home visits. The social work practice was found to be deeply investigative. Children's bedrooms were routinely inspected and were the most common place where they were seen alone. A high proportion of children were not seen on their own because they were too young and the majority of the time was spent working with parents and children together. Small amounts of time were spent with children on their own and some first encounters were so rushed that social workers did not even introduce themselves to the child. This arose from two key factors: firstly, organisational pressures from high workloads and the short timescales that social workers were expected to adhere to by managers and Government; secondly, practitioners had varying levels of communication skills, playfulness and comfort with getting close to children and skills at family work. Where these skills and relational capacities were present, social workers were found to have developed deep and meaningful relationships with some children and families, for whom it was apparent that therapeutic change had occurred.     

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.     

Residential care: an effective response to out‐of‐home children and young people?

The ever‐growing number of out‐of‐home children in Italy over the last decade has urged an assessment of the available care services. Although foster care is spreading rapidly, many young people are still housed in residential facilities. Reflection on residential care quality has intensified at both a national and an international level. This paper presents the results of a study on residential care facilities for children and young people in the region of Northern Italy (Lombardy). Four dimensions of ‘quality’ are considered: efficiency, effectiveness, participation in planning and intervention, and empowerment of children and their family relationships. The combined effects of these dimensions are defined as ‘relational quality’. The results show that residential care facilities are generally good, while Social Services resources often appear inadequate for interventions aimed at birth families (efficiency). The well‐being of children in residential care facilities is high, even if they tend to move from one facility to another, rarely returning to their birth family (effectiveness). The involvement of children and their families at different stages of the care path is limited (participative approach). Finally, the most critical element is the failure to properly involve birth families (empowerment).     

Being there for my grandchild – grandparents' responses to their grandchildren's exposure to domestic violence

Grandparents whose grandchildren are exposed to domestic violence are faced with some unique challenges in their grandparenting, which have thus far been little discussed in research. This paper discusses the narratives of 10 Swedish grandparents whose grandchildren have been exposed to violence towards their mother. The aim was to explore grandparents' narrations of their responses in the face of violence, and their understanding of the role they play in their grandchildren's social networks. Two significant responses are discussed: ‘being there’ and ‘acknowledging the independence and self‐determination of the adult children’. Grandparents experienced these responses as contradictory and felt powerless when it came to their possibilities to protect their grandchildren. The paper suggests that grandparents could be a resource for domestic violence services, and social work practice needs to assess the roles of grandparents of children exposed to domestic violence. Social workers should consider the challenges these grandparents are facing and what support they may need in order to support their grandchildren.     

Gender,emotions and fly‐in fly‐out work

This paper explores the emotional life of fly‐in fly‐out (FIFO) workers and their families, through an analysis of more than 500 postings made on an online chat forum for mining families. Building on literature on fly‐in fly‐out workers and understandings of emotions as socially constructed, analysis shows how posters to the forum, typically women whose male partners are FIFO workers, construct gendered emotional identities for their partners (sometimes referred to as ‘Mr Miner’), and for themselves, as ‘mining women’, ‘mining widows’ or the ‘mining missus’. Inherent in the creation of gendered emotional subject positions is the process of women undertaking emotion work on and behalf of themselves, their male partners and their children. The findings demonstrate the overarching normative dimensions of women's emotional self‐transformations in the service of their mining partners' careers and the attendant reproduction of everyday patriarchal relations in the private lives of mining families.     

Children living with parental substance misuse: A cross‐sectional profile of children and families referred to children's social care

Parental substance misuse is a significant public health and children's rights issue. In the United Kingdom, social workers frequently work with children and families affected by substance misuse. However, relatively little is known about this population, particularly at point of referral to children's social care. This paper reports on the largest known study of parental substance misuse as a feature of children's social care work in England. The paper provides a cross‐sectional profile of 299 children living with parental substance misuse and referred to children's social care in one local authority in England. Data were collected from social work case files at the point of referral to social care about the child, family, the wider environment, and parental substance misuse. The findings show that children affected by parental substance misuse frequently had other support needs relating to their well‐being and mental health. Children were also likely to be experiencing other parental and environmental risk factors. The significant historical—and in some cases intergenerational—social care involvement for some families indicates potential issues with the capacity of services to meet needs. Recommendations for practice are discussed with a particular focus on the need for early, comprehensive support for children and families.     

Integrating the teaching,learning and assessment of communication with children within the qualifying social work curriculum

Qualifying social work education must provide students with a variety of experiential, personalized, participatory, didactic and critically reflective learning opportunities across both the taught curriculum and in practice placements if deep learning of the capabilities needed for effective communication with children and young people is to be ensured. At present, programmes in England are not consistent in the curriculum structures, content and pedagogical approaches they are employing to teach and assess this topic. This paper discusses first how current proposals for the reform of qualifying education in England do not address the ambiguities and discretion in regulatory guidance, which have meant that the place and relevance of this topic within the curriculum remain uncertain and contested. It then draws on a model of the sequencing of students' learning and development in qualifying training, developed through the author's recent empirical research, to present an integrated and coherent approach to the teaching, learning and assessment of this topic. It is proposed that this strategy will enable students to develop the generic, ‘child‐focused’ and ‘applied child‐specialist’ capabilities they need for the ‘knowing’, ‘being’ and ‘doing’ of effective communication with children.