| Abstract: | 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. |
