Children's Social Work: There is Another Way

Children's Social Work
There is Another Way

As a children's social worker in the 1990's I was fortunate in being able to work in a service built on practice wisdom accumulated over many decades. In those days we had plenty of scope for building caring relationships with children and young people. Compliance with the rules was necessary but the possibility of working more creatively was not ruled out. My experience of children's social work was so different from that of social workers today it is hard for me to hold on to the idea that I have something useful to offer them. There are enormous problems in children's services but I hope that my reflections will help social workers think about the possibility of change.

Social work claims to be a profession but, in reality, it can never be a full profession like the medical profession because it operates within a political system, which gives its interventions legitimacy. In recent decades those in positions of power have utilised the specialism of children's social work for political objectives aimed at improving parenting through support and education. However, strategies to change individuals are constrained by the extent to which social workers can achieve the necessary degree of trust with parents and harness increasingly scarce resources for families living in poverty. Furthermore, the malign influence of incoherent academic theories has made the knowledge base of social work too complicated and irrelevant to the day to day practices of social workers. There is an urgent need for the profession to reclaim the essential knowledge and skills required of children's social workers, explain these to the rest of society and demonstrate why it deserves to be called a profession.

Top-Down Reforms

Over the past fifteen years a range of reforms have been introduced that were not informed by the practice experience of social workers. The role and function of children's social work was completely reconstructed, through the elevation of social work skills in the provision of family support services and the de-prioritising of child protection interventions.

The introduction of the Children Act 2004 and the Common Assessment Framework re-built social work practice on new foundations. Assessment became a more bureaucratic activity that hardly recognised the need for intuitive understanding and professional judgement. Social work was reduced to a standardised process of assessment of need followed, if necessary, by social work intervention based on the assumption that family preservation was the primary objective. It was assumed that this approach would be effective in reducing the need for coercive measures, including care proceedings. However, the more bureaucratised approach has actually achieved the opposite of this and in recent years the continuing rise in care proceedings and the number of children in care has pushed services to breaking point.

As children's social workers face mounting criticism it seems that we are now at a critical fault-line in society where social work practice and political forces collide. Inconsistency in social work practice, together with a perception that social work is too risk averse, is creating political pressure for change. There are also mounting pressures from campaign groups and aggrieved parents for reform of the whole child protection system. These problems cannot be solved by improvements in training alone. There is widespread dysfunction in the child protection system itself.

How Poor Practice Arises

At the core of safeguarding work is the capacity to make judgements about parenting and to take action that may provoke strong emotions in people. This task is made more difficult if it takes place within a society where there are constantly shifting pressures, often coming from campaigners who may have unresolved issues from their own upbringing. It is also made more difficult if the service is run by senior managers who are not registered social workers - who ignore statutory procedures and notions of good practice in order to retain their power and control over decision-making.

Child protection work involves the use of authority but, while social workers have adequate powers to intervene, they are sometimes unclear about their powers or ambivalent about the use of them. It is essential that social workers are very clear about the extent and limits of their legal powers and duties. Unfortunately, legal aspects of child protection practice receive insufficient attention in training and many newly qualified social workers do not have a sound understanding of the official guidance.

Weaknesses in two key areas are so serious that this seriously damages public confidence in social workers. Firstly, social workers have developed informal understandings with other professionals about information-sharing and often assume that the important principle of confidentiality can be over-ruled if there is a risk to the 'well-being' of a child. This has been clarified by a recent court case and the implications of this for social work practice have been explained in this blog here. The latest statutory guidance can be seen here. Secondly, social workers are unreliable in their capacity to strike an appropriate balance between care and control. Social workers often seem unable to cope with the conflicting demands of the duty to provide support services and the duty to investigate risk. In situations of uncertainty and stress social workers may focus on one aspect of their role more than the other and fail to achieve an appropriate balance. When this lack of balance becomes the norm the style of working that emerges may be either too authoritarian or too laissez-faire. This is when scandals are more likely to occur.

There is a limit to how many theories or techniques of intervention students can really absorb. Many are seduced by the theory that cases should never be labelled as 'child protection' and are opposed to any notion of 'child rescue'. Training courses are producing social workers who are ambivalent about child protection work and this can have tragic consequences. For example, in the Daniel Pelka case social workers were made aware of risk factors but failed to treat the case as 'child protection' and a fateful opportunity to intervene was lost.

Practice-based learning opportunities are essential in enabling social workers to think for themselves and make sound judgements. However, social work teams often lack good mentors who can offer inexperienced social workers on-the-job guidance and support. Consequently, social workers who are uncertain of their role may welcome procedures that put too much faith in family-based solutions. If this fails and they face escalating concerns about a family they may experience a sense of betrayal and adopt a punitive approach.

Organisational Dysfunction

Many local authorities seem incapable of learning from their mistakes and have become stuck. Studies of dysfunctional organisations have described the processes which emerge to protect staff from stress as 'defence mechanisms' that work to prevent the organisation from fulfilling its core function. Children's social work displays many of these processes. In order to protect themselves staff have developed a survival strategy which can lead to the depersonalization of clients, particularly parents. An orthodoxy of shallowness may then emerge - to enable staff to deny the existence of concerns that could lead to difficult and time-consuming work, and to speed up decision-making by not obtaining all the facts. Assessment becomes a bureaucratic exercise serving the organisation rather than children in need. Inter-agency working becomes an end in itself, particularly if staff find they are too busy attending inter-agency meetings to visit families. There is also the danger that, if all concerns and risks are dealt with through imprecise 'safeguarding interventions', serious indicators of risk are not recognised as such.

Organisational dysfunction results in poor quality social work practice which then becomes embedded in the organisation and cannot be changed without a radical re-appraisal of priorities and practices. If the organisation does not provide an appropriate structure for statutory child protection work problems may arise that can only be resolved by the family court. If social workers were well supported in carrying out complex child protection work in a timely and comprehensive way and in presenting the relevant facts in court this might well reduce the amount of time and money spent on court work.

Social work's theoretical base in child protection work has become so fragmented and weakened that this work is in danger of disappearing into a sink-hole of its own making. Fostering trust is the key to good social work practice and the consensual model of working with families is therefore important. However, at some stage, in dealing with children at risk of 'significant harm' there may have to be a deliberate turning away from a supportive response to parents to confronting them with responsibility for what they themselves are doing. Unfortunately, some social workers have neither the experience in identifying risk of 'significant harm', nor the confidence in their ability to show respectful curiosity about any child protection concerns, to make reliable assessments. The safety of the child requires a comprehensive assessment of the child's needs and the family circumstances together with the often challenging task of engaging families in understanding the causes for concern. Unless this happens the social work task of child protection planning and core group working is unsafe.

There is Another Way

During the 1990's we had a clearer focus on child protection duties and a vision for social work based on community-based support services. What is needed now is a very clear model of child protection practice that enables social workers to find a meaningful role and inspires them to use their skills effectively. When a child is placed on a child protection plan social workers must try to support the family without losing sight of the over-riding duty to protect the child. This approach is often based on humanistic values and pragmatic notions of what would help the child and the family. Relationship-building serves to both protect the child and promote the child's welfare - although the relationship should never become an end in itself.

Much social work is based on a model of supportive work which incorporates therapeutic approaches and strengths perspectives. It involves putting at the centre of practice a theory which takes into account an understanding of the parents' circumstances as well as the child's developmental needs. This type of ongoing supportive work, while not exactly therapy, may be experienced by some parents as beneficial, in terms of confidence-building and assisting in their personal growth and development. Social workers who can maintain positive contact with the child and family over a period of time are often valued by the family and their skilled, collaborative work can clarify the family dynamics and assist sound decision-making.

Creative thinking must be brought to bear on the difficult task of managing increased caseloads in children's services. Authorities need to recognise that child protection is a core function and provide an organisational structure that supports ethical practice and sound decision-making. Also, it is essential that staff at all levels have a sound understanding of how to meet the emotional and developmental needs of children in the care system.

The Committed Survivor

The BASW report, Voices from the frontline, quotes a social worker as saying 'It makes me so sad that this job seems only to be possible if you sacrifice your own health and wellbeing'. At present the element of personal support is completely missing from many teams. Without this it will be impossible for these teams to retain the best people and keep them motivated over the long term.

Hilary Searing