The Prevention of Baby Battering

Two recent criminal court cases, one in Wales and the other in England in which parents have been found guilty of the murder of a baby, have raised concerns that Children's Services apparently turned a blind eye to abuse known as 'baby battering'. Social workers are not naturally judgmental but they are required to think the unthinkable and spot any signs of physical abuse being inflicted on a baby. If serious risk is identified they have a legal duty to ensure that the baby is protected from significant harm.

However, the modern approach in Children's Services emphasises the duty to 'safeguard' all children. This far-stretched term is keeping social workers very busy but the huge amount of work being done reduces the prospect of effective practice in high-risk child protection work. While training courses tend to focus on the social work task of offering support to families and promoting the well-being of children, young social workers are often called upon to take on work that goes beyond their level of competence and this may result in mistakes being made. The current approach to good practice in the prevention of baby battering is so weak and under-developed that scandals are bound to occur. Social workers therefore need all the help they can get to improve practice in this area.

In child protection work the nature of the working relationship is complex. Parents are likely to act out their problems in relation to the social worker, who enters the family as a person in authority, and the social worker immediately becomes caught up in dealing with their feelings of suspicion and hostility. The establishing of a trusting relationship between the social worker and parents is obviously desirable but this is inherently difficult to achieve due to the problem of the imbalance of power between them. The professional distance between the worker and parent may be played down with the use of an informal style of relating. However, this lack of formality may give the impression that the problems being addressed are low-level ones and responsibility for solving them is shared equally.

The arrival of a couple's first baby inevitably means that new parents are required to make changes to their way of life and act responsibly. Most parents adjust to their new responsibilities and enjoy the status of being a parent. It is natural for new parents to have feelings of vulnerability at this time. Obviously, all parents will benefit from support and practical help following the birth of their baby, although the need for this will possibly be greater if the parents themselves have experienced difficulties in their own upbringing.

Serious concerns will be raised about prospective parents whose current lifestyle includes incidents of domestic violence and misuse of drugs or alcohol. If they have a strong desire to keep their baby it may be assumed that they have positive feelings about parenthood and social workers often feel obliged to give them the benefit of the doubt. It is not easy for social workers to take the opposite view - that the possibility of violence within the family poses a serious threat to the life of the baby - although this will occasionally be necessary.

Baby battering is essentially an assertion of superiority over the only person a parent can feel superior to - a helpless child. An essential component of good practice in child protection work is the capacity to think about the everyday hassles of family life and the hidden aspects of the personality of the adults that may trigger violence.

If there are serious and accumulating concerns about the parents' ability to care for their baby it is important that social workers consider these carefully. Social workers need to develop a good understanding of how responsibilities are shared and the patterns of relating as a couple that have the potential to trigger violence. The couple relationship may be a relationship primarily based on sex and lacking any real emotional connection on any other level. Their relationship with their baby may be distant because the baby is primarily something that gives them status and recognition rather than a person who needs love and affection. Worse still, the baby may be experienced as a source of irritation and stress that puts a strain on the couple relationship and triggers uncontrollable feelings.

Without any recognition of Freudian theory about the central importance of the unconscious in adult life and the persistence of infantile conflicts and desires, much of the learning that takes place during social work training is too cerebral and leaves social workers unprepared for the emotional demands of this work. An understanding of the inner world and unconscious forces provides an extremely important context within which to practice safely and creatively. In particular, the notion of 'the psyche' should be given some attention and this includes an understanding of 'defense mechanisms' which operate to protect the individual from unresolved conflicts and interfere with maturational development into adulthood.

The absence of a theory which makes sense of the more disturbing aspects of this work is a major contributor to stress in social work. The professional identity is essentially based on values of caring and showing respect for individual difference. Consequently, social workers with responsibility for safeguarding children sometimes fail to look more deeply into the human psyche and see the dangers from a potentially violent parent before it is too late.

If the professional judgements made by children's social workers are unreliable it is inevitable that the public will lose confidence in the profession. What is needed is a challenge to the existing models of learning about social work practice in children's services and a stronger emphasis on recruiting mature, well-rounded people with relevant life experience.