Domestic Violence: Social Work Intervention

Domestic Violence:
Social Work Intervention

In recent years there has been a large increase in the amount of social work intervention with families affected by domestic violence. Children's social workers have a professional obligation to explain to parents why it is necessary for them to intervene and to work effectively to understand the dysfunctional patterns of relating between the adults and to protect the children.

Domestic violence is defined as any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between adults who are or have been intimate partners regardless of gender. It is also recognised that coercive control is a core part of this. In recent years, increasing awareness of the emotional impact on children of exposure to domestic violence has resulted in more children in these situations being referred to children's services for safeguarding measures.

Social workers are often dealing with people with a lot of chaos in their lives and must be careful they do not add to that chaos. They have a statutory duty to recognise when a child may be at risk of significant harm and to take any necessary protective action - though they often carry out this duty informally without making use of their powers under section 47 of the Children Act 1989. It should not be forgotten that social workers have the lead responsibility for protecting the child victim (despite the mantra that child protection is everyone's responsibility). Children's services is therefore presented with difficult ethical dilemmas. The most serious risk would be that a child might die at the hands of a parent or step-parent, with babies being particularly vulnerable. On the other hand, since risk factors seem to be present in many families, it can be difficult for social workers to know where to draw the line for their safeguarding interventions.

The Social Work Role in Domestic Violence

Social workers play an active part in the multi-agency risk assessment conference (MARAC) operating across the UK which is an information-sharing and decision-making mechanism for safeguarding the adult victim of domestic violence. An escalating pattern of domestic violence sometimes causes professionals to focus all their attention on the risks to the family from male violence and social workers may under-estimate the seriousness of the risk posed to the child by violence from the mother. This happened in the case of Ayeeshia Jane Smith.

Feminist discourse asserts that in most cases the victims of domestic violence are women and the perpetrators men and the only realistic solution to the relationship problem is to end the relationship. Social work intervention that is informed by this discourse tends to be brisk, brusque and decisive. Nevertheless, risks to the children may continue even when the parents are living separately. In situations where no-one has been physically harmed but there are ongoing concerns about the children a different approach may be necessary. This requires social workers who are confident about what they are trying to do and can handle the complexity of working in a conflict situation while closely monitoring the risks to the children.

Many parents come from less than ideal parenting themselves and consequently their internal frameworks for judging whether their parenting is good enough are often under-developed. They lack important information because the model of parenting they experienced in their own childhood was deficient in some way, or even harmful. Most parents do their best to care for their children in the situation they find themselves in and when faced with difficulties work out what to do about them as they go along. Furthermore, it is not unusual for the couple relationship to come under strain when a child is born. Now that many parents live far away from their own relatives they may have little support from older people who can share the burden of child care with them and offer advice from their own experience of parenting.

When a social work assessment is carried out following a domestic violence incident fine judgements have to be made about the quality of parenting. A social worker's understanding of the term 'good enough parenting' will be influenced by both personal, psychological factors and wider cultural factors. The personal ones may be conscious or unconscious; the wider ones come from beliefs rooted in societal norms and professional training. The interweaving of these different influences within the individual creates a notion of what is 'good enough parenting' that is unavoidably personalised and subjective. Hence, there may be little consistency in the way that different social workers respond to cases of domestic violence and how they assess the level of risk to the child.

To illustrate the dilemmas for social workers involved in domestic violence work I will describe my own work with a family that took place over a period of three years. My own efforts to promote the welfare of the children only seemed to make a difference when the department decided to make an application for a Supervision Order. My initial misgivings about this decision disappeared when I realised the longer-term benefits to the children justified this course of action. The use of legal proceedings can be an effective tool for work with a family resistant to social work help.

The Children Act 1989 gives courts the power to make a supervision order when the threshold criteria for significant harm under section 31 has been met. There are no direct enforcement mechanisms in relation to supervision orders but they give the local authority the legal power to monitor the child’s needs and progress while the child lives at home. A social worker will advise, help and befriend the child, although in practice this means the social worker gives help and support to the family as a whole.

The Case Study

The family consisted of Mrs A, who was divorced, her three children from her first marriage, two boys aged 14 and 10 and a girl aged 12, and her partner Mr B and their one year old son. On a number of occasions the police were called to the home by Mrs A following domestic incidents. During one of these there was damage to the property and the baby had suffered a minor injury. It was known that Mr B had a history of aggressive and violent behaviour in his youth and had been on probation. The police made a referral to children's services and a social work investigation was carried out under section 47. A child protection conference was held, all the children were made the subjects of a child protection plan and the case allocated to me.

Mrs A was of limited intelligence but was a warm, capable mother in many ways. She budgeted well on a low income and managed to take the family on holiday every year. She suffered from a slight speech defect and seemed quite socially isolated. Conditions in the home were poor, partly due due to the council's inadequate maintenance of the property. Mrs A had received support and practical help from social workers in the past when she was struggling to cope with three children under five. During that period, while she was married, there were low level concerns about the family, including possible physical abuse or neglect. After getting divorced she coped well as a single parent with support from her extended family. Her new partner, Mr B was single and unemployed and five years younger than her. After the birth of their son Mr B spent more time in the pub and often returned home intoxicated and aggressive.

Some of the concerns about the older children were simply due to the impoverished environment they were growing up in. Their schools described them as pleasant, good-natured children but slow learners who needed support within the school environment. None of them had any contact with their father.

Because Mrs A and Mr B were inclined to minimize their problems and insisted on continuing to live together I found it necessary to be open with them about the surveillance aspect of my role. The child protection plan set out my responsibilities as: home visits (both pre-planned and unannounced), seeing the older children routinely on their own, and holding regular core group meetings to monitor the situation and develop action plans. During the initial stage of my work Mr B sometimes moved back to his parents after family rows but, after a reconciliation, he returned to the family, the situation remaining calm for a short period. Soon afterwards another incident involving the police would occur.

I arranged a part-time nursery placement for the youngest child and staff there were able to develop a positive relationship with Mrs A and give her support. I also arranged for a support worker to visit Mrs A to offer help and advice regarding health and safety issues around the home. My ongoing concerns about the risk of violence eventually resulted in a written agreement with the parents which stated that Mr B would only live with the family during the week but not at weekends, when he went to the pub, when he would stay with his parents.

Mrs A and Mr B were outwardly cooperative but inclined to conceal things from me. The older children were intensely loyal to their mother and, although polite and communicative with me, seemed to share her negative feelings towards me initially. However, over time they became more trusting as they began to see me as someone who was interested in their well-being and offered practical and financial help to the family.

Mrs A was a quiet person who seemed in need of support. Mr B was surprisingly open up with me about his difficulties in coping with the situation in the family. He was very proud of his son and seemed interested in taking an active role in his upbringing. The ambivalence in the couple relationship was apparent to me but not discussed. I soon became aware that the eldest boy had previously assumed a 'parental' role in the family and perceived Mr B as a rival for his mother's attention. The three older children were inclined to act in immature ways but usually within the realm of normal. On one occasion the girl took a small overdose as a cry for help. Some of the everyday hassles of family life caused the parents a lot of stress. While I understood these difficulties it was also necessary for me to set firm boundaries by insisting that Mr B had to control his temper, despite the pressures on him.

On one occasion, when I made an unannounced home visit on a Friday evening, I found Mr B in the house. As the parents had failed to comply with the written agreement legal proceedings were instigated. This prompted Mr B to seek help from a psychiatrist who referred him on to a counsellor for alcohol problems. He also started to attend an anger management group. During this period it was even more important than ever that I spoke to the older children and explained that I was simply taking legal action to protect them. I reassured the family that the aim was not to take the children into care.

Prior to the court hearing I prepared a comprehensive assessment of the family to present as evidence in court. I already had much knowledge of the family due to my close involvement with it over an extended period of time and therefore decided to focus on a new parent-based assessment. I used the framework for assessing risk (Department of Health, 1988) to carry out formal, semi-structured interviews. By carrying out one-to-one interviews with the parents I gained a better understanding of them as individuals and how their psychological make-up affected their ability to parent. I also made home visits to the parents of both Mrs A and Mr B for the purposes of this assessment.

It is worth noting that Mr B spoke positively of my work with the family. He had found the assessment process useful in making him think about his strengths and weaknesses and his ability to cope with his new responsibilities as a parent. This had given him the opportunity to reflect on his feelings and begin to act in a more considered way - a process which might be called therapeutic. However, by time the supervision order was granted Mr B had moved out of the family home permanently.

My subsequent use of the supervision order was therefore carried out with a light touch. During this phase of the work the main focus was on practical support to the mother and children through working with education and health services and monitoring the contact arrangements for the youngest child.

In many ways this should be seen as a standard piece of child protection work offering a package of services plus controls. My intervention helped in the process of change but only because I had enabled the adults to take responsibility for deciding what changes they wanted. Perhaps the most important outcome of social work intervention was that the children were given an experience of people around them protecting them from violent behaviour and this may have indirectly raised their confidence in their own ability to deal with similar situations in the future.

In the above case I found that assessment work can be a positive experience for parents when it is carried out without any preconceptions about the outcome. It seemed to me that the parents had experienced the assessment interview, in which their own thoughts and feelings were taken seriously, as beneficial in itself even when the issues raised were difficult to face.

The Way Forward

At present any one of a number of services may be called upon to help victims of domestic violence. Intervention from children's services tends to be reactive, with referrals only being accepted when the child is thought to be at high risk. A more proactive approach would be better to engage families at an early stage and to prevent the situation from deteriorating. Families in which no-one has been physically harmed but the children may have been emotionally affected can be offered help on a voluntary basis. It is possible that intervention aimed at understanding the family dynamics may facilitate open and honest discussion between the adults about their difficulties and constructive resolution of them, without circumstances reaching the threshold for formal child protection measures.

If a firmer, more persuasive approach is necessary there are various social work tools that can be used, such as a child protection plan or a supervision order. Formal child protection intervention can prevent the need for care proceedings. Children's services should recognise the value of long-term targeted work, not only in providing support and surveillance of the family but also for assisting in decision-making. An organisational structure must therefore be provided that supports the distinctive approach of children's services with these families and is capable of recognising when legal thresholds have been crossed.

Finally, if social workers are genuinely concerned about children they should uphold their professional values more strongly. These values give social workers a clear duty to help parents with a propensity to violence recognise their personal responsibility for changing their own behaviour and reducing the risks to their children. Any failure to do this is not only harmful in itself but it also undermines efforts to change parents by sending a message that society is not serious about protecting children from physical abuse. A better understanding of the ethics of social work intervention in child protection would make social workers realise that the use of their statutory powers, whilst possibly experienced by parents as intimidating, should not be regarded as authoritarian but, instead, as a constructive approach to tackling dysfunctional patterns of relating.

Hilary Searing