Child Protection: Radical Thinking

I was a local authority social worker for 27 years and in my experience most social work intervention these days to safeguard and protect children is either weak and ineffectual or authoritarian and oppressive. Social work is an approach based on humanistic values and a helping relationship to enable families to function better. Children's social work now claims to be a full profession with a particular expertise that unqualified people do not possess but, in reality, social workers who carry out safeguarding interventions are less trusted than ever before. As public confidence in the profession has declined so has the ability of children's services to do what is necessary to restore its image and status and attract the right people into the profession.

At the root of these problems are doubts within the profession that social work should lead child protection. In fact children's services has a clear legal duty to act as the lead agency for child protection. However, current practice wisdom places more value on multi-disciplinary group-think in decision-making than on the capacity of social workers to use their professional knowledge and expertise to analyse risk factors and make sound decisions about the need for protective action.

The profession has effectively adopted a socio-economic analysis to explain the causes of family dysfunction that may trigger child abuse and neglect. Practice is also driven by a critique of the power of middle class professionals who make judgements about disadvantaged families living in impoverished environments. Some social workers think 'child protection' is ruining the reputation of social work because practice has become too authoritarian. However, I believe it is the right profession to do this work but not under the current organisational arrangements.

Problems have developed because social workers are not always clear and firm with families about what they are trying to do. Social workers are expected to recognise and address complex issues in families and dysfunctional patterns of relating but their capacity to achieve changes within the family is often quite limited. There is something wrong with the way local authorities go about their business of safeguarding and protecting children.

I believe that most social workers are sensitive and caring people. However, the theories underpinning their practice are often too simplistic and training does not require them to reflect on the way their own personal histories might shape their thinking about how they might act as a 'change agent' in their work with families. Often what has driven them to social work remains hidden in their unconscious allowing them to find satisfaction in a relationship where they have power but no vulnerability - because there is no effective scrutiny of their work in the family home.

As a consequence it can be difficult for them to achieve the necessary balance and objectivity in their professional practice. Of particular concern is poor practice in child protection investigations - because the way this task is handled has a crucial influence on subsequent work. This was highlighted in a recent court case in which the social worker who conducted a section 47 interview with the family was ill-equipped for this role and unaware of the forensic requirements of the task.

When I was in practice I understood the dilemmas involved in striking an appropriate balance between child protection and child welfare. However, these days staff in children's services often seem uncertain about how to respond to child protection concerns and struggle to achieve a balance between supportive and controlling measures. Possibly, they do not even think of themselves as local government officers with statutory duties.

Child abuse is a complex area of work and evokes strong feelings in professionals; unless those feelings are considered they can adversely affect judgement. The key to good practice is social workers who are more confident, less defensive and more explicit about what they do. While defence mechanisms have a part to play in enabling them to cope with uncertainty and uncomfortable feelings, too much defensiveness can result in clients being treated in a de-personalised way or serious risks minimised. This poses questions about how we train and support social workers to be emotionally astute enough to perceive and recognise something that should ring alarm bells. The notion of 'professional curiosity' in child protection investigations is very useful in this context.

When I did this work I was sufficiently experienced and clear about my responsibilities with regard to safeguarding children to achieve the necessary balance between support and protection. I believed that relationship-based work with involuntary clients was an important method of working but inherent constraints within the statutory role limited what I could achieve, particularly in terms of therapy or in tackling poverty and inequality. Although my instinct was to avoid the use of compulsion I sometimes came to the realisation, during supervision from my line manager, that a threshold had been crossed and more coercive measures were necessary. Supervision was essentially about being held to account for my work in fulfilling statutory duties and responsibilities. The important point here is that subjectivity in the social worker is inevitable and managerial oversight is essential in order to achieve the necessary objectivity and balance in decision-making.

These days social workers often seem unable to differentiate between poor parenting and child abuse. Sometimes they even fail to recognise the significance of serious indicators of risk and when mistakes are made they are publicly criticised. Then the profession complains that it does not get the respect it deserves. Instead it must stop promoting the myth that an effective multi-disciplinary support service can address all child protection concerns and design a service where social workers are better equipped for their child protection duties.

Children's social work can only make claims to being a full profession if it offers expertise in carrying out certain tasks not held by other professions, such as detecting children who are at risk of significant harm and intervening appropriately. Social workers who carry out child abuse investigations under section 47 have a policing role (which is distinct from a criminal investigation by the police) and need a mind-set different from that of social workers who provide family support. The investigative role requires a more decisive and probing style of working than that normally adopted by social workers. If this work was recognised as formal investigative work the task might be much simpler.

To summarise, the organisation of safeguarding work needs to undergo radical change. Social work already has much to offer in understanding and tackling the problems of deprivation and poverty which are at the centre of much child and family work. It is time to create a new structure for social work activity that has the vision and commitment to making significant improvements in the lives of poor children and families living in deprived communities but also supports the development of skills in identifying children at risk of significant harm. It is essential that practice is always informed by an understanding of the complexities of the legal framework so that social workers use their legal powers appropriately.

Hilary Searing