The Shallowness of Children's Services

A culture of shallowness has become the norm in children's services. Social workers are doing an increasing number of complex assessments but these often lack the necessary depth, rigour and analysis. They also face more parental resistance to social work intervention than ever before. These problems arise out of the dysfunctional nature of a service that is too focused on the bureaucratic task of assessment and does not fully recognise the complexity of navigating the dual roles of family support and child protection. A fundamental redesign of the service may be necessary in the more dysfunctional authorities.

The social work task of discovering which children are being abused or neglected is not a simple one but few people understand how social workers carry out this task. When serious mistakes are made the social work profession invariably hides behind the cloak of confidentiality and says that lessons are being learned. It is not my aim to put the blame for poor practice on front line workers. However, I believe the quality of the service provided is affected by the bureaucratic nature of the organisation and routine procedures which inhibit the capacity of social workers to think creatively when confronted with new situations.

Some writers use a socio-economic analysis to deny the need for a debate about the factors essential to good child protection practice. It is important to assert that the protection of children is a role that social workers can be proud of and historically has been an important part of social work values. This requires policies and practices that are based on a coherent model of practice for children’s social care.

The Bureaucratic Organisation

Children's services operates within an unpredictable environment which is throwing up ever more challenging problems for it to deal with. As an organisation it is quite paranoid, particularly in the way it attempts to deal with the environment by constantly warding off criticism. However, it must respond to policy changes and so the objectives of the organisation are forever being widened in response to lobby groups pushing for reforms. It is inevitable that compromise, adaptation and re-negotiation are intrinsic aspects of the way children's services operates within a democratic society.

While the Munro review of child protection recommended a reduction in bureaucracy it did not explore the way bureaucratic mechanisms operate. For example, when social workers become socialised into children's services they are required to conform to the systems and routines that are already in place. They learn by working alongside those trying to carry out their duties while taking account of the rights and best interests of those concerned. If teams are under pressure staff may circumnavigate procedures, simply to cope with the heavy workload, and new customs and practices may emerge that deal with unrealistic expectations. Although all social workers should be able to challenge any inappropriate practices, beginning social workers may not have the confidence to resist top-down bureaucratic pressures and speak out about poor practices. If they simply follow the rules and accept what they are required to do they may come to think that social work is little more than a process of routine assessment and child rescue.

Problems arise from the notion of 'social care' in children's services which is at odds with the fact that authorities spend a major part of their budget on child protection work and looked after children. An organisation which presents itself as a service for children in need may be insufficiently focused on ensuring child protection work is of a high professional standard. Meeting time-scales for the completion of needs assessments may become more important than developing good practice in 'at risk' cases, such as the capacity to conduct comprehensive assessments of the family circumstances and be realistic about the barriers to change.

There is a tension between organisational pressures to manage the rising demand for services and the concerns of many social workers who take seriously their child protection responsibilities. However, the necessary conditions to support social workers with decision-making in complex child protection cases are being sacrificed as heavy workloads and staff shortages increase. Without an appropriate framework for supporting high standards of professional practice there is often a downward spiral of demoralised staff, high staff turnover, increased workload pressures and continuing poor standards of child protection practice.

Part of the problem is the drive to 'business management' processes within councils due to the assumption that the provision of 'support services' is the primary function of children's services. Those at the top focus on 'effectiveness' and regard those on the front line as the problem as they allegedly lack the necessary skills. Policies invariably include a strategy of keeping the child in the family as long as possible, avoiding the use of section 47 investigations and keeping down the number of children on child protection plans. Social workers often feel obliged to go to enormous lengths to try to engage the family but find that parents who have not asked for help are unlikely to feel motivated to change. A naive faith in the effectiveness of informal 'safeguarding' work may not be conducive to good child protection practice.

This focus on early intervention has created uncertainty about the arrangements for responding to incidents or allegations that require an urgent response. Consequently, children who are flagged up as possibly at risk of abuse or neglect may suffer delays and poor quality investigations. Social workers are doing their best to respond to the large number of families where parenting is poor but they are encouraged to do this under a safeguarding agenda, not a child protection one. There is much evidence from serious case reviews of poor practice in safeguarding work because some cases never crossed the threshold to 'child protection' and the approach to risk assessment remained superficial and incomplete. The Kent Safeguarding Children Board Review into the tragic death of two-year-old Frankie Hedgecock shows how 'safeguarding' work resulted in unsatisfactory arrangements for information-sharing, risks being under-estimated and an absence of consistent efforts to improve parenting - as explained here.

Bureaucratic rationality contains an element of irrationality. For example, it is taken for granted that the scientific method is to be valued more highly than more subjective ways of studying effectiveness. Consequently, a huge amount of effort goes into recording statistical data on outcomes, implementing evidence-based interventions and designing new strategies to meet the goals of the organisation. There is an absence of attention to subjective knowledge and intuitive understanding. Little thought is given to drawing on the human experiences of those who understand the challenges of front line practice and giving social workers a stronger voice in reforms.

The Recent History of Increasing State Intervention in Family Life

Prior to the Children Act 1989 child care law was very unsatisfactory and injustices arose from the blurring of the boundary between voluntary and compulsory measures. The 1989 Act dealt with this by treating section 17 (children in need) and section 47 (investigation of abuse or neglect) as separate and distinct activities.

The era of Labour government from 1997 onwards was a disaster for child protection. The Victoria Climbie Enquiry provided the justification for Labour's transformation programme. Policies were introduced aimed at promoting an expanded function for children's services and a broader understanding of what constituted risk for children but they never developed in the way intended because the implementation was not informed by the practice experiences of social workers. The introduction of the Common Assessment Framework and accompanying ICT systems had a profound effect on social work practice. It bureaucratised the social work task of assessment and required social workers to gather masses of data - which many parents experienced as bewildering and frustrating. Social work was systematically de-skilled and much practice wisdom was lost.

The underlying theory was that good inter-agency arrangements and early help to families would make more coercive child protection measures unnecessary. Whilst the re-focusing of services towards family support was aimed at reducing parental anxiety, in reality most parents were fully aware of the powers of children's social workers and naturally wary of them. Furthermore, the mantra of 'safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility' sent a message that social workers did not need to be pro-active in investigating child protection concerns. When a new legal duty was introduced to promote the child's 'well-being' this, in effect, created a loophole for local authorities to avoid their duties under section 47.

Social work was dragged away from a clear focus on child protection by the new orthodoxy of 'safeguarding'. Policies of prevention and early intervention introduced a stronger element of duplicity into the social work task. The current lack of clarity about the meaning and purpose of a safeguarding intervention must have an impact on the way the relationship between the social worker and the family develops. Parents now find it difficult to understand to what extent social workers have power over them. Often parents feel pressurised to give consent to a home visit, or voluntary care, without a clear explanation of their rights. As a consequence, they may go through the motions of co-operating with the social worker but resist entering into a genuinely collaborative working relationship.

In-Depth Work

When a more in-depth assessment of the needs of a child is deemed necessary a core assessment must be completed by a social worker. This presumes a good level of professional skills and a clear focus on engaging with the child and parents. However, serious questions about the quality of these assessments have been raised by recent research in England to test a new approach to social work assessments here. While the research found that the new approach did not raise standards, of greater interest is what it revealed about social work practice. The quality of many assessments required improvement because they were often insufficiently informed by the application of professional knowledge and too subjective and superficial. Social workers were unlikely to engage the male member of the family in the assessment, ask probing questions about the concerns, develop an understanding of the family dynamics or consider the level of parenting capacity. This research also exposed a lack of clarity about the reasons for the managerial decision to categorise a case as 'complex child protection' and a failure to ensure social workers developed clear goals with families after serious concerns were identified.

At the heart of good social work is the ethical imperative to do everything possible to improve the wellbeing of the child. Many local authorities now operate as though the labelling of an incident, or allegation, as 'child abuse' is sufficient to justify legal proceedings and permanent removal of the child. There is no room for ambiguity about what may have happened. Decisiveness in care planning is the main objective and many local authorities hope that courts will simply rubber stamp their recommendations. This authoritarian trend must be challenged.

Working in partnership with parents is an important principle. However, as the basis of much child protection work involves uninvited surveillance of family life there are challenges for social workers in establishing trust and genuine partnership. The profession correctly assumes that providing emotional support and a package of services to the family goes some way towards engaging parents and improving the life chances of children. However, as parenting involves aspects of both caring and control it is right that social work practice also operates in a way which includes both.

The child protection plan, a structured, multi-agency approach for working collaboratively with the family, is an excellent tool for this work and should be recognised as a constructive social work intervention aimed at preventing the need for care. The skills required of the social worker in getting alongside the family, offering help, gathering information, assessing risk and reviewing progress generally receive little attention. It is essential that social workers are taught these skills during their training so that they become second nature.

Finally, we cannot avoid the paradox that the social work process of helping in child protection is often experienced by parents as the opposite. In effect, the social worker may be saying to parents: ‘I understand that it is difficult for you, with your background, your lack of resources and stressful circumstances but you must control your anger, attend to your child’s needs, respect sexual boundaries, act more responsibly if you wish to keep your child’. It is only fair and reasonable that parents who are struggling should be made aware of the possible consequences of their behaviour and offered appropriate help to improve their parenting and if changes are then observed the need for more coercive measures will certainly be reduced.

Safeguarding and Child Protection: Similarities and Differences

The function of 'safeguarding' is very broad and can generally be provided by people who are not social workers. Schools have been required to take on a major safeguarding role. This is based on the assumption that ordinary good parents need all the help that society can offer them in the prevention and treatment of any difficulties their child may develop. The aim of safeguarding is to provide parents with evidence-based knowledge about child development - in terms of physical and emotional health, education and protection from harm - while also respecting the wishes of parents.

Safeguarding includes an informal family support approach, such as the 'Team Around the Family', which helps vulnerable children and may prevent more serious problems from developing. Inter-agency information sharing that accompanies this approach generally works well when the parents are co-operative and recognise their need for support. A lower level of social work skills is usually sufficient for this type of work. The profession may claim that safeguarding avoids the use of 'intimidating' child protection procedures. Referrals to children's services are normally categorised as needs assessments despite the fact that many children have needs arising out of unsatisfactory parenting. This process can make some parents feel they are forced to undergo assessments and this can increase the likelihood of parental resistance.

When new information about a case is given to children's services it may need to consider whether the case has crossed the threshold into child protection. If the dilemmas are carefully considered, and sound decisions made and acted upon, this will have a crucial influence on subsequent work. At present it is unclear what criteria managers use to separate out cases which require a section 47 investigation. An assessment under section 17 would be an inappropriate way to engage parents whose pathological features or irresponsible behaviours present a serious risk to a child. If a section 47 investigation is initiated this requires staff who have the necessary skills and support for this complex task.

Unfortunately, the negative connotation given to child protection measures is a major weakness in many authorities. There is no reliable system for organising an appropriate response to clear indicators of risk. The confusion operates at all levels within the organisation and is rooted in opposition to the notion of 'investigation' because it implies a style of work similar to 'policing'. The social work profession has much practice wisdom in section 47 investigations and should ensure they are carried out with sensitivity and respect and in a proportionate and lawful manner.

Changing the Culture

The reforms introduced over the past two decades have revealed more signs of child neglect and sexual exploitation and this has increased demand for social work involvement, putting huge pressures on services. There is now an urgent need to look at the fundamentals of what social workers are now required to do for society and make sure they have the backing of society so that they can do it well. Without this kind of clarity it is difficult to see how children's services can ever function better.

An Effective Response to Indicators of Risk

Some newly qualified social workers do not feel comfortable with the use of authority. Universities are insufficiently focused on providing students with a good understanding of the principles underpinning the Children Act 1989 and ensure they they carry out their legal duties and responsibilities correctly. Consequently, they are not producing social workers who are fit for child protection practice. I have written previously about how social work practice in section 47s needs improvement: Social Work Practice: Section 47. One way of simplifying the task would be to develop a clearer separation of section 47 and section 17 duties.

The conventional wisdom is that risk assessment is complex and difficult and therefore requires input from a range of professionals to understand the elaborate interplay of all the factors. However, in my experience, the situations putting children at greatest risk are relatively easy to spot. These include the following: an adult in the home with a history of violence, incidents of domestic violence, parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol and are socially isolated, a baby who is failing to thrive or frequently presented for medical attention or suffers a serious injury, teenagers who repeatedly go missing from home. All social workers should be trained to look for indicators of risk such as these and to recognise situations where children are at risk of significant harm. This way of thinking seems like common sense to the lay person.

Much of the time social workers are working with families where there is uncertainty about what has happened and risks cannot be labelled clearly. These risks may or may not be serious but if social workers are to understand their significance they need help from managers who fully understand the professional dilemmas. It is not unusual for parents 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 the parent’s cycle of suspicion and hostility towards authority figures. If these parents are to be helped to change the social worker will need to acknowledge and work with these often disturbed and disturbing feelings. Working at this level is a very complex and difficult task and supervision that is informed by psychoanalytic insights can assist this process here .

Unfortunately, a bureaucratic organisation is hardly equipped to grapple with the messy situations some families get themselves into and the deeper aspects of family life. If social workers are to cope with the heavy emotional burden of their responsibilities towards children and families they may have to numb themselves to the distressing situations they deal with, simply as a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, this can result in a more detached styles of working - which may cause them to gradually lose faith in the effectiveness of social work.

Conclusion

The key to good practice is social workers who are more confident, less defensive and more explicit about what they can realistically do. The profession often responds to the death of a child with psycho-babble and political opposition to policing families - which reduces the death of a child to being merely an inevitable product of social forces. Important questions about the realities of a bureaucratic system that is too influenced by the business model and the problems in aligning this with good social work practice are completely avoided.

Hilary Searing