Fifty Years of Social Work

On 29 May 1970 the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, based on the main principles in the Seebohm Report, received royal assent. I was there at the birth of social work as a single profession. The widespread support for the new Social Services Departments was exciting. It seemed that social work as an emerging profession would play a major part in the development of better services for families. These are my recollections of the history of social work for children and families over the past fifty years.

1970 to 1990

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) was formed on 24 April 1970 and brought together seven social workers' organisations (including Moral Welfare Workers!). Probation Officers had been part of the previous social work organisation but their professional association decided not to join BASW.

It took several years for local authorities to reorganise their services to comply with the new Act. At first we were expected to be 'generic workers' and take on cases from each of the previous specialist groups and, although this was an interesting learning experience, there were too many gaps in our knowledge for this to work well. We therefore tended to stay within our previous specialisms initially.

At that time social work practice with children assumed there was a close link between delinquency and child neglect. Work with the family came to be seen as key to addressing both these concerns and sometimes younger children were placed in a residential school and older children in a training centre. Juvenile Courts dealt with cases presented to them where children were 'in need of protection or beyond parental control' - which effectively meant 'protection from cruelty and neglect' or 'at risk of offending'. Where a child was suffering neglect or cruelty, and voluntary care seemed inappropriate, the local authority had to make an application for 'assumption of parental rights'. A written report would be presented to a council committee about the child and family and formal approval was invariably given to a resolution to apply to the Court. Parents were entitled to appeal against the resolution but this was virtually unknown. Magistrates then considered the application and a Care Order would be made.

When children were received into care they were often placed at an Observation and Assessment Centre for a short period of time so that their needs could be assessed and a suitable placement found. After growing concerns about these places, particularly the larger, more regimented establishments, most were closed down. However, my recollection of Olands Assessment Centre in Somerset, a small residential unit in a quiet location for children aged 9-14, was that it served the needs of young people well. It remained open until 1993.

Child guidance clinics were well established and local authorities provided a range of special schools for children, both day and residential, following the recommendations of the multi-disciplinary team. Children with emotional and behavioural problems, whose families were unable to engage effectively in clinic-based work, were more likely to be placed in residential schools. This was regarded as a form of early intervention, offering nurturing and education, while enabling these children to maintain their home base. A number of pioneering schools arose during this period and one founded in 1948, the Mulberry Bush School, still exists and is highly regarded.

The death of 7 year old Maria Colwell in 1973 and the subsequent inquiry eventually led to the introduction of the child abuse register (later re-named the child protection register). This marked a shift away from traditional statutory work using casework skills to a new system of multi-agency working and decision-making. In the early days multi-agency child protection procedures were very concise and easily understood. There seemed to be a broad consensus in society that a small number of families with problems might harm their children and it was necessary for social workers to make use of their statutory powers. This was a time when 'child protection' was a more limited concept and the need for resources being made available to children at risk and their families was generally well understood. During this period social work was not subjected to such intense scrutiny as it is today. The number of children's social workers was also much lower then.

The Children Act 1975 saw the introduction of separate legal representation for a child in court where there is a conflict of interests between a child and his or her parents in certain proceedings under the 1969 Act. Eventually this led to the the establishment of panels of guardians ad litem in 1984 to safeguard the interests of children entering care or in adoption cases.

However, professional concerns about the ethical dilemmas of 'policing' disadvantaged families made some social workers question the new child protection arrangements. The tension between the need to categorise children for the Register and the need to understand the wider circumstances of the family produced some interesting compromises. In some authorities the categories of 'grave concern' or 'failure to thrive' were included - in addition to the current four categories. Also, a sub-division of these categories into 'actual harm' and 'possible harm' appeared in Wales. All of this was aimed at reducing parental anxiety about the professional judgements being made about them.

The introduction of the child abuse register effectively reduced the autonomy of social workers and created a new system of multi-agency working and decision-making. This marked the beginning of a change in organizational culture in which children's social work was gradually transformed into a service with a much greater emphasis on procedures. In addition, the advance of a tough-minded management culture had an impact on social work practice. During the 1980's increased pressures on services, partly due to an increase in the number of sexual abuse allegations being made, were often addressed by the re-structuring of services. Nevertheless, the profession's traditional discourse of 'prevention' continued and contributed to the development of a range of new initiatives. These included the development of Family Centres following the successful initiative by Bob and Annette Holman in setting up the Easterhouse Project in Glasgow.

1990 to 2000

During this period there was a renewed sense that progress was being made. The Children Act 1989 (enacted in 1991) was an excellent piece of legislation and pointed the way to a more balanced approach in child protection work. The new Act effectively integrated good social work practice into the law, with guidance provided in the accompanying booklet 'Principles of the Act'. It also introduced new principles of 'parental responsibility' and 'partnership with parents'.

Initially, the investigative duty under section 47 tended to be the gateway into child protection services and in my authority the Emergency Duty Team ensured that any child protection concerns were dealt with immediately and lawfully. An incident-focused response from social workers resulted in information being collected about known concerns, the family context and any relevant history of family difficulties. All this was carefully considered and a managerial decision was then made about possible risks to the child and the level of intervention. Equally important was the legal duty under section 17 to provide services for children in need. Family Centres were established where statutory social workers developed links with the local community and offered an open door service to individuals and families in need. Social workers were expected to work with families under stress where children were at risk of coming into care. Specialist teams were also established to attend to the needs of children with disabilities, young people in care who presented challenging behaviour, and young people leaving care.

During this time a range of initiatives were developed by the voluntary sector which focused on vulnerable parents and children with special needs and projects set up to engage families living in impoverished communities. The Monroe Young Family Centre in London was established in 1989 to offer assessment and treatment to families where there was known abuse, or serious risk of abuse. Allthough this project was relatively short-lived, its work has given us a deeper insight into the difficulties for skilled workers in coping with the emotional demands of working with families where children are on the edge of care.

The re-focusing debate from the mid 1990's argued that the balance should be shifted away from investigative work because it was stressful for parents and rarely resulted in the provision of support services. There was a growing body of opinion that a greater emphasis should be put on family support and preventative work.

However, the era of the New Labour government from 1997 onwards was a disaster for child protection social work. There appeared to be an element of distrust of the social work profession within government policy. Top-down policies were aimed at promoting a broader understanding of what constituted risk for children and an expanded function for children's services that did not develop in the way intended because it was not informed by the practice experiences of social workers. The Victoria Climbie Enquiry underpinned the thinking of New Labour's transformation programme.

In 1998 the Crime and Disorder Act established multi-agency youth offending teams and a range of orders, including the Anti-Social Behaviour Order. This was followed by the setting up of the Youth Justice Board in England and Wales.

This period also saw moves to introduce a new degree in social work as a strategy for developing a skilled workforce. This was to replace the two-year qualification at sub-degree level, the Diploma in Social Work, which had been an important entry route for people with relevant experience who wanted to qualify as social workers. Radicals tended to regard these developments as ideologically unsound - as the notion of raising the level of professionalism through a more academic approach risked taking social workers further away from the people they serve.

2000 to 2010

The new legislation introduced during this period was less about improving child protection practice and more driven by a government with a political agenda to modernise social care services and develop a skilled and ethically-sound workforce. In 2002 the social work degree was introduced and for the first time students, aged 18, could enter training without any relevant social work experience. The Children Act 2004 shifted the focus of professional intervention away from 'child protection' to one of 'safeguarding' which put a stronger emphasis on the provision of support services to families. This Act also brought about the transfer (in England) of social work for children and young people from the Department of Health to the Department for Education.

However, it later became apparent that the 2004 Act was badly written - because 'duties' were merely 'aspirations' for children's well-being that were often impossible to achieve. The underlying assumption had been that good inter-agency arrangements and early help to families would make more intimidating child protection measures unnecessary. A new mantra appeared - 'safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility' - which sent a message that social workers did not need to be pro-active in investigating child protection concerns. Worse still, the Act promoted the imprecise notion of a professional duty to 'promote the child's well-being' which created a loophole for local authorities to avoid their duties under section 47 of the Children Act 1989.

The introduction of the Common Assessment Framework and the 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 some parents found bewildering and frustrating. It reduced social work to a set of pre-determined tasks and the crucial dynamics of the helping relationship were hardly recognised. Social work practice was also subjected to more efficient scrutiny and control through the introduction of performance measures. This use of 'outcome' measures for children may have been useful for planning purposes but possibly introduced perverse incentives to achieve targets. It also seemed to overlook the importance of sound professional judgement when making a decision about an individual child.

The introduction of the term 'safeguarding' and the widening of the safety net around children certainly gave social workers a more nuanced way of thinking about their role. During subsequent years there was a large increase in cases of neglect and emotional abuse and greater willingness to respond to referrals of child sexual exploitation, children at risk of radicalisation, children who witness domestic abuse and young people exploited through criminal exploitation. Children's services was increasingly expected to take on primary responsibility for a vast array of society's problems.

2010 to 2015

During the five years of the coalition government efforts were made to address some of the problems facing the profession after a series of scandals, including the Baby P case. The Munro Report published in 2011 perceived the failures of child protection as resulting both from problems in the design and operations of organisational systems and the decisions of certain professionals, particularly social workers. Its recommendations included less paperwork and more direct contact with families, an increased focus on the needs of the child and less central government prescription in social work practice. The report did not address the difficult issue of thresholds - something which has subsequently emerged as the main concern of aggrieved parents.

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, recognised that good practice was sometimes undermined by dogma. In 2013 he installed a chief social worker for children and families, Isabelle Trowler, to reform the profession. In 2014 he appointed Sir Martin Narey to consider how social work training for children's social work could be made more rigorous. Most undergraduate courses were generic courses and unable to provide the specialist knowledge base required for children's social work. Furthermore, the shortage of local authority placements meant that many students obtained the social work degree without ever undertaking the social work role in children's services, but went into children's services because there were vacancies there. Martin Narey's report acknowledged these concerns and pointed to the need for training that was more grounded in practice. His report resulted in local authorities taking on more responsibility for newly-qualified social workers’ induction and continuing professional development. Subsequent arrangements meant that learning must be completed to a satisfactory level in the workplace for registration to be confirmed.

Despite a strong professional commitment to improving practice children's social workers were still on the receiving end of a great deal of negative publicity. Some of this was connected with the introduction of greater transparency in the family courts by the President of the Family Division in 2014. This paved the way for a more litigious environment and a greater amount of time and money being spent on resolving conflicts in the court arena. Obviously, courts must have oversight of social work decision-making to ensure that it is lawful but, when errors are exposed, the profession often seemed at a loss to know how to tackle concerns and restore public confidence in social workers.

The way that statistics were initially gathered during this period revealed a curious assumption within the whole system - namely that social work intervention should be framed as 'care and support'. The assessment framework developed to assess children in need and their families remained the standard social work response to all referrals. Statisticians therefore recorded the number of assessments of need for 'care and support' that social workers had completed. Data about the way local authorities fulfilled their duties under section 47 received less attention. In some authorities there was even a reluctance to provide a framework to ensure these legal powers were used appropriately.

The Future

A central problem for children's social workers is how to maintain helpful illusions about their work while facing up to the reality of what they are legally required to do. Along with the commitment to constructive engagement with children and their families goes the need to strengthen the way the local authority delivers its statutory functions. The negative connotation given to child protection measures remains a major weakness in the professional system.

We have had fifty years of children's social work and progress has certainly been made. It is up to the next generation to shape the future of children's social work, learning the lessons from the successes and failures of the past.

Hilary Searing