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Hannah Bows, Editorial: Focus on Social Work with Children and Families, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 51, Issue 6, September 2021, Pages 1937–1941, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcab188
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Introduction
This issue brings together papers focusing on child welfare and safeguarding, both within and outside of the UK context. At the time of writing this editorial, the latest official statistics released by the government reveal that serious child harm cases reported by councils in England rose by nearly 20 percent last year, during the first year of the pandemic (UK Government, 2021a). COVID-related changes—school closures, unemployment and lockdowns reducing children’s contact with a range of services—are identified as potential contributors to this increase although major challenges existed prior this and have been the catalyst for the independent review into children’s social care launched this year (UK Government, 2021b). These have likely exacerbated social and economic inequalities, which our first paper (and Editor’s choice) authored by Rick Hood, identifies as key issues driving demand for child social services. As Hood points out, children in the most deprived areas are over ten times more likely to be placed into care than those in the least deprived neighbourhoods and argues that some of this demand is driven by conditions experienced by children in the most deprived households, such as falling incomes, precarious employment, poor quality housing and food poverty.
An investigation into the state of children’s services by the Guardian revealed a sharp rise in social service referrals in the last eighteen months (Pidd and Quach, 2021). The report revealed that the number of children in care—both residential and in the community—has risen steeply over this period, but foster places are in short supply. This is particularly concerning given the majority of children in care in England live with foster carers. One of the major themes in this issue concerns foster-care and adoption. The first paper on this topic looks at the impacts of Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) introduced in England in 2005 to enable carers to take full responsibility for all aspects of a child’s care—an extension of the normal rights afforded to foster or kinship carers. Woodward et al. examine carer’s experiences and perceptions of SGOs and found most were positive about their role and relationship with the child but some felt unsupported and unprepared, highlighting the need to services to ensure carers are better prepared and provide long-term support for those with SGOs. In the second paper, Fylkesnes et al. consider what constitutes appropriate help and support from the perspective of young people in long term foster-care in Norway. They found that inclusion in the fostering process—having their views matter, agency and autonomy to make decisions, being honest, available, and offering support through regular follow-ups and facilitating a relationship with the birth family were important to the young people who took part in the study. The next paper by Bengtsson and Karmsteen examines the views of birth parents whose children grow up in family foster-care—a neglected area of inquiry, despite most foster children remaining in contact with at least one birth parent. The narratives of parents subject to compulsory placements were dominated by acts of resistance and a general disagreement with the placement. What united these different patterns was a shared desire for recognition of their parenthood and love for their child.
Linda Bell et al. stay on the theme of birth parents, turning their attention to the experiences of ten birth mothers who have experienced successive losses of their children to public care. Through their narratives, they identified that mothers wanted clear and better communication, particularly around decision making, as most mothers were not clear on why their children had been removed. Women wanted to be recognised as mothers and be respected for that role, even after their children had been removed. The women grieved the loss of their children and few were offered post adoption support.
Sarah Wise is concerned with ‘repeat’ removals, where parents lose successive infants and children to out-of-home care in the Australian context and offer a holistic intervention model that brings together professionals and parents to improve outcomes for parents and children.
The authors of the next paper chart the change and continuities in the role of social work in adopt in Scotland since 1968. Ariane Critchley, Polly Cowan, Maggie Grant and Mark Hardy found that over the last five decades the adoption system has shifted from being a process largely overseen by one worker with a locus with each corner of the ‘adoption triangle’ in what was primarily a supportive approach to what can be broadly understood as the tasks of ‘child protection’ and ‘family finding’ and increased turn towards evidencing problems within the birth family.
Looking more broadly at ‘care’ within children’s social services, Neagu examines current approaches and argues that a shift from a ‘welfare’ approach to one that centralises dignity and autonomy as part of a broader child rights model is required in order to ensure young people in care reach their full potential and have equal opportunities. This perspective would seem to lend support to recent calls by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services who, in response to the ongoing independent review into children’s social care, have argued that support and protection are part of a continuum and must be integrated into social work with families and children (Preston, 2021).
The next set of papers examine decision making by child protection social workers. Beth Casey and Simon Hackett examine how child neglect is performed in social work practice and the discourses produced in social workers’ assessments of child neglect through interviews and case files. They found that judgements were often made about whether mothers were good enough, and this led decision making rather than whether a child’s needs were being met or their development severely and adversely impacted. Fathers were notably absent from the analysis of relationships and attachment behaviour, with focus on relationship between child and mother in case files. A similar point is discussed in Linda Bell and others article, where the authors note that work with parents in families where there are child protection concerns often focus on ‘mothers’ who are seen as proxy for ‘parents’. Similarly, Karina Nygren et al. examine the role of gender, (in)equalities and child welfare social work through vignette focus groups with social work practitioners in England, Ireland, Norway and Sweden and also report that there continues to be a heavy focus on mothers in child protection decisions across all four jurisdictions, despite recognition that fathers pose more risk to children than mothers. Collectively, these papers illuminate the continued, disproportionate burden carried by women in child welfare and protection cases.
In the next paper, Paul McCafferty, Joe Duffy and David Hayes explore permanency decisions with regards to looked after children. Using vignette, findings reveal that different decisions were taken by participants although they all clustered around the more interventionist options, with most favouring adoption and foster-care despite viable alternatives offered. Although there was broad consistency related to the rationale for the decisions taken, this did not translate into a consistent permanency option being chosen. He recommends the greater use of structured decision-making tools in permanency decisions to increase their objectivity and consistency.
Ciarán Murphy’s article is also concerned with decision making, in particular, the ways social workers do (or do not) exercise discretion in the best interest of individual children in child protection matters. The author found that social workers were willing to employ discretion in officially recognised or formally granted such as diary management and logistical case management, but were more reluctant in other areas, where they expressed a lack of confidence.
The next two papers are concerned with interventions, specifically Family Group Conferences. Femmianne Bredewold and Evelien Tonkens identify four conditions for successful application of FGC: the presence of a positive network; the need for formal care in addition to informal care by way of the FGC; active protection against paternalism and humiliation; and taking seriously clients’ reluctance to ask social network members for help.
Mary Mitchell examines the value of Recognition Theory in family group conferences and child social care and protection. Mitchell argues that Recognition Theory—which contends that social relations acknowledge and validate personal existence—can be applied to FGC to create the conditions within which participants can experience different forms of recognition.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the next paper by David Wilkins and Donald Forrester reports on client satisfaction amongst parents who have been subject to statutory child and family social services in the UK and found overall low levels of satisfaction, particularly amongst parents from lower socio-economic groups and parents of adolescents. The tension between services and families is one focus of the ongoing independent review into children’s social care, but as the British Association of Social Workers has recently pointed out, negative framings of social workers either doing too much, or not enough, by the media (and sometimes politicians) damages the profession as well as the families they work with (Gill, 2021).
In England, children who have been in care account for 25 percent of the homeless and 24 percent of the prison population, two key issues prompting the current independent review into children’s social care (UK Government, 2021b). These issues are not specific to England, as the next paper reveals. Peter Fallesen examines children’s involvement in three statutory systems: child protective services, mental health services and the criminal justice system in Denmark. Using cohort data from the full population of Danish children born in 1982–1995 who had contact with at least one of these systems, Fallesen assesses how children move between, and are retained within, the three systems across childhood. He observed that most early contact is with child protective services but this trajectory shifts and overlaps with the other systems as children age, with children moving from the position of subject at risk, to a position of subject of risk, across childhood.
Staying with the theme of childhood experiences and outcomes, John Devaney, John Frederick and Trevor Spratt consider the utility of the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) concept and associated research. They argue that although imperfect, ACEs offer a framework to help us ‘see’ the cumulative impact of multiple adverse incidents across time, which result in long-term difficulties for children and their families. They argue for a framework which accounts for the temporality of adversity.
Collectively, the papers in this issue provide important empirical insights into child protection and safeguarding, from the perspectives of children, birth parents, foster parents and social work practitioners, and offer suggestions for how practice and policy might improve for the benefit of children and their families.
References
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