TRANSITIONS IN SOCIAL
WORK WITH CHILDREN
AND FAMILIES
3rd International Congress of the Swiss
Association of Social Work (SGSA)
September 2015
Harriet Ward
Centre for Child and Family Research (CCFR)
Loughborough University, UK
What professional transitions has social work
made over time in response to changes in:
• Political and economic circumstances?
• Ideological perspectives on the relationship between
the state and the family?
• Understanding of children’s developmental needs?
• Understanding of children’s rights?
• Understanding and acceptance of diversity?
• Evidence of the prevalence and consequences of
maltreatment?
• Evidence of outcomes of interventions?
19TH CENTURY FACTORS
THAT WILL CHANGE OVER
TIME
James 1860
• Refused support in the
community (outdoor relief)
because mother drank and
had had three illegitimate
children
• Entered the workhouse
where family were
separated
• Sent to a district school
away from family
• Apprenticed to a fisherman
at age 12
• Ran away at 14
• Sent to a reformatory at 15
Economic/Political/Ideological perspective
• Inadequate wages/casualised labour force/cyclical
unemployment – ‘surplus population’
• Increasing inequality, widespread destitution
• Fears of dependency/loss of personal responsibility
• Stigmatisation of illegitimacy
• Outdoor relief/family support services not acceptable
as would not be a deterrent
• Indoor relief (the workhouse) intended to deter
through stigmatisation/shame/separation
• Less eligibility: The pauper’s situation shall not be
made really or apparently so eligible as the situation
of the independent labourer of the lowest class
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•
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•
•
Understanding of children’s developmental
needs: education
Tensions between less eligibility principle and
need to ensure economic independence
Fear of subversion – writing but not reading
Bible-based learning by rote– conformity and
social control
To become employable, not to meet
potential
Some understanding of relationship between
destitution/ignorance and delinquency
Sarah : 1880
• Admitted to voluntary
society 1880s
• Placed as far away from
home as possible – in
residential home for girls
in moral danger
• Letters from mother not
passed on
• Placed in domestic service
at 14
• Returned as ‘unsuitable’
at 15
• Returned to work
Understanding of children’s developmental
needs: social and emotional
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Interest in nutrition, particularly infants
Debates concerning vaccination
Spare the rod and spoil the child
No understanding of attachment
Lack of transparency
Understanding of Rights
• Father had right to: lawful punishment; child’s
earnings if dependent; custody; refuse consent to
marriage
• Married mother ‘entitled to no power, but only to
reverence and respect’
• Unmarried mother had no rights – illegitimate child
was filius nullius
• Children no rights – except redress from criminal
courts if injured or killed by parent
• Child welfare legislation introduced at end of 19th
Century sets out terms under which parents can lose
their rights on grounds that they are unfit to look
after a child
• Public and charitable support for dependent children
was regarded as social largesse
Understanding diversity
• Purpose to engender conformity and
suppress diversity
– Severance policies of voluntary societies
– Juvenile emigration from UK
– Enforced separation of aboriginal children in
Australia/Canada
– Enforced separation of Yenish children in
Switzerland
Understanding maltreatment
• Debates concerned definition rather than
prevalence or consequences
• Difficult to distinguish:
– Physical abuse from father’s right to chastise child
– Domestic abuse from husband’s right to chastise wife
• Neglect and exploitation identified in 1880s
• Sexual abuse identified in 1880s but defined in
terms of exploitation by strangers
Understanding outcomes of care
• Rarely questioned
• Extreme poverty led to poor outcomes for
children in foster care
• Children in residential care (Poor Law and
voluntary):
– better fed, better educated, better health
care than contemporaries
– conformity. respectability, loss of identity
Transitions to adulthood from care
• Early transition to independence – but probably later
than peers
• Low aspirations - training for domestic service,
merchant marine, casual labour
• Few boys better equipped for labour force than
fathers
• After care monitoring and support
• High percentage of adolescents sacked because
‘unsuitable’
• Concerns about transitions to adulthood from poor
law institutions - high levels of prostitution and
criminality
Social worker’s role
Poor Law Officers: (public services)
• Stigmatisation by association
• Arrangement and monitoring of placements in foster care
• After care
• Increasing professionalisation – but no training
• Poor quality residential care staff
Voluntary society workers:
• Patronage and belief in superiority of middle classes
• Arrangement and inspection of foster care
• Amateurs – no training
• Some formidable women
TRANSITIONS IN THE
20TH CENTURY,
FOLLOWING
DEVELOPMENT OF
WELFARE STATE
Shareen : 1970
• Support from universal services
–health, education
• Family support included
holidays, food, occasional cash
• Received initially into short
term care in response to
mother’s illness
• Placed with unrelated foster
carers, apart from siblings
• Lost touch with mother and
siblings
• Placed in residential home
when foster placement broke
down
Economic/Political/Ideological situation
• Until 1960s state could only support families
through universal services – social care provided
on the basis of separation and concept of the
unfit parent.
• 1963 : advice, guidance and assistance to
prevent the need for care – including cash
• Drivers for change:
– less fear of dependency/acceptance of collective
responsibility
– introduction of welfare state
Understanding of children’s developmental
needs (1970s)
• Mass evacuation in WWII had led to questions
about attachment
• Bowlby’s work on attachment
• Closure of residential nurseries and some of the
larger children’s homes – more children placed
in foster care
• Improved transparency – more attention given
to children’s views – Who Cares? movement
Understanding of rights and diversity
• Movements to suppress diversity challenged
(Juvenile emigration ended 1967; Hilfswerk
fur die Kinder der Landstrasse closed down
in 1973)
• 1924 first international Declaration on Rights
of the Child
• In UK - Concerns that state was ignoring
parents rights – arbitrary parental rights
resolutions, loss of family contact in care
Understanding prevalence and consequences
of abuse
• Concerns re physical abuse re-emerging in 1970s
• Concerns re sexual abuse 1980s
• Poor understanding of emotional abuse, neglect
and their consequences
• Minimal understanding of prevalence or longterm consequences
• Increasing awareness of abuse in state
institutions
Understanding the outcomes of care
• Few questions asked about outcomes
• Tensions: is purpose of care to provide food, clothing
or to enable children to fulfil their potential?
• Insufficient attention to children’s health, education,
emotional and behavioural development , preparation
for independence
• Children in residential care isolated from their peers
• Persistent low aspirations
• Conditions in community improved – care unlikely to
be as beneficial as previously
Transition to adulthood from care 1980s
• Renewed concerns about poor outcomes for
care leavers:
– Compressed and accelerated transitions
– Low expectations and poor qualifications
– Poor preparation
– Isolation
Shareen 1980 • Left care age 16 with no
•
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qualifications
No practical preparation for
independence
Unskilled ‘monkey’ job
Placed in bed and breakfast
accommodation
Lost job after three weeks
Moved in with abusive
partner and quickly became
pregnant
Role of social worker 1980s
• Professionally qualified fieldwork staff
• Residential staff rarely qualified - no tradition of
pedagogy
• Generic social workers introduced in 1970s
• Increasing emphasis on skills – sometimes to the
exclusion of a knowledge base
• Relationship-based support to children and
parents
• Unfocussed – minimal long-term planning;
reviews of progress; consideration of
effectiveness
TRANSITIONS TOWARDS
THE INCLUSION OF
PARENTS THROUGH THE
CHILDREN ACT 1989
AND UNCRC
Steve 2005
• Extensive attempts to prevent
need for separation
• From age of eight periods of
short-term temporary care
• Committed to care at twelve
because of physical abuse and
risk of sexual abuse
• Placed initially with
grandparents
• Following breakdown placed
with unrelated foster carers
• Educational catch up support
• Psychotherapeutic support
• Continued contact with birth
mother
Political/ Ideological perspective
• Rise of neo-liberalism – retraction of the state
• Reinforcement of individual responsibility/
fears of dependency
• Rebalancing of relationship between state and
parents through Children Act 1989
• Enduring parental responsibility
• Abolition of concept of unfit parent
Children Act 1989 : moves towards
the inclusion of parents
• Duty to promote the upbringing of children in
need by their families
• Requirement to place with a family member if
possible
• Presumption of contact
• Duty to provide services for children in need to
promote their satisfactory development
• Care/ accommodation as part of a continuum of
services to meet children’s needs, not to punish
parents
UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child (1989)
• Similar focus on developmental needs:
• Right to:
Life
Protection from abuse
Enjoyment of highest attainable standard of health
Standard of living adequate to physical, mental,
spiritual, moral and social development
– Education
– Rest and leisure
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–
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–
Children’s developmental needs
Outcomes of care (Parker et al, 1991)monitored in terms
of potential for achieving long-term wellbeing in
adulthood:
– Health
– Education
– Identity
– Family and Social Relationships
– Emotional and Behavioural Development
– Social Presentation
– Self Care Skills
Every Child Matters – outcomes for all children; reducing
the gap between most and least vulnerable
Understanding and acceptance of diversity
• Partnership principle
• Empowerment
• Anti-discriminatory practice
Evidence of prevalence and consequences of
maltreatment
• In UK , 2.5% children 0-10 and 6% 11-17 abused
or neglected by caregivers each year (Radford et
al. 2011).
• Impact affects all areas of child development:
neuro-biological, cognitive, social, emotional,
behavioural
• Consequences can persist into adulthood
• Abuse and neglect seen as public health issues
requiring coordinated inter-agency response
Evidenced interventions to support parents
and children
• Programmes to engage parents (eg motivational
interviewing)
• Intensive parent-focussed programmes (eg Parents
Under Pressure)
• Holistic, family focussed programmes (eg MST-CAN)
• Programmes to support attachment:
Interaction guidance
• Enrichment programmes:
– Peer-led social skills training
– Nurture groups
– Letter Box club
34
Evidence of outcomes of care
• Number of children in care reduced by c50%
(now rising as family support services cut)
• Majority of children in care have been
maltreated
• Majority of maltreated children do better in
care in terms of stability and child welfare
outcomes (Wade et al, 2011)
• More attention to outcomes, but insufficient
expertise, too few specialist services
Steve 2015
• Achieved sufficient grades
to enter university
• Financial support through
university
• Remained with foster
carer until graduated
• Normative transition to
adulthood
Outcomes for care leavers 2014
• 6% in higher education (compared with 33%
peers)
• 33% make the transition from care to
independence before their eighteenth birthday
(more than four years before their peers)
• 41 % not in education, training or employment
(compared with 15% peers)
• Care leavers with most complex needs gain least
access to services
• 64% care leavers services rated as requiring
improvement or inadequate
Implications for social worker’s role
• Knowledge and understanding of abuse,
neglect and their impact on childhood
development
• Relationship skills plus evidence based action
• Expertise in assessing need and monitoring
progress
• Expertise in accessing and/or delivering
evidence-based programmes
• Professionalism with a human touch
Transitions in social work with children and
families
• From reducing dependency to taking collective responsibility – and back
• From rescuing children through separation and denigration to working in
partnership with parents
• From eradicating difference to celebrating diversity
• From meeting basic needs to upholding rights
• From challenging to denying to understanding abuse and neglect
• From amateur to professional to generic to specialist
• From working in isolation to inter-agency collaboration
• From intuitive relationship based action to structured evidence based
intervention to an integrated approach
• Maintaining a sense of mission within an increasingly hostile working
environment
Auf Weidersehen
Danke Schoen
Contact:
• H.ward@lboro.ac.uk