Overcoming barriers to child-centred practice

1. Overcoming barriers to child-centred practice Vivienne Barnes 21.3.18

2. Insider/outsider view

3. 1 Background to child-centred practice • Child-centred practice: the context • Perspectives on children and childhood • Children’s rights and child-centred practice II Developing skills in child-centred practice • Communicating with and developing relationships with children and young people • Empowerment, participation and advocacy skills • Breaking down the barriers? III Specific fields of child-centred practice   • Child protection and safeguarding • Children and young people who are looked after

4. Child centred practice – a cliché? Assessment Framework Child at the centre (DfE, 2015) Munro Review of Child Protection ‘A child-centred system’ (Munro, 2011)

5. Why do we need to be reminded ? • Failures in protecting children, especially babies and young children, from abuse and neglect. • Direct complaints by children and young people looked after in foster and residential care that their voices are not heard.

6. SRC> Child protection: Findings from Serious Case Reviews Professionals: • Did not see children frequently enough, or ask about their views and feelings. • Did not listen to adults who tried to speak on the children’s behalf, and who had important information • Were prevented by parents and carers from seeing and listening to children. • Focused too much on the needs of parents, especially on vulnerable parents, and overlooked the implications for children • Did not interpret their findings well enough to protect the child. (Ofsted, 2010; Sidebotham, 2016)

7. Children and young people looked after in foster and residential care say they want : • To be listened to • To be involved in decisions about their lives • To be treated with respect • People who care • Continuity – of placements, social workers, education (Butler and Williamson, 1994; Barnes, 2012; Pert el al, 2017)

8. Still not listened to............? • ‘I just want someone to listen and understand what I want to happen’ (Butler and Williamson, 1994) • ‘They [social workers]don't listen to children's views - don't listen to what we want. They just jump in at things like a bull at a gate.’(Barnes, 2012) • ‘What’s the point [of attending review meetings]? Nothing ever changes so there is no point’ (Pert et al., 2017)

9. Progress? • Children and young people attending case conferences • New media resources for consulting children and young people, and consultation forums • Teams around the child, Signs of Safety • Independent Reviewing Officers and advocates

10. What is Child-centred practice, anyway? DEFINED THROUGH RIGHTS AND UNCRC? • ‘The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides a child-centred framework within which services to children are located.’(Munro, 2011) • Child-centred practice related to the different strands of children’s rights in the UNCRC, - of provision, protection and participation. (Rasmusson et al., 2010) DEFINED THROUGH BEST INTERESTS? ‘There is no general agreement of what a child-centred approach is, but the basic principle involves engaging with children and their families, understanding and providing services that reflect their individual needs and taking into account their wishes and feelings, but remaining aware that they may not yet fully understand the risks involved in their choices’ (Goodyer, 2011)

11. Critiques • A person-centred or child-centred approach in social work is misplaced since social workers are not helping their service users to ‘self actualise’ (as in client-centred therapy) but are using relationships instrumentally in e.g. assessments of risk(Murphy et al., 2013) • So called ‘child-centred approaches’ do not go far enough in taking account of the inequalities in power between social work professionals and children. We need to be ‘child- directed’ (Fern, 2014)

12. Towards a Definition..... • Ascertaining children’s wishes and feelings by communicating appropriately in terms of age, language, ethnicity and ability; • Maximising their participation in discussions about their welfare; Including them in decision making; • Taking account of their strengths and their unique knowledge of their own situation; • Making sure that any judgements about what is in a child’s best interests and any perceived limitations of risk should not be allowed to dominate completely and hinder professionals from taking account of children’s agency; • Facilitating the access to independent advice or advocacy, especially where a social worker’s or agency’s views conflict with those of a child.

13. Barriers to child centred practice? ORGANISATIONAL • Resources Resource driven services, Pressures of time, Workloads, Locum workers (No Good Options, 2017) • Austerity What in British social policy is referred to as the imposition of ‘higher eligibility criteria’ in social care is a polite way of saying that basic services that people require for a decent existence and to which they have been entitled for decades will no longer be available and that they will have to get by, somehow, without support. (Ferguson and Lavalette, 2013)

14. Barriers to child centred practice? Bureaucracy • Social worker told to ‘do less visits to families and do more paperwork’ (Gibson, 2016) • ‘Just there doing a job’ (Barnes, 2012) • Managerialism Monitoring, evaluation and control (Hughes and Wearing, 2013) Affected by ‘blame culture’ (Jones, 2014)

15. Barriers to child centred practice? Decisions • Rigid procedures? • Resource - led? Attitudes to children and young people • Paternalist / ‘developmentalist’– children as ‘incompetent’, ‘immature’ • Protectionist – children as ‘vulnerable’ Barriers to good relationships‘Tasks, Trust, Threats, Theories, Training, Tools and Time’(Winter, 2011)

16. Taking steps? • Changing the culture Times of meetings child friendly meetings and offices • Making and spending time Social workers in child protection teams spent 70-90% of their time on administration (Gibson, 2016) • Challenging the organisational ethos Changing systems – putting children at the centre (Gibson and O’Donovan, 2014) Professional/ group action?

17. Taking steps? Child-centred supervision • Photo of child • What type of relationship do you have with the child/ young person? • To what extent does the child/ young person trust you? • In what ways have you provided information to the child/ young person? • In what ways have you encouraged the child/young person to be involved in decision making? (McPherson and Macnamara, 2016)

18. Taking steps? Building on progress • Communication • Advocacy and participation • Social pedagogy • Awareness of oppressive social attitudes to children – children as ‘social actors’?

19. Some Dilemmas of Child Centred Practice • Risk and rights e.g. young people and access to media • Domestic abuse victims and their children • Sharing information with other professionals and confidentiality - losing trust of young people • Very young children – how to include them • Child Sexual Exploitation – working with young people who don’t engage

20. Example: Balancing rights and risks • Sani- 13 year old in foster care • Was rejected by her family because of her relationship with a15 year old boy • Her father found naked images of her on her mobile phone that she had sent to her boyfriend • The police became involved and interviewed the boyfriend • Sani is not allowed to see him or communicate with him at all, and she is not allowed to have her mobile phone.

21. https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/?SF1=barcode&ST1=9781137606419https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/?SF1=barcode&ST1=9781137606419 • Email k.v.barnes@sgul.kingston.ac.uk

22. References • Barnes, V. (2012) Social Work and Advocacy with Young People: Rights and Care in Practice, British Journal of Social Work, 42 (7): 1275-1292. • Butler, I. and Williamson, I. (1994) Children Speak: Children, Trauma and Social Work. London: Longman/ NSPCC. • Department for Education (2015b) Working Together to Safeguard Children. London: DfE. • Ferguson, I. and Lavalette, M. (2013) Crisis, Austerity and the Future(s) of Social Work in the UK. Critical and Radical Social Work, 1(1): 95-110.  • Fern, E. (2014) Child-Directed Social Work Practice: Findings from an Action Research Study Conducted in Iceland, British Journal of Social Work, 44 (5): 1110-1128. • Gibson, M. (2016) Social Worker or Social Administrator? Findings From a Qualitative Case Study of a Child Protection Social Work Team, Child and Family Social Work, doi:10.1111/cfs.12335. • Goodyer, A. (2011) Child-Centred Foster Care: A Rights-Based Model for Practice. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. • Hughes, M. and Wearing, M. (2013) Organisations and Management in Social Work, 2nd edition. London: Sage. • Jones, R. (2014) The Story of Baby P. Setting the Record Straight. Bristol: Policy Press.

23. References • McPherson, L. and MacNamara, N. (2016) Supervising Child Protection Practice: What Works? An Evidence Informed Approach. London: Springer. • Munro, E. (2011) The Munro Review of Child Protection: Final Report: A Child-Centred Approach. London: The Stationery Office. • Ofsted (2010) The Voice of the Child: Learning Lessons from Serious Case Reviews. A Thematic Report of Ofsted’s Evaluation of Serious Case Reviews from 1 April to 30 September. • Pert, H., Diaz, C. and Thomas, N. (2017) Children’s Participation in LAC Reviews: A Study in One English Local Authority, Child and Family Social Work, 22 (S2): 1-10. • Rasmusson, B., Hyvönen, U., Nygren, L. and Khoo, E. (2010) Child-Centred Social Work Practice -Three Unique Meanings in the Context of Looking after Children and the Assessment Framework in Australia, Canada and Sweden, Children and Youth Services Review, 32(3): 452-459. • Sidebotham, P., Brandon, M., Bailey, S., Belderson, P., Dodsworth, J., Garstang, J., Harrison, E., Retzer, A. and Sorensen, P. (2016) Pathways to Harm, Pathways to Protection: A Triennial Analysis of Serious Case Reviews 2011 to 2014 Final Report. London: Department for Education. • Winter, K. (2011) Building Relationships and Communicating with Young Children: A Practical Guide for Social Workers. Abingdon: Routledge.