Putting the Child Back into Child Protection Practice

1. Putting the Child Back into Child Protection Practice ACWA 2012 Masterclass Marian Brandon, Jeanette Cossar, Darren Sharpe m.brandon@uea.ac.uk

2. How carefully do we listen to children living with abuse and neglect? • Do we know what children want, and need, when they are living with abuse and neglect? • How child friendly are our child protection services? • How can young people with experience of the child protection system work as co-researchers in child protection studies – how are the ethical dilemmas tackled? • How can research activities and techniques be used in practice with children?

3. This Masterclass draws on the process and findings of two new studies for the Children’s Commissioner in England and on longer standing government funded research to think about how we take account of what children say and feel in child protection practice. Children’s agency and the balance between Article 12 and Article 3 of the UNCRC are the starting point for this discussion. Article 12 asserts that children’s views should be expressed and given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity while Article 3 stresses children’s rights to the protection and care necessary for their well being. The session will explore the contribution that children and young people make to research about child protection both as subjects and as co-researchers. The key aim of the Masterclass will be to examine what we can take from research for everyday child protection practice.

4. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child • Article 3: the best interests of the child should be primary and governments should act to ensure the child is adequately protected and cared for • Article 12: child’s right to express his or her views in all matters affecting the child, his or her wishes being given due weight in accordance with age and maturity

5. How carefully do we listen to children ? Learning from research

6. The studies Living with Significant Harm - Longitudinal Study (1993-2000) • Gauging children’s well being (over time) when they live with maltreatment and its consequences • Gaining children’s views (over time) about their lives and what has helped them Children and Young People’s Views of the Child Protection System (2010-2011) • Children and young people’s perspectives on the experience of abuse and their experiences of being involved with the formal child protection system • How do children’s views contribute to improving responses to abuse and neglect?

7. The Studies contd. Recognition and Telling: Developing Earlier Routes to Safety for Children and Young People (2011-2013) • How do young people deal with and cope with abuse and neglect, how do they disclose and get help, what are their pathways to safety? • To develop an analysis of approaches and services which young people have found helpful and produce proposals about how to improve access by children and young people to support following abuse and how the child protection system can best respond.

8. Living with significant harm Key Findings and Learning • High levels of re-abuse • Most children stay at home or return home. They ‘live with’ maltreatment and carry the legacy of harm with them into adulthood • Putting the child at the centre of practice means understanding the child in their family context • Children’s views about living with domestic violence reveal its harm and its complexity • Activities and exercises for engaging children – with implications for practice

9. Do we know what children want, and need, when they are living with abuse and neglect? Children’S Views of the Cp system

11. Children’s Views of the Child Protection System (Cossar et al 2011 Don’t make Assumptions) Findings: What is the child’s perception of risk? • Negotiating adult definitions • Taking responsibility for problems within the family • Sibling issues: risk and responsibility • Problems outside of the family I don’t really think like I’m at risk, it’s just my behaviour really, like I don’t really feel like I’m in a risky environment or nothing it’s just that the things I might say just only to my mum because I might be disrespectful to her, might trigger things off. Sol, 14

12. Child’s view of professional concerns • Minimal awareness • Partial agreement: timing and degree • Disagreement with view of parenting • Disagreement - underestimate risk they just seem to have thought my dad’s going to relapse which I don’t think is going to happen, nobody thinks it’s going to happen, they just think it is which is a bit stupid, Sarah, 14.

13. Child’s experience of intervention The benefits of having a social worker • Sharing problems • Practical help including money and transport • Sorting out problems at school • Advocacy • Speaking to each member of family individually and together • Making sure child’s opinion is heard at meetings • Openly discussing disagreements with the child

14. The importance of the relationship with the social worker Child participation in the child protection process Because if you’re not honest with her she can’t really help you and like it’ll make things harder, if you lie about something it will make things harder, because she does try and help you with it. And if it’s not the truth and that, it’s not going to make things any easier and she won’t trust you either. Because you’ve got to trust her and she’s got to trust you, otherwise there’s no point. Louise, aged 15

15. Negative aspects of the relationship • Minimal contact with social worker • Child feeling pressured • Words being ‘twisted’ Well like when I say something, she’d try and twist it around so make it sound like stuff going on, like make them look better and us look worse If I’m having a good day then it’s just like, because I know it’s going to be the same old questions, “is your dad still taking the stuff”, and “has he ever hit you”, it’s just like - shut up

16. Unhelpful aspects of child protection • Intrusion • Increased tension in the family • Stigma You can’t live a normal life, because as soon as I’ve walked out the door pretty much everything I do.... Gets reported back to social services Hannah, 13 My dad he’s more stressed as well because of everything that’s happening because there’s a lot going on. It’s hard for my mum to balance her life with everything they tell her to do. Naheed, 15

17. Implications for practice • Making sense of the child’s view of risk • Managing disparities between the child and professionals’ views • The importance of family dynamics as well as age and understanding • Paying attention to how the social work involvement is affecting the child • The importance of the relationship with the social worker

18. How child friendly are our child protection services? Recognition and telling study

19. Recognition and Telling Study Phase one, gaining knowledge and building a model of services: • Literature review about help seeking and telling • What children say when they contact ‘ChildLine’ message board about abuse and neglect - how they ask for help. • Interviews with 30 vulnerable young people aged 11 +. What’s helpful or discouraging about ‘telling’ and help seeking? What keeps you safe? • 1 focus group with approx 8 adult family members. What’s their experience of support services for their children? What’s their experiences of confidentiality ?

20. Recognition and Telling Study • 2 focus groups with approx 8 professionals. How can access to support services be improved for children and young people? What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing practices for managing confidentiality? • 2 workshops with approx 8 children people (1 primary and 1 secondary school age). How do children and young people recognise abuse and neglect? What help do they want? • Use the information to build a model of helping

21. Recognition and telling Phase two, testing the model of helping and passing on the learning • Test the model re-run same focus groups and workshops • Present the model to a group of policy makers • Refine the model

22. Early findings from literature review • Gaps in understanding of whether and how children and young people recognise abuse and neglect. • Not clear what behaviour children consider to be maltreatment (which validates our study) 2 potentially different approaches to a model for earlier help: • Build on mostly adult oriented understandings of maltreatment and teach children what abuse and neglect is so that they are better able to recognise it and seek help. • Find out more about what children think is unacceptable and abusive and adopt a model in the light of their perspectives not adults’.

23. Focus Group Exercise • What can we learn from the way young people experiencing abuse and neglect access early help in your setting? • How do you think access to support services could be improved for children and young people experiencing maltreatment? • What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing practices for managing confidentiality in your setting?

25. Video • link

27. Early findings from ChildLine message boards • Message board users are preoccupied with whether or not a problem counts as abuse, and what should be done. • Often a dilemma that the young person feels the situation cannot continue, but does not know what to do. • For some, message boards offer a first attempt at telling.

28. Young people with experience of the child protection system as work co-researchers How does it work, ethical dilemmas

29. Young Researchers • Fluid team of up to 10 young researchers, aged 17+ employed on casual contracts – up to 30 hours work for the life of the project • Commitment to young people’s agency throughout study. Important to have perspectives of vulnerable young people with experience of maltreatment in the research team and understand the terms they use to discuss abuse and neglect • Roles in research design, preparation of interview schedules and activities, facilitate workshops, and analysis of ChildLine message board, interviews and workshops.

30. Ethical issues • Payment may compromise benefit payment • Distress about upsetting information (secondary trauma) • Feeling overwhelmed and not up to the task • Difficult to manage sensitive issues, like over-disclosure at workshops, disclosure from fellow young researchers • Young researchers may not respect participants’ confidentiality • Young researchers posing a risk to participants or participants posing a risk to young researchers

31. Ethical issues emerging • Young researchers are part of the project because they want to make a difference. How will they feel: if the findings are rejected by policy makers, if the findings are not well received at dissemination? • Young researchers have their own personal stories to tell and want to add these to the study

32. Learning from research for practice Interviews with children

33. Learning for practice from research: the activity based interview • Screening questionnaire – have you experienced abuse or neglect? • Helping people cards – with vignettes, then using your experience • Confidentiality • Worry people • Rounding up questions – what could have been done differently, what’s helped the most, what’s your one message for us to take back to the Children’s Commissioner?

34. References • Brandon, M., Thoburn, J., Lewis, A., and Way, A., (1999) Safeguarding Children with the Children Act 1989, London: The Stationery Office. • Brandon, M., Schofield, G., and Trinder, L., (1998) Social Work with Children, Basingstoke: Macmillan • Brandon, M., and Thoburn, J., (2008) ‘Safeguarding children in the UK: a longitudinal study of services to children suffering or likely to suffer significant harm’ Child and Family Social Work, 13(4) 365-377 • Cossar, J Brandon M and Jordan P (2011) Don’t make assumptions: children and young people’s views of the child protection system, Office of the Children’s Commissioner/UEA