Participating in Core Groups and Child Protection Conferences

1. Participating in Core Groups and Child Protection Conferences Patrick Ayre Department of Applied Social Studies University of Bedfordshire Park Square, Luton email: pga@patrickayre.co.uk web: http://patrickayre.co.uk

2. Objectives • To gain awareness of the procedures when referring a child or young person to Children’s Services • To understand your role and responsibilities when attending core groups and child protection reviews • To gain knowledge on how to compile a professional report for child protection conferences • To gain understanding of the interagency frameworks and child protection assessment processes, including the use of assessment frameworks

3. Typical natural history of a case • Abuse or cause for concern identified • Consultation/discussion within agency • Referral  Initial Assessment

4. Typical natural history of a case • Multi-agency strategy discussion to plan co- ordinated action • Investigation (s47 or Core Assessment) • Child protection conference to plan further action

5. Initial child protection conference “Where the agencies most involved judge that a child may continue to, or be likely to, suffer significant harm local authority children’s social care should convene a child protection conference”. “The aim of the conference is to enable those professionals most involved with the child and family, and the family themselves, to assess all relevant information and plan how best to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child”. Working Together 2010

6. Initial child protection conference • Brings together and analyses information obtained about the child’s developmental needs and the parents’ capacity to respond to these needs to ensure the child’s safety; • Considers evidence presented to the conference, taking into account present situation, family history and present and past functioning; • Decides whether the child is continuing to, or is likely to, suffer significant harm; • Decides future action required to safeguard and promote welfare, including need for child protection plan, planned developmental outcomes for the child and how best to intervene to achieve these.

7. Review child protection conference • Review whether the child is continuing to suffer, or is likely to suffer, significant harm; • Review health and developmental progress against planned outcomes in the child protection plan; • Ensure that the child continues to be safeguarded from harm; and • Consider whether the child protection plan should continue or should be changed.

8. Discontinuing a plan • No likelihood of significant harm; • Child has moved away; • Child has reached 18 or has died.

9. Core group • Led by named keyworker; • Include the child if appropriate, family members, and professionals or foster carers working with the family. • Arrange for the provision of appropriate services whilst awaiting assessment(s); • Develop the child protection plan as a detailed working tool, and implement it;

10. Core group • Monitor progress against objectives specified in the plan; • Provide a forum for negotiating and working parents, wider family members, and children; • Meet for first time within 10 working days of the initial child protection conference; • Then meet often enough to facilitate working together, monitor actions and outcomes, and make any alterations required.

11. Core group • Each member is jointly responsible • Key worker has the lead role. • Use information about the family’s history and functioning to inform decision making • Keep the focus on the child • Ensure child is seen alone where appropriate • Attend to welfare, wishes and feelings, • Understand the daily life experience of the child and its meaning to them

12. A child centred approach The purpose of assessment is to understand what it is like to be that child (and what it will be like in the future if nothing changes)

13. Checkpoint: Core group research What do social workers say about other professionals? What do other professionals say?

14. Core group: What do social workers say about other professionals? • Have lower tolerance of risk • Unwilling to share responsibility and chores even when social worker new or under pressure • Anxious or less than enthusiastic about getting involved • Try to do the business outside meeting, away from parents; afraid of parents • Sometimes focused on parents instead of child (mirroring)

15. What do other professionals say? • Greater knowledge disregarded and decisions overturned without consultation • Trust difficult because of turnover • Not always possible to be open with parents • Resented demands when peripheral

16. Mental health or drugs issues • Working on the same case but not working jointly • Mutual incomprehension and misunderstanding • False expectations and assumptions • Abdicating responsibility • Need for ‘interpreters’

17. Multi-agency meetings • Collusion vs conflict • Inclusion vs exclusion • Facilitation vs determination

18. Multi-agency meetings • Closed or open groups? • Polarisation • Exaggeration of hierarchy (Reder et al., 1993)

19. Multi-agency meetings: groupthink • Shared rationalisations to support the first adequate alternative suggested by an influential group member; • A lack of disagreement; • An illusion of infallibility; • Negative stereotypes of outsiders; • Direct pressure on dissenters.

20. Multi-agency meetings: groupthink • May appear late in conference; • Outcome determined by information and perspective of social worker; • Group ineffective in challenging risky decision making; • Escalation of commitment and self-justification • Hard to interrupt once symptoms present Kelly and Milner (1996)

21. Conference problems • Attendance at conferences • Protection plans omit objectives and outcomes • Removal from the register

22. Response to overload • Acclimatisation at individual, team, agency and geographical levels • Lack of a strategic multi-agency response

23. Checkpoint: Acclimatisation • Is acclimatisation present in any aspect of your work? • What could you/do you do about it?

24. The Child Safeguarding System (nominal)

25. The Child Safeguarding System (actual?)

26. Reporting to the Conference Two main purposes: • To help the conference to decide if there are grounds for making a CP plan • To help to decide what the plan should be

27. Social worker’s report to conference • Chronology of significant events; • Child’s current and past developmental needs; • Capacity of the parents to ensure the child is safe from harm, and to respond to developmental needs; • Family history and current and past functioning; • Wishes and feelings of the child, parents and other family members;

28. Social worker’s report to conference • Analyses Assessment Framework information • Child’s strengths and difficulties; • Parenting strengths and difficulties; • Family and environmental factors; • Effect of parenting on the child’s health and development. • Includes the local authority’s recommendations

29. Reports of other professionals • Details of involvement with the child and family; • Knowledge of child’s developmental needs; • Capacity of parents to meet these needs; • Impact of current and past functioning and family history on the parents’ capacities; • Wherever possible written report in advance.

30. Reporting to the Conference May seem like a chore BUT: • Can get everything down (less risk of forgetting something or missing it out) • You can check the information and make sure it is accurate. • You can spend time thinking about how you express things • The conference and the other parties will read in advance, so may have less time speaking: • Should only be asked about disputed parts of the report • Those with a different view may not need to ask questions or may even fold!

31. Selling you opinion What would you look for yourself?

32. Selling you opinion • Presentation • Content

34. Presentation • Make it pretty and easy to read • Neat • Double spaced • One side only • Numbered paragraphs and pages

35. Language • Good grammar • Good sentence construction • Simple sentences • No unnecessary, unexplained jargon • Appropriate tone (formal so no slang, no contractions, no use of first names for adults) • Sensitively phased (but not watered down)

36. Content problems • Incomplete • Biased • Conclusions and recommendations poorly argued and justified (or absent altogether)

37. What do they want to know? • Who you are • Why you are reporting • The facts of the case • The conclusions to be drawn from the facts

38. Introduction • Qualifications & current employment • Experience and expertise • How long involved with family and capacity • Purpose of report • Sources of information from which the report is compiled

39. The chain of reasoning Facts  Analysis/summary  Conclusions and recommendations

40. The facts • ‘It is the task of practitioners to share, sift, search for and weigh the significance of their information’ (Morrison 2009)

41. The facts • Family composition (attach a genogram) • Background history (family and individual) • Recent events

42. The facts • Tell the story chronologically without too much editorialising • Facts sufficient support your argument and also to refute counter arguments • First hand evidence is best but give source of any information • Make sure that you have put information as fully and accurately as possible (Checklist: Who, what, when, where, how)

43. Bias and Balance • Include information favourable to ‘the other side’ as well as that favourable to yours • It is your job to make judgements but: • avoid empty evaluative words like inappropriate, worrying, inadequate • Give evidence for descriptive words like cold, dirty and untidy • Beware the danger of facts

44. Bias and Balance Born in 1942, he was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment at the age of 25. After 5 unsuccessful fights, he gave up his attempt to make a career in boxing in 1981 and has since had no other regular employment

45. Lies, damned lies and killer bread Research on bread indicates that • More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users. • Half of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. • More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread. • Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis. • In the 18th century, when much more bread was eaten, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza were common.

46. Incomplete or out of date

48. Can you trust a snapshot?

49. Collecting and interpreting information • Importance of comprehensive family assessments, especially male figures • Need for medical evidence to be considered within the overall context • Understanding thresholds, especially the importance of neglect and emotional deprivation and the need to accumulate evidence

50. Capturing chronic abuse • Judging the impact of long-term abuse is an essential component of any assessment but how well do we do it? • Judgements subjective and prone to bias • Intangible: Difficult to capture and compare • High threshold for recognition • Neglect is a pattern not an event