Justine Ogle Stewart is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Northumbria and the Programme Leader for the BSc (Hons) Social Work programme. Justine qualified as a social worker in 1989, and worked as a children and family social worker and Senior Practitioner before moving into a Children’s Services Workforce Development Manager role. Justine’s research interests lie in children’s participation in child protection practice, and in multi -agency-safeguarding arrangements. Justine is a member of a local authority Safeguarding Children’s Partnership Board Learning and Improvement Group.
Justine Ogle Stewart is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Northumbria and the Programme Leader for the BSc (Hons) Social Work programme. Justine qualified as a social worker in 1989, and worked as a children and family social worker and Senior Practitioner before moving into a Children’s Services Workforce Development Manager role. Justine’s research interests lie in children’s participation in child protection practice, and in multi -agency-safeguarding arrangements. Justine is a member of a local authority Safeguarding Children’s Partnership Board Learning and Improvement Group.
Understanding the lived experience of children and young people in child protection is an established legal, moral and practice imperative, promoted through relationship based practice and assessment models. Why is it then, that in the child protection conference the child’s lived experience is rarely articulated by the child in person, or represented through the child’s own words? Whose voice is most likely to be heard?
My recent PhD study sought to understand firstly how decisions over attendance were made, and secondly how children’s lived experience are conveyed to the conference when they don’t attend in person. Decisions over attendance were influenced by assumptions based on age and capacity, with social workers more likely to consider attendance for children aged twelve and over. Social workers also acted in the child’s best interests to protect against seeing and hearing their parent(s) in an angry and upset emotional state. When young people had felt supported to attend, they identified some tangible benefits associated with emotional catharsis, personal growth and life skill development.
Children who do not attend a child protection conference in person are reliant on others, namely the social worker to convey their views, wishes and feelings. Some younger children were considered too young to express a view. Some assessments were rich in narrative, others less so, and as one Independent Reviewing Officer said… ‘there are other cases where I feel like I’m not even sure if anyone has met this kid’. A consistent theme across all social work reports I had access to was the absence of the child’s authentic voice as a consequence of professional filtering and interpretation.
Strength based approaches such as Signs of Safety (Turnell and Edwards,1999) have given rise to a range of direct work tools designed to facilitate communication with children and young people. My research highlighted the prevalence of The Three Houses tool (Weld,2008) as a default approach for ascertaining wishes and feelings, used across the age ranges, but with limited evidence of analysis and contribution towards safety planning. There were some excellent examples of innovative and creative use of tools, however there also examples of work that represented little more than a colouring in exercise.
My research findings question the extent to which contemporary risk assessment approaches have advanced the participation agenda for children and young people who are the focus of child protection conferences. Upholding participation rights in the child protection arena requires social workers to think differently about their relationships with children and young people. We need more conversations. Conversations that challenge assumptions of childhood that position the child as too young or too vulnerable. Conversations that challenge our assumptions of what is means to see, to hear a child’s voice, and to convey this as an authentic voice. Finally, we need conversations that challenge our understanding of child -directed practice. Let us not reduce participation to a colouring in exercise.
References
Turnell, A and Edwards, S. (1999) Signs of Safety: a Solution and Safety Orientated Approach to Child Protection Casework. London W.W. Norton and Company.
Weld, N. (2008) “The Three Houses Tool: Building Safety and Positive Change” in Calder, M.C (ed) Contemporary Risk Assessment in safeguarding Children London: Russell House Publishing.pp224-231.