Inter-professional working in child protection with families with long-term and complex needs

Within the United Kingdom there is growing awareness of the need to identify and support the small number of children who are living in families experiencing multiple problems. Research indicates that adverse experiences in childhood can result in poor outcomes in adulthood in terms of lack of employment, poorer physical and mental health and increases in social problems experienced. It is acknowledged that most of these children are known to child welfare professionals and that some are referred to social services, subsequently entering the child protection system. This paper reports research conducted with twenty-eight experienced child welfare professionals. It explores their views about families known to the child protection system with long-term and complex needs in relation to the characteristics of children and their families; the process of intervention with families; and the effects of organisational arrangements on practice. The research indicates that these families are characterised by the range and depth of the problems experienced by the adults, such as domestic violence, mental health difficulties and substance misuse problems, and the need for professionals to have good inter-personal skills and access to specialist therapeutic services if families are to be supported to address their problems.

Fast, quantitative nucleoside protection under solvent-free conditions

Persilylation of nucleoside hydroxyls was effected in quantitative yields under solvent-free conditions using a ball mill. In addition, one-pot persilylation and acylation of cytidine was performed as an exemplar reaction demonstrating the utility of solvent-free approaches to nucleoside chemistry.

Retrodirective Antenna Spatial Data Protection

In this letter, we show how a 2.4-GHz retrodirective array operating in a multipath rich environment can be utilized in order to spatially encrypt digital data. For the first time, we give experimental evidence that digital data that has no mathematical encryption applied to it can be successfully recovered only when it is detected with a receiver that is polarization-matched to that of a reference continuous-wave (CW) pilot tone signal. In addition, we show that successful detection with low bit error rate (BER) will only occur within a highly constrained spatial region colocated close to the position of the CW reference signal. These effects mean that the signal cannot be intercepted and its modulated data recovered at locations other than the constrained spatial region around the position from which the retrodirective communication was initiated.

Imaging the future: theatre and change within the child protection system

The use of social pedagogy as a paradigm for critically appraising developments within child and family social work has been largely neglected. This paper outlines the work of Augusto Boal and his adoption of social pedagogy as a method for empowering oppres-sed social groups in Brazil. It is argued that Boal’s approach can be adapted by using action research techniques to analyse and effect change in situations where child care professionals face daily contradictions in their attempts to both protect children and support families. To demonstrate its relevance to child care practice, a description is provided of how the approach was used with two groups of social work students – one undertaking qualifying training, the other post-qualifying training. The results of this application suggest a new theoretical framework for practice which aims to establish communicative consensus around the needs of children and a mutual appreciation of roles and responsibilities.

Developing critical social work in theory and in practice: child protection and communicative reason

This paper argues that a critical analysis of the ideologies that inform contemporary child care has been missing from the ‘re-focusing debate’. Such an analysis points up the necessity of reasserting a critical social work position in order to provide a basis for reconstructing practice and engaging with other social actors and their ideologies in an open and creative fashion compatible with Habermas’ aspiration of ‘communicative reason’.