A Model for Understanding Worker Premises in Child Protection

Considers the use of premises in child protection and offers a model how they are constructed to avoid bias

Child Protection Work and Family Support Practice in Five Family Centres

Academic interest in the work of family centres in the United Kingdom has largely been concerned with categorising the work of such centres in terms of issues of childcare ideology, working practices and degree of service user control. Meanwhile, the re-focusing of child protection services in order to develop child welfare services has largely dominated childcare social work in recent years, with scant attention paid to the role of family centres in relation to this debate. This study is concerned with examining the perspectives of staff and service users in five 'client focussed' family centres in Northern Ireland in relation to how child protection issues are understood and dealt with. It was found that staff enter into negotiations with both referrers and service users to conceptually reframe child protection work as family support practice. This leads to the development of partnership relationships between staff and service users based upon mutual high regard. The work of such centres leaves them well placed to provide integrated services to children in need in line with current government priorities, but could leave some children vulnerable where child protection issues are not amenable to conceptual reframing along family support lines.

Adoption from Care in Northern Ireland: Problems in the process

This is a study of the processes for freeing children for adoption in Northern Ireland. The focus was the time taken from admission to care to adoption order. The findings confirmed that the process is dogged by delay at each stage. In total the average time from the child becoming looked after to the granting of an adoption order was 4.5 years. Most of the time taken was in the stages for which social services had lead responsibility, principally the decision to pursue adoption as the plan for a child. The children were very young when admitted to care - average age 1 year 7 months. Most were admitted to care because they were being neglected. Their parents were well known to social services and had multiple problems. Most parents unsuccessfully contested the social services' application and this contributed much to the delay. Their former foster parents adopted almost half of the children and these children tended to be placed more quickly with their adopters than those placed with adopters who were not their foster parents prior to the adoption process.

Substance Use among Young People Living in Residential State Care

Existing empirical evidence on substance use among young people living in residential state care during adolescence is comparatively limited. This paper reports on substance use trends of young people living in residential state care during three annual data-sweeps when aged 14, 15 and 16 years. A repeated cross-sectional research design was utilised in the research. The findings suggest some similarities for lifetime prevalence rates for tobacco and alcohol use for those living in residential state care with a group of same-age young people not living in residential state care who participated in the research. However, solvent abuse and cannabis use was higher among those living in care. More frequent substance use was reported by the residential care sample for all substances at each stage of the study. These findings suggest that young people living in state care continue to merit higher levels of vigilance from researchers and policy-makers in order to fully understand this behaviour and develop appropriate prevention initiatives to meet their needs regarding potential drug problems.

Child Welfare Interventions: Patterns of Social Work Practice

Some 10 years ago one of the authors embarked on a research study examining the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare practice orientation (Spratt, 2000; 2001; Spratt and Callan, 2004). The research reported here develops that work; examining how social workers respond to ‘child care problems’ (CCPs). The results indicate that Northern Irish Health and Social Services Trusts (equivalent to Local Authorities in England and Wales) have responded to social policy goals to balance the protection of a lesser number of children whilst meeting the welfare needs of the greater by reducing the number of referrals designated ‘child protection investigations’ (CPIs) and increasing the number of CCPs. Closer analysis reveals, however, that a filtering system has been developed by social workers to address perceived child protection risks within CCP cases. Paradoxically, this leads to early closure of the more concerning cases, with service provision largely confined to the least concerning. The authors argue that the ways in which social workers balance social policing and supportive functions in practice may indicate possible responses to an increase in referred families anticipated within Every Child Matters (Chief Secretary to the Treasury, 2003).

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’.

Recognising the co-occurance of domestic and child abuse: a comparison of community and hospital-based midwives

This study aimed to compare and contrast how midwives working in either hospital or community settings are currently responding to the cooccurrence of domestic and child abuse (CA), their perceived role and willingness to identify abuse, record keeping, reporting of suspected or definite cases of CA and training received. A survey questionnaire was sent to 861 hospital and community midwives throughout Northern Ireland which resulted in 488 midwives completing the questionnaire, leading to a 57% response rate. Comparisons were made using descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation, and the questionnaire was validated using exploratory factor analysis. Community midwives reported receiving more training on domestic and CA. Although a high percent of both hospital and community midwives acknowledged a link between domestic violence (DV) and CA, it was the community midwives who encountered more suspected and definite (P <0.001) cases of CA. More community midwives reported to be aware of the mechanisms for reporting CA. However, an important finding is that although 12% of community midwives encountered a definite case of CA, only 2% reported the abuse, leaving a 10% gap between reporting and identifying definite cases of CA. Findings suggest that lack of education and training was a problem as only a quarter of hospital-based midwives reported to have received training on DV and 40% on CA. This was significantly less than that received by community midwives, as 57% received training on DV, and 62% on CA. The study suggests that midwives need training on how to interact with abused mothers using non-coercive, supportive and empowering mechanisms. Many women may not spontaneously disclose the issues of child or domestic abuse in their lives, but often respond honestly to a sensitively asked question. This issue is important as only 13% of the sample actually asked a woman a direct question about DV.

Working with a child Exposed to Community and Domestic violence in Northern Ireland: An Illustrated Case Example.

The focus of this paper is on the author’s multi-modal therapeutic practice with a 7-year-old boy referred to the Family Trauma Centre, following paramilitary assaults on his father. The work also addresses the boy’s experience of domestic violence. The work is contextualised in terms of the ‘Peace Process’ in Northern Ireland, including the establishment of the Family Trauma Centre as a response to the needs of victims of the Troubles. A rationale for working with children using a multi-modal approach is presented.

Young children returning home from care: The birth parents' perspective

While a wide range of literature exists on the experiences of children in foster care or adoption, much less is known about children who return home from care to their birth parents. This paper focuses on the perspectives of a small sample of birth parents of young children who returned home from care. It draws on findings from the Northern Ireland Care Pathways and Outcomes Study that has been following a population (n = 374) of children who were under 5 years and in care in Northern Ireland on the 31st of March 2000. As part of this study, interviews were conducted with the foster parents of 55 children, the adoptive parents of 51 children and the birth parents of nine children who had returned home from care. The paper explores the birth parents’ views on how they coped while their child was in care, how they were coping after the child had returned home and how their child was faring at home. Results revealed that these parents, and their children, were experiencing multiple difficulties and struggled to cope after the children had returned home.

Implementation of European standards of care for cystic fibrosis - provision of care

Background: Several guidelines for cystic fibrosis (CF) caregivers exist, but information about their implementation is lacking.

Implementation of European standards of care for cystic fibrosis - Control and treatment of infection

Background: Several guidelines oil infection control and treatment of infection exist for cystic fibrosis (CF) caregivers, although the extent of implementation is variable.