Transcript here - Social Work - University of Edinburgh

Social Workers’ Communication with
Children involved in Child Protection:
Findings from the TLC Study
Professor Viv Cree and Dr Fiona Morrison
The University of Edinburgh
Structure of presentation
• Background: why this research?
• The research project: research questions,
methodology, methods & phases of inquiry
• The data: what are our findings based on?
• The findings
• Key messages
• Dissemination & publications so far
• Initial responses and questions; wider discussion:
how do we move forward from here?
Background
Our current knowledge:
• Repeated evidence from Inquiry reports and Serious case
Reviews that children are not seen and heard sufficiently
• Yet everyone agrees that communication with children is
critically important!
• So why isn’t this happening, and what can we do to
improve the situation for children, their parents and social
workers?
• Some research already, but it tends to be focused on what
social workers say, not what they do, with a few recent
exceptions (e.g. Ferguson)
• Some evidence too about skills/training gaps
• Hence the TLC project was devised…
Research questions
• What are social workers observed to do when
they communicate with children in a range of
settings and with a range of aims (including child
protection, assessing need and promoting wellbeing)?
• How do practitioners experience and understand
their communication with a child?
• How do children experience and understand their
relationship with social workers?
• What factors best facilitate communication
between social work practitioners and children?
The research project
• Methodology: qualitative, ‘practice-near’
• Methods: ethnographic and innovative videobased
• 3 phases:
– Phase 1: participant observation in team rooms and observation
of visits with children
– Phase 2: Video-stimulated recall interviews with pairs of
children and their social workers
– Phase 3: Development of training materials for practitioners
• We are now in Phase 4, but phase 3 work
continues
The data
• Phase 1: Three researchers were located in 8
social work teams across the UK (2 in each
nation) for a period of 6 to 8 weeks each.
• Purposeful, pragmatic sampling; observation
in offices + interviews before & after visits;
82 visits in total with 126 children/y. people
• Phase 2: Three researchers used videostimulated recall with 10 children and social
workers in 3 settings across the UK
Broad findings
• 3 kinds of evidence emerging:
– About the context in which social work is
practised across the UK
– About the profession – how social workers
are feeling about their work
– About communication with children – what
works and what gets in the way of good
communication
More specific findings
• SWs make connections in a range of settings and
through a range of methods
• Mis-match between SWs’ knowledge &
understanding and what they can do in practice;
structural , practice & personal factors can help
and impede good communitive encounters
• Some children see SW as a threat, ‘the enemy’;
others as a support, ‘a friend’ – parents key here
• SWs need opportunities to reflect, to get support,
to get training – it’s a difficult, challenging job!
Mis-match between knowledge and
what they can do in practice
16 year old Rachel has been admitted to hospital following
a suicide attempt. Rachel is refusing to return home to
where she lives with her parents. A social worker named
Helen is meeting Rachel for the first time at hospital.
Helen asks her how she is. Rachel says that she is feeling
pretty low. She says that she has spoken to her CAMHS
worker and said she doesn’t want to go home. Rachel nods
and asks her the name of her worker
Mis-match between knowledge and
what they can do in practice
Helen asks Rachel how she feels about going home. Rachel
shakes her head.
***
Helen asks Rachel what would need to change at home for it
to be a place she could go back to. Rachel says ‘everything’.
***
Helen outlines her worries about a foster placement and how
to get Rachel back home eventually. Helen says that she
wouldn’t want that to be the end. Rachel says that she
wouldn’t want contact with her parents. Helen says ‘okay
that’s helpful, that’s helpful to know how you see this’.
Mis-match between knowledge and
what they can do in practice
Helen looks at me [researcher], raises her eyebrows, takes big breath
and slowly blows it out. She shakes her head. […] Helen says to me that
she hates situations like this. Helen says that ultimately she has to try
and convince Rachel to go home. She says that she’ll need to speak to
her manager and see if there are any other options but there probably
aren’t. Helen says that it might be that they can find a temporary
placement for ten days, which will allow them to get a bit of space, and
they can work on working with the family to try and get Rachel to
agree to go home, and to try to make it safer for her. She says that with
social work’s involvement it should be different as the family will have
to comply with the plan, but that she can understand why Rachel
doesn’t trust her or believe her.
Key messages
• Communication between children, young people
and their social workers is framed by the complex
context in which it takes place
• Social workers need to use their skills sensitively
and creatively to make spaces for communication
with children and young people
• The relationship between children, young people
and their social workers is more important than
communication itself; a good relationship will
forgive a poor communicative encounter
Dissemination
• Peer-reviewed journal articles
• Materials for practitioners, students and
managers on our project website – still a work
in progress!
• Feedback to all teams that participated in the
study – currently ongoing
• This new ESRC ‘impact’ project & another
based at University of Sussex: briefing papers,
participation events, website, blogs, etc
Publications so far
• Winter, K., Cree, V.E., Ruch, G., Hallett, S., Hadfield, M., Morrison, F.,
‘Effective communication between social workers and children and young
people’, British Journal of Social Work (accepted)
• Ruch, G., Winter, K., Cree, V.E., Hallett, S., Hadfield, M., Morrison, F.,
‘Making meaningful connections: insights from social pedagogy for
statutory social work practice’, Child & Family Social Work (accepted)
• Briefing paper 1: Effective communication between social workers and
children and young people
• Briefing paper 2: Making meaningful connections: insights from social
pedagogy for statutory social work practice
• Website & blog:
http://www.socialwork.ed.ac.uk/research/grants_and_projects/current_p
rojects/revisiting_child_protection_in_scotland
Acknowledgements
• With thanks to all the families and children,
local authority social work managers and
practitioners who supported this project and
gave us access to their lives and work
• Thanks to our funders (ESRC) and universities
• And thank you for your attention!
Question for discussion
• What would need to happen for social
workers to be supported better in their
communication with children?