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Ofsted publishes children's social care report 2022: recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic

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Ofsted publishes children's social care report 2022: recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic

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Children’s social care 2022: recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

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The picture overall

The COVID-19 pandemic has put specific pressures on the children's social care sector, and exacerbated existing challenges. Throughout, those in the children's social care sector have worked to adapt in their roles. They have continued to care for children, protect them from harm and support their families. Our insights give us the opportunity to report on how the sector continues to respond to the ongoing challenges, based on information we have gathered from our inspections and published data. In this briefing, we draw on evidence from a sample of inspections, and from focus groups and interviews with inspectors and policy colleagues, to understand what the sector has done well, the pressures that remain and the main barriers to managing these pressures.

During the COVID-19 restrictions, some children were less visible to professionals, which increased the risk that evidence of harm to them was not being identified. When the restrictions were lifted, and all children returned to school and re-engaged with other services, professionals were able to see these children again. However, some services are either not yet being offered or are running at a lower capacity than pre-pandemic levels. As a result, there may be delays in identifying vulnerable children and their needs, and families may have fewer opportunities to ask for help. Access to therapeutic and respite services for disabled children continues to be limited, leaving children and families without support.

The mental health of some children and young people deteriorated during the pandemic, and we are seeing increasingly complex mental health needs among the children who require support. Health services are stretched and many local authorities and providers are organising their own mental health and well-being services as a result. This is transferring cost pressures to local authorities, providers and schools and such provision can lack the clinical governance of NHS services.

The pandemic compounded a number of existing issues that affect care leavers. Care leavers are already at risk of becoming isolated, and lockdown restrictions meant that many of their relationships and support networks were disrupted. They also experienced practical and financial difficulties, as many lost their jobs or were placed on furlough. We are continuing to hear that greater numbers of care leavers than would have been expected before the pandemic are not in stable employment or education. There is concern that the toll on their well-being will be long-lasting.

A long-standing challenge for the children's social care sector is the lack of places in the right location, at the right time, for the children who need them. This is especially the case for residential settings, particularly secure provision, where the number of places for children with highly complex and specific needs is not meeting demand. Additionally, there are continuing difficulties in identifying suitable places for children with mental health issues, and the increasing complexity of children's mental health needs since the pandemic began has compounded these further. Some children are having to live in places where their specific needs cannot be met. The lack of a suitable place to live results in some children living in unregistered homes.

Recruitment and retention of staff continue to be a problem across children's social care. Having reassessed their priorities and work-life balance during the pandemic, greater numbers of residential workers are leaving the sector entirely, to pursue more flexible and better-paid work elsewhere. A large number of social workers have also left the sector or have moved to agency contracts, which offer competitive incentives.

Of particular concern is the loss of highly qualified and experienced staff, who had previously been relied on to support and develop newly qualified colleagues. Local authorities and providers are using various incentives to attract and retain staff, such as higher salaries and greater investment in well-being and training. But the persistent issue is that the pool of suitable staff is too small.

Some changes in ways of working have persisted since restrictions were lifted. Social workers have recognised the importance of face-to-face work with children and families. Some of this work continued throughout the pandemic, for those who were assessed as being at highest risk, but it has now returned to expected levels. However, many other tasks that do not require direct contact with children and families, and would have previously been carried out in offices, are now being done from home. This minimises the time that social workers spend together in person, reducing opportunities for peer support and learning.

There is a similar concern around training, as providing this online makes it more difficult for attendees to hold discussions with peers and form strong support networks. This is not just a concern for social workers but also for foster carers, who missed the opportunity to build support networks during the pandemic. Remote working is only appropriate if the staff's support and development needs are met, and training cannot be considered successful unless it has upskilled staff and carers effectively to meet children's needs.

Methodological note

In this briefing, we draw on evidence from inspection reports and from our inspectors. We set up focus groups and carried out interviews with Ofsted colleagues in May and June 2022. Participants in the focus groups had professional experience of inspecting local authority children's services or social care providers in the past year, and/or had overseen the work of inspectors in their region. Participants in interviews were Ofsted colleagues who work in the social care policy team.

During the focus group discussions and the interviews, we asked participants to reflect on what they had seen during recent inspections, or what they were seeing in the sector currently. This ensured that our evidence focused on what is happening in the sector at present, rather than what was happening at the height of the pandemic.

We triangulated insights from the focus groups with evidence from 29 inspection reports produced under the inspection of local authority children's services ( ILACS) framework and the social care common inspection framework ( SCCIF). The reports that we reviewed were from inspections carried out between June 2021 and April 2022 (16 ILACS reports and 13 SCCIF reports).

We used this evidence to report on the impact that the pandemic is still having on the children's social care sector. In particular, we focused on the impact on:

children and families

sector staff

local authority children's services

children's social care providers

We carried out a total of 5 focus groups and 6 interviews. There was representation from all 8 Ofsted regions.

A small number of inspectors participated in the research, so the data collected is not necessarily representative of the whole sector. It does, however, help to triangulate and enrich our findings from the inspection reports.

We have also drawn on additional quantitative and qualitative evidence that we either collect ourselves or have access to within Ofsted, including:

responses to the 2021-22 point-in-time survey: each year we carry out a survey of all the children's social care providers that we inspect; in these surveys, we ask children, parents, staff and external professionals (such as children's social workers, health professionals, teachers, headteachers in the virtual school and family court advisers) for their views about the providers they are involved with

the children's social care in England 2022 statistical release

Annex A documents collected on inspections: this is the information that inspectors request from local authorities before the inspection or visit. It includes data on children who are looked after by the local authority

A substantial amount of evidence has been published about the effect of the pandemic on the children's social care sector. This has focused mainly on the periods of national lockdown during 2020 and 2021. While this report focuses on the current situation, this initial section briefly summarises the existing published evidence. This gives context to our findings on the continuing impact on children's social care.

Referral rates

In interviews with representatives from 15 local authorities, the reduction in referrals was attributed to the small proportion of children attending school in person, and the reduction in contacts with health visitors, midwives and nurses. As a result, signs of concern were less likely to be picked up than they normally would be. Nationally, the largest reductions in referrals generally occurred during the periods of lockdown. However, both the initial decline and subsequent recovery in referral rates were inconsistent across different local authorities.:

Unsurprisingly, the sources of referrals also changed. During lockdowns, fewer referrals were made by teachers and NHS staff such as health visitors, many of whom were redeployed to other parts of the NHS. More referrals were made by the police and hospital staff.

Increased and differing risks

The initial reduction in referrals to children's social care sparked concern about 'hidden' children: vulnerable children who either had not been identified by children's services previously or had become less visible to the services that support them.[footnote 10] Some families were experiencing increased pressures, such as financial issues, while also having less access to support services and their social support networks.[footnote 11] The additional strain on families meant that some of those who had previously been just about managing were now needing help.[footnote 12] There were also concerns about increased reports of domestic violence, with this being the reason for many of the referrals made by police.[footnote 13] With families being confined together in their homes for extended periods, some children experienced new or increased exposure to domestic violence.[footnote 14] As a result, it was likely that the number of children at risk and in need of services increased, but, because these children were less visible, this was not reflected in the number of referrals being made.

The decline in children and young people's mental health during the pandemic has been widely reported.[footnote 15] This has been partially attributed to the impact of lockdown on children's relationships, as children were deprived of face-to-face contact with their peers.[footnote 16] The move to partially or fully online forms of contact sometimes disrupted communication between children in care and their families, and between children and their social workers. In these instances, children reported feeling abandoned, which had a negative effect on their mental health.[footnote 17] On a more positive note, a small number of children experienced an improvement in their mental health during the lockdowns. This has been attributed to the children not having to experience the pressures of attending school, leading to less confrontation with family members,[footnote 18] or to improvements in their relationships with carers and residential staff because they spent more time at home.[footnote 19]

During restrictions, children and young people relied more on social media for their interactions with others. This heightened concerns about online harm, as it meant more potential exposure to online exploitation, grooming and bullying.[footnote 20]

Changing ways of working: challenges and how they were managed

During the lockdown restrictions, social workers adapted to new ways of working. They reduced home visits to a minimum and used virtual forms of communication. These new ways of working did not always allow social workers to gather enough information to fully assess children's needs and the situations within families. Social workers expressed concerns about missing out on non-verbal cues, not being able to tell who else was in the room when speaking to children, being shown only positive things by families, and virtual contact being easier to evade for some families.[footnote 21]

Changing ways of working: advantages

Another benefit of the move to virtual working has been the improvement in multi-agency work. Attendance at multi-agency child protection conferences increased because professionals were able to attend online; in particular, representation from GPs improved.[footnote 32]

Lockdown pressures meant that, in addition to their safeguarding work, social workers were often providing families and care leavers with material and practical support.[footnote 33] This included helping them to claim benefits and help with accessing food or supplies.[footnote 34] Although this placed new or additional demands on social workers, it helped to foster positive relationships with families.[footnote 35]

Care leavers

We have seen examples of the positive work done by some local authorities to address the isolation experienced by many care leavers. This included providing internet dongles to facilitate virtual contact, sending out activity packs and food parcels, and organising a virtual Christmas dinner.

The current state of children's social care

This section reports on the current situation in children's social care, as observed during our inspections, and gives examples of how the sector is managing these challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the only significant sector pressure. Social workers and sector leaders have raised other issues, including heightened tensions regarding perceived racial inequalities, and institutional barriers following the deaths of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes. Although we recognise the influence of additional factors, in this section we aim to focus on the problems that have been created or exacerbated by the pandemic.

Despite these challenges, we continue to see an improvement in the overall effectiveness grades of local authority children's social care. As at 31 March 2022, 43% of local authorities were rated good or outstanding, and 12% as inadequate. This compares with 36% good or outstanding and 22% inadequate at the end of the first round of inspections under the previous framework.[footnote 38]

Number of referrals and the impact on caseload

During recent inspections, we have seen continued hesitancy to step down care and move children from a child protection plan to a child-in-need plan, or from a child-in-need plan to early help. This is partially due to social workers' cautiousness when considering risks in the context of a new, post-lockdown environment. Although this has increased caseloads in some areas, in some positive examples it is being treated as an opportunity to prevent re-referrals. By working with families for longer periods, social workers are ensuring that progress is being made at a suitable pace for the family, increasing the chance that improvements will be sustained.

Data published by the Department for Education does not show escalating caseloads. In September 2021, the average caseload of a children's social worker was 16.3. This was the same as in 2020, and slightly lower than in 2019, when it was 16.9.[footnote 43] However, this is an average figure and does not capture differences in caseloads among staff. It also does not account for the complexity of cases, which has increased since the pandemic began. As social workers deal with increasingly complex cases, workloads will rise, even if the number of children on the caseload remains stable.

Changing risks

The escalating cost of living is an issue that has been, at least partially, influenced by the pandemic. Social workers, children's charities and advocacy groups have expressed concern that this issue might increase the number of families living in poverty. Financial hardship makes parenting harder, which may result in more risks to children. Some local authorities have told us that, with families under greater financial strain, they anticipate higher numbers of child protection cases and children in need. They noted that they have planned for this in their budgets.

Although restrictions ended in 2021, and face-to-face visiting by social workers has returned to pre-pandemic levels, we are concerned that some babies and children are still not being seen by family support services. Services such as health visitors, district nurses and family centres were interrupted during the pandemic. In some places, these services are still not running at pre-pandemic levels, and there is a risk that, with less contact, identification of children's vulnerability and needs may be delayed. Reduced contact with health visitors also limits the opportunities for parents to raise emerging issues before they escalate, and for professionals to give families information about available services. For example, funded childcare is available for families on certain benefits and for children with additional needs,[footnote 44] but, without information on this, families may not take up services they are entitled to.

Some services for disabled children and their families have also yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. This is partly because of persistent fears about the COVID-related risks to these children. Many services for disabled children and their families, such as schools, short-break services and holiday schemes, were closed during the lockdowns. As a result, many disabled children lost around 2 years of therapeutic support, which reduced their progress and, in some cases, resulted in regression. Their families also lost support and respite, which they may have relied on to help them care for their child. Consequently, these children and their families may now need more intensive support - not just a return to pre-pandemic service levels.

The risks of child exploitation have also increased. Children spend more time online, increasing their exposure to online grooming and exploitation, and we have heard that providers, carers and social workers do not feel equipped to identify or manage these risks.

Court delays

The pandemic has exacerbated existing pressures on the family justice system. During the pandemic, the caseload and backlog rose to a level that required a prioritisation protocol to be put in place.[footnote 45] This allowed the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) to prioritise public law and private law cases that had a safeguarding factor. Lower-priority cases, which previously had to be assigned a caseworker, could instead be allocated to duty hubs. This meant that, although cases were being monitored, no active work was being done with the families. As a result, the families less in need of acute support were and are having to wait longer. As backlogs are persisting, Cafcass is not yet in a position to remove this protocol completely.

During the restrictions, families found it difficult to engage in virtual family court hearings, as they often had to attend from home, frequently without support. The benefits of face-to-face working in these circumstances appear to have been recognised, and in-person work with families has now resumed.

Education 'catch-up'

The virtual school, which previously only worked with children in care, was extended to have a strategic role in supporting all children and young people who have a social worker.[footnote 46] Virtual heads facilitate work between schools and local authorities to support the education of vulnerable children. The extended role of the virtual school includes:

increasing education settings' awareness of the disadvantages faced by children who have a social worker, and raising expectations for these children

encouraging the use of practices that support children to engage with education, by promoting these in education settings and other settings that work closely with children who have a social worker

raising outcomes and narrowing the attainment gap between children who have a social worker and other children

The virtual school was extended because it was recognised that, for many children with a social worker, the pandemic has increased the barriers to education, and that these children need support to catch up. As this new role is strategic, the virtual school is not responsible for supporting individual children in the way it would for children in care. Although the expansion of this service is perceived as positive by the sector, there are concerns that resources will be stretched as a result.

During inspections, it has been positive to see more children's homes working closely with the virtual school. Increased anxiety among children has resulted in some being reluctant to attend school, and homes are seeking support from the virtual school to help address this. Homes have used various other methods to support children in returning to schools and to catch up on missed education. In some examples, staff have helped children with exam revision, or employed tutors to supplement school lessons.

Children in care and those with a social worker were entitled to attend in-person schooling during the lockdowns, and many did so. For a lot of these children, it was a positive experience, and they benefited from the smaller teacher-pupil ratios that resulted from fewer children being in the classroom. Some children were able to receive more individualised teaching during this time. Although some children then struggled with a return to full-sized classes when schools fully reopened, many were happy to regain the social benefits of school and to reconnect with friends.

Across all children nationally, there appears to have been an increase in the number of children being electively home educated. Although this is not an issue in itself, it does pose an additional risk for children who are already at risk of abuse, neglect or exploitation. Removing children's contact with school staff minimises their visibility and increases the danger of unidentified harm.

Children and young people's mental health

Both the frequency and complexity of children and young people's mental health issues have increased, putting considerable strain on the sector. Some of this has been caused by a delay in accessing treatment and therapies during the pandemic, and therefore a worsening of pre-existing mental health issues.

Around half of foster carers surveyed in 2021 reported that they were looking after at least one child who they felt required mental health support. Of those foster carers, half said that the children were not getting mental health support.[footnote 49] This may have been due to lack of services or because the child was not in a stable placement and therefore could not have their mental health needs assessed. While this survey is a year old, during our recent inspections, some providers and local authorities have told us that they cannot depend on access to child and adolescent mental health services ( CAMHS) for children, as the waiting lists for this already-stretched service have increased dramatically and referral thresholds are higher. Long waits for assessments leave children without much-needed support, and create a risk that their needs will escalate before they receive it. Delays sometimes result in reduced engagement from children and, as a result, their case is closed by CAMHS before their needs can be addressed.

Many providers are having to find alternative support for children's mental health needs. Many local authorities had in-house therapists before the pandemic, and we have seen an increase in the number of homes and agencies that employ these therapists to work with children and also support their staff. For many, having a therapist on site has been effective, as their regular presence in the home has helped with building relationships and encouraging the children to engage. Staff are also reassured by their presence, as many feel ill-equipped to support children with mental health needs. Although we have seen the positive effect of in-house support for mental health, this can be very costly and is not possible for all providers.

Some local authorities have also developed their own mental health or well-being services to supplement the limited availability of CAMHS. Their investment in this area indicates that they are recognising and responding to children's changing needs. In an example of proactive practice, a local authority employed specialist mental health staff in its social care teams. These specialists could assess children's needs and then have detailed discussions with social workers about how best to support the child. The 'no wrong door' model used by a number of local authorities has helped children and young people to access mental health support. This approach involves offering residential or outreach services through hubs, where a single multidisciplinary team provides wraparound support.[footnote 50] A clinical psychologist is included in the hub team so children and young people using the hubs can receive some mental health support internally.

Despite efforts to help children and young people to access support, there is concern in the sector that the deterioration in children's mental health will be a lasting legacy of the pandemic, and that children's services are likely to remain strained for years, with a rise in demand for adult mental health services in the future.

Sufficient and suitable accommodation

The 'sufficiency duty' is the requirement that a local authority should secure, as far as reasonably possible, sufficient and suitable accommodation for children in its care. Places for children to live should not just be sufficient in number, but should also meet the children's needs and, where consistent with the child's welfare, be within the authority's borders.[footnote 51]

Foster care

Figures for 2020-21 show that the number of fostering households and foster carers continues to rise. However, this growth is still not keeping up with demand. As with children's homes, suitability of placements is important.

While the number of places may be rising, this does not necessarily mean that the foster carers are able to provide for the current profile of need. Figures show that, while 71% of fostering households are approved to care for 2 or more children, many of these places remain vacant or are not available. The number of available places may therefore be lower in reality than the increase suggests.[footnote 54]

Children's homes

Some of the country's most vulnerable children live in children's homes. Many have experienced multiple placement breakdowns and/or need support with various emotional and behavioural difficulties.[footnote 55]

This is further impacted by the exacerbation of existing staffing issues, as large numbers of staff have left the sector since the beginning of the pandemic.[footnote 58] To operate effectively, providers need sufficient numbers of experienced staff and, without them, some providers have decided to offer fewer places while others can no longer meet some needs effectively. This increases the likelihood that children will have to live in provision where their needs cannot be understood and met.

Secure children's homes

Among secure children's homes, the lack of places in the areas where they are needed is even more acute. These are homes that restrict the liberty of children because they pose a risk to themselves or to others, or as a consequence of offending.

In March this year, around 50 children were waiting for a secure children's home place. The sector-wide staffing problems, together with the greater complexity of children's needs, mean that secure children's homes are operating with reduced capacity.[footnote 59]

When secure children's home places are not available, the High Court can authorise the deprivation of a child's liberty in an alternative placement. Although total numbers are relatively small, the use of these powers increased by over 450% from 2017/18 to 2020/21.[footnote 60]

Of concern is the number of children and young people who are having to live in unregistered provision because no suitable place is available, despite the risks this creates. Some senior family judges have notified the Secretary of State for Education and HMCI and, in some cases, have made public statements about the judgments they have had to make in some of the most acute cases. They have expressed their distress at the level of unmet need and the lack of suitable placements for the most vulnerable children.[footnote 61]

Care leavers

The isolation experienced by many care leavers during lockdowns, and the practical challenges they faced, are still affecting their lives. As with children and young people more widely, the mental health of this group has deteriorated, and many are struggling to access support. This issue is compounded for care leavers, as the move from children's to adult services can often disrupt the support they receive. In some cases, this stops altogether because the threshold for adult services is higher.

Good relationships with personal advisers are hugely valuable for care leavers, but some of these were disrupted at the height of the pandemic, and continue to be disrupted due to staffing issues, sickness or other factors.

Many of the practical and financial issues that care leavers faced during lockdowns are persisting. We are still seeing higher numbers who are not in employment, education or training, or who have moved from stable employment to more casual work or zero-hours contracts. The loss of stable employment combined with the escalating cost of living is increasing the financial strain.

Workforce challenges

The sector has significant staffing challenges at all levels. Staff shortages have implications for sufficiency, both in the number of places and the skills of the staff available. Additionally, the high turnover of social workers and residential workers and the reliance on agency staff mean that children lack stability in these relationships. In a number of recent inspections, children have reported that frequent changes in social workers have been a problem for them, but this was also a challenge for some pre-pandemic.

As well as the implications for children, the staff shortage creates significant challenges for the workers who remain in the sector. Workloads are high and the demands of an already challenging job can become unsustainable. The impact on these workers should be considered in the context of the challenges they have faced and additional support they have provided over the past 2 years. We have heard reports of: residential staff isolating in children's homes and forgoing time with their own families; staff delivering meals to families who were self-isolating; and colleagues supporting each other throughout.

Although staffing issues in this sector are not new, the impact they have on the workforce now needs to be considered alongside the additional strain of the pandemic.

Changing ways of working in local authorities

After a large reduction in face-to-face visits during lockdowns, in-person work has resumed across the sector. Decisions about where it is appropriate to maintain virtual working are being carefully considered, and this is generally only used when it is suitable and beneficial. Multi-agency meetings are one example where attendance is much improved when there is no need to travel to attend in person. Crucially, where face-to-face work is the best option for children and families, this has been restored.

Some changes in ways of working have persisted since the restrictions were lifted. A lot of staff and social workers have moved to hybrid models, where they spend more time working from home than they did before. This varies between local authorities, and many are still deciding which work can be done remotely. We are concerned about what could be lost if office-based work continues to be limited. For good social work practice to thrive, staff need to be in face-to-face contact to build meaningful relationships that provide support and supervision. This is essential for calibration and moderation of judgements and decisions among peers. Additionally, working together face to face creates opportunities for informal support and learning, and helps to maintain and boost morale. Social workers often encounter challenging and emotional situations, and it is important that they are able to talk through these with colleagues. When local authorities permit remote working, they should make sure that they retain the peer support and learning and development opportunities that are afforded by office working and time spent with colleagues.

This is particularly important for newly qualified social workers, who derive most benefit from face-to-face interactions with colleagues. Social workers who were training or newly qualified in the last 2 years will have spent their first years in the profession operating under pandemic conditions. Their opportunities to interact with other staff and observe and learn from experienced colleagues have been much more limited than for their predecessors.

The pandemic had a substantial impact on staff training, as most of this moved online. Although face-to-face training is possible again, in our recent inspections we have found that much of it is still online. This may be because training is often organised many months in advance, and local authorities may have avoided planning face-to-face sessions because of uncertainty about COVID-19.

When local authorities and providers make decisions about future training, they should consider the limitations of providing this online. There are concerns that online training requires less engagement and therefore minimises the amount of learning that is retained. During inspections, we heard of staff completing large numbers of online training courses in a single day and therefore having insufficient time to engage with and reflect on the content. As with remote working, remote training does not offer opportunities for interaction with colleagues and peers. This face-to-face contact can facilitate discussions about the course content and help to secure learning.

It is imperative that local authorities and providers ensure that the training they provide for their social workers is effective in upskilling them to best meet the needs of the children they support.

Changing ways of working in fostering agencies

Fostering agencies also had to turn to virtual training at the height of the pandemic, and some have been slow to move this back to face-to-face training.

One benefit of virtual learning is that attendance has improved, as people no longer have to travel to attend. This benefit was highlighted by some foster carers and adopters in the 2022 point-in-time survey, who had previously found the required travel difficult as they lived a long distance from the fostering agency.

As well as removing practical barriers to attendance, providing training virtually can have financial advantages, as it eliminates the costs of hiring a space and providing refreshments. This is particularly true now for fostering agencies that decided to sell premises over the last 2 years and move all staff to remote working. Although some foster carers and adopters valued the ability to attend virtual training, many others expressed a desire to return to face-to-face training and events. They felt that meeting others in person helped them to establish a stronger bond and support network.

There is no single best way of training those involved in children's social care. The benefits and limitations of different methods will depend on the course content and the needs of those participating. It is essential that fostering agencies consider the wider benefits of meeting face to face, and take these into account when making decisions about training.

Staff recruitment and retention in local authorities

Problems with recruiting and retaining staff are the greatest challenge the sector currently faces. Although this was already a challenge before the pandemic, it has been exacerbated by a number of factors.

Many social workers are moving into agency work rather than leaving the profession entirely. Agencies often have appealing contracts, with greater flexibility and higher pay than local authorities can offer. As a result, agencies are outcompeting local authorities for staff from a limited pool of workers. Agency work may have been made more attractive by recent changes in the way that many agencies are structuring their contracts. Previously, agency work could be very unstable and require staff to work mainly within unfamiliar teams, but now many agencies have moved to contracting whole teams of staff for fixed periods. This means that some agency staff now benefit from the stability of working within a consistent team of colleagues, and having guaranteed work schedules for several weeks or months at a time. While this may provide better working conditions for agency employees, the new way of contracting limits flexibility for commissioning local authorities, and can increase costs.

As well as competing with agency offers, local authorities are having to compete with each other to recruit and retain staff. Although staff have always crossed county borders for jobs, this has increased during the pandemic. We have seen examples of social workers based in rural authorities being employed by London boroughs that can offer higher salaries. This is now possible because of remote working, which enables some desk-based social work to be done from anywhere. However, this way of working is concerning, as it could erode the quality of social work if social workers lack local knowledge and understanding of the communities that they serve, which are important elements of social work.

Shortages in staff mean that local authorities have to rely on agency workers, which increases their costs and undermines stability for children. Consistent relationships are important for children and their families, and frequent changes in social workers can contribute to a sense of abandonment for these children.

Recruitment and retention of residential staff and foster carers

As discussed above, numbers of foster carers and fostering households have risen over the last year, although the rise is not able to keep up with demand. Enquiries from prospective fostering households continue to increase, but the proportion of these that converted to applications in 2020-21 was at an all-time low. The proportion of fostering applications that have been approved has also fallen.[footnote 64] This remains a challenge for the sector, especially because the majority of children in care are in foster care.

We are seeing many residential care workers, who are typically on low salaries, leaving the profession entirely for jobs with higher pay and a better work-life balance. The demanding nature of care work, the responsibility of the role and the need to work shifts have been offered as reasons for finding work elsewhere.

Many providers are also struggling to recruit and retain registered managers. The number of children's homes with a vacant manager post was increasing before the pandemic, and this rise has continued, from 9% of children's homes without a manager in March 2019 to 17% by March 2022. The level of responsibility in this role, along with the hours involved, has made it an unattractive choice for many. With high numbers of experienced staff leaving the sector, the pool of suitable potential managers has decreased, and there are not enough to meet demand. Good management of settings is influential in the experiences of staff, and this may therefore have an effect on staff retention.

With many providers unable to recruit enough staff, some have been forced to reduce their capacity. Others have chosen to run at below capacity in an effort to maintain the quality of their provision. Some providers have had to employ inexperienced staff. This could result in situations where staff are unable to meet children's needs, and it places great demand on providers' training budgets. Among some of the largest providers, lack of staffing has resulted in homes standing empty, temporary closure of homes, and plans for expansion or new registrations being abandoned. As large providers typically have greater flexibility in staffing, this suggests that smaller providers may face even greater challenges.

Providers are using various approaches to recruit and retain staff. While some have offered financial incentives, this is not possible for all. Other strategies have included a greater focus on staff well-being, such as offering well-being days, and more investment in training, including helping staff to gain qualifications. Some children's homes offer targeted support to help staff in areas of particular concern. A good example of this is employing in-house therapists to support staff in managing children's mental health needs.

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Children's social care 2022: recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic

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The COVID-19 pandemic has put specific pressures on the children's social care sector, and exacerbated existing challenges. Throughout, those in the children's social care sector have worked to adapt in their roles. They have continued to care for children, protect them from harm and support their families.

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Support for social workers is the missing piece of the Star and Arthur review | Harry Ferguson | The Guardian

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hen six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and 16-month-old Star Hobson's deaths from appalling physical abuse became widely known in December there was an outpouring of public anger, grief and questions about how this could possibly have been allowed to happen. The review into their deaths, published yesterday provides some answers - but fails to engage fully with some vitally important issues.

First, the review rightly emphasises that both children had the misfortune to be in the care of exceptionally cruel parents and step-parents. Social workers never saw Arthur on his own to hear from him what his life was like, and they didn't get close to Star either, focusing predominantly on her parents. But a vital message from the review is that the concerns of children's wider families must be taken very seriously. Star and Arthur's other relatives could see their deterioration and made reports, including sending photos and videos of bruising to the children that were, after investigation, regarded by professionals as malicious.

Above all, the review argues that the key reason the children were not protected was poor communication and collaboration between professionals. Strategy meetings to pool their knowledge didn't happen. Yet it also confronts the reality of the very difficult organisational conditions social workers had to work in, with staff vacancies, high caseloads and low morale. The children's social care service in Bradford that worked with Star was "in turmoil". The social worker who carried out a crucial home visit to see Star was a temporary agency worker who left Bradford before the assessment was complete, and the inquiries into the child's safety were allowed to fizzle out.

The review wants to bring about a step-change in structures and processes in England that will improve communication and decision-making between professionals, recommending the establishment of multi-agency child protection units made up of experienced, skilled social workers, police, psychologists, doctors and heath staff. The review wants the units to put all of the evidence together, interrogate it, challenge each other's perspectives, and agree a coordinated and strong response.

However, while huge attention is given to the need to create such new systems, the psychological and emotional impact of doing child protection work does not get enough attention.

A consistent finding in more than 40 years' worth of child death inquiry reports is that what appeared to be straightforward tasks, such as sending a photograph to another professional, simply didn't get done. This requires us to explain the unexplainable - and why, time and time again, well-intentioned professionals can't explain even to themselves their inaction in the face of evidence of marks and injuries.

To fully understand what happens when professionals are in the presence of abused children, careful attention must be given to the impact that the stress and anxiety that pervades the work has on professionals' capacities to think, or not think clearly. My 12 years of research, based on observing face-to-face encounters between social workers and families, shows that those who fill professionals with the most dread and anxiety are parents hostile to involvement. Faced with threats, intimidation or passive aggression in parents not answering the door, the intense anxiety professionals experience clouds their judgement and makes it extremely difficult to think about and tune in to the children, or to even recognise that they have failed to do so.

Moreover, the crucial work with Arthur and Star went on during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, a time when, our research shows, social workers' anxieties rose hugely owing to fears of catching and spreading coronavirus and having to try to interact with and observe children while social distancing. The review concludes that Covid-19 "had some impact on the effectiveness of the response to concerns about bruising to Arthur and subsequent decision-making", but we need to take the next step of accepting the unavoidable limits to child protection at that unique time, and fully understanding the impact of unbearable levels of complexity and anxiety on social workers.

Managing public expectations about what is possible and not possible to achieve in child protection is absolutely vital. In Solihull, the level of abuse and threats towards social workers in the aftermath of Arthur's death has meant some having to leave their own homes according to one council leader. This inhumane public response, fed by hostile media coverage, only makes social workers jobs and keeping children safe even harder.

There are vital lessons to be learned from this Review about the missed opportunities to protect Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. While creating multi-agency child protection units may well help to make children safer, it has to be understood that there can never be certainty here, and there will be more tragic deaths. This is because day-to-day practice and information-sharing and decision-making are not just rational processes. In an area as anxiety-provoking and uncertain, and with such high stakes, as child protection the work will always involve unpredictable behaviours and unconscious, irrational thinking and non-thinking that result in errors.

The key way to manage these practical realities and emotional complexities is to provide social workers and others with the kinds of well-resourced workplaces, manageable caseloads, training and quality support they need. The more compassion social workers are shown, the more money the government invests and time practitioners are given to think and understand how they are relating to children, the less likely it will be that these tragic deaths will occur in future.

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Support for social workers is the missing piece of the Star and Arthur review | Harry Ferguson

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hen six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and 16-month-old Star Hobson's deaths from appalling physical abuse became widely known in December there was an outpouring of public anger, grief and questions about how this could possibly have been allowed to happen. The review into their deaths, published yesterday provides some answers - but fails to engage fully with some vitally important issues.

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England’s care system is failing children. This new overhaul is based on a middle-class fantasy | Rebekah Pierre | The Guardian

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ike a protective sibling, I am the first to both criticise and defend the care system. It failed and saved me in equal measure. In adult life, I returned to it as a social worker. I know its flaws and its potential to change lives. The sector is stretched and underfunded. People working in the care system welcomed the promise of a review, but our hopes were short-lived.

The landmark review of children's social care in England, released today, has been dubbed a "once in a generation opportunity" to transform the system. To anyone who has lived through, or worked within it, that may have sounded more like a threat than a promise. Any harmful recommendations could linger for decades - a terrifying prospect. Children in care are among the most vulnerable in society: they are twice as likely to die prematurely and only 6% will end up in university.

There are some positives here: the review seeks to increase life expectancy among children in care, double university entry, and make care experience a protected characteristic. But many have long questioned the independence of the review. Its chair, Josh MacAlister, a secondary school teacher-turned-CEO of Frontline (a fast-track programme for social work) received £45m from the Department for Education to train just 900 social workers in 2019. Frontline retention rates do not justify this eye-watering cost.

Remarkably, the government has been unwilling to invest a penny in the review's recommendations, according to a leaked contract. Additional money, such as the £2.6bn requested by MacAlister (which doesn't even begin to plug the £4bn budget black hole) will be taken from other public services. Perhaps that's why the review focuses on scaling back so much. First to go is the independent reviewing officer role, designed to give children a voice and scrutinise care plans.

One group, though, is exempt from the pinch. Private providers that charge local authorities up to £10,000 a week to care for one child won't face profit caps, despite calls from people who work in the sector for limits on how much they can charge.

Other cuts are better disguised. The review insists communities (an undefined, homogenous group) can provide "organic, responsive help that services simply can't". It elaborates: a classmate's parent, or a friend or family member, can step in to "look after a child after school to give the parents some space". Thisis neither fair nor sustainable.

To state the obvious, communities are not always safe spaces. The Homes for Ukraine campaign is a prime example of this. While most hosts were genuine, this did not stop a minority attempting to exploit vulnerable people leaving a war-torn country. Children in care are easy targets of county lines exploitation. Will gangs be exempt from volunteering?

Law-abiding citizens who have protested against children's homes being built on their streets pose an equal threat. What will persuade them to suddenly tolerate, let alone mentor, the very children they want rid of? Not everybody lives in quaint cul-de-sacs where retired therapists can offer parenting advice over supper. This middle-class fantasy won't work for people living in unsafe housing, or suffering intra-community abuse.

We're living in a time of unprecedented inflation, with one in five people in the UK living in poverty. People are struggling to support themselves, let alone others. This is especially the case among underpaid and overworked teachers, who, among other "trusted adults", are framed in this review as the panacea to the foster carer shortage. The review states that "if only 1% of teachers stepped forward to foster a specific child, there would be 4,610 new homes available".

The ethical implications of this are huge. Professional boundaries between teachers and pupils exist to keep children safe. It is unfair to expect teachers to provide a child's intimate care, social-emotional support and potentially be marking their homework while balancing the needs of 29 other children in their class. In gaining a foster carer, we should not be expecting children, in essence, to forfeit a "normal" educational experience.

The review states that we need more foster carers. This is doubtless true, but they also need time, training and experience in order to provide care. I was informally fostered by a "trusted adult" - a young community professional who, in earnest, thought they could help. I waited patiently for the spare room to be set up, but as autumn turned to winter, I was still sleeping on a sofa bed in the freezing cold living room. I now realise this was a sign they were wildly out of their depth, perhaps unsure they could commit to caring for a traumatised 16-year-old. One day after school, I found a note on the kitchen table. It said I had four days to find somewhere else to live - a particularly cruel deadline, given it was 20 December.

I never really got over this. This rejection, at such a pivotal point in life, damaged my ability to form trusting relationships for years. I ended up in an unregulated hostel among adults known to police ( 22 children died in such settings between 2018 and 2020, but the review failed to condemn the use of unregulated hostels in the past).

In times of crisis, children need the best expertise available. Relying on a loose idea of "community" to supplement social care is a gross abdication of government responsibility. Communities can be a wonderful thing: while at the hostel, a family I had known my whole life provided invaluable care. They taught me slowly how to trust people again. But assuming parents and social workers haven't already exhausted these avenues is naive. Practices such as family group conferencing, which is drawn from Māori culture and involves family and friends developing their own plans, have long been used in children's social care.

Meaningful change must be achieved by properly funding services and protecting children's hard-won rights. Passing the buck to the public is a cop out. Even a child could see that.

Rebekah Pierre is an author, journalist and social worker

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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England's care system is failing children. This new overhaul is based on a middle-class fantasy | Rebekah Pierre

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ike a protective sibling, I am the first to both criticise and defend the care system. It failed and saved me in equal measure. In adult life, I returned to it as a social worker. I know its flaws and its potential to change lives. The sector is stretched and underfunded.

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Care Review recommends new ‘expert social worker’ role and Family Help Service | Social Work Today

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The long-awaited final report from the review of children's social care calls for a 'fundamental reset' to the system, proposing a bolstered early help service and cooperatives to tackle the 'broken' care market.

The Independent Review of Children's Social Care in England has published its final report calling for a 'radical reset' of the system.

Suggesting major reforms to the care system, including a new expert social worker role and bolstered early help, Josh MacAlister, Chair of the Independent Review said change is "desperately needed".

"There are too many stories of lives lived isolated, unfulfilled or cut short. The time is gone for half measures, tweaking or quick fixes. A fundamental reset is now needed and the review has produced a plan to do just that.

The Review estimates that the lifetime costs of adverse outcomes of children's social care is £23 billion each year.

The number of children in care has increased by 25% since 2009/10 and projections show that by 2032 there will be close to 100,000 children in care, up from 80,000 today. The total cost of children's social care, the Review team estimates, will be £15 billion per year, up from £10 billion per year now.

"Change is now both morally urgent and financially unavoidable. We have a stark choice - keep pouring money into a faltering system or reform and invest to improve people's lives and make the system sustainable for the future.

Improving early help

New proposals from the Review include strengthening early help and intervention with struggling families by creating a new 'Family Help' service. The new service, which the Review estimates will cost roughly £2 billion to set up, will be based in trusted community settings like schools will provide support to families struggling with problems like domestic abuse and poor mental health.

Noting the frequent changeovers of staff and services working with children, the proposed Family Help Teams will continue to work with families throughout child protection processes and continue to support families if a child is removed.

Expert social worker role

The Review also recommends strengthening child protection through a new expert social worker role to jointly work alongside Family Help teams where there are serious child protection concerns, and boost multi-agency and information sharing arrangements.

The new expert social worker will become involved where a decision needs to be made about whether a child may be at risk of significant harm, and what action might need to be taken.

"At these critical moments, we recommend that an Expert Child Protection Practitioner, who is an experienced social worker with demonstrated knowledge and skills, comes alongside Family Help to co-work and is responsible for making key decisions about what should happen to a child. The role of the Expert Child Protection Practitioner should be to undertake joint visits, chair child protection planning, and lead multi-agency professionals who will input into decisions about what should happen to a child," the report states.

The new role will be open to current social workers who entered the profession before its introduction recognised based on their experience, however in future, new social workers would need to have passed a five year Early Career Framework to undertake the role.

The move is hoped to combat what the Review describes as the current system's overly "proceduralized and 'vertical' accountability", citing a recent study which found that English social workers were the least likely to have confidence in their own or colleague's decisions, in comparison to American, Finnish and Norwegian child protection workers. Describing child protection conferences as the main check on decision-making in the process, the report says it is 'questionable' whether they are working effectively.

"Parents with lived experience who have spoken to the review have explained how conferences can leave them upset, confused and less likely to engage. Social workers tend to come to the conference with a set viewpoint and there is little disagreement between professionals or critical interrogation of information," the Review stated.

The Review also recommends spending £253 million over five years to recruit and retain enough social workers, as well as national payscales. national pay scales to "provide a desirable career pathway to remain in practice, specialise and be rewarded
through higher pay that reflects expertise."

Also included in the recommendations is for social workers to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time working directly with children, as well as reducing the use of agency social workers.

"We need to reduce the use of agency social work, which is costly and works against providing stable professional relationships for children and families, by developing new rules and regional staff banks. Taken together, this will mean social workers work with a smaller number of children and families, with more knowledge and skill, and with more available time and resources to do intensive life changing work for children families," the report states.

Tackling the broken care 'market'

The Review is also recommending launching new dedicated bodies - called Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs) - to "bring an end to profiteering in the children's social care market" and recruit thousands of new foster carers. The cooperatives are suggested to be local authority-owned regional bodies which will use their "scale and expertise" to provide a wider choice of homes for children closer to where they live.

"The need to fundamentally change the way children's homes, foster care and secure accommodation are commissioned, recruited to, managed and run, goes beyond addressing the immediate challenges of a shortage of homes, weak market oversight and high profit making and costs," the report says.

"Changes need to transform the care that is available for children when they need it. Care needs to be more tailored for teenagers (the fastest growing group entering care), less binary for children who can continue to safely see their families, and significantly better at keeping children close to their community, school, friends and brothers and sisters."

The Review anticipates that up to 20 RCCs could be created across England, suggesting that the Government selects one or two local authorities from each region to oversee their setup. The new RCCs will be inspected on a new specialist framework developed by Ofsted and will have sufficiency duty in their area, and therefore planning for future needs. They will also be responsible for running and creating new public sector fostering, residential and secure care services in the region, as well as commissioning not-for-profit and private sector-provided care for children as necessary. Local authorities will no longer perform these functions but the Review says they will have 'direct involvement' in the running of RCCs and children will continue to be in the care of the local authority.

Secure care

The report lambasts the 'abysmal' state of child detention in England, saying Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) or Secure Training Centres (STCs) are wholly unsuitable for children. It says these institutions "should be phased out within the next ten years" and replaced by local secure children's homes or 'Secure Schools' run or commissioned by RCCs, as they are "almost always better able to provide a more caring, less institutionalised and more supportive environment for young people to recover, learn and eventually return to their family, carer or the community."

Protected characteristic

The Review says that having a good home, qualifications, a fulfilling job, loving and trusting relationships, and good mental and physical health are the foundations of a good life, but notes that care experienced people often struggle more than most to achieve these.

It is estimated that 26% of the homeless population have care experience and 24% of the prison population in England have spent time in care. Two in five (41%) of all 19-21-year-old care leavers are NEET (not in employment, education or training) compared to 12% of all other young people in the same age group. adults who spent time in care between 1971-2001 were 70% more likely to die prematurely than those who did not.

It is proposing 'Five Missions' to tackle these inequalities that those who grew up in care often face. These 'Missions' include goals such as no young person leaving care without at least two loving relationships, doubling the proportion of care leavers attending university, and creating at least 3,500 new well-paid jobs and apprenticeships for care leavers each year. It also sets the Government other targets to reduce - and subsequently eradicate - care leaver homelessness, and increase the life expectancy of care experienced people, by narrowing health inequalities with the wider population.

The Review is recommending that these five aims can be supported by introducing a protected characteristic to recognise the lifelong impact of being care-experienced and reduce stigma and discrimination.

"Hearing testimony from care experienced people sharing the discrimination they have experienced, even from a very young age, it is clear that such discrimination can be similar in nature to other groups that have a legally protected characteristic under the Equality Act (2010)," the report said.

The report notes concerns that making care experience a protected characteristic might inadvertently increase the stigma people face and says Government should "give due consideration" to these views, but suggests the introduction is necessary and, like other 'hidden' protected characteristics, care experienced people would be able to choose whether to share their past care experience or not.

Implementation

Major changes such as those recommended by the Review will, however, come at a price. The Review is recommending an injection of £2.6 billion as part of a five-year reform programme to reverse the current trends in children's social care and improve outcomes. It is hoped that in ten year's time, 30,000 more children will be living safely with their families.

The report proposes that the changes should be funded through a single comprehensive reform programme to avoid the re-creation of small pots of funding and overlapping programmes, as well as supporting whole system change led locally. A £46 million fund will be offered in year one, rising to £987 million in year two and an eye-watering £1.257 billion in year three. The money, which the Review says must be new spending, can be funded by bringing forward spending that is forecast to be needed over the coming years.

"Investment in the comprehensive reform programme outlined by this review will deliver cashable savings within children's social care that can be reinvested for children and families over the medium-term, reduce wider public spending pressures and also provide social benefit in improved outcomes for children and families," the report says.

Most of the funding (roughly £2 billion) will be poured into setting up Family Help. A further £253 million will ensure there are enough skilled social workers and £76 million will be used to recruit 9,000 more foster carers and set up the RCCs. £23 million will also be earmarked to "unlock the potential of family networks" to bring parity between the support given to foster carers and Special Guardianship Orders (SGO) / kinship Child Arrangement Orders (CAO).

Roll out

The report says that government will need to start work on actions immediately and during the first six months publish a White Paper which sets out a full response to the Review. From here, government will need to consult on the most significant changes it intends to make through a new Bill in the final session of this Parliament.

It recommends that a National Children's Social Care Framework is developed to bring together in one place the objectives, outcomes, indicators and practice guidance to support system improvement.

In the 18-month period between January 2023 and Royal Assent of a new Children's Social Care Bill, the Review says that implementation should focus on the delivery of recommendations which do not require legislation, or where foundations need to be laid in preparation for legislation being passed in Spring 2024.

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care review recommends new ‘expert social worker’ role and family help servicethe long-awaited final report from the review of children’s social care calls for a ‘fundamental reset’ to the system

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proposing a bolstered early help service and cooperatives to tackle the ‘broken’ care market.children's

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Care Review recommends new 'expert social worker' role and Family Help Service | Social Work Today

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The long-awaited final report from the review of children's social care calls for a 'fundamental reset' to the system, proposing a bolstered early help service and cooperatives to tackle the 'broken' care market. The Independent Review of Children's Social Care in England has published its final report calling for a 'radical reset' of the system.

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Child protection in Britain: here is what social work experts know must change in the system

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The recent cases of seven-year-old Hakeem Hussain, 16-month-old Star Hobson and six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, all of whom died as a result of horrific abuse and neglect, have rightly led to questions as to how and why these children died. They have also led to criticism, from politicians and the media alike.

Some of this criticism may be legitimate. We don't know all the facts of every case, but it's possible that the individual frontline workers involved might have been unable or unwilling to undertake their duties. Their senior leadership, too, may not have been up to the task. Genuine mistakes might also have been made.

However, this is by no means the complete picture of child protection work. Despite the dearth of reliable data -- which is, itself, an indictment of the political oversight of this field - there is some evidence that indicates that many professionals involved in child protection and vital, wider family support are effective. In England, 35% of children's social care departments are rated as "good" and 12% as "outstanding". The UK has been ranked first among 60 countries for its response to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Rather, then, the criticism reflects a profound collective failure to appreciate the scale and complexity of child protection as a societal - and systemic - problem. If children are to be protected and families supported, these systemic failures have to be addressed.

The ever-increasing scale of child protection work

In the year ending March 2021, children's social care in England received almost 600,000 referrals from people concerned about children's wellbeing. Many of the families in which these children live have major, if not massive, problems, which the professionals involved in child protection are charged with addressing. Domestic abuse and mental health are among the most common.

Much child protection work is not in fact about immediately preventing abuse and neglect, although this is invariably at the forefront of practitioners' thoughts. Instead, it is about the often fraught task of working with parents so they are more able and more willing to care for their children appropriately.

Previously, practitioners involved in child protection were expected to respond to four major types of maltreatment: emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and neglect. Over time, though, they have been required to tackle an ever-expanding range of concerns, including breast flattening (the application of force to the breasts of young girls to restrict their development), child criminal or sexual exploitation, child marriage, child trafficking, female genital mutilation, online abuse and radicalisation. The child protection task has, therefore, increased not only in scale but also complexity, rendering it yet more challenging.

How children's social workers face organisational challenges

In 2021, while 2% more people joined the social worker profession, as compared to the previous year, 15% of those already employed left. There is currently a 17% vacancy rate within the sector; and agency staff occupy 16% of social worker posts.

This level of churn is a symptom of the pressure social workers are under. It also exacerbates existing problems, causing further disruption to services and greater pressure on staff.

According to the most recent government figures, social workers have an average of 16 cases at any one time. This is only slightly above the recommended range, as specified by a 2003 government-commissioned review, of 12 to 15 cases.

However, a recent survey among social workers, by the Community Care consultancy, reveals that the average is actually closer to 26 cases per person. It also shows that cases are becoming more complex. More than one third of social workers in this survey stated that their caseloads are "completely unmanageable".

A second survey, by the British Association of Social Workers, found that 96% of practitioners have to work overtime - overtime which is invariably unpaid and for which they often cannot claim time off in lieu. Insufficient time with families, an absence of other support services, excess administrative tasks, a lack of supervision, and media and public criticism, are just some of the other legion pressures facing social workers.

Those surveyed by Community Care reported that these working conditions have left them feeling "deflated, burnt out and extremely tired". This, they said, has, in turn, affected the quality of their work.

Some authorities have gone so far as to state that there is a "crisis" in child and family social work. Given that most public services - the judicial system, mental health services, the NHS, policing, the prison service, the probation service, schools and social care, even dentistry - are judged as being currently in "crisis", this should come as no surprise. Indeed, "crisis" appears to be the default position now in public services.

In 2021, the government, ostensibly in response to concerns surrounding children's social care, commissioned the Independent Review into Children's Social Care. The review's final report is due by the end of May 2022. It has come in for a considerable amount of criticism, which is unusual for a child protection-related review. Scholars, myself included, have voiced concerns over various aspects of the review, including its independence, scope and timescale.

The leaders of the review, by contrast, have claimed that it represents a "once in a generation opportunity to transform the children's social care system". Such statements represent a dangerous naivety about the complexity and challenge of child protection work, and the ability of a review to transform it. As I have pointed out, like innumerable reviews before it, this one is likely to have little, or no, beneficial impact.

Both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have lambasted successive governments for their gravely negligent attitude to children's social care. What is needed is not yet another review but action. Specifically, a genuine and massive commitment - with the requisite investment of time and energy - on the part of a competent government to improve the child protection system, and, for that matter, all other areas of public service.

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Child protection in Britain: here is what social work experts know must change in the system

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The recent cases of seven-year-old Hakeem Hussain, 16-month-old Star Hobson and six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, all of whom died as a result of horrific abuse and neglect, have rightly led to questions as to how and why these children died. They have also led to criticism, from politicians and the media alike.

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Immigration officers placed in 25 local authorities by Home Office, FoI reveals | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

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The Home Office has placed immigration officers in child social services and dozens of other local authority departments, in an arrangement that has raised concerns about the ability of the most vulnerable to seek support, the Guardiancan reveal.

The officers are part of an "enhanced checking service" that includes providing information about people's right to work and their eligibility for council services. The embedded official can also pass the details of undocumented people to immigration enforcement officers.

These immigration officers have been placed in 25 local authorities, according to records obtained under freedom of information (FoI). They work across services dealing with vulnerable people including children, as well as homelessness, social care and mental health provision. Others using the arrangement since 2016 also include Transport for London and HS2.

Several of the "customers" for this service are specifically child social care teams, but documents state that officers are expected to work across a range of local authority services.

The on-site immigration fficer service was reported by the Observerin early 2019. The revelation that the Home Office was "hiring out" immigration officials to enforce the government's hostile environment policy was met with outrage from critics, leading many local authorities to eject the officers, and the Home Office to remove information about the service from government websites.

However, the service has continued to operate. Records released in response to FoI requests reveal that at the end of 2021, 12 local authorities plus HS2 and TfL still had immigration officers working within them on behalf of the Home Office, including five where officers had been placed specifically in children's services.

The shadow minister for immigration, Stephen Kinnock, said: "Keeping children safe is an absolute priority and there should be no action that puts that at risk. The Home Office must explain what exactly these officers are doing and how they can guarantee that their work does not deny vulnerable children the support or protection they need."

Mary Atkinson, campaigns officer at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: "It's chilling to hear that government have been entrenching hostility into the services that families rely on for help and protection. Just like the hostile environment in healthcare, we know this practice spreads fear in our communities, and prevents people from seeking support.

"It's time government ended this dangerous and discriminatory approach - every resident should be able to put their trust in local councils at times of need."

Colin Yeo, an immigration law barrister at Garden Court Chambers, said: "Councils are not legally obliged to collaborate with the immigration authorities in this way and it is disappointing to see them voluntarily creating a hostile environment for vulnerable migrants. Enforced removals and voluntary returns are very rare now so all this does is force people underground who need help and support to get on their feet."

A template agreement between the Home Office and local authorities seen by the Guardian reveals the extent to which immigration officials work across council services.

The document, marked "official sensitive", states: "the officer will work the following teams within the customer's organisation; housing needs; homelessness and immigration team; children's services leaving care; adult social care; adult mental health services ... the officer will conduct real-time immigration status checks to support the customer's decision-making in relation to the individual's or family's eligibility for support or benefits and advise on the implications of those status checks."

The advice provided by the immigration officer includes providing information about people's right to work and their eligibility for council services.

Under the "no recourse to public funds" policy, people without the right to remain in the UK are denied access to a range of public services, such as housing. The officer is also there to advise on "voluntary returns", whereby people return to their country of citizenship, according to the document.

Local authorities that placed immigration officers in children's services included Enfield, Sutton, Thurrock, Slough and Barnet.

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At the end of 2021, the 12 local authorities that still had immigration officers working with them on behalf of the Home Office were: Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Enfield, Essex, Greenwich, Hertfordshire, Hillingdon, Slough, Sutton, Thurrock, and Newham.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Local authorities can request dedicated support on immigration related matters, with advice on specific cases where appropriate, but this is voluntary and aims to help vulnerable migrants, particularly single mothers and families with small children, to resolve their status. It is usually used to help those who are destitute access appropriate support.

"Individual decisions are made by local authorities rather than immigration staff and to suggest otherwise is wrong."

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Immigration officers placed in 25 local authorities by Home Office, FoI reveals

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The Home Office has placed immigration officers in child social services and dozens of other local authority departments, in an arrangement that has raised concerns about the ability of the most vulnerable to seek support, the Guardiancan reveal. The officers are part of an "enhanced checking service" that includes providing information about people's right to work and their eligibility for council services.

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Made in London: Solidarity Britannia - video | Global | The Guardian

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Lynda Ouazar set up a food bank for undocumented people in the first lockdown, supporting those who lost their jobs and houses overnight, and who were unable to seek official help. She joined the Guardian for this collaborative film-making project, Made in Britain, to try to unearth some of these hidden stories in her part of east London

This is the fourth episode of Made in Britain, a community-based video journalism project looking at poverty, inequality and the challenges our communities face in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The aim is to put the individuals who are typically under-represented in the media in front and behind the camera

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Made in London: Solidarity Britannia - video

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Lynda Ouazar set up a food bank for undocumented people in the first lockdown, supporting those who lost their jobs and houses overnight, and who were unable to seek official help.

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How many more children must die before we fix England’s social services? | Polly Curtis | The Guardian

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How many more children must die before we fix England’s social services? | Polly Curtis

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A system eroded by austerity has been further stretched by the pandemic. The tragic consequences are all too plain to see, says author Polly Curtis

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23/05/22 Child protection beyond the pandemic: Shaping direct practice with children and families

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A team of researchers led by Professor Harry Ferguson at the University of Birmingham has been researching the impact of COVID-19 on social care and child protection in four local authority fieldwork research sites across England since the start of the pandemic and have collected a new wave of data for 2022.

In a short timeframe, we have learned a lot about the possibilities and limits of digital/hybrid working in children's social care. While many places have now returned almost entirely to face-to-face practice, this research work in early 2022 has found important differences in approaches and the nature of closeness and distance that is occurring with children and families, raising the profoundly important question of what should effective child protection and relationship-based practice involve?

This Knowledge Exchange session will share key themes from this research and seek participants' perspectives to enrich the research findings and inform a briefing to be published later in 2022. With the Review of Children's Social Care and the National Safeguarding review both due out in coming months we are keen that practice experience of post pandemic working informs the future.
Please note in order to request your place at this event you will need to have created a Research in Practice account. You can do so here. If you are unable to make this date, as an alternative this event is also taking place on 24 May. Please only book onto one of these dates.

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23/05/22 Child protection beyond the pandemic: Shaping direct practice with children and families

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A team of researchers led by Professor Harry Ferguson at the University of Birmingham has been researching the impact of COVID-19 on social care and child protection in four local authority fieldwork research sites across England since the start of the pandemic and have collected a new wave of data for 2022.

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Social Sciences | Free Full-Text | Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm

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Institute of Applied Social Research, University of Bedfordshire, Room F303, Park Square, Luton LU1 3JU, UK

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 27 February 2020 / Revised: 25 March 2020 / Accepted: 26 March 2020 / Published: 1 April 2020

This paper critically reflects on the role of surveillance and trusted relationships in social work in England and Wales. It explores the characteristics of relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance and asks how these approaches apply to emerging policy and practices responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH). Five bodies of research that explore safeguarding responses across a range of public bodies are drawn on to present an analytical framework that explores elements of safeguarding responses, constituting relationships of trust or relationships of surveillance and control. This analytic framework is applied to two case studies, each of which detail a recent practice innovation in response to EFH studied by the authors, as part of a larger body of work under the Contextual Safeguarding programme. The application of this framework signals a number of critical issues related to the focus/rationale, methods and impact of interventions into EFH that should be considered in future work to address EFH, to ensure young people's rights to privacy and participation are upheld. View Full-Text

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Wroe, L.E.; Lloyd, J. Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm. Soc. Sci. 2020, 9, 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9040037

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Wroe LE, Lloyd J. Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm. Social Sciences. 2020; 9(4):37. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9040037

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Wroe, Lauren E., and Jenny Lloyd. 2020. "Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm" Social Sciences 9, no. 4: 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9040037

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Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm

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This paper critically reflects on the role of surveillance and trusted relationships in social work in England and Wales. It explores the characteristics of relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance and asks how these approaches apply to emerging policy and practices responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH).

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Full article: Social work and child protection for a post-pandemic world: the re-making of practice during COVID-19 and its renewal beyond it

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Social work and child protection for a post-pandemic world: the re-making of practice during COVID-19 and its renewal beyond it

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(2022). Social work and child protection for a post-pandemic world: the re-making of practice during COVID-19 and its renewal beyond it. Journal of Social Work Practice: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 5-24.

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Introduction

Radical Safeguarding - A Social Justice Workbook for Safeguarding Practitioners is designed

for practitioners working with children and young people, particularly in school contexts, who

might be wondering how to start doing things differently when it comes to safeguarding.

Our understanding of a radical approach to child safety is one that traces the root cause of

harms to children. This resource looks at some of the cultures and structures that underpin and

enable this harm and suggests some models for understanding child safety and a range of

practical approaches and activities that we hope can support practitioners in fostering

alternative, resistant, safeguarding practices.

The Need

We created this resource because we know that 'safeguarding' often actively causes harm to

the most marginalised young people, particularly young people of colour, and that 'safeguarding'

training and structures often leave practitioners feeling fearful, lacking in agency and resigned to

responding in ways that they know will cause young people and their families further harm.

The resource explores cultures and structures of UK schooling that can cause harm to young

people, and problematises current safeguarding strategies and practices that pathologise,

criminalise and harm children, particularly those from oppressed communities.

What We Did

We worked in partnership withTransforming Together to produce and write the Radical Safeguarding workbook. We worked with a range of partners in the development of the workbook including families and young people, the Contextual Safeguarding Network, No More Exclusions and the Radical Education Network.

While the workbook has been written with a focus on safeguarding practice in education, we invite practitioners and groups with safeguarding responsibilities in any sector to adapt and apply what is useful in the contexts that you are working in.

The Radical Safeguarding workbook was written by Alex Johnston and Latifa Akay and designed by https://www.soofiya.com/.

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Introduction Radical Safeguarding - A Social Justice Workbook for Safeguarding Practitioners is designed for practitioners working with children and young people, particularly in school contexts, who might be wondering how to start doing things differently when it comes to safeguarding. Our understanding of a radical approach to child safety is one that traces the root cause of harms to children.

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Unheld Child: Social Work, Social Distancing and the Possibilities and Limits to Child Protection during the COVID-19 Pandemic | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic changed dramatically the ways social workers engaged with children and families. This article presents findings from our research into the effects of COVID-19 on social work and child protection in England during the first nine months of the pandemic. Our aim is to provide new knowledge to enable realistic expectations of what it was possible for social workers to achieve and particularly the limits to child protection. Such perspective has become more important than ever due to knowledge of children who died tragically from abuse despite social work involvement during the pandemic. Our research findings show how some practitioners got physically close to some children, whilst being distanced from others. We examine the dynamics that shaped closeness and distance and identify seven influences that created limits to child protection and the problem of 'the unheld child'. The article provides new understandings of child protection as embodied, multi-sensorial practices and the ways anxiety and experiences of bodily self-alienation limit practitioners' capacities to think about and get close to children. Whilst social workers creatively improvised to achieve their goals, coronavirus and social distancing imposed limits to child protection that no amount of innovative practice could overcome in all cases.

Introduction

From its early 2020 beginnings, the COVID-19 pandemic brought new risks of infection from a potentially deadly coronavirus, resulting in 'lockdowns' of the population in their homes, forbidding visitors from entering and imposing two-metre 'social distancing' which effectively banned touch between people not sharing a household. Following the announcement of the first lockdown on the 23 March 2020, government guidance in England sought to limit the need for social care staff to enter homes, suggesting '[T]here are many ways to keep in touch with a child, young person or family without physical face-to-face contact' ( Department for Education, 2020). A key early strategy was for social workers to see families by making 'virtual home visits' using video calling technology ( Cook and Zschomler, 2020). Rapid risk assessments were made by managers and practitioners to ensure children on child protection plans and in complex need were visited at home in-person-inside the house, on the doorstep or in the garden-whilst children considered at lower risk could be seen virtually.

This sudden disruption of the taken-for-granted ways child protection was done raises vitally important questions about what could now be achieved? In this article, we present findings from our research into the effects of COVID-19 on social work and child protection undertaken over the first nine months of the pandemic. Our research asked: How can practices that have relied on achieving closeness keep children safe and help families in a period of institutionalised social distancing? One aim of the study was to provide knowledge to help social work organisations, regulators, politicians, policy makers and the public attain realistic expectations of what it was possible for social workers to achieve in a context of social distancing and the limits to child protection under such conditions. The need for such perspective has become all the more important due to public disclosure in December 2021 of the deaths of children in two families in England, six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and sixteen-month-old Star Hobson. Both died as a result of horrendous abuse despite some involvement of social workers and other professionals.

Arthur and his father moved into his stepmother's home at the start of the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020 and as soon as April 2020, it appears, his wider family had reported suspected abuse; social workers visited, but he died in June 2020 ( The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/03/arthur-labinjo-hughes-timeline-of-events-that-ended-in-his). Star died in September 2020 meaning that key interactions between her, her family and professionals also went on during the early phase of the pandemic. Reviews of the practice of professionals in both cases are under way and aim to inform policy and practice nationally. It was striking how the furious public and political response to these tragedies underestimated or totally ignored the impact of the pandemic on social workers' capacities to keep children safe.

These cases increase the need for better understanding of the real possibilities and limits of social work and child protection in a pandemic. We have reported elsewhere on how social workers improvised to get as close as possible to children and support families by using video calling, messaging and walking interviews in fresh air spaces beyond the home ( Ferguson et al., 2022). We found that there was no single pattern to, or consequence of, the mandate for physical distancing, and it did not necessarily keep social workers remote from children and families. Children, parents and even objects like toys, became untouchable, whilst simultaneously physical closeness and touch were creatively used within nurturing responses to some children. Thus COVID-19 had complex effects that, despite-and even because of-social distancing, saw some practitioners getting physically close to and tactile with some children, whilst staying physically distant from others. We argue then that these interactions between social workers and service users are best understood through exploring the dynamics of closeness and distance, what influences them and their impact on the effectiveness of child protection. Our data suggest that COVID-19 and social distancing imposed limits to child protection that no amount of creative, innovative practice could overcome in all cases, leaving gaps that children could fall through.

We argue that these limits and gaps can usefully be explored through the notion of 'intimate child protection practice' ( Ferguson, 2011) and in terms of the problem of 'the unheld child' ( Ferguson, 2017). The latter concept encapsulates how effective social work is not just about ensuring children are 'seen' and heard but that entering the child's world involves getting down to their level, using physical closeness, play and where appropriate touch to learn about their experience and help them. The pandemic seriously disrupted the possibilities for achieving such intimate child protection practice.

From intimate child protection practice to the unheld child

The literature on social work and the COVID-19 pandemic is already extensive. A systematic literature review of publications during its first year identified 256 outputs ( Cheung, 2022). In the second year of the pandemic the literature grew significantly, covering COVID-19 implications across different countries, service user groups and all aspects of social work education, practice, staff well-being, ethics, inequalities and policy. Our focus here is on relational practice in child protection and studies of a key aspect of that, the digital and casework through video calls, show that some service users prefer this, whilst often social workers feel that their assessments are adversely affected by what they cannot see going on beyond the frame of the screen and the absence of the sensory experience of being in service users' homes ( Baginsky and Manthorpe, 2020; Cook and Zschomler, 2020; Pink et al., 2022).

Yet, there has been little research into these sensory experiences and the nature and dynamics of in-person relating between social workers and children and families during the pandemic, and the focus of this article is on the actual embodied practices that were engaged in and the lived experience of providing and receiving social work services. The literature on social work and relationship based practice largely leaves out consideration of corporeality, of the 'body' ( Green, 2017, 2021), especially as it is used and experienced in practice interactions ( Cameron and McDermott, 2007; Phillips, 2014). Kong et al. (2021) argue that COVID-19 has made visible social workers' 'sensuous bodies', concluding from their secondary analysis of survey data that social workers' bodies 'have been suspended, displaced and re-constituted during the first UK national lockdown'. Green and Moran (2021) argue that the pandemic led to a 'scientisation' of touch in social work where its emotional constituents and the actual practices of touch have been silenced under impersonal scientised terminology such as 'social distancing'. In going beyond such terminology, our data show how child protection social work must be understood as embodied, multi-sensorial practices that depend upon hearing, smell and touch, as well as sight, on movement as much as being still.

To understand the impact of the pandemic on child protection it is crucial to place it in the context of pre-pandemic practice. Prior to COVID-19 ethnographic research that observed practice showed that children were most commonly seen in the family home and effective relationship-based practice involved getting physically and emotionally close to them, especially on home visits ( Winter et al., 2017; Ferguson et al., 2020a). Different degrees of closeness to children and families occurred and in a minority of cases children were ignored altogether, despite being in front of social workers-they were not only 'invisible' but 'unheld' children due to an absence of tactile contact, play and holding ( Ferguson, 2017). Some encounters and relationships with children were close and intimate. A typical example is a case researchers shadowed for a year, where the social worker held the infant on all of the ten home visits she was observed on, regularly moving by getting down on the floor to the child's level. The worker's rationale was that touch was an important sense to use in relational work and as a way of checking children's well-being and safety. By getting physically and emotionally close to children such intimate child protection practice was central to creating a 'holding relationship' that benefited parents as well as children ( Ferguson et al., 2020b).

However, tactile closeness was not the only way that practitioners established intimacy that kept children safe. With older children emotional connection was achieved through talk, photos and other things in their bedrooms, encounters in the car, cafes, on computers and through mobile phones and social media ( Simpson, 2017). With younger children closeness from a distance occurred by workers speaking to them and connecting through smiles and other gestures such as clapping hands in unison. Such effective rapport and relationship building had an emotional feel, which in psychotherapy has been called 'non-physical touch, through energetic attunement' ( Bloom, 2005, p. 58). As we will show non-physical holding through energetic attunement had to become crucial to child protection work during the pandemic.

Methodology

The originality of our contribution lies in part in our qualitative longitudinal methodology. Between April and December 2020, we conducted interviews with forty-eight social care staff: twenty-nine social workers, nine family support workers and ten managers from four local authority areas in England. Forty-one were women and seven men and seven participants identified as Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic. Twenty-one social workers and six operational managers worked in long-term child protection and 'child in need' teams, whilst five were from initial assessment teams, three worked with children with disabilities, two were from children in care teams. A core sample of social work practitioners were interviewed seven or more times, approximately every month. Interviews were conducted through video calls and occasionally by telephone and we explored practice issues arising from the pandemic and also tracked social workers' experiences of working with a subsample of families over the nine months. We interviewed twenty-one parents and one grandparent, most of who (seventeen) were involved in these longitudinal case-studies. We also observed four video recorded interactions between social workers and parents. The data enable us to show the dynamics of closeness and distance in individual encounters and longer term relationships. All interviews were audio-recorded, fully transcribed and analysed using NVivo 12 Plus, identifying key themes across the interviews and the case-studies of longer term work with families. The study obtained ethical approval from the University of Birmingham research ethics committee and the participating agencies. All of the participants gave verbal consent to being involved. All information that could possibly identify participants and research sites has been changed.

Understanding the possibilities and limits of child protection in the fearful, anxious conditions caused by the pandemic requires a theoretical framework that enables understanding of embodied, sensory and mobile experiences and gathering data that explore what social workers and service users said and did and the atmospheres of the encounters, their moods, emotional texture, smells, sounds-in essence, how they 'felt' ( Page, 2021; Pink, 2015). The body can be understood as 'a "medium" or "mediator" between the reflective self and the world' ( Rosa, 2019, p. 83). The world exists in our consciousness only through our bodies, whilst consciousness itself must be understood as bodily. Our findings show how social workers' anxieties about COVID-19 and restrictions on movement and closeness caused experiences of what Rosa (2019, p. 105) calls 'bodily self-alienation'. Here, the body becomes an enemy or an unknown stranger and how it behaves runs contrary to our intentions by blushing, sweating, smelling, belching, refusing to move and so on, meaning we no longer feel comfortable in our own skin ( Rosa, 2019, p. 105).

Such bodily alienation is deeply connected to disruptions of social workers' minds, their use of the reflective self and how they are able to think-or not think-about service users. The theory of reflective practice holds that practitioners should reflect in action and then afterwards reflect on what they did and why ( Schon, 1983). It is a flawed theory, however, because it places no limits on what is it possible to think about and to feel when in the heat of practice ( Ferguson, 2018a). The 'self' therefore is conceptualised as an unproblematic entity that has an unlimited capacity to absorb emotion, that the worker goes into in order to connect to their feelings, thoughts, values and how they are relating to service users. Much more relevant to our research is the psychoanalytical concept of the 'defended subject' or self ( Briggs, 2005, p. 23). Here, the self is understood as being conflicted and principally concerned with maintaining tolerable, manageable levels of anxiety. We argue that in our study not reflecting in action was a vital strategy practitioners adopted to avoid them becoming overwhelmed by unbearable anxiety. Not thinking about the danger and complexity they were in whilst they were in it helped social workers defend the self and get through encounters with service users, especially in the riskiest COVID-19 domain of all, their homes, but this made it much more difficult to think about and hold children in mind.

Findings

Our data reveal seven key influences on the dynamics of closeness and distance that made child protection work more complex and prone to limitations than it was pre-pandemic: pandemic emotions; the complexity of the home as the key site of practice; 'frazzled', defended states of mind; untouchable bodies and things; hostile relationships and the home as a fortress; the effects of facemasks and social working in isolation.

Pandemic emotions and atmospheres of fear and danger

As levels of fear and anxiety have fluctuated during the pandemic depending on levels of infection and deaths, it is easy to forget just how frightening the initial emergence of coronavirus was. The first death from COVID-19 was recorded in England on 2nd March 2020 and by the end of that year 72,178 people in England were officially known to have lost their lives to cornavirus ( Public Health England, 2022). An intense atmosphere of uncertainty and danger existed at the time of the first lockdown between late-March and June 2020, when staying at home and away from others was held to be the safe way to avoid infection. Yet, social workers were still required to enter family homes, where the smallness of these spaces, taking in of residents' breath and contagion from surfaces, all in a context of no vaccines and low population immunity was regarded as extremely dangerous. This fear is typified by a social worker who undertook many in-person visits during the first lockdown:

I do worry driving home in my clothes, wondering what I am carrying. ... [a colleague] and me removed 2 children and they sat in my own children's car seats. You couldn't get closer to my family... we are potentially super-spreaders.

Using a car like this was only allowed in emergency situations. Because social work offices closed practitioners were forced to work from home and to return there from home visits to the intimate places like bedrooms that they worked from home in, putting at risk their own and their family's health. We heard frequent stories of workers on arrival home stripping in the hallway and going straight for a shower. Personal protective equipment (PPE) provision was intended to promote worker and family safety but its availability early in the pandemic was generally poor and policies directing when it should be worn were contested and confusing ( BASW, 2020).

Yet, the pandemic prompted a passionate commitment to social work values and selflessness which manifested in a powerful commitment to being helpful through home visits, even when personally anxious about the risks.

That's the drive: helping families, helping children, so for me to drop back I know in my head that there's this Covid that many ethnic minority people have. On the news we've been told that more of them have died, they've succumbed to this illness, but knowing that and then in my heart, the heart that I have to help is kind of overriding ... the knowledge about this Covid-19 and the risks.

Risks from COVID-19 were greatest for black and minority ethnic families and workers and this Black British social worker was here reflecting on the risks she was taking in the first lockdown.

We heard many stories about how impossible it was to maintain the expected two metre distance inside homes, because younger children did not understand it. Here, a social worker explains how a four year old girl 'likes to come and put her head on my knee, I think it is almost like a comfort thing, I think she slightly understands that I am there trying to help.' Social workers invariably reciprocated by providing the comfort children needed, revealing how closeness and actual tactile contact are a crucial part of the nurture and therapeutic help social workers provide for children.

Home visits are often calm, congenial affairs, but some are volatile and dangerous, whilst most are steeped in uncertainty and the unknown of what is behind the door ( Ferguson, 2018b; Page, 2021). From the start of the pandemic social workers reported encountering the unexpected, such as one who found a father who was not supposed to be in the home hiding in the bedroom behind a wardrobe, and in another case a man jumped out of the bedroom window on seeing the social worker. Another risky element was the threat of violence by some family members, but now with the additional risks of infection.

I think our risk ... remains the same, ... we are going into people's houses. I got a Dettol spray and every visit I do I spray myself ... [and] the physical risk of being threatened by parents, sometimes teenagers, I think that's still there.

As Page (2021) notes service users' homes are also sites 'of potential breakthrough, requiring work that is founded upon intuition and feelings as much as protocols and procedures.' The pandemic both intensified the feelings and made such breakthroughs harder to achieve. There were agonising examples of social workers on doorstep visits trying to establish whether children had been harmed.

On my visit the boy [two years old] had a bruise on his eye, mother was coughing away, I was on the doorstep, and mother went upstairs and left the child at the top of the stairs and I was trying to get him to come down the stairs, he didn't. She brought him down and put him in the hallway and I couldn't go in and get him because of the coughing and his older brother said he did it [the bruised eye] and I finally got to see him closer up. So that was farcical. ... I was a bit closer than 2 meters.

When asked how effective they could be at ensuring such children are safe the social worker told us 'it's not very satisfactory because you can't go as far as you usually would OR you have to go for a full medical. You've got to underplay it or overplay' and in the former 'you are waking up in the night and wondering should I have seen more, have I done enough?'

'Frazzled' states of mind and body

Thinking and reflecting in action in social work have always been challenging but COVID-19 made them considerably harder. An example typical of our sample involves a social worker we call Monica. The referral about the Martinez family concerned a twelve-year-old boy having a black eye that his mother allegedly caused, in response to being hit by her son. It was Monica's first time stepping into a family home during the pandemic and we interviewed her thirty minutes after the visit. She had spent just under an hour on the visit, during which she saw the other child of the family, a seven-year-old girl, on her own spending time in the garden, the sitting room, and upstairs in her bedroom so she could show the social worker her dolls. She thought the child had 'probably been prepared by mother for the visit.' Initially, the worker and child sat on the 'medium-large sofa, about a meter and a half apart, she sat at one end I sat at the other, I was perched on the edge of the seat. Then we sat outside briefly at a large garden table on chairs, approximately 2 metre distance, then inside around a dining room table, opposite each other.' When in the child's bedroom, the social worker 'knelt on the floor near the door way, she [the child] was about a metre or two away playing on the floor, she had her back to me most of the time.'

The twelve-year-old boy was in his bedroom and when the social worker entered he continued playing with his x-box. She saw he had a black mark on his eye, but he shrugged to everything she asked. The social worker, 'felt like I was trying to convince him what social work is about, ... he'd made his mind up he wasn't going to talk.' The boy was sitting on the end of his bed and she 'walked into the room, initially stood in the doorway and stood about a metre from him, as I needed to take a photo of his injury.' Mrs Martinez was quite open about what had happened, that she had hit him and showed the social worker 'the bad bruises' on her arms, caused by him.

Despite the barriers, the social worker managed to achieve at least some of her aims. She established some rapport with the seven-year-old, elicited a cooperative response from the parent, saw the mark on the boy's eye, but did not get him to engage. There was however a disoriented quality to the social worker's experience in the family home, as if part of herself and mind were absent. Directly afterwards she could not remember certain details that normally she felt she would have easily recalled. Her demeanour was weary and her thinking ponderous, as she stared into the distance on the video call and tried to make sense of the experience she had just had.

Funny I forgot the process, not big things, like where the children sleep, I can't remember if ... Funny because I was just so aware of what I was wearing. ... I took the mask off because the child was upset. ... It's true what colleagues were saying, you get really hot really quickly. ... You soon forget or I did anyway the social distancing, it all goes out of the window.

When we spoke to Monica again ten days after she did the above visit she began without prompting by awkwardly describing herself as having been in a 'frazzled' state when we spoke to her that late afternoon. Her unease and embarrassment spoke to a sense of disorientation that sometimes afflicted social workers during COVID-19, making thinking in action very difficult. Seeing families in their gardens was one way of gaining respite from the risk of the virus but this also became a place of unease for Monica because the neighbours were also in their garden and had a noisy aggressive argument which drove the social worker and the family indoors again. The social worker said the commotion next door was part of a series of things that 'threw off the visit'. Monica was interviewed nine times for the research and in December 2020 still spoke anxiously of having to wear PPE and 'maintain social distancing, knowing that I do feel time pressured, I don't feel as relaxed with children.'

This shows how precarious relating to children and families was, how interactions could be 'thrown off', but also how some connection could still occur. There was a heightened uncertainty and tension between connection and disconnection that very often caused a sense of a lack, of not being able to fully trust in what had been done to try and keep children safe. Monica experienced what she called 'forgetting of the basics'. Our analysis suggests two ways of accounting for this. The first is that it was due to the impact of anxiety on the mind and body. The sensation of the overheating body and feeling she had forgotten she was supposed to social distance were signs of 'bodily self-alienation' ( Rosa, 2019) and how the worker did not feel at home in or have control over her body. As another social worker Patricia expressed it in October 2020:

I never think about it [Covid] when I'm in people's homes. I think about it before I go in ... and when I go in I go into automatic pilot doing my visiting. You're talking to children, trying to find out how they are, Covid is not on the radar when you are in there.

There appears to be a contradiction here between social workers being afraid of the effects of COVID-19 whilst also claiming not to think about it once they were engaging with children. However, we see these responses as complimentary: Reverting to not thinking about COVID-19 when interacting with children was a strategy for managing the anxiety it caused. This is how we interpret Patricia's reference to 'going into automatic pilot' when home visiting.

What is evident here is how the limits to child protection were informed by the messy difficulties of implementing reflective practice when in the heat of the work. The findings show how during the pandemic social workers could think about some aspects of what they were doing whilst they were doing it, but there were limits to how far practitioners could reflect in action and sometimes chose to. The complex practical and emotional demands of COVID-19 and face-to-face work were so great at times that workers could not think about or allow themselves to feel that complexity whilst they were in it, if they were to be able to focus on service users' needs. Non-reflection and 'forgetting' arose from the self needing to defend the worker from unbearable levels of anxiety ( Ferguson, 2018a). Not reflecting in action was a vital strategy practitioners adopted, to a degree consciously, but more unconsciously, to get them through encounters with service users.

The second way of understanding disoriented frazzled thinking is through the concept of 'liminality'. A home visit involves stepping across a boundary into another world and liminality is an 'in-between' state that evokes a sense of normlessness from moving from one state to another ( Turner, 1969). The doorstep, hallway and porch straddle the threshold between public and private worlds, where they are neither in nor out and for this reason carry danger. Within them, we experience the world differently, not knowing where we stand. It is common for hallways to have mirrors to allow us to glance at ourselves to reorient to who we are ( Rosselin, 1999). Little wonder then that doorstep visits could be so challenging. What Monica described-and embodied-was how lockdowns intensified home visiting as a liminal experience, involving a state of disorientation that could last for the opening minutes of a visit or persist for its entire duration.

When Jeyasingham (2018) shadowed practitioners as they moved around the areas where service users lived, he found social workers often experienced these spaces as 'uncanny'. The uncanny can be the eerie feeling of a place being haunted, whilst for Freud (2003 [1919]) it was 'the jarring sensation that comes when something familiar is encountered in an unexpected context or vice versa'. It makes itself felt 'through a creeping sense of disquiet' ( Jeyasingham, 2018, p. 85). Home visiting was very familiar to these social workers but their experience of it had changed. Due to COVID their work now happened in uncanny spaces with a heightened sense of liminality, greatly increasing the risks of disoriented frazzled thinking that made it very difficult to think clearly and adequately hold children in mind.

Untouchable things and the sense of a lack

It was not just bodies but surfaces and all everyday things that were regarded as potentially contagious and could not be touched. This included pens and paper, which limited communication and:

if you are playing a game, that is not feasible at the moment because of the cross-contamination, like if we pick up the same pieces. So, that is tricky and in terms of our resources we are limited.

Social workers' freedom to move was also restricted. As one social worker put it, pre-COVID-19:

I would be all over: in the kitchen looking in the cupboards and holding stuff, and now we are being told that touch should be very minimal to prevent cross-infection. So, yeah, I find the way we are working now is restricting my practice compared to how I've practiced before. So, [pre-COVID-19] you'd sit by the table or on the floor with the child; you'd be close to them and doing direct work or talking to them, things like that.

How and where to sit so as to maintain physical distance and the role of touch had to be completely rethought. Yet, there were no absolutes. Some workers told us they 'would rather get in there and play and you know drive the cars around and ask them about their toys, like touching every toy', because they knew that play was an important way to enter the child's world.

This sense of a lack pervaded social worker's sensibilities and can also be seen in casework that had been effective. A powerful example is the relationship Sandra developed with the Williams family, who by the start of the pandemic she had known for five months. Three of their children had previously been removed from them into care. The pre-birth assessment for the new baby was positive and when she was born at the start of lockdown she was allowed home. For several months after the birth Sandra spoke to the parents daily, by phone or WhatsApp video. There was also frequent messaging and she visited them in person quite regularly. Elsewhere, we have characterised this practice as a classic form of hybrid digital and in-person social work that emerged during the pandemic ( Ferguson et al., 2022). The worker provided humane care to the parents and developed a relationship with the baby despite not being able to physically hold her. Sandra told us how 'In normal times I would certainly have had a cuddle by now and would try and get her to have a look at me and follow my facial expressions, she does recognise my voice now and mum and dad say she does recognise me. Were it not for the pandemic I'd be a bit more hands on, I'm a natural hugger.'

Wanting a hug emerged from the worker's 'natural' inclination to touch and her preferred 'hands-on' style of relating to children. She adapted to social distancing by attuning to and developing a meaningful relationship with the infant based on non-physical touch: through observation, voice, eye contact and being playful from a distance. Although the child was physically unheld, emotionally and energetically she was held in mind by the worker. By the end of our fieldwork in December 2020 the plan was for social work involvement to soon end.

Sandra had helped the parents to keep their child, yet for her there remained a doubt, a lack, relating to that unfulfilled part of the work where the child was physically unheld.

During lockdowns home visits were generally shorter and social workers saw children on their own, in their bedrooms for instance, much less frequently than pre-pandemic because this would have prolonged the time they spent inside the home and make maintaining distance from children more difficult. When schools were closed due the pandemic, except to vulnerable children, when parents did not send them as often happened seeing children on their own and for long enough was extremely difficult. The hybrid 'little and often' ( Kong et al, 2021) approach that emerged with relatively short in-person encounters sometimes complimented by video calls and messaging could be helpful to some families ( Pink et al, 2022). However, in high risk child protection situations where seeing the children and the family in-person remained the priority, practice generally lacked the immersive quality, the intimacy, that makes it possible to establish how safe children feel and are.

Hostile relationships and the home as a fortress

Whilst many families in our study were grateful for the thoughtful help they received during the pandemic, social workers also visited homes where they were unwelcome. Practitioners suspected some families pretended to have COVID-19 symptoms to stop them visiting. One example was social worker Linda's experience with the Stafford family. The children, aged nine and eleven years, were being home schooled and by August 2020 had not been seen by the social worker for five months, since the start of the pandemic. Refusing to let social workers in was not new, but COVID-19 lent it a new impetus. Linda finally persuaded the family to come to the office in October 2020, when she said: 'They wouldn't even sit down. Mother was very angry, she had the frown, I could only see part of her eyes, the glare felt much more intense over the mask.' The concern was about 'emotional harm by mum ... Even now we don't know what these children's lived experience is.' This was the kind of 'hostile relationship' that involves huge challenges ( Ferguson et al., 2021) to which COVID-19 added another layer of difficulty. There was not enough evidence to remove the children, for whom the limitations of child protection ran deep.

Disconnection and disorientation: The use of face masks

Another powerful narrative about the effects of COVID-19 was how mask-wearing caused 'disconnection' and 'disorientation'.

I hate wearing the mask, it's horrible, I feel frustrated and flustered in it, it does impact on my concentration, you get hot even if not wearing full PPE ... you want children to see your expressions. When sitting at a table or living room and facing down at work they are doing, they sometimes look up and catch your facial expression. ... I feel disconnected.

This could lead social workers to rush the work. As one exemplified it: 'With the mask I almost want to get the visit over and done with, when you take it off the visit feels much better. I feel disoriented, don't remember things as well. ... At times I get used to it but I usually feel more disconnected.' Some creativity was used to get around these barriers: 'I went to see a baby the other day and I was really trying to smile at him with my eyes.' However, mask wearing not only interrupted the normal 'facework' that goes on, it could affect workers' minds by causing flustered thinking, reduced concentration and bodily self-alienation in the form of agitated overheated bodies-disruptions that imposed yet more limits on child protection.

Working in isolation

Social workers consistently reported that many early help, health and therapeutic services either shifted online or were withdrawn. Whilst professional networks continued to meet online at case conferences and schools provided some in-person or doorstep support and the police visited in emergencies, during the first lockdown social workers were often the sole agency going into homes. Most health visitors were redeployed onto COVID-19 hospital wards and just one in ten parents of children in the UK aged under two years saw a health visitor face-to-face during the first lockdown ( Saunders and Hogg, 2021). This compounded how babies and pre-school children were unheld, increasing the danger of at-risk children being missed, whilst similar risks existed for older children whose parents did not send them to school, closing off a vital space where children could be seen alone. The capacity of social work teams to meet these higher demands was affected by episodes of staff sickness and self isolating due to COVID-19, larger workloads and at some of our sites increases in time-consuming court work due to more children being taken into care.

Working in isolation was exacerbated by working from home. In normal times the office and the team are a secure base within which workers can offload anxiety and difficult feelings ( Cook et al., 2020), but this could no longer happen in person during lockdowns. One social worker characterised this as 'missing the niceness of being around friendly faces that know what the work is like if you are doing something unpleasant. [With COVID-19] you hold on to more.' Some social workers spoke of a reluctance by managers to openly discuss workers' emotional and visceral experiences. Instead at some of our research sites managers anxiously insisted on extensive case recording in anticipation of inspection by the regulatory body Ofsted, even though inspections were suspended during the early pandemic phases. Front line workers felt the extra stress this caused during a global pandemic was deeply unfair. Whilst managers feared the shame that comes from a failed Ofsted inspection, such insistence on bureaucratic tasks involves the imposition of what Menzies Lyth (1988, p. 50) called 'ritual task performance' that occurs when anxiety becomes 'intense and unmanageable' and attention is displaced on to what can be controlled. Feelings were avoided for psychological, unconscious and defensive reasons arising from the need for not just individuals but organisations to defend themselves against anxiety and unbearable feelings ( Whittaker, 2011). At a time when workers' need for emotional support, containment and help to understand how they were thinking-or not thinking-and relating to children and families was never greater, the opportunities for them receiving it had literally never been so remote.

Discussion

The range of influences we have drawn out from our data shaped the dynamics of closeness and distance in child protection work during the pandemic. We are not claiming to have provided an explanation for how it was that children such as Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson died at that time despite social work involvement. At the time of writing, the circumstances surrounding attempts to protect them are largely unknown and are the subject of case reviews. What we are arguing is that the influences on the dynamics of closeness and distance we have identified provide the context within which the work was done and that must be taken into account in any evaluation of what it was possible for social workers to do and not do in keeping children safe during COVID-19. A strength of our methodology and analysis is that it captures how social work was done and experienced in real time, thus avoiding the pitfalls of hindsight.

Influences on closeness and distance manifested in different ways, either singularly or in combinations. The more of these influences were present and the more potent the interplay between them, the greater the potential limits were to effective child protection. So, in situations where social workers defended the self by suspending reflection in action and their thinking was frazzled, they avoided closeness and touching children, toys and other surfaces, they became rushed and sweaty due to facemasks and uncomfortable in and alienated from their own body, where home visiting was a disorientating, liminal experience, families were hostile to involvement, other things happened that 'threw off the visit' and there was limited organisational support to enable them to process their visceral and emotional experience and think clearly, the more likely it is that children could not be protected. Many children were left unheld, who in pre-pandemic times would not and should not have been. This does not mean that social distancing rules meant that touch was not used by social workers, but that it was engaged selectively, mostly when children initiated it. Babies and infants who are unable to walk over to and initiate contact with adults were at particular risk of missing out. Detached, disconnected practice was not the preferred approach of the social workers, who ached to get close to children and often took significant personal risks in doing so. As Green (2017) shows, the meaning and use of touch in social work is not fixed or static. The pandemic has created an intensified awareness of the centrality of touch and physical nurture to social work practice, for intimate child protection practice, and this learning must be taken forward. This needs to go hand-in-hand with a deep understanding of the sensuous nature of the body and its role in practice ( Kong et al., 2021).

To say some children were left unheld does not mean casework was never effective, that children were not kept safe, or families not helped. Many were and key to this was how the dynamics of distancing were minimised and the dynamics of closeness stretched to the limits resulting in relationships where children, whilst not proactively held physically, were held in mind through psychological holding and energetic attunement. This closeness-from-a-distance was achieved when social workers improvised in highly creative ways. Yet, fears from the virus and social distancing imposed limits to child protection that no amount of innovative practice could overcome in all cases, creating gaps that children could fall through, with-we now know-at worst tragic consequences.

Conclusion

Some limitations to the research must be noted. The most rigorous way to find out how practitioners relate to service users is to use an ethnographic approach to observe these encounters. Participants are not always fully aware of what they did and did not do and their interview narratives may struggle to convey the nuances of what occurred and how it felt ( Ferguson, 2016; Forrester et al., 2008). However, COVID-19 risks prevented us from getting physically close to practice. Our sample of four local authorities may also mean there were experiences in other places that our study missed. However, our frequent in-depth interviewing of participants over the nine month period meant that we did manage to get as close as it is possible to be to social workers' lived experiences without being there. This has enabled us to show that whilst child protection has always been complex, COVID-19 made it much more so.

The pandemic provides very important learning about the risks and complexities of child protection practice and new opportunities to conceptualise it, that we have taken here in terms of embodied practice. As O'Sullivan (2019) shows, keeping children safe requires that the embodied experiences and emotional and physical well-being of frontline workers, managers and leaders receives careful analytical attention in supervision and organisational support. Child protection whilst social distancing raises complex practical and moral issues and dilemmas. Children need protection. Vulnerable parents need support. And children's social care workers have the right to physical safety for themselves and their loved ones. Social workers need to know that when they cannot get as close to children and families in their practice as they normally would, that employers, politicians, policy makers and the public recognise their hard work, courage and skill, their achievements and the high risks they take and fully understand and accept the realistic limits to child protection during a global pandemic.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the local authorities, managers, social workers, family support workers and families who allowed us to research their experiences; to the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback and to the journal editors Rea Ana Maglajlic and Vasilios Ioakimidis for their support.

Funding

The research this article is based on was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Grant Number [ES/V003798/1].

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

References

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Unheld Child: Social Work, Social Distancing and the Possibilities and Limits to Child Protection during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The recent tragic deaths in England of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and sixteen-month-old Star Hobson during the first phase of COVID-19 have raised quest

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Talk to the hand – I’m not YOUR social worker! / Pink Tape

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Revealed: scandal of NHS charges putting pregnant migrant women at risk

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The health of pregnant migrant women and their unborn babies is being put at risk due to fears around NHS charging, with some trusts demanding upfront fees for maternity care or wrongly charging those who are exempt, it has been claimed.

Vulnerable migrant and asylum-seeking women with no recourse to public funds are frequently being issued huge bills ahead of giving birth or aggressively pursued for payments during their pregnancy against current guidance, maternity rights groups have warned.

According to Maternity Action, which supports around 400 women a year who have had encountered difficulties with NHS charges, one trust asked a migrant woman for a £5,000 deposit for her birth. Another demanded monthly repayments of £800 from a woman who could not afford to pay and referred her to a debt collection agency while she was still pregnant.

"There should be no upfront charging for maternity care. Every woman is entitled to antenatal care regardless of whether or not they are chargeable," said Christine Benson, an immigration lawyer for Maternity Action.

"What we saw previously was trusts giving invoices to pregnant women but not requiring payment until after the birth. However, increasingly over the last eight months we are seeing NHS trusts having different approaches to undocumented women in relation to charging." NHS trusts, she added, had misassessed regulations "many, many times".

The culture of fear around charging means women are sometimes declining vital care.

Ros Bragg, director of Maternity Action, said: "Many women are frightened to attend their appointments after receiving these invoices. Those who are chargeable include some of the most vulnerable women in the UK who do not have permission to work or access to the mainstream benefits system. They may be living in exploitative relationships in order to secure food or accommodation.

"The policies deter women from accessing maternity care but, more worryingly, the safeguards within these policies are not routinely being followed by NHS trusts, particularly in England. As a result, a woman who, for example, discloses domestic violence or abuse may still be charged or may not be referred on to other agencies."

One woman, known as Sandra, who came to the UK from Ghana, said before giving birth at a north London hospital she was told she would need to find £2,000 for a natural birth or £4,000 for a C-section.

She told the Observer: "The midwives were doing their job and would still see me but the NHS kept calling me and asking for money. I managed to pay £300 initially then weekly payments of £20, but it was all I could afford."

After her baby was delivered by emergency C-section she received constant phone calls from the trust threatening to report her to the Home Office. "My partner left me, so it was just me and my baby. Every time they called I said: 'I can't pay you because I need the money to feed my child.'"

The impact of NHS charging was a common theme raised by women giving evidence to the organisation Birthrights as part of an ongoing inquiry into racial disparities in maternity care.

During six focus groups with refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant women from a range of ethnic communities across in London and Swansea, multiple participants claimed their antenatal care was negatively impacted by a fear linked to their immigration status.

One woman who experienced bleeding in early pregnancy was denied a scan unless she could pay £220 upfront. Another said the Home Office unexpectedly turned up at her home on the day she had a scheduled induction to move her and her husband out of London. Others received NHS letters demanding payments of more than £5,000 when they went into labour - and in some cases British-born women were assumed to be chargeable due to the colour of their skin, the inquiry heard.

Amy Gibbs, chief executive of Birthrights, said: "Our inquiry heard multiple accounts of black and brown women being too afraid to access antenatal or hospital care, facing intrusive questions about their immigration status during appointments and receiving demands to pay thousands of pounds for routine care when they can't afford basic essentials. Failure to provide adequate interpreting services compounds these barriers. This is structural racism in action." Evidence shows that women from Black and Asian backgrounds - which includes many migrants - are more likely to die and have poorer outcomes in childbirth than white women.

The Royal College of Midwives has called on the government to scrap the "punitive" NHS charging of pregnant migrant women and last week issued fresh guidance on the matter. Clare Livingstone, an RCM policy adviser, said: "No women should be afraid to come forward to get the care they are entitled to, and we must remove any obstacles that prevent them doing that. This means not charging them for their care."

Currently migrant women should not be relocated from 34 weeks pregnancy but the RCM is calling for this to be changed to 20 weeks.

A government spokesperson said: "All refugees, asylum seekers and victims of modern slavery are exempt from NHS treatment costs. While some other migrants or visitors to the UK may be required to contribute, we've always been clear urgent care should never be delayed or withheld over charges, including all maternity services. It is illegal for any relevant body to racially profile patients and our guidance makes very clear that every patient should go through the same process when identifying who may have to pay for their healthcare."

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Revealed: scandal of NHS charges putting pregnant migrant women at risk

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The health of pregnant migrant women and their unborn babies is being put at risk due to fears around NHS charging, with some trusts demanding upfront fees for maternity care or wrongly charging those who are exempt, it has been claimed.

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CBT is wrong in how it understands mental illness

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CBT is wrong in how it understands mental illness

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We know that cognitive behavioural therapy works, but we don’t know how or why.

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Basic income pilot scheme for care leavers to be trialled in Wales

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All young people leaving care in Wales at the age of 18 are to be offered the chance to take part in a basic income pilot scheme under which they will receive £1,600 a month for up to two years.

The money will be given unconditionally and participants will be able to earn from paid jobs on top of the basic income with ministers hoping it will help give some of the most vulnerable in society a better chance of thriving.

Officials, who investigated basic income schemes from California to Finland before designing the Welsh pilot, will study whether those who take part do better in the long term, financially, physically and emotionally, than young people who do not.

The scheme, set to launch in the summer, is believed to be one of the most generous of its kind in the world and will cost the Welsh government £20m over three years.

Those taking part will be taxed and will not be able to claim all benefits they would be entitled to if they were not given the money after the UK government refused to allow this. Benefits are not a devolved area.

The move was welcomed by UBI Lab Wales, which campaigns on the concept of universal basic income, under which every citizen, regardless of their means, receives regular sums of money for life to cover the basic cost of living.

Lowri Walters, of UBI Lab Wales, said: "While this proposal is not for a location-based basic income pilot with a wide range of participants, it represents a huge step forward for the UBI movement and a first for the UK. This will be a sizeable basic income for young people who need financial support at an uncertain and difficult point in their lives, and we're confident that, if done properly, this pilot will demonstrate that a basic income can transform the lives of care leavers as well as citizens across Wales."

Welsh parliament member Jack Sargeant who led the Senedd's first debate on UBI, said: "This is an incredibly bold move from a Welsh government that is leading the world in this area.We now need to ensure that we learn all we can from this trial. This is a real opportunity to show things can be different."

The Welsh minister for social justice, Jane Hutt, said the Labour-led government was committed to supporting the most vulnerable and tackling the "scourge of poverty.".

She said: "Too many young people leaving care continue to face significant barriers to achieving a successful transition into adulthood. Our basic income pilot is an exciting project to deliver financial stability for a generation of young people that need it most. Support will also be offered that is designed to build up their confidence to negotiate the world outside of care. This extra support will include, for instance, financial wellbeing training and signposting to all available support."

All young people leaving care who turn 18 during a 12 month period, across every local authority area in Wales, will be offered the chance to take part in the pilot.

The pilot will run for a minimum of three years with each person receiving a basic income payment of £1600 a month for a duration of 24 months from the month after their 18th birthday.

Almost half of the Welsh parliament signed a pledge calling for UBI to be trialle d in the run up to last year's elections.

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Basic income pilot scheme for care leavers to be trialled in Wales

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All young people leaving care in Wales at the age of 18 are to be offered the chance to take part in a basic income pilot scheme under which they will receive £1,600 a month for up to two years.

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Children’s Social Care – putting children’s voices at the heart of reform | Children's Commissioner for England

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Foreword by Dame Rachel de Souza DBE

This paper is dedicated to all the children in care who have spoken to me as Children's Commissioner. These children have shared with me their experiences - good, bad and sometimes traumatic. Lots of the children and young people I meet are grateful for the love and support they have been given. But all too often they can be angry and frustrated about the challenges they face and the way they have been treated. These children in care have told me their thoughts and personal experiences in the hope that I can bring about change for the children who follow in their footsteps. And, I have been constantly impressed by the reflective and sanguine way children in care can discuss their experiences.

As Children's Commissioner I want to put children's voice at the heart of everything we do. I am motivated by all the children I have met and the stories they have shared. That is why, 'The Big Ask', my survey of nearly 600,000 children last year, offered children the opportunity to tell me their hopes, aspirations, and challenges. What was striking was that for children in care they were the same as all other children. They wanted to feel safe, stable, and loved; to maintain the vital relationships with friends and family; to be able to pursue their own interests and make plans for the future, and to be helped and supported when things go wrong. It is these essential elements of a good childhood which are too often missing for children in care and on the edges of it, and it is these fundamentals I want to focus on.

We have a unique opportunity now to change and reform the lives of children in care. With the Review of Children's Social Care, the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Green Paper, the Schools' White Paper and reforms to Integrated Care Services all taking place at the moment. This provides a unique opportunity to address these important issues ambitiously, cohesively and in a child-centred way. And my Office continues to contribute to all these ongoing pieces of work.

The case for change couldn't be stronger - we are failing to give children loving, caring and stable homes; we are failing to get children into good schools which can support them, and we are failing to get children vital mental health care to help them recover from trauma. In some cases, as we have been reminded so tragically recently, we are failing to make the interventions that could save a child from trauma, serious harm and even death.

Quite simply, we can and must do better and I will be relentless in pushing for the changes we need to see. This paper focuses on the changes I believe are needed.

I do not pretend this is easy to get right every time, but when we are talking about the lives of children no failure rate is acceptable. We need to focus on the experience we want for every child and commit to building a system that can deliver it. We need to acknowledge that the system must do better and then commit to working together to get it to where we want to be. We must celebrate the good the great social care is doing across the country and use this as a foundation from which to build.

The Social Care Review can be the catalyst to bring about the bold and radical changes children want to see, but it will take all of us to make it a reality for all children within five years.

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Children's Social Care - putting children's voices at the heart of reform | Children's Commissioner for England

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This paper is dedicated to all the children in care who have spoken to me as Children's Commissioner. These children have shared with me their experiences - good, bad and sometimes traumatic. Lots of the children and young people I meet are grateful for the love and support they have been given.

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Social work in England: Emerging themes - Social Work England

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breastfeeding social work and - Google Scholar

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Children’s social services in Bradford to be handed to independent trust

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Children’s social services in Bradford to be handed to independent trust

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Move comes after an investigaton found serious management shortcomings and follows Star Hobson case

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The policing bill will criminalise Gypsy and Traveller families – there is a better approach

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The policing bill making its way through UK parliament has sparked controversy over its draconian proposals to expand police powers and curb protests. The bill will also have a detrimental impact on Gypsy and Traveller families with the criminalisation of trespass.

In its current form, part four of the bill changes the act of trespassing from a civil to a criminal offence and introduces additional powers for police to deal with roadside camps. This means that people who live on roadside camps could face time in prison, a fine of £2,500 or have their home taken away from them. This will have profound consequences for Gypsy and Traveller groups, already some of the most marginalised communities in England and Wales.

Advocates and campaign groups have called for part four to be scrapped. The Council of Europe commissioner for human rights wrote to MPs and members of the House of Lords opposing the measures. Even the police are opposed. All argue that the main driver of unauthorised encampments is a lack of sites - people simply have no other options.

Since the 1960s, Gypsies and Travellers have been subjected to legislation aimed at controlling or eradicating nomadism and pushing the community into bricks-and-mortar housing. Yet no government has ever gone as far as the policing bill in so explicitly seeking to make nomadic practices illegal. It marks a pivotal moment in the longer-term erosion of the Gypsy-Traveller right to nomadism.

The criminalisation of trespass will affect several "unfixed" groups, such as squatters, activists and rough sleepers. However, our research shows that this bill explicitly targets Gypsies and Travellers using racist stereotypes. We analysed the government's consultation process, which has been used as evidence in parliamentary debates to support the criminalisation of trespass.

The consultation frames Gypsies and Travellers themselves as the problem from the outset. Encampments are equated with stereotypes of crime and antisocial behaviour. As well as leading respondents through assumption loaded questions, the consultation selectively prioritises racist responses from anonymous individuals. More informed submissions from the police, charities and those engaged daily with Gypsies and Travellers are largely ignored.

Gypsies and Travellers are presented primarily as a threat to property that trumps any right to travel. There is no consideration of the reality of decades of underprovision of sites driving unauthorised encampments, nor of anti-Gypsy and Traveller racism as a key barrier to new site development. Tellingly, the consultation response states that criminalisation could be "positive in the long term" by dissuading people from "choosing a travelling lifestyle, to the benefit of children".

A better solution

Criminalisation makes little sense. It will invariably lead to increased conflict, vilification, homelessness and costly eviction procedures. But there is a proven and cost-effective alternative that can foster a better relationship between nomadic Gypsies and Travellers and their temporary neighbours.

"Negotiated stopping" involves an agreement between roadside families, neighbours and the local authority around acceptable use of a space and length of stay (usually around 28 days). In return, the local authority provides the same infrastructure they would for any citizens, such as sewerage (portaloos), wheelie bins and water access where possible.

The approach was pioneered in Leeds by Gypsy and Traveller organisation Leeds Gate. It is producing estimated savings of around £200,000 per year for the local authority and police force combined. Similar initiatives are being developed by Gypsy and Traveller groups and local authorities in London and other parts of the UK.

In avoiding costly and confrontational evictions, this approach has seen relations with police, local authorities and neighbours improve. Providing basic amenities eases tension around encampments related to rubbish and waste, which make up the vast majority of complaints. Meanwhile, families can stay put for long enough to access education, healthcare and work, directly improving their quality of life. These are not radical suggestions, nor are they costly to implement.

Criminalising trespass will only reinforce longstanding stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as threatening "outsiders". Negotiated stopping offers a far more effective, inclusive and less burdensome response than costly eviction-first approaches.

A 2019 high court ruling against eviction injunctions stated, "simply pushing families out of one area into another is not a solution". As Leeds Gate argues, the government needs to acknowledge that families have the right to travel, evictions are harmful and far better solutions are already delivering results.

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The policing bill will criminalise Gypsy and Traveller families - there is a better approach

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The policing bill making its way through UK parliament has sparked controversy over its draconian proposals to expand police powers and curb protests. The bill will also have a detrimental impact on Gypsy and Traveller families with the criminalisation of trespass.

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Risk of food insecurity in undocumented migrant households in Birmingham, UK | Journal of Public Health | Oxford Academic

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Risk of food insecurity in undocumented migrant households in Birmingham, UK

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Over the past decade there has been renewed interest in food insecurity in the UK, with a small but growing academic literature on food insecurity and the rise of emergency food aid in both the UK and across Europe since 2010.

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Programme about sibling relationships in care 

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Programme about sibling relationships in care 

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Programme about sibling relationships in care 

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In care I thought I was an only child. In my 20’s I find out via a FB msg that I have siblings. 2020, I bump into a brother for the 1st time by coincidence. This has led to a film about the state of sibling relationships in the care system. Prod by a great team. Out 26th Jan 👊🏽

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In care I thought I was an only child. In my 20’s I find out via a FB msg that I have siblings. 2020, I bump into a brother for the 1st time by coincidence. This has led to a film about the state of sibling relationships in the care system. Prod by a great team. Out 26th Jan 👊🏽 https://t.co/KLXnQjhsax

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In care I thought I was an only child. In my 20’s I find out via a FB msg that I have siblings. 2020, I bump into a brother for the 1st time by coincidence. This has led to a film about the state of sibling relationships in the care system. Prod by a great team. Out 26th Jan 👊🏽 pic.twitter.com/KLXnQjhsax
— Ashley John-Baptiste (@AshleyJBaptiste) January 14, 2022

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In care I thought I was an only child. In my 20’s I find out via a FB msg that I have siblings. 2020, I bump into a brother for the 1st time by coincidence. This has led to a film about the state of sibling relationships in the care system. Prod by a great team. Out 26th Jan 👊🏽 https://t.co/KLXnQjhsax

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
In care I thought I was an only child. In my 20’s I find out via a FB msg that I have siblings. 2020, I bump into a brother for the 1st time by coincidence. This has led to a film about the state of sibling relationships in the care system. Prod by a great team. Out 26th Jan 👊🏽 https://t.co/KLXnQjhsax

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
In care I thought I was an only child. In my 20’s I find out via a FB msg that I have siblings. 2020, I bump into a brother for the 1st time by coincidence. This has led to a film about the state of sibling relationships in the care system. Prod by a great team. Out 26th Jan 👊🏽

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Psychiatrists warn of police and crime bill’s impact on young people

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Hundreds of clinical psychiatrists and psychologists have warned that the police and crime bill reaching its final stages in parliament "will have a profound negative impact on young people's mental health".

"We cannot think of better measures to disempower and socially isolate young people," they say in an open letter signed by more than 350 academics and clinicians and published online.

The intervention comes as the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill reaches the final stages of its journey into law. It has been widely opposed by human rights activists, racial justice groups, former home secretaries and parliament's joint committee on human rights, which called the proposals "oppressive and wrong".

Among the anti-protest measures in the bill are new powers for police to ban marches and demonstrations deemed "seriously disruptive", including being too noisy; sentences of up to 51 weeks for protesters who attach themselves, or "lock on" to, another person or to an object; and sentences of up to 10 years for anyone found guilty of the "desecration" of a statue or memorial.

"One result of this legislation, if passed, will be that young people face a choice between being intimidated into inaction and isolation, or possibly criminalised if they choose to act," the letter says.

"Some may deliberately choose to escalate their actions to be more disruptive and possibly violent, given the severe consequences for even minor nonviolent activity."

Signatories include Susie Orbach, psychoanalyst and author of Fat Is a Feminist Issue, Eric Taylor, the emeritus professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at King's College London, and Mike Wang, the chair of the Association of Clinical Psychologists, who signed on behalf of his entire organisation.

Orbach said young people, full of the "great hope and ennui" of adolescence, were keen to make a difference to the world. "Imagine then a bill that robs you and your friends of initiative and agency," she said.

'"We bring children up to act and then the government says no. This bill sews confusion. It attempts to disable engagement. It will depoliticise youth, which is maybe what is wanted, but what a tragedy personally and collectively."

The letter was drafted by Lynne Jones, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, who was awarded an OBE for her work with children in conflict zones in central Europe in the late 90s.

Jones said she was inspired by an Australian environmental activist, Marco Bellemo, who called on professionals to oppose restrictions on activism. She said of the bill: "It is terrifying because it is undermining one of the pillars of our democracy, and it is also attacking the young people who most need our support.

"Priti Patel has made no bones that she's targeting eco-protesters, that means she's targeting young people."

The Guardian has contacted the Home Office for comment.

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Psychiatrists warn of police and crime bill's impact on young people

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Hundreds of clinical psychiatrists and psychologists have warned that the police and crime bill reaching its final stages in parliament "will have a profound negative impact on young people's mental health". "We cannot think of better measures to disempower and socially isolate young people," they say in an open letter signed by more than 350 academics and clinicians and published online.

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Asylum seekers: The homes where ceilings have fallen in - BBC News

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Asylum seekers: The homes where ceilings have fallen in

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A BBC investigation into housing for asylum seekers reveals concern about conditions.

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Rising prices mean people in poverty are struggling to stay afloat this winter | JRF

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I live on my own in a small two-bedroom council house on a large, mainly local authority owned estate. I moved to my present home 26 years ago, and the estate nearly 33 years ago. I was really lucky to get a house at all and if it hadn't been for them knocking down the blocks of flats close by that I was living in at the time, I wouldn't have got a house. I'd say I'm ingrained in the community immediately around me and well known in the wider community area.

The area, the community and the feeling of belonging means a lot to me in my life. Over the years I've dipped my toes in and out of activism on the estate, but through health issues forcing me into unemployment I have become much more involved and active once again, one of these areas being poverty.

Until I had the invitation, through my involvement in our community's local conversation project (funded by the Health Lottery Trust), to join the JRF poverty action group, I had never really realised that I had either lived in poverty or close to it all my life bar a short period in my teens, when my parents entered the middle-class earning bracket. There is no doubt my learning differences (Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia and Irlens syndrome) have contributed in some way; I'm presently waiting to find out if I suffer from undiagnosed ADHD. That, apparently has a major effective on your ability to manage money. I am fascinated in, how to me, it seems people living in poverty like myself internalise it, it becomes our norm and we just get on with trying to survive, because there is no alternative but to give up.

I'm sitting here in a t-shirt, hoody and two dressing gowns writing this. The alarm on my phone just went off to remind me it was time to switch off the heating from its second half-hour run of the day. In the past I used to dread the alarm going off for work, now my heart drops as I realise I've got about 15 mins of warmth left before I start to feel the chill again. It's not like I'm extravagant with my heating. I set it at 16C or 18C when it's really cold out, and I'm happy, but even that's not affordable. I find myself following the weather forecast hoping for mild at least.

I am one of the millions to who the removal of the £20-a-week lifeline within Universal Credit (UC) has made a drastic difference. I already knew this winter was going to be hard after seeing a rise in my gas price due to my deal ending, but was then hit by another massive increase when that company recently failed.

Long story of how it came to be, but I have a key meter for my electric and an ordinary gas meter that I pay for monthly by Direct Debit. It has always worked well - electric a bit dearer but I didn't use much - plus the addition of some government-funded solar panels, which I've been told will run my fridge and freezer for a day in the summer months, also helps. Until this May, I always managed to get a good gas deal, even if it was a pain shopping around (not the comparison sites but by going to each company site). The double hit with the company I switched being more expensive than last year's deal then going bust, and the increase again in price with the company I was transferred to, means I'm paying 80% more for my gas per unit and 52% more on the standing charge than this time last year. I have increased the amount I pay by about 33% but that still means I've got to cut my consumption by about 50%, then there's talk about another massive rise in April.

Since the reduction in UC I've just about survived but, and this is hard to admit, I wouldn't have done without some generosity from friends. They gave me almost the equivalent of half of the money I had lost though the removal of the lifeline over the past two months, plus a little bit of early Xmas money from family has meant I could put extra in my electric to have the electric fire on a few times a day and eat reasonably well. Pride and shame won't let me take anymore, although it has been offered.

I think I'll just scrape though Xmas, but January onwards is a real worry. If we are lucky we will have a mild winter and I might scrape through until May, when I hope to see some personal respite from hard poverty but that's by no means guaranteed - but hope is all some of us have left.

I've always managed to survive, sometimes by the skin of my teeth, I'm a seasoned pro at getting by, but it does make me fearful that if someone like me who has been that resourceful at getting by in the past is finding it hard, how are these young families, the old, the disabled and the children living in poverty going to get through this winter?

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Rising prices mean people in poverty are struggling to stay afloat this winter

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I live on my own in a small two-bedroom council house on a large, mainly local authority owned estate. I moved to my present home 26 years ago, and the estate nearly 33 years ago.

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Nationality and Borders Bill: many of the proposals will negatively affect children, not just those concerning them directly | British Politics and Policy at LSE

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Ilona Pinter writes that various proposals in the Nationality and Borders Bill put children at risk and make the system even more punitive and damaging for their long-term prospects.
Hadia (22), Mubin (16), and Hasti (7) along with their mother Khazal were among the 27 people who died in the Channel in November 2021, trying to reach the UK. Other children and young people like them have attempted the dangerous crossing or have made it across the Channel, though we don't know how many. While not the majority, children do make up a significant proportion of the asylum-seeking population. Between 2010 and 2020, 86,533 children claimed asylum in the UK, while children made up almost a quarter (23%) of UK asylum applicants and dependents during that time. Most (62,321) claimed asylum with their families, making up 17% of asylum seekers overall. The remaining 6% claimed asylum on their own as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Recent debates around the UK's asylum system have focused on the Nationality and Borders Bill currently going through Parliament. Some of the proposals contained in the Bill, particularly plans to 'offshore' asylum seekers and Channel 'pushback' policies, have been widely criticised including by senior MPs. Former Brexit minister David Davis MP warned of creating a 'British Guantanamo Bay' while former Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell MP warned that 'threatening to send desperate women and children to a detention centre on foreign soil will simply shame our nation and prove toxic for the Conservative Party'. Meanwhile, the union representing Border Force staff has joined several charities in their legal challenge to prevent the 'pushback' plans from going ahead.

What has received less public attention are provisions that may make the system even more punitive, including for children. Had Hadia, Mubin, and Hasti and their mother arrived in the UK safely, they would have been subject to the new rules on 'inadmissibility' in place since January 2021. Under these rules, the Home Office can decide to deem a family's claim inadmissible on the basis of their 'earlier presence in or connection to a safe third country'. Families can be issued with a 'notice of intent' while the Home Office decides on whether they consider their claim to be inadmissible making them liable for 'removal to any safe third country that will take them'.

According to figures provided by the Home Office through an FOI request, of the 6,598 individuals including main applicants and dependents served with notices of intent between January and September 2021, 491 (7%) were children. Unaccompanied children are currently not subject to the inadmissibility process, so it is assumed that all of these are children claiming asylum with their families. Published figures show that only a small proportion of those initially served inadmissibility notices during this time - 10 in total - were returned and 2,126 (32%) were subsequently admitted into the asylum process for their asylum determination, leaving families in limbo for longer.

Individuals and families already wait many months for their asylum claim to be processed. During this time, asylum seekers are not permitted to work or access mainstream benefits because they have 'no recourse to public funds'. Those who are destitute can access support provided by the Home Office through dispersed accommodation and subsistence payments of £5.66 per person per day. Despite some additional in-kind services and extra payments, this income still places families below the poverty threshold and well below the minimum income standards.

Data provided by the Home Office reveals that there were 16,186 children aged under 18 living on such 'Asylum Support' at the end of December 2019, before the pandemic, making up over a third (34%) of the 47,353 individuals supported by the Home Office at that time. Of those, 15,363 children were on Section 95 support - the main form of support for those awaiting their claim including families with dependent children. Most families with children (71%), had been on Section 95 support for over a year at the end of 2019, while 16% of families had been on support for over five years.

Living on a low income, as research has shown, has causal effects on children's educational, development, and health outcomes, as separate to other factors like parental education. For children's development, time is critical and though even short periods of extreme poverty and deprivation can have lasting consequences, the risks are higher when poverty exposure is persistent.

Most of the measures contained in the Bill are likely to affect children and young people, not only those targeting them directly, such as the age-assessment and statelessness clauses. For example, plans to treat newly recognised refugees differently depending on how they arrived in the country would apply to children, including those who face brutality and violence at the hands of people smugglers while crossing the Channel. Under proposed measures, children and families will be granted a new temporary protection status with 'no recourse to public funds' conditions which means they will continue to be ineligible for social security support for many years. Although the government has said that those on Section 95 Asylum Support already deemed destitute would not have this condition applied at their initial grant of the temporary status, it is unclear whether no recourse to public funds - which is currently applied to all cases unless the family can show they are at risk of destitution - could be reapplied at each subsequent grant of leave when families are already working. Current practice shows that this approach knocks families off benefits and childcare support, plunging them back into poverty and homelessness and dependent on local authority support.

Currently, refugees can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain after being granted refugee status worth five years of leave to remain without additional fees, but new measures will mean that uncertainty and exclusion from social security protection could continue for at least 10 additional years beyond asylum determination, where families are required to make retraumatising applications to prove their need for protection every 30 months.

Numerous studies have already highlighted the detrimental consequences of no recourse to public funds conditions on children. Exclusion from most income-based social security benefits means that families are unable to access benefits such as Child Benefit and Universal Credit; those with additional needs or a disability are unable to access Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payments, which is likely to be significant given the prevalence of disability, mental health problems, and long-term health conditions among this population.
About the Author
Children made up almost a quarter of all asylum applicants and dependents over the last decade - almost 8,000 children on average each year. The majority of these are children seeking protection with their families. Almost 500 children were deemed inadmissible in the first three quarters of 2021 and will likely face the punishing measures contained in the Bill. The Secretary of State has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children affected by asylum and immigration policy. Yet there are no safeguards for children on the face of the Bill nor has there been a comprehensive child rights impact assessment to show how children's welfare and rights will be protected under each clause. Without adequate safeguards in place, many more children are likely to suffer throughout their childhood.

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Ilona Pinter is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Policy at the LSE.

Photo by Paulo Almeida on Unsplash.

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Nationality and Borders Bill: many of the proposals will negatively affect children, not just those concerning them directly

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Ilona Pinter writes that various proposals in the Nationality and Borders Bill put children at risk and make the system even more punitive and damaging for their long-term prospects. Hadia (22), Mubin (16), and Hasti (7) along with their mother Khazal were among the 27 people who died in the Channel in November 2021, trying to reach the UK.

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Lifeline For All Report | The Children's Society

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A Lifeline for All | The Children’s Society

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Lifeline For All focuses on the experiences of families affected by NRPF and makes recommendations for policy, practice and further research.

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Full article: How social workers reflect in action and when and why they don’t: the possibilities and limits to reflective practice in social work

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Abstract
The need for professionals to use reflection to learn about and develop their practice is now a universally stated goal. In social work however there has been little research into whether and how reflection in action actually occurs and this paper explores the possibilities and limits to reflective practice by drawing on research that observed encounters between social workers and children and families as the work was being conducted in real time. The findings show that practitioners often do reflect in action by elevating their minds above the interactions they are having so that they can think critically about and adjust what they are doing. But there are times when reflection is either limited or non-existent because practitioners defend themselves against the sensory and emotional impact of the work and the high anxiety they are experiencing. Drawing on psychoanalysis and social theories of the body and senses, the paper argues for a revision of the concept of reflective practice to take account of how the self is defended. The limits to reflection must be fully recognised while seeking ways to develop the capacity of practitioners to think clearly and critically so that vital insights about service users and the helping process can occur.

Reflective practice is a core concept in social work and probably the most well known theoretical perspective across the entire applied professions of teaching, health and social care. Its origins lie especially in Schon's () formulation of how professionals engage in 'reflection in action' by thinking about their experience and what they are doing while they are doing it and afterwards using 'reflection on action' to think about and link their practice to knowledge (Redmond, ). Despite its popularity there has been very little research into how, or indeed if, practitioners do actually reflect in practice (White, Fook, & Gardner, , p. 19). This paper draws on an ethnographic study of social work practice in child protection, in which I observed and audio-recorded the face to face encounters between social workers and children and families, mostly on home visits, and incorporated questions about reflective practice in interviews with practitioners (Ferguson, , ).

The paper shows that social workers thought about some aspects of what they were doing while they were doing it. However, there were limits to how far practitioners could reflect in action and sometimes wished to. The demands of face to face work were so great at times that workers could not think about or feel that complexity while they were in it, if they were to be able to focus on service users' needs. Non-reflection arose to protect the worker from unbearable levels of anxiety and was rooted in what, following psychoanalysis (Briggs, , p. 23; Hollway & Jefferson, ; Trevithick, ), I will call the defended nature of the self.

In social work literature reflection is often tied in with the 'use of self' and 'emotional intelligence'. I argue however, that the 'self' in question is regarded as an apparently limitless resource that the worker taps into and uses to help service users. The theory of reflective practice needs to be underpinned by a much more sophisticated theory of the (defended) self and how it is used and I will suggest that this can be found in psychoanalysis and work that theorises how the lived experience of the senses and the (mobile) body shape our capacities to think and act (Ingold, ). Much greater acknowledgement is needed of the limits to reflection and when it is not possible or even desirable. Reflection is too all encompassing a term to capture the complexity of what is occurring in these moments and it will be argued that the interior work practitioners do on themselves is better understood in terms of what Casement () calls 'internal supervision'. Some, like Ixer (), have argued that despite all the work that has been done on it, there is no such thing as reflection. I do not go that far. There is something called reflection and it has value, but it also has limits, which need to be understood if we are to achieve a deeper appreciation of the complex nature of social work practice, the demands the work makes on practitioners and the implications for service users.

Researching reflection

The research was based in two local authorities in England and involved social work teams who did short and longer term child protection work. I did the fieldwork myself and spent three months in each local authority. I shadowed the social workers on their journeys to see service users and, with the family's consent, followed the worker into the family home and observed and audio recorded their practice encounters with children, parents and others present. Straight afterwards I interviewed the workers about their experience of the encounter, which was usually in the car on the way back to the office or on to the next visit. Twenty-four social workers were involved and a total of 87 practice encounters were observed, 71 of which were home visits, 9 interviews with children in schools, and 7 office interviews. The research was granted ethical approval by my university and the two local authorities involved and only social workers and service users who consented were included. The core aim of the research was to find out what social workers actually do, how they relate to children and families?-one aspect of which concerned their experience of doing the work and whether and how they think and reflect in real time while doing it (Ferguson, ).

What is reflection and the self?

When students and practitioners are told to 'reflect in action' what precisely are they being asked and expected to do? There is a vast literature on reflection and reflective practice, reviews of which point to the plethora of tools and techniques for reflection. There are also many conceptions of reflective practice associated with different research and theoretical formulations and approaches (D'Cruz, Gillingham, & Melendez, ; Ixer, ; White et al., , p. 17). Schon's () classic formulation of reflection in action and on action was intended to challenge the dominant perspective that professional practice is a technical-rational activity that merely involves the application of rules and expertise to problems. He argued that professionals use reflection to deal with the uncertainty that pervades their work, shape their thinking and actions and learn from experience.

In the social work literature, Sheppard argues (, p. 129) that 'The reflexive practitioner shows a high degree of self-awareness, role awareness and awareness of assumptions underlying their practice.' Many argue for the need for critical reflection, which is the use of reflective abilities with respect to power and its complex expression (White et al., , p. 13). Imbalances of power between workers and service users arising from social class, gender, race, sexualities and ability need to be reflected upon, and unethical uses of power avoided (Fook & Gardner, ). For instance, Schaub, Willis, and Dunk-West (, p. 440) show that some social workers appear not to think critically about sexuality, leading to some 'bracketing-off' of oneself which limits their capacity to fully engage in the relational aspect of social work.

Notions of reflection and 'use of self' are often used inter-changeably or conflated as part of an agenda to promote 'emotional intelligence'. Howe (, p. 185) writes that 'Implicit in the idea of emotional intelligence is a knowledge of the self, particularly the emotional self. The "use of self" is a key aspect of relationship-based practice.' It is argued that the worker needs to be able to acknowledge and understand their own emotional states if they are to be able to get in touch with the feelings of the service user and the potential for their emotions and experience to trigger emotional reactions in the worker (Howe, , p. 185). Training and supervision are seen as key to developing reflective practitioners. As Howe puts it, 'Reflective practice demands that you learn from experience. It requires you to be self-critical. It expects you to analyse what you think, feel, and do, and then learn from the analysis' (Howe, , p. 171, original emphasis).

From observing practitioners in my research it was evident that self-awareness assisted them to be ethical and helpful. Social workers often managed to remain composed in moments when service users were in distress, absorbing their sadness, shame, fears, and at times their joy. Some of the vast literature on reflection provides valuable insights into how this occurs (Trevithick, ). Too often however there is a simplicity to how reflective practice, the (use of) self, and 'emotional intelligence' are written about which belies what I have found occurs in practice. The research shows that there are times and situations in which practitioners find that it is better not to reflect in the manner advocated in the literature. A significant factor in the failure to recognise the limits to reflection is how 'the self' has been conceptualised as a coherent unproblematic entity, as something distinct and unified that the worker accesses and goes into in order to connect to themselves and their service users. Understood in this way no limits are placed on the capacity of the self to absorb feeling, on the mind to think and on the depths of reflection that are possible and needed.

A professional 'self' can be said to exist in the sense of a core personality and identity that each individual has, albeit one that is not fixed but open to change. Ward (, p. 64) suggests that what effective practitioners 'have developed (perhaps intuitively) is a personal quality which overlaps with professional skill to create an effective persona'. However, while we each have a unique persona the 'self' that is being used by social workers is not a unified, coherent entity with a limitless capacity to be reflected upon in the manner suggested by the literature. It is a self that is fractured; a defended self that is principally concerned with protecting itself from unbearable levels of anxiety (Hollway & Jefferson, ).

This notion of the 'defended subject' or self (Briggs, , p. 23) draws from psychoanalytic thinking, which argues that from birth the self is primarily constituted through its relationship to anxiety. The infant is in a complete state of dependency on parents/carers and hunger for instance triggers uncertainty and anxiety about whether they will be fed. Unbearable ('bad') feelings are split off and projected into parents/carers, who become 'good' objects through providing food and comfort (Hollway & Jefferson, , p. 19). The child's ability to cope, learn and develop psychological well-being is heavily influenced by the capacity of carers to receive and process the child's projections of unbearable emotional states and make them tolerable for the child, by attuning to their needs, and providing understanding, comfort and care (Bower, , p. 155). This process, which Bion () called 'containment', is similar to the kinds of processes that go on in professional supervision where at its best practitioners are enabled to express feelings and helped to think about anything unbearable that has been split off (Ruch, ).

Casement () argues that practitioners' experience of being supervised is crucial to them being able to develop the capacity to reflect, self-analyse and contain themselves when interacting with service users, a process he calls 'internal supervision'. The supervisee learns in supervision to see how they are as a practitioner and watch themselves as well as the client. They take this learning into practice by monitoring what it may feel like to be the service user, putting themselves into the service user's shoes in his or her relationship to the professional, trying for instance to listen to what it crosses their mind to say and silently trying out a possible comment or interpretation. With practice, Casement argues, it becomes possible for the practitioner to use these two viewpoints simultaneously, the service user's and their own. The processing function that holds together these two positions and states is what Casement calls the 'internal supervisor'. A key task of internal supervision is to enable the practitioner to maintain a benign split within themselves whereby their mind is free to move between themselves and the service user (Casement, , pp. 34-35). In some respects what Casement is referring to is similar to reflection in action and indeed Smith (, p. 114) regards it and internal supervision as broadly the same thing. However, in my view Casement's concept of the internal supervisor takes us further than a generic notion of reflection by explaining more clearly the internal work, the self-analysis, the practitioner has to do, especially in very challenging situations, and how not only thinking but non- thinking occur in practice. It adds greater psychological depth in terms of the possibilities and challenges involved when anxiety and the defended self result in the professional being unable to think about the service user in a meaningful, potentially helpful way.

Reflective practice, in practice

Social workers in the research generally found it quite challenging to explain what they were doing and feeling in the midst of doing it, in part because they are not practised at doing so. In all of the interview data drawn upon here the practitioners were interviewed (usually in the car) straight after the home visit and asked questions such as: 'Were you reflecting in there on what was going on at the time?'. The following is typical of the way many reflected out loud on the question while trying to answer it.

Well, different bits. Obviously, depending on what she was saying, I was sort of, I would be thinking would affect I suppose the course of where I was going. So, I was obviously needing to, to absorb what she was saying and to reflect on it to some extent. I don't know. It's a good question about how much you do that at the time. And I think, I think there's a couple of things-I've forgotten what it was now-where I think, I certainly got that sense of her being a bit of a rebel; and the family have sort of said that. That was quite a quick sort of thing really. I hadn't sort of spent ages sort of thinking about it; it just occurred to me. It just popped into my head, I suppose. Whether that is what you mean I don't know? (Leon).

The worker describes how by reflecting on the spot he thinks about and to an extent revises his understanding of the service user and their needs. A great deal of what professionals do depends on what Schon (, p. 49) calls 'tacit knowing-in-action' which involves 'knowing more than we can say' and they struggle to find the language to describe what they do. A lot of practice is performed intuitively and draws on personal and professional knowledge and experience built up over a lifetime. The findings support the work of scholars of reflective practice (Redmond, ; Taylor & White, ) who argue that knowledge of how to practice is not based on simply applying theory and technical rules and expertise to a problem but, as Schon (, p. 49) puts it, 'our knowing is in our action'. All kinds of learning occurs in the process of enacting professional work. Understanding derives not only from what is going on in the mind but what is occurring in the body and through movement as well as stillness (Ingold, , p. 17). This was evident in the research, for instance, when conversations with parents were difficult and workers moved, sometimes suddenly jumping to their feet and looking around family homes (Ferguson, ). Sometimes this kind of improvisation occurs through the worker consciously reflecting in action, while at times it is largely unthought about and is based on tacit knowledge and is intuitively enacted. This means that what practitioners are able to say about how they think and reflect on what they do covers only some of the richness of their performances (Ferguson, ).

Social workers identified different levels to reflection, the most common formulation being a distinction between what is reflected upon in the moment of conducting practice-in action-and afterwards.

the reflecting side of things I find quite important and I do quite a lot of that, almost to the point a bit, where it's like, you know, you're going to have to let it go ((laughs)). And like you can't, you can over analyse or worry about, you know, there's always things that you could have said differently, or missed out, or, you know, but you can't ... But no, I think I definitely do, you do do it during the visit as well, because there are times, you know, where something, and it might just sort of niggle there at the back of your head then, like a little comment or something that you don't feel you made quite clear, but then there's other stuff that they may be talking about by then that you need to talk about, and it is sort of reflecting in that sense, thinking: I'm not quite sure I said that right. (Amy)

Similarly, Monica described the process of reflection and its various 'layers' as: 'It's like you're having this conversation, and yet somewhere, you're helicoptering above your conversation', a phrase she had heard a counsellor use on the radio.

And it's kind of like yeah that's what we're doing as well, because it's not just reflecting afterwards, you're reflecting whilst you're, it's reflexive, I guess, you know. That you are, you know, you might feel that a certain sentence or a certain, I don't know, avenue is not going where you want it to go, so you'll, you know, rejig and so yeah, you know, there's different levels of it, aren't there? It is happening whilst you're there, in that moment, but it's also, there's another layer that continues when you've left, you know, the immediate, and then perhaps another layer, you know, when you're sat at home at night on the sofa and something comes back to you, you know.

This articulates the classic formulation of reflecting in action as a form of cognitive self-monitoring which is achieved by elevating one's mind-'helicoptering'-above the interaction with the service user. Eraut refers to this as 'meta-cognition': 'a person's ability to be aware of what they are doing or have just done' (Eraut, , p. 6). This enables the worker to think about her assumptions, questioning style, how the service user is responding, and the meaning and value of the encounter. Monica also vividly describes how reflection on action goes on after the encounter in the office, supervision, and at home at night.

This worker was interviewed having just been observed on a home visit at which another layer of reflection- critical reflection -was apparent. A mother-here called Maggie-had complained to the police for the fourth time about her boyfriend assaulting her. The 42 min home visit was based in the sitting room, with Maggie sat on the settee with her 12 month old son Robbie on her knee. Maggie said she is now determined to get away from her violent partner. The police had apprehended him but let him go and he has been taunting her since. Monica showed great empathy towards Maggie, assured her she was doing the right thing contacting the police and supported her analysis of men's violence and the poor response of the system:

Yeah, I can understand that that must feel ((interrupted))

I reckon it's disgusting, to be honest.

Yeah, and it's really pissed me off. Because he's had a bad past before, and the thing is, he's very clever, like I know what he was doing, he's so clever he can really turn people and make you, but I'm just really annoyed how he's, 'I've not done anything.'

Yeah, I think you've done exactly the right thing.

The worker clearly practised in a critically reflective way by drawing implicitly on a feminist perspective to place abusive men's behaviour in the context of the social power and sense of entitlement men have within patriarchy and the propensity of the criminal justice system to let men get away with it. This should not be taken to mean that all social workers in the study always critically reflected in this manner; it shows rather aspects of what critical reflection involved when it did occur by making explicit the kinds of power dynamics that were affecting service users.

Suspended self-preservation: the limits to reflection

While the data bear out the existence of some aspects of reflective practice, the findings also suggest that the current popular notion of reflection in action is too simplistic to capture the complexity of how social workers think, or don't. The following social worker's account was typical:

But you're in it; you can't do anything about it once you're in it. You kind of don't think too much about panicking and flapping, because you're supposed to be the one that's in control. You almost suspend it a little bit. It's like suspended self-preservation of: I can't be scared right now so I'm not going to be. And then later on when you're safe you can go: oh my god that was a little bit, flipping heck. But at the time you just kind of think: I can't let myself right now, so I'm just going to think everything's fine'. (Jenny)

While this worker is talking about dealing with frightening situations 'suspended self-preservation' had a more general relevance to how these practitioners think-or sometimes don't think- about their feelings in practice.

we don't have a lot of planning time, a lot of before time very often just because we're very busy and we don't have the time. But I generally use the time as I'm driving to a place to think about what I'm going to do. And then while I'm there if I think: okay, this isn't really working out at the moment, how can I do this differently-then I will think about it while somebody's sometimes talking back at you. ... Yeah, I think I'm more critically, I more reflect back on the way I asked questions than the way this person has an impact on me. Sometimes obviously I think: god, this person's really pissing me off today and I don't want to be here, and I don't think this has been productive at all. But I do think about, I think about how I use my sessions and how I, how I ask questions and things, you know, things like that I will think about. But I won't necessarily think about how it will impact on me in the moment I'm there. That's more something I think about as soon as I leave the house and drive back to the office and drive to my next appointment. ... And then as soon as I go away and have time in the office or time in the car that is when I think about how it impacts on me. And I don't think it would be productive for me, I don't know for others, productive if I would think about it while I'm there. It's basically that you don't open yourself up too much so that those projections don't have an impact or don't come onto you. (Angela)

Angela uses meta-cognition and engages in some internal supervision that enables her to see herself in interaction with others. She allows some emotion to be felt (being 'pissed off'), but closes off to the possible deeper impact of what she is experiencing and what is being projected into her. She had just been observed on a visit to a family where child neglect was a major concern and like many social workers in the study spoke of the difficulties of shaking off the effects of the 'dirty' home conditions and unpleasant odours that attached to her nostrils and clothes. Stopping these sensory experiences and accompanying emotions like disgust from becoming overwhelming occurred through conscious and unconscious defences of the self (Trevithick, ).

Suspension of feeling and self-preservation occurred at times by practitioners consciously turning reflection on and off, to meet the demands of the situation. A social worker, Hannah, was shadowed on a visit where a mother refused to let her in and quickly became very upset, spending 14 min on the doorstep crying and shouting at Hannah and seeking assurances that she would not remove her daughter from her care. Afterwards Hannah went straight to another home visit, which I also observed. Six days later after having been back to see the family again, here is Hannah explaining aspects of how she coped with the impact of the doorstep encounter:

No, and you just turn the music up loud in the car and you forget about it, and then you focus on the next visit. But it's like if you have a lot [of difficult visits] together, then it would be draining. And that's what I was saying about, I think, like when I went, before I went on the visit today, I was sort of ranting to [colleague] about it, like, 'Oh God, you should have seen her the other day what she was like with me, and now I've got to go.' I think it's, I really draw on that, you know, being able to offload a little bit, just briefly, and her being like, 'Oh yeah.' Do you see what I mean?

This confirms the importance of practitioners being contained by having opportunities to 'offload' feelings to colleagues in the office, both informally and in supervision. As with Angela's narrative, it also reveals the vital role of the car as a potential reflective space (Ferguson, ) and how loud music can assist workers to deal with the deep emotional impact of the work by helping them not to reflect. Hannah used the loud music to drown out thinking about what she had experienced because to reflect on and allow herself to feel her raw painful feelings would have prevented her from being defended and resilient enough to face the next family and practice effectively. And it seemed to work, as the next visit was also very challenging and the social worker managed to overcome parental resistance and meet her aim of seeing the child on his own.

The more emotionally and viscerally demanding and anxiety provoking the encounter the harder practitioners found it to reflect in action, at any depth and the less control they had over their defences and whether they reflected or not. 'Gary', spoke of this after he had just been observed interviewing a father-'Michael'-about his cannabis use:

that's kind of when, you know, my anxiety levels started to go up again .... you can feel the kind of emotions arrive and you've got to be monitoring them constantly and sort of on the move really, so, you know, that whole idea of being mindful, mindfulness, and because you're, you know, you can't just feel something and act on it, because that doesn't, I think that puts you in danger of kind of just, well, reacting to things rather than responding to them. Does that distinction make sense? ... But at the same time, you can't shut your emotions off because that's, you know, giving you a huge amount of the information. And so I suppose it always feels like you're trying to sort of watch the interview and watch how I'm performing from like a, you know, a bit of a distance away as well, just so you modulate your responses and ... then trying to guide the conversation and guide the interview to make sure that the points that you need to make are made, but they're not being made in such a way that's going to lead someone to fly off the handle. I think Michael played a part in that role as well really, you know, he was willing to sit and talk and seemed to be reflecting on the information, at least until towards the end. I can still kind of feel that kind of sense of, you can just feel it physically, you know, the kind of stress and attention that you've had in your body since, well, last night really, when I went to bed and I was just trying to figure out how, how I was going to do that interview.

This account sets out well the process of internal supervision (see also Casement, , pp. 132-150) and the anxiety and worry that go on both before and during the encounter with the service user. The practitioner perceptively articulates a core challenge of how to adopt the position of acknowledging and monitoring feelings while suspending fully feeling them, so as to make the work possible.

The language of 'splitting' was also used by Gary to describe this:

I know when I'm kind of meant to be doing it, you know, reflecting in practice. ... Because say like if you walk into like a house and kind of, you know, immediately the parent starts being aggressive or something like that, then all your fight or flight response is going to kick in, but you still need to be monitoring very consciously. You know, number one: where's the exits, where's the, where's the danger, where's the risk? And number two: can I talk this person down and do the role that I came here to do? You know, if you do manage to do that, you know, can I see the child, is it safe to see them, what's the risk to them if I ask kind of certain questions or don't? And so you can't ever be fully submerged in what you're doing because that would put you at risk as much as everybody else in that situation. So I think a certain level of splitting is absolutely fundamental to doing the job, and the more dangerous the situation, the more you've got to be able to, or the more, the more potentially volatile or dangerous the situation or the person that you're dealing with is, the more important it is to be able to do that kind of splitting, because you're going to have to be, react or respond in a very kind of considered manner to what might be some very frightening stimuli.

Through internal supervision Gary has created a split within himself whereby his mind is free to move between himself and the client, between thinking and feeling. Some reflection is going on in the moment described in the sense of an awareness of danger and vigilance in monitoring how to get out of the house safely, while at the same time needing to defend the self from becoming flooded by anxiety.

Amy referred to the need to defend the self in terms of erecting an 'internal barrier'.

sometimes you are just flying by the seat of your pants and you haven't got the luxury, you know, you haven't got the mental space to, to do that [reflect], you are just getting by. ... and you've just got to be a bit more on your toes, haven't you. But that's why each visit is, you know, potentially so different. ... If, for example, somebody's being feisty and it, you know, it feels like they're kind of attacking you, then you put your barrier up and because you have, this is not you that person's attacking, this is the social worker, you know. And yes, you have to take responsibility for what you do professionally, but that's when you need to have that barrier, you know: 'I'm not this, you know, crap, horrible, nosy, incompetent person,' or whatever it is that's being chucked at you. I'm doing my job and this is where my job ends and, you know, the rest of me is protected behind this barrier. ... An internal barrier. ... You need to hear and understand what somebody's throwing at you, to be able to respond to it in a way that's meaningful for them, but you need that barrier there for those things not to touch you yourself.

So the worker reflects in action, but only up to a point, the cut off being when the interaction with the service user is felt to impact on their inner self in an unbearably intrusive way. Erecting a 'barrier' to defend their inner life from the unbearable feelings is a means to trying to get through the encounter. The irony, given the importance placed in the literature on reflection, is that not reflecting in action provides a basis for being able to act (at all) and getting through at least some of what has to be done.

Some found the challenge of being able to think and provide internal supervision for themselves on some home visits too great.

Well, I didn't, I just didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to say, what to do, and as I was, and as I was sat there I was, I was analysing my own practice, I guess, and I'm thinking: I can't even talk to, I can't talk to the child, I can't even. I felt like I ignored him, which I didn't mean to do, because I was trying to make the effort to talk to him and to listen to what he was saying, but I, as if I was brushing him off, I felt, because I was a bit like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah'.

The worker's struggle to focus effectively on the child was confirmed by the observation. She did ignore him and found the visit difficult due to the father's resistance, a very tense atmosphere and the disgust she felt at the home conditions. She was able to become aware of how ineffective her practice was while she was doing it, but was so anxious and disgusted she was unable to adjust it to achieve what she needed to. She became overwhelmed. Reflecting in action does not therefore always lead to the worker being able to act there and then on the understanding gained from it. Realising she was being ineffective was a useful thing for the worker to know even if she couldn't change it, because if a worker leaves an encounter knowing they haven't achieved their aims they can at least go back again.

Serious risks arise when the self becomes completely defended, workers stop thinking and are not even aware of their non-reflection. This occurred in a minority of observed cases, where social workers became intuitively, emotionally, and cognitively absent and did not relate to children and parents in meaningful ways to the extent that they and the risks they faced became invisible (Ferguson, ). This arises from a thorough-going closing down of the self, rather than a temporary suspension and defence of that self. It involves not only not thinking about the experience of the work but not even knowing about what is not being thought about. As has been shown, non-reflection can have a reflective element in how through internal supervision the worker gains momentary awareness and makes a decision that this is so difficult it is not safe, productive or bearable to dwell on how emotionally and viscerally demanding it is. Yet at a deeper level not reflecting in action is not so much a choice practitioners make as a product of how in the moment the defended self leads them to enact the impulse not to dwell on painful feelings but to split them off. Its basis is existential and has unconscious elements. At its most worrying, where fear of feeling becomes embedded in organisational culture (Cooper & Lousada, ), a continuous cycle of unconscious disconnection from emotional states can exist, leaving practitioners and managers often unable to think clearly about the safety of service users and the well-being of staff, and blame and other toxic experiences may then prevail.

Conclusion

Practitioners reflect in action in some ways that fit with the literature. But the evidence considered here has shown that there are times when they limit reflection in order to defend themselves as a way of making the work bearable and doable. They have a vested interest in not going into the depths of the difficult experience they currently are in. Such splitting was a consequence of the fine balance that has to be struck between thinking about emotional and sensory experiences as they occurred in the moment and not thinking about them too much and becoming over preoccupied and paralysed by them. Some non-reflection can be healthy as a practical way of being that enables the worker to psychically protect themselves, and try to meet their goals. As Smith (, p. 115) observes, for some people some of the time 'it is necessary to move away from rather than towards their selves'. Crucially however, any kind of non-reflection should only be a temporary state and needs to end with supervisors providing containment, and enabling critical thinking on what has been experienced.

While Schon () wisely recognises some limits to reflection in action, too much social work scholarship does not do so, while adopting a naïve and flawed theory of self. This leads to the expectation that students and experienced practitioners, even at moments of high intensity, can, even should, be able to reflect in action on their feelings and thinking to ensure a skilled and ethical use of self. Connecting the use of self to reflection in action in such simplistic ways is no longer tenable. Due to the defended nature of the self there are experiences and situations where reflection in action is deeply problematic, to an extent that it may be neither possible, desirable or beneficial.

The theory of reflective practice is not sufficient to make sense of how, or if, practitioners think in action and I have argued that it needs to be supplemented with insights from psychoanalysis and theories of embodiment and lived experience, taking into account movement, the senses and complexity, as well as the sedentary nature of practice (Ferguson, ; Ingold, ). This reveals the impact of anxiety on the self, its need to defend, and the crucial role internal supervision plays in helping practitioners to think in the heat of the moment. The research findings support Trevithick's () argument that defences and defensiveness are common experiences in social work and need to be far better understood and worked with. Internal supervision is a more accurate way than the generic term 'reflection' of accounting for the kind of self-analysis that needs to happen at a deeper emotional, sensory, experiential level that may enable practitioners to contain their thoughts and feelings-or not.

It is of paramount importance that the limits to reflection are fully recognised, so that workers are not misunderstood, or pathologised by expectations that they should be reflecting in action when this is not possible. That said, social work education and training need to build on the important work that has been done (Fook & Gardner, ; Redmond, ) by helping practitioners to develop their capacities to contain themselves through good internal supervision so as to be able to tolerate anxiety in difficult situations that bit more to allow vital insights about the service user and helping process to arise. Briggs describes a therapeutic method that derives from Freud of giving 'free floating attention' to the client and encounter. It is a way of trying to surpass what is expected of the client and relationship and try to discover something new, unexpected or that isn't conscious (Briggs, , p. 103). Similarly, Bion (, p. 124) argued that therapists need to achieve a 'state of patience' in being able to tolerate uncertainty. Of course statutory social workers are not therapists. They work in fast moving bureaucracies where time to devote to service users-some of who do not want a service-and the scope for patience is stretched. Yet in my study I observed social workers sometimes achieving that kind of containment of themselves and capacity to bear a lot of feelings and connect effectively with children and parents, while some others were less capable of it. Briggs is surely right then in arguing that a great deal is to be gained from developing the capacity to 'sit with uncertainty, powerful feelings and impulses, and to treat these seriously' (Briggs, , p. 110). It is what is required and social work education needs to enable students to achieve it by learning about the complexities of the self, their emotional lives, and what affects thinking. One form of training that research shows assists in this is the experience of undertaking a lengthy period of infant observation (Hingley-Jones, Parkinson, & Allain, ), an approach that is adopted on some social work courses and that needs to be universally implemented (Parkinson, Allain, & Hingley-Jones, ), alongside a focus on critical thinking and the dynamics of power in practice.

Finally, this argument clarifies the vital importance of reflection on action. Staff support after practice encounters needs to be rigorously reflective, analytical, and critical, taking fully into account the feelings and sensory experiences that may have been split off in action and not thought about. Good experiences of supervision in turn supports the further development of the internal supervisor and the worker's capacity to contain themselves in the difficult circumstances that threaten to stop them from thinking and feeling what as far as is humanly possible they need to be able to.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J006629/1].

Notes on contributor

Harry Ferguson is a professor of Social Work at the University of Birmingham, England. His books include Child Protection Practice (2011) and Protecting Children in Time (2004).

Acknowledgement

I am very grateful to Stephen Briggs, Michelle Lefevre and Clare Parkinson for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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How social workers reflect in action and when and why they don't: the possibilities and limits to reflective practice in social work

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Abstract The need for professionals to use reflection to learn about and develop their practice is now a universally stated goal. In social work however there has been little research into whether and how reflection in action actually occurs and this paper explores the possibilities and limits to reflective practice by drawing on research that observed encounters between social workers and children and families as the work was being conducted in real time.

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Social Work and the Quest for Environment Justice; a Call to Action | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic

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While we were finalising the content and focus of the current issue, news about the underwhelming results of COP26 summit in Glasgow were shared across global media. The disappointing conclusion of the COP26 was in stark contrast to the mass, vibrant and assertive protests both in Glasgow and globally. Such antithesis between the determination of the people to defend the planet and the timidity and unwillingness of global leaders to prioritise our planet's future over short-term profits, informed our decision to dedicate the limited space of our current editorial to the global plight for climate justice. When deciding on the focus of our editorial, we were mindful of the fact that academic journal editorials do not-and should not-be following the 'headlines of the day'. If anything, because of the time lag between the themes that temporarily dominate daily news and the relatively infrequent publication of academic journals. The impact of climate change, however, is not merely a topic that briefly made headlines because of the COP26 summit; it is a global emergency, the effects of which are already visible around us and can be felt across the planet. Climate change will eventually affect everyone, everywhere on this planet. However, as social workers know all too well, such catastrophe does impact on the most vulnerable communities of our societies disproportionately.

Last summer, teams of Greek social workers were urgently dispatched to the island of Evia to support local communities who had witnessed the most extensive wildfires in the history of the country. The wildfires obliterated their villages, small towns, businesses and livelihood. The forest reserve of Evia, located close to a deindustrialised and divested region of the country, had become a crucial source of modest, eco-friendly, community-based business activity that included eco-tourism, timber processing, pine resin production and moderate agriculture. The near total destruction of the reserve means that, even if the Greek state fulfils its promises for temporary financial support, the forest-based economy will take decades to recover. As emergency social workers heard in their work with local families affected by the catastrophe, the only way for thousands of people to survive post-disaster would be relocating to Athens, the Country's capital and financial centre. This process, which has already begun, will lead to one of Europe's first cases of climate refugees.

For as long as climate change is not meaningfully addressed by world leaders and major industries, it is certain that the number of climate refugees will increase sharply, even in the world's more developed regions. One has to recall that while Greek social workers were supporting families in the island of Evia, their German colleagues and members of civil protection units were dealing with the devastating effects of extraordinary flash-floods that claimed the lives of hundreds of people in the regions of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. Even Europe's largest and most developed economy was ill prepared to deal with the horrible effects of climate change-related flash floods.

What took European countries by surprise, has not been unknown to low-income countries. The lack of critical infrastructure combined with aggressive exploitation of rich natural resources has meant that millions of people in Latin America, Africa and South Asia have already been forced to leave their communities and seek refuge in urban areas. The social, political and environmental impact of excessive deforestation in the Amazon has been well established for decades. Entire regions of farming villages as well as indigenous communities living there for thousands of years have been forced to evacuate their land. The effects of deforestation, devastating as they are for the local communities, have not been geographically limited to specific regions. For deforestation contributes significantly to climate change and undermines the balance of critical ecosystems at a global level. Perhaps, the most notable and catastrophic example of such imbalance between human and natural habitats is the outbreak of zoonotic viruses, one of which is linked to the current global Covid-19 pandemic. Although the exact timeframe and location of the disease's 'spill over' to the human species has not been determined yet, there is a broad consensus that Covid-19 originated from wild animals before infecting the first human (Patient 0).

The climate emergency seems to be mobilising the global social work community. Despite the welcome increase in climate change-related literature in social work journals, the fact of the matter is that, in much of the world, environmental justice had not been a central theme in social work practice and scholarship. The sparse and sporadic interest groups that emerged over the past decade, although important, could not hide the fact that climate change had not been meaningfully prioritised by social work organisations. However, such gap in social work practice is urgently been addressed, both by grassroots social work actions and through the mobilisation of the global social work community. In relation to the former, we have been witnessing the proactive involvement of social workers in the climate justice movements across the world. In terms of practice, disaster prevention and preparedness have been included in social work interventions. With regards to the global mobilisation, we can only welcome the decision of the International Federation of Social Workers to dedicate the forthcoming World Social Work Day on 'Eco-social work'. Furthermore, IFSW has been leading on the organisation of a people's global summit (2022) titled 'Co-building a New Eco-Social World Leaving No One Behind'. The multi-partnered summit, comprising organisations that represent hundreds of millions of people aims to identify and develop ground values, principles, policies and practice that will be used as references points for development.

Our pledge, as journal editors, is that we will also continue to emphasise the importance of environmental justice, its relevance to social work and the centrality of social work academics, researchers and practitioners in the global movement for transformative action towards reversing climate change. Our journal will remain a forum for evidence sharing and knowledge generation in relation to the impact climate change has on our communities and societies. We will also proactively encourage practitioners, academics and service users to use such knowledge and experience in order to 'speak truth to power'.

The current issue, although not fully dedicated to environmental justice per se, does retain a strong international focus. The themes it explores are linked to a variety of important and inter-related areas such as mental health, child protection, labour conditions, comparative social services and critical practice. It is exactly such ability of social work to connect globally and generate groundbreaking ideas and actions that provide a critical space for the profession to deal with the effects of global emergencies such as inequality and climate change.

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Social Work and the Quest for Environment Justice; a Call to Action

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While we were finalising the content and focus of the current issue, news about the underwhelming results of COP26 summit in Glasgow were shared across global media. The disappointing conclusion of the COP26 was in stark contrast to the mass, vibrant and assertive protests both in Glasgow and globally.

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Out of Harm's Way: A new care system to protect vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation and crime

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Out of Harm's Way: A new care system to protect vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation and crime

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Anne Longfield, chair of the Commission on Young Lives, is today (Wednesday 29 th December) publishing 'Out of Harm's Way: A new care system to protect vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation and crime', the first report of a year-long series of reports into teenagers at risk.

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Young Carer - ImpoliteLesbian’s Newsletter

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"Young Carer" is an oxymoron. The moment you become a carer, you are no longer allowed to be young.

If you haven't guessed by now, this post is not about gender, it's about something else I care a lot about. I've been trying to write this for a while. It's been really hard. Actually, I had no idea how hard it was going to be.

I was a young carer.

When I was around 9 or 10, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. My grandfather cared for her primarily until a series of strokes left him with vascular dementia.

I am now 21. My grandfather is bed bound, and has very little speech or movement. My grandmother is physically quite able, but has very advanced Alzheimer's. Most days she doesn't know me.

Part of what has led me to writing this now is what's happened in the last few weeks. I've seen less of them since the pandemic started, which has been both a horrible sense of loss and unexpectedly freedom. I've always been on call for emergencies, whether I was in school, out with friends, or asleep in the middle of the night. Covid has forced me to step back, as for months we were unable to see my grandparents at all. I got to watch my grandmother's birthday through a window. I haven't been able to be a part of her care, and that has given me some time to be young, and think about myself and who I want to be in the world. It felt like, slowly, the weight of the world started to shift off my shoulders, and I wasn't needed so much anymore. Until I was.

The post many people reading this will know me by (moving the goalposts) was uploaded on Friday the 5th of November. I went out with friends on Friday night, and spent Saturday catching up on sleep and completely shocked at being followed by so many of my idols, as the piece blew up. I spent Sunday in A&E.

My grandmother was found on Sunday morning with an unexplained head injury, a bruise that covered the right half of her forehead. The carer who initially found the injury failed to write an incident report or signal that she needed help so an investigation has been triggered with social services. I spent maybe 10 hours in hospital with my grandmother, during which I didn't eat or drink because I didn't feel able to take my eyes of her for a moment. After a day of unbelievable stress, upon arriving back at my grandmother's nursing home, a carer made some extremely unkind comments, telling me "you shouldn't be surprised she wasn't found straight away, sometimes people die and we don't find them."

In the last forty days since that happened, my grandmother has had two other unexplained injuries, one that took her back to hospital to have an X-ray done to look for fractures in her back.

At 21, this last month has been hard. At 15, months like this nearly killed me.

A recent BBC article estimates that 75% of young carers are not known to councils.

I was within that number. I got no support as a young carer. I struggled academically, socially, mentally, physically.

I did well in classes. I've always been someone who liked to talk, I was described as bubbly and chatty a lot as a child, even in classes I didn't like, my hand was always up. But I rarely ever did homework. I got plenty of detentions and telling offs but never once, in 5 years of secondary school, did I have a single teacher ask me if there was a reason I found it harder to work at home.

I lost friendships and ended my first relationship because I didn't have the capacity to be young in the way that she was, even though she was only a month and a day younger than me. She went to parties, I went to hospital appointments, it wasn't possible to share myself with her without sharing my trauma and I didn't want to hurt her. So I left her.

As for health, I've struggled with depression for as long as I can remember, a deep mistrust of doctors has meant it's only in this last year that I've actually been diagnosed. It meant years of self harm and deep scars that will never fade, days where I couldn't force myself to eat. Physically? Stress wears away at a body. It makes migraines worse, leaves your bones aching, and I ground my teeth in my sleep so badly that my jaw would lock during the day and make eating or talking painful.

As weeks of stress wears away at a body, so do years of it wears away at a soul. Only the people who know me very well now could describe me as talkative. I carry my grief and anger and shame with me, and it is a visible thing, even if people don't recognise what it is that they are seeing.

I remember people saying I was a happy child. I remember teachers saying I smiled a lot. No one would call me happy now.

I want you to understand why. I want you to understand what happens to young carers, how and why it happens, and most importantly, that it is entirely preventable. When I tell people about this part of my life, I'm very aware of the pain it can cause, and very careful in what I say, and obsessively balance any reality with humour to soften it for whoever is listening. I protect the other person from being hurt by my life, and my experiences, and in doing so, I minimise what happened and the harm it caused me. I'm not doing that here. I am going to be as honest as I am able to be. It is on you to determine how to hold this trauma, or when to stop reading if you're not able to hold it.

This might jump around, because I don't know how to tell this story but I do know where I want to start. I'm going to start with the worst day of my life.

I don't know the dates of most of the bad days, because when something like this goes on for so long, they all blur together, but I know this one because it happened on New Year's Eve. I was 16, and my grandfather had been in hospital over Christmas. (Christmas is hard, Christmas will always be hard. This year the nursing home is in lockdown. Staff have tested positive. I will not see my grandparents over Christmas.)

Most of the time we fell into a pattern in my family where my mother and sister would go to my grandfather and I would go to my grandmother. I won't explain why or say anymore about my mum or sister than the facts of where people were on various days, to protect their privacy.

So for weeks, my sister and mother would go to see my grandfather in hospital every day, and I would go to my grandmother and help her get up and out for the dementia lunch club that would come to collect her. This usually involved getting breakfast, sorting medication, helping her find lost shoes or a bag, and getting out the door. Then I would go back in the afternoon to meet her, make tea and get an orange or a chocolate bar, sort the afternoon medication, and stay until she was settled.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was maybe 6 hours a day, roughly 3 in the morning and 3 in the evening, some days more, some less. It was 7 days a week, of course, because dementia doesn't have weekends. I mention the hours because it matters, because this is round about the threshold for a carer's allowance (something I've never had explained to me and had no idea of at this age, so I've never had a carer's allowance). This is (or should have been) paid work. And it's hard work. Finding a bag or peeling an orange is easy, doing it while your grandmother asks you if her husband is still in hospital? What's happened to him? Where is he? Is he okay? Why won't they let him come home? Do we have a number for his doctor? Is he going to survive? And then the thought pattern changes and she wants you to recount to her who's dead and who's alive, how her father died, how her mother died, how her brother died?

While you're 16? It's really hard.

Anyway, back to the day in question. New Year's Eve, at 16 I was still with my ex, the one I mentioned above. She was going to a party at a mutual friend's house and so excited I had agreed to come because I'd long since abandoned most things like parties. I wanted to go. I wanted to see her and my friends, I hadn't really learnt to do make up yet so I'd agreed to go to hers so she could help me. What I didn't want to do, was go out in the cold and sort medications and face questions I couldn't answer about dead people I'd never met. I just didn't want to.

So I asked my uncle to go for me that morning. He agreed, and I went back to bed, and slept for an extra hour or two, and then started choosing clothes for the party. I got a text from my uncle, mid afternoon, saying he was locked out and asking me to bring a key. I assumed everything had been fine in the morning, and he had forgotten his key when going over to meet her for the afternoon, so I went out with only my phone and a key to let him in.

I got to the front door and it was like walking into a nightmare. Their front door was frosted glass and so I could see and hear my grandmother behind the door. Screaming.

She had pneumonia. She was hallucinating. She was terrified. He had never made it into the house because she had locked him out. I don't know, I've never known, how I got the door to open, because she had wedged her key into the lock on the inside. Brute force and sheer panic got the door open.

I won't go over the whole day. I have with my therapist, when I described to her these memories that I am only just beginning to realise are probably flashbacks. I can feel the panic now as I'm typing this, I can feel that fear as a physical thing inside me. What I really remember, and want to share, is the 999 operator asking me if we really needed an ambulance, reminding me that New Year's is busy and they had other patients to see. I remember wanting to scream "I don't know! I don't know what to do! Please tell me what to do!" But I couldn't do that. Not everyone is willing to help if you don't behave the way they want you to and when it's someone else's life in danger you have to do everything right. So I pushed down the fear and the trauma, and handled the situation. I went with her in the ambulance, and stayed with her at the hospital until my family got there and my mum sent me home.

Then I sat in our kitchen in the dark as the fireworks went off for the new year, and listened to the voice messages my friends had sent me from the party, asking why I wasn't there and laughing and having fun.

I blamed myself for her pneumonia. I still do, to this day. If I had been there in the morning, I would have gotten through that door. She would have had an ambulance at 9am instead of 3pm and she wouldn't have gotten so sick, or been alone and afraid for so long. I failed her, I let her down and I have never forgiven myself for that. I doubt I ever will.

I'm sharing a photo here, probably a bad moment to reveal my face for the first time (hi!) but I want you to understand that it isn't the me who is writing this, who understands stress and trauma and empathy and has the vocabulary to describe these things who was in that room. It was her.

I'm around 15 in that photo. I don't have many pictures of that time because I hated the way I looked so deeply, so that's the closest I have.

In the 6 months after that New Year's when I was 16, I cut off contact with all my friends, everyone from school and everyone from college, I broke up with my girlfriend, and I left college. That was the end of normal education, part way through my first year of a levels.

I recently said on Twitter that I left school at 17, and wrote about the effect, it's only on going back and looking at emails that I've realised I hadn't even had my birthday yet. When I left, I was only 16.

I've been asked so many times why I left school and the answer is everything and nothing. No one reason. I hated it. I needed to be home more. Depression put a wall in front of my bedroom door. I wasn't going to pass.

That's the one I beat myself up with. I wasn't going to pass.

I was predicted As for my GCSEs, I scraped Cs. I didn't understand that what was happening in my life wasn't normal. I didn't understand that I was going through severe trauma that was affecting my mental health, no one said the word trauma. No one said the phrase Young Carer, I didn't hear it or know it applied to me until after I'd turned 18.

Failure and shame aren't easy to shake off once they find you. I believed that I'd failed. I believed that I'd failed because I was too stupid, and scars like that run deep. Those wounds are reopened often, when I have to explain in a job interview that no, I'm not studying, and no, I don't have a degree. When every new person I meet asks me what university I go to. The answer I want to give, always, is that I'm not smart enough for that. This didn't just hit my self esteem, it erased it, I fundamentally don't believe that I am a person of value in the world, because I failed, I failed everything.

I've started pushing that back. At 19, I saw a tweet from Rape Crisis, saying they were looking for volunteers for the national helpline, and I emailed asking for more information. At the end of that year, my application was accepted and I was offered a place on the training course, which was supposed to last six weeks. Instead, covid hit, and the course lasted six months. I stuck with it, and did all the role plays, which were shockingly hard, and made me consider quitting a few times over, attended all the training sessions and turned in my written work. And... almost failed.

It's not surprising really. All the revising and exam prep most kids learn as teenagers, I missed. My role plays were fine, it was the written work I struggled with, and I needed extra support from my mentor to meet the marking criteria. That week is the only time I have ever truly cried in front of my therapist, because she had the bad luck to see me immediately after I got the call from my mentor letting me know I needed to change my written work to pass. I told my therapist that I'd failed, that I wasn't smart enough, wasn't good enough, wanted to quit, and I think I shocked her with my utter hatred of myself.

I know I am laying this on thick, but I need you to understand, to really understand what this does to a kid because I am not the only one. 27% of young carers experience educational difficulties. And that statistic doesn't acknowledge the fact that we just don't know for a fact how many young carers there actually are in this country. I would not have been recorded in that statistic because I was not recorded anywhere as a young carer.

I do volunteer at Rape Crisis now because I did pass. I've worked on the national helpline for 2 years now. I also own a 3D printer that I put together in my bedroom, because I did go back to education, if in an unconventional way, and found a part time jewellery manufacturing course that taught me CAD. I am also followed by Kathleen Stock (and yes I'm listing that as one of my achievements). I am trying to be proud of those things. I am trying to put enough achievements in my success pile to balance out the shame of the things I feel I failed it.

I talk to young people on the helpline. If I talked to a 16 year old child experiencing trauma who'd left school, I'd feel angry on her behalf, that she hasn't been supported in her education, or been able to get what she needed, that the adults around her have let her down. But I didn't have an adult like me around me when I was a child.

This feels so raw and so painful, so let's move onto something more proactive now. There are still children in situations like this, how can we help them?

For a start: pay them. Yeah.

It's my most radical opinion and people don't like it. A carer's allowance is almost £70 a week if you're doing at least 35 hours a week of care, but only if you're over 16.

If you're under 16, there is no guarantee of any real support, of a lighter burden, you are expected to behave like an adult but treated like a child. If the idea of paying a 12 year old £70 a week scares you, think about why. If that child is not mature enough to handle money like that THEN SHE'S NOT MATURE ENOUGH TO HANDLE THE WORK!

Take it from someone who did it and was traumatised by it.

If you don't like the idea because that child doesn't need to pay for things like rent and food yet, and so doesn't need the money, then I'd suggest starting a savings account for all young carers, and putting that money in the account to give them access to when they turn 16 or 18. They are statistically going to have more barriers in their life, their physical and mental health will be affected, they are likely to leave school younger and get worse grades than their peers. Some money could go a little way to beginning to meet that gap. Aside from anything else, they earned that money.

Child labour isn't suddenly acceptable because you decide not to pay the child. Everyone would be horrified if I'd been working full time in a nursing home at 12, but if I had, I would have been given training, I would have had colleagues supporting me, I would have been paid and had something to put on my CV when I left that work. I might have had the chance to be promoted, been on a career pathway, and maybe to sit qualifications specific to care. I would have had set working hours, outside of which an emergency is someone else's responsibility.

That didn't happen. I was there for the broken wrist, and the broken hip, the strokes, the falls, the going missing, the sun downing, the pneumonia, the blood clots, the non emergency days- the mundane hospital appointments and struggling to push a wheelchair, and helping feed my grandfather when he couldn't hold a fork. I didn't get holiday days, or the luxury of being able to plan a weekend, knowing I wouldn't be needed. I wasn't trained. I didn't know what I was doing, I learnt the hard way.

Young Carer's is a bizarre term when you start to see it through that lens. Young doctors or young lawyers or young teachers would refer to adults. Name one other profession where we recognise children as being a part of the work force.

I think we should offer other qualifications to young carers. I think I should be able to sit some qualification that assesses care abilities, because I know more about dementia than half the nurses and social workers I've met (hint: stop asking if they're better, dementia doesn't get better). And I don't have a way to prove that so it's often discounted, but those could be transferable skills for me, trying to work in the VAWG sector and get jobs in counselling.

I also want to acknowledge that my two suggestions above, about wage and qualifications, are, in my mind, short term support to help young carers cope with the difficulties of their lives whereas our ultimate goal should be to make their lives less difficult. Teach schools to recognise signs of a child in distress, to ask a child why she doesn't hand in homework, or why her attendance is so bad, instead of labelling her a bad child. Fund social services so they can properly help these children, and provide counselling, respite and other services.
(I didn't get counselling as a child. When my school found out I was cutting myself I was referred to a counsellor who never bothered to learn my name, who didn't show up after the first appointment and I never saw him again. My name slipped off some list and no one ever asked.)
Properly fund and de-stigmatise nursing care. Good nursing care is painfully expensive, and the mentality that people "dump" their parents or grandparents in a home because they don't love enough to keep them in the community is prevalent and awful. We moved my grandparents into a nursing home because when my grandfather broke his hip, the frame it took to get him out of bed in the morning was bigger than his bedroom. We had no choice. Those last few weeks at home, when I would go to see my grandmother, sometimes she wasn't there, because she was missing, walking streets looking for my grandfather, lost and unsafe. And I went looking for her (a teenager, also not safe wandering the streets at night!). When I went to see her in the nursing home her first few weeks there, she sometimes wasn't there, because she was downstairs in an art class, or listening to music, or watching the pantomime that came to perform. We really, desperately, need to reevaluate the concept that she was more loved unsafe at home than she is while safe in appropriate nursing care with trained professionals.

Show empathy. Learn active listening skills. Ask kids what's wrong and believe them when they tell you. I wanted to tell someone, no one ever asked.

Write to your MP. Ask them what provisions are in place to support Young Carers. Tell them this is an issue you care about. That's what I'm going to do next, I'm printing this text out and going to my MP's surgery to ask her what she is able to do to support Young Carers.

I know there's more I wanted to say but this is all I can do tonight. I somehow simultaneously don't want anyone to read this, and also want everyone to. I want people to understand this issue and this story because it matters, and it needs to be heard, but I'm also terrified of being seen.

I want to say thank you to women who will probably never read this, to my mentor who helped me through my training at Rape Crisis because I don't know where I'd be in the world if she hadn't supported me. To my therapist, who slowly pushed me to understand the child inside myself, and start to show her empathy.

To my grandmother. I would be nothing without her. Her strength, and kindness and generosity taught me what being a good person looks like.

I want to leave you with an impression of what it's been like these last few weeks with my grandmother's latest injuries have been like but I won't post a photo of her because it feels exploitative, and wrong, so instead I'll show you this. When she hit her head, we were sitting in a small room in A&E, waiting to see a doctor, told he was delayed because he was resuscitating another patient.

My grandmother suddenly said "look at those beautiful green fields out the window."

And I've never wished so badly I could see through her eyes. There was no green fields, just an empty ambulance, seen through a dirty window with a falling apart plastic cover on it.

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If you haven't guessed by now, this post is not about gender, it's about something else I care a lot about. I've been trying to write this for a while. It's been really hard. Actually, I had no idea how hard it was going to be. I was a young carer.

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Vulnerable children in UK face their ‘most dangerous Christmas yet’

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Many children are facing their "most dangerous Christmas yet" as uncertainty over Covid and the cumulative pressures of the pandemic heighten internal family tensions, the NSPCC has warned.

The charity's chief executive, Peter Wanless, said a "toxic cocktail" of accumulating financial pressures, disrupted festive plans and strained relationships threatened to create unsafe environments for some children and young people.

"We know that in a normal year, Christmas can be a tense and difficult time for children, but this year there's an extra toxic cocktail of facts and uncertainties that place many children in a difficult situation," Wanless told the Observer.

"It's going to be a pretty miserable Christmas for many children and a dangerous one for some - potentially the most dangerous yet."

Wanless also urged people not to shy away from contacting the authorities in the wake of the two recent shocking cases where a toddler and a young child were killed despite social services being repeatedly informed both were in danger.

Earlier this month, details emerged of the murder of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes from Solihull, West Midlands, who was poisoned, starved and beaten during a campaign of abuse by his stepmother and father. Social workers, notified of bruising to the boy, found "no safeguarding concerns" despite visiting him two months before he was murdered.

And last week, renewed outrage greeted the death of 16-month-old Star Hobson, who was murdered by her mother's partner after months of " neglect, cruelty and injury " and despite five referrals from concerned family members to social services.

Wanless said he was concerned that the authorities' response to the two deaths may deter people from coming forward. "Some people may be worried about a child but think that if they vocalise their concerns nothing's going to happen anyway," he said. "We are saying please speak up or speak out - don't wait. It's important that throughout this Christmas period people look out for children in their communities."

The NSPCC is also urging the government to introduce a contingency plan to ensure that children do not become "hidden victims" of any future Covid restrictions or even another lockdown.

Georgia Macqueen Black, senior policy officer at the charity, said: "The government needs to be responding to the Covid data coming out and ensure that if children aren't allowed to return to school in January, core agencies like the police, social care and schools come together to put in place robust multi-agency plans to safeguard children. We can't reach a situation where children are allowed to slip off the radar." Arthur's abuse began after the start of the first lockdown in March 2020 when he was moved into the home of his father's girlfriend Emma Tustin, 32.

His father, Thomas Hughes, 29, was sentenced to 21 years after being found guilty of manslaughter over the torture and killing of his six-year-old son. Tustin was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 29 years for inflicting the head injury that killed Arthur.

Last Wednesday, Savannah Brockhill, was jailed for a minimum of 25 years for inflicting "catastrophic" injuries on toddler Star, her partner's daughter. The attorney general has since been asked to review the sentence of Brockhill and that of Star's mother, Frankie Smith, 20, who received eight years for causing or allowing her death.

Fears of tighter Covid restrictions are caused by data showing that serious child harm cases reported by councils in England rose by nearly 20% during the first year of the pandemic, including a 19% rise in child death notifications. There were 536 serious incident reports in England during 2020-21, up 87 from 449 in the previous year and an increase of 41% on the number of incidents recorded five years ago.

Last Christmas, the NSPCC's childline provided 6,000 counselling sessions over the festive period, with the charity not expecting to record a lower figure during the weeks ahead.

Childline spokesperson Wendy Robinson said: "Children are going to be at home during a period when family life might be stressful and when there's a real pressure for them to be happy. If you're struggling with your mental health or things at home then it's 10 times worse at Christmas."

The warnings come days after the Children's Society said that another lockdown could put young people at further risk of exploitation from county lines drugs gangs. The charity said the issue had grown in the last five years but that the pandemic and festive period could escalate the situation.

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Vulnerable children in UK face their 'most dangerous Christmas yet'

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Many children are facing their "most dangerous Christmas yet" as uncertainty over Covid and the cumulative pressures of the pandemic heighten internal family tensions, the NSPCC has warned. The charity's chief executive, Peter Wanless, said a "toxic cocktail" of accumulating financial pressures, disrupted festive plans and strained relationships threatened to create unsafe environments for some children and young people.

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My name is not ‘asylum seeker’: on labels, dignity, and respect | Solidarities

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My name is not 'asylum seeker': on labels, dignity, and respect

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Last month, my colleague A recurring theme in our research has been the lack of dignity that people in the asylum system in the UK are afforded. The asylum accommodation system is highly centralised and complex, and people in asylum dispersal housing have told us they feel they are not being listened to simply because they are asylum seekers.

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Child protection and social distancing: Improving the capacity of social workers to keep children safe during the COVID-19 pandemic - University of Birmingham

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Previous research has shown that a crucial way child protection work is achieved is by social workers getting close to children, especially on home visits, and immersing themselves in the lives of parents and families. The primary research question for the study is how can practices that have relied on achieving closeness keep children safe and help families in a period of institutionalised social distancing and at a time of increased stress, poverty and risks of domestic abuse and other harms within families?

This research is funded by the ESRC and will run from 2020-2021.

Research team

Professor Harry Ferguson (PI)

Harry Ferguson is Professor of Social Work at the University of Birmingham. He has taught and researched widely in the areas of social work and child protection, domestic abuse, fatherhood, masculinities and men's lives, mobile research methods, ethnography, and the social science of social work.

Read is full profile

Professor Sarah Pink

Professor Sarah Pink is Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University in Australia, which undertakes critical interdisciplinary and international research into the social, cultural and experiential dimensions of the design, use and futures of new and emerging technologies.

Her research focuses on emerging intelligent technologies, automation, data, digital futures, safety and design for wellbeing. Sarah is also a world leading Design Anthropologist, known for her development of innovative digital, visual and sensory research and dissemination methodologies.
Read her full profile

Dr Laura Kelly

Dr Laura Kelly (Research Fellow) is a sociologist with experience of researching work with children and young people in a number of settings. She has also explored how practitioners navigate working in an environment of rapid policy change.
Read her full profile

Project collaborators

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Child protection and social distancing: Improving the capacity of social workers to keep children safe during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Previous research has shown that a crucial way child protection work is achieved is by social workers getting close to children, especially on home visits, and immersing themselves in the lives of parents and families.

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History is repeating itself with the reaction to the killing of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes | Social Work Today

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Ray Jones explains how social workers and children's services are being set up to take the blame for the blame for the murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, echoing the political and media reaction to the 2007 killing of 'Baby P' and ignoring the systematic defunding and fragmenting of the social work profession.

The awful torturing and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is absolutely shocking and has created anger and outrage for us all. But, as before, much of the media and many politicians have turned their anger onto those who spend their working lives seeking to help families and when necessary to protect children.

Once again, it is social workers and children's social services placed centre stage for vilification. The press and politicians have referred back almost 15 years to the killing of Peter Connelly. What they seem not to know, or at least not to acknowledge, is the impact their false, erroneous and indeed mischievous shaping of the 'Baby P story' has had on children's social services.

There has been a tremendous expansion in child protection investigations, surveillance and monitoring of families, making it more difficult amidst what Eileen Munro called the haystack which has been made bigger to spot the children who need urgent attention. It has trumped help for children and struggling families. It has been compounded by the opportunity of the greedy bankers-created financial crisis in 2008 to pursue the politically-chosen imposition of austerity with social security cuts increasing and intensifying poverty for children and cutting back on the services to assist families.

Two reflections on the here-we-go-again actions of the press and politicians. First, they must have something not available to the rest of us and whatever they have they do not share with us. Government ministers must have crystal balls and aids to reading tea leaves which allow them to perfectly see the future. They are sure that it is possible to prevent the horrific abuse and killing of all children. It will and must never happen again. Is it that they have tremendous intelligence or is it that they are lacking integrity as they claim that all terrible tragedies can be prevented? Is wishful thinking trumping wisdom?

Second thought. Will the awful death of Arthur be used to promote what the government has already set out as its agenda, albeit with little opposition recently from Labour?

Since 2010 the explicit intention has been to wind back public services and to push forward on privatisation. The government has also moved forward on fragmenting the social work profession, moving the education of children's social workers away from universities and into a stand-alone company, and with the government seeking to define and control who can be social workers, what should be within their education and training, and what they should do.

Michael Gove is the current Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This was formerly the department for local government but local government has not only been wiped out of the department's title but it is also being wiped out by funding cuts. It was when Mr Gove was Secretary of State for Education in 2014 that the ground was prepared through changes in statutory regulations to move children's social services to a commercial marketplace. It was Mr Gove who told social workers they were too concerned about poverty and the impact of deprivation.

A bit of history. It was the killing of Dennis O'Neil which was symbolically used to promote the 1948 Children Act, but it was already an Act in preparation before Dennis died. In 1973 it was the death of Maria Colwell and the subsequent inquiry which was used to justify the 1975 and 1976 legislation promoting permanence for children in care and adoption, but this was already in preparation prior to the Maria Colwell inquiry. It was the inquiry following children being identified in Cleveland as sexually abused which has been claimed to have generated the 1989 Children Act, but the roots of the legislation were in a law review and research prior to the Cleveland Inquiry. And the 2004 Children Act has been seen as a consequence of the Victoria Climbie inquiry. Not so, it was already being shaped through New Labour's 'Every Child Matters' and joined-up services agendas.

So it would not be novel or new if the killing of Arthur and the subsequent press and political targeting of social workers and local authority children's social services were used to promote what has already been in preparation. History has been known to repeat itself.

Ray Jones is emeritus professor of social work at Kingston University and St George's, University of London and a social worker and former director of social services. He is the author of 'The Story of Baby P: Setting the Record Straight' (Policy Press 2017), 'In Whose Interest? The Privatisation of Child Protection and Social Work' (Policy Press, 2019), and 'A History of the Personal Social Services in England' (Palgrave 2020).

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history is repeating itself with the reaction to the killing of arthur labinjo-hughesray jones explains how social workers and children’s services are being set up to take the blame for the blame for the murder of arthur labinjo-hughes

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echoing the political and media reaction to the 2007 killing of ‘baby p’ and ignoring the systematic defunding and fragmenting of the social work profession.children's

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History is repeating itself with the reaction to the killing of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes | Social Work Today

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Ray Jones explains how social workers and children's services are being set up to take the blame for the blame for the murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, echoing the political and media reaction to the 2007 killing of 'Baby P' and ignoring the systematic defunding and fragmenting of the social work profession.

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Full article: Hostile relationships in social work practice: anxiety, hate and conflict in long-term work with involuntary service users

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ABSTRACT
While recognition that some service users do not want social work involvement has grown in recent years, little research has explored what relationships between social workers and 'involuntary clients' look and feel like in practice and how they are conducted in real time. This paper draws from research that observed long-term social work practice in child protection and shows how relationships based on mutual suspicion and even hate were sustained over the course of a year, or broke down. Drawing on a range of psycho-social theories, the paper adds to the literature on relationship-based practice by developing the concept of a 'hostile relationship'. The findings show how hostile relationships were enacted through conflict and resistance - especially on home visits - and how anxiety and other intense feelings were often avoided by individuals and organisations. Much more needs to be done to help social workers recognise and tolerate hostility and hate, to not retaliate and to enact compassion and care towards service users.

At the heart of social work is a value base that urges practitioners to strive for relationships with service users that are empowering and based on mutual respect. However, some relationships in social work are not like that but are transacted through mistrust, fear, hostility and even hate. One reason social work places such an emphasis on achieving empowering reciprocal relationships is because it is assumed that service users are voluntary and want a service (Barber, ). While social work literature and policy stress the importance of 'user engagement' and working in 'partnership', 'the reality is that most social work relationships are involuntary' (Smith et al., , p. 1462) because the person receiving the service does not freely enter into it.

We even lack an agreed language to refer to people who don't want a service (McLaughlin, ). With respect to people experiencing mental distress and detained through the use of compulsory powers, Beresford () suggests the term 'service refusers' might be more appropriate. As people who have no desire to use a service are not 'service users' in any meaningful sense, the term 'involuntary client' seems a more honest, accurate way of representing the relationship. Recognition of involuntary clients and the complexity of such work has grown in recent years (Calder, ; Rooney, ; Trotter, ; Tuck, ). High profile cases where children were harmed or died despite extensive professional involvement have heightened awareness of what Laming () called 'resistant and deceitful parents'. Sudland () shows how working with 'high-conflict' parents and families is enormously emotionally and practically challenging. Some research suggests that in such high-risk cases intimidation and physical violence towards social workers by family members are quite common (Littlechild, ; Stanley & Goddard, ). Verbal aggression and threats have been found to be commonplace and have detrimental consequences (Robson et al., ), while significant numbers of workers have felt that the impact of the violence and parental hostility on them was minimised and mismanaged by their managers and this adversely affected their practice and the quality of protection that children received (Hunt et al., ). Notions such as 'respectful uncertainty' (Laming, ) have been coined to try and capture the delicate balance of trust and doubt that social workers need to achieve. Strengths-based practice models such as Signs of Safety include techniques for advancing such work (Edwards & Turnell, ; Turnell & Essex, ). Within the literature on relationship-based practice (Ruch et al., ) there is recognition of the complexity of working with strong feelings and dealing with aggression and hostility (Cook, ; Smith, ). Turney () argues that recognition, respect and a degree of reciprocity are key elements of an ethically grounded relationship-based practice with involuntary clients.

However, what is mostly absent from the literature is attention to what 'involuntary' relationships look and feel like in practice and how they are actually conducted in real time. Much more needs to be learned about how relationships based on mutual suspicion are sustained over time, or break down, and how the feelings generated by tense, often conflictual and sometimes frightening encounters are dealt with and the implications for keeping children safe. How professionals can have a relationship with someone who does not even want to be involved with them is one of the most difficult, important and yet under analysed dilemmas in social work.

This paper seeks to contribute to filling this gap in knowledge by drawing on an ethnographic study that used participant observation to explore how social workers establish, develop and sustain long term relationships with children and parents in child protection cases and how this is influenced by organisational life, staff support and supervision. Fifteen months of fieldwork were spent with social workers, the first three months of which were used to identify a sample of 30 cases that were then shadowed for as long as they were open for up to a year (Ferguson et al., ).

The research found that different kinds of relationships became established between social workers and families in long-term casework. Some were cooperative from the start, and therapeutic, or became that way having begun with the service users not wishing to have social work involvement (see, Ferguson, Warwick, Disney, et al., ). Some parents were opposed to child protection involvement and this type of relationship was often hostile and remained that way. It is the latter kind of work and 'hostile relationship' that is the focus of this paper, which has two aims: to draw on case-studies of long-term casework with 'involuntary' clients to show what it looks like, feels like and involves for both social workers and service users; and secondly, to add to the literature on relationship-based practice by developing the concept of a 'hostile relationship'.

The paper draws on a range of psycho-social theories to show the complex dynamics of hostile relationships, the emotional demands they place on social care staff and service users and the impact on individual workers, teams and organisations of working with or avoiding such hostility (Holway, ).

Researching long-term practice and relationships

The 15 months of fieldwork were conducted simultaneously in two Local Authorities in England and the research team spent a total of 402 days in the field. We had no way of knowing at the outset how long the 30 cases (15 at each site) we sampled would be open for and in the event 12 were shadowed for the full 12 months, one for eleven and 22 were shadowed for at least eight months. A total of 271 practice encounters between social care staff and service users were observed, 146 of which were home visits. Fifty-four staff supervisions were observed and 54 interviews took place with families, some of which involved up to three interviews with the same families over the course of the year. We also extracted data from social work case files about the total work that was done over the year (Leigh et al., ). Mobile research methods were used so we could travel with practitioners, interviewing them on the way to and from home visits and other places where children and families were seen (Disney et al., ). The practice encounters between practitioners and service users were observed and audio-recorded. Similar close attention was given to observing and recording encounters between staff in the social work offices, soaking up atmospheres and organisational cultures. A case study method was adopted by bringing together all the data on each case and this provided 30 very detailed case studies of long-term social work practice. Due to the large size of each case-study and the insights they give into the detail of practice the paper is focused around a small number of cases. The chosen cases are what Wengraff () calls the 'focal' or 'gold-star cases' within qualitative research samples that deserve attention because they not only tell their own story but illustrate the general research findings particularly well. The research was funded the Economic and Social Research Council and ethically approved by the participating social work agencies and universities. Professionals and families were only shadowed and interviewed if they gave informed consent. While the case examples used here reflect actual events and findings, details have been changed to protect the anonymity of the families, professionals and research sites.

The approach to participant observation that was adopted enabled attention to be given to the senses, emotions and lived experience of face to face practice and organisational life over time (Ferguson, ; Pink, ). This involves the researcher staying close to participants' experience and writing in ways that intertwine events and emotions as they were experienced in real time, ensuring accounts of practice maintain their 'aliveness' (Holway, , p. 123). In presenting the findings key scenes from the data are selected that typify what was said and done and the atmospheres of encounters and experiences over time, their smells, sounds, moods, emotional textures - in essence, how the work and relationships felt. This qualitative longitudinal approach (Neale, ) enables the drawing out of key patterns of relating between social workers and service users and how they were influenced over the course of a year by the ebbs and flows of what was going on in the family and the organisation - what we have elsewhere called the 'seasons of social work' (Ferguson et al., ).

In facing head on the difficult experiences and emotions that hostile relationships involve, the paper draws on social theories that are helpful in thinking about such emotional and relational complexity. The power social workers have to intervene into people's lives must be understood in terms of the lack of social power and status service users typically have. The persistent stigmatising of the poor and of black and minority ethnic communities make them into marginalised 'others' who provoke fear and contempt (Tyler, ). Service users in child protection cases have increasingly been framed through such discourses as disgusting 'others' (Warner, ). While social workers are trained to understand marginality and how fear of the 'other' is socially constructed and to counter it through anti-oppressive practice, at a psychological level direct contact with people from such social groups can still provoke anxiety and be experienced as a threat to the integrity of the self. This is exacerbated by how at a social level the social work profession is constructed as a 'bad object' into which the media, politicians and the general public project their rage and attack it for perceived failures in keeping children safe (Valentine, ).

Freud's work and psychoanalytic theory as developed by Klein (Salzberger-Wittenberg, ), Winnicott () and Bion (), argues that professionals' capacities to think clearly about and relate to the service user (referred to as 'transference') is particularly influenced by the level of anxiety the professional experiences and what the service user projects into them (referred to as 'counter-transference'). To care about someone and be helpful requires a capacity to become emotionally attuned to their experience, to think about why they present in the ways that they do and to not retaliate when they are angry and upset. This is extremely difficult for professionals to do when they are constantly under attack by service users and rage and hate are projected into them. As Winnicott () showed, feelings like hate are experienced and acted out unconsciously by professionals and not just service users. This analytical approach also sensitised the research to how not only individuals defend the self from unbearable feelings, but entire organisations erect defences that impede thinking and reflective practice (Cooper & Lousada, ; Whittaker, ). Developing Winnicott's work, Kahr () uses the metaphor of hostile clients throwing 'bombs' into encounters with professionals, causing 'psychological shrapnel' that workers and clients have to find ways to survive. Professionals are liable to retaliate and throw some bombs of their own into relationships and are involved in a struggle not to be hateful and punitive towards the service user. That struggle is at the heart of this paper.

Involuntary relationships

Within the sub-sample of cases where service users did not want a service there were different degrees of resistance and discontent. Some families reconciled themselves to the inevitability of statutory involvement, were not overtly aggressive towards social workers and tried to make the best of circumstances to promptly get workers out of their lives. In other cases parents were extremely unhappy, often hostile and remained that way. As will be shown however, this hostility was not simply a result of parental attitudes or personalities, it was also relational and a product of social worker attitudes and how the interactions between families and professionals developed into hostile relationships.

Twenty-five encounters took place between social work and the 'Jones' family over the year and there would have many more if the parents had permitted it. The concerns surrounded neglect of the three children, aged 6, 8 and 10. Social workers always undertook joint visits and the 11 encounters we observed were characterised by anger, acrimony and frustration. The parents attempted to take charge by interrupting, shouting and making accusations - that social workers are untruthful, inconsistent, hypocritical and 'in cahoots" with other professionals. Social workers at times raised their voices, argued with and talked over the parents. After a period of involvement, things got so bad that having let the social workers into the home the parents walked out and hovered around the front door. The practitioners tried to relate to the children in the home and saw them at school, but the parents soon blocked that too. The awkwardness of these encounters was painfully obvious; contempt and hate filled the air. When interviewed during month seven of the research Mrs Jones was scathing:

it was uncomfortable and it has got worse and worse the longer it has gone on. We felt like we were being judged obviously, which we are, nothing has properly been explained to us. We have been lied to actually from social services, blatant lies to our face so there is definitely no trust or anything there. They seem very aggressive, and very argumentative and sometimes patronizing ... From our point of view it seems like they are trying to pull the whole family apart. All of the experiences so far have been very bad and they keep coming round and saying, "well, we are here to help". Well, no, you're not because you're just causing problems and making everything a lot worse and worrying people and stressing people out rather than actually doing anything to help anyone. It has caused a load of stress, headaches, made us sort of feel ill in ourselves.

The social workers meanwhile, regarded the parents as being responsible for the lack of cooperation and saw this as further evidence of their problematic parenting. In child protection work with involuntary clients what constitutes fair, proportionate and respectful practice is inevitably contested.

This can also be seen in the case of the 'Lewis' family. They were seen 24 times by social care over the course of the year - they too prevented/avoided more visits - and we observed 15 of these encounters. There had been significant concern for the two children aged 4 and 5 from early in their lives due to their father's drug abuse and violence towards their mother. The social worker, who had known them for over two years, was so used to the family pretending not to be in that she no longer waited for them to answer but would knock and immediately walk into the house. The parents - Ron and Angela - didn't like it, but it enabled the worker to see the children with whom she had a good relationship. In Month 3 of being shadowed, there was yet another incident of the father being found to be in the home, despite being told he was too big a risk to be there, and the social worker Rebecca made a home visit:

Although there was a polite greeting there is an intense atmosphere. Rebecca in particular seems really angry with Angela and Ron, she doesn't hold back as she notes Ron's presence and the complete lack of engagement with the Child Protection Plan. Ron barely acknowledges the conversation initially, although it's largely aimed at him. Angela obviously does not see the problem with having Ron in the home. Both deny it and Rebecca threatens to do spot checks in the middle of the night. Ron leans back, puts his arm behind his head and splays his legs. Angela continues to have her feet up, snuggling into the sofa. There is a remarkable contrast between Rebecca, who sits rigidly and tensely upright on the sofa, and Ron and Angela who give off an air of not caring. Rebecca raises her voice to talk over them, she talks about the concerns of nursery. Ron, who was so placid and uncommunicative earlier, begins to seethe. He demands to know what the nursery workers are saying about him, complaining that there are never any concerns when he pick ups [youngest child]. Ron begins to raise his voice, he waves his hand around in a gesture of frustration, raising his voice louder still. Rebecca tries to bring it back to Angela and Ron's relationship, but they don't understand what she means ... Ron paces around, in and out of the kitchen and living room. You can feel the anger coming off him, anger with Rebecca and her manager for how he feels he's being described, anger with Angela for seeking to go back to court and complaining no one helps him.

In forcefully challenging the parents, the social worker did not disguise her annoyance with the lack of progress and ongoing risk to the children and she just about maintains her composure in the face of the father's behaviour. In working with on-going hostility, social workers face huge challenges in maintaining their professionalism by having empathy for service users' fears and not retaliating. While the above examples illustrate how social workers may consciously channel their anger into challenging parents, the danger is that they unconsciously return the hate service users have projected into them and become punitive but are not aware of it. This is what Winnicott () called 'hate in the counter-transference'. All the parents we interviewed who were involuntary clients felt social workers crossed the professional line and were punitive and persecuting. The threat by Rebecca the social worker to do spot checks in the middle of the night expressed her commitment to checking on the children's safety, but because it was so unrealistic it can be construed as retaliatory. Nothing changed and by the end of the research the children had been removed. These skirmishes, the anger, threats and walk outs, all delivered in highly personalised ways, show how incredibly emotionally and intellectually demanding these hostile relationships are for everyone concerned. But because of the child protection concerns, neither families nor social workers can walk away, and somehow a relationship based on hostility has to be sustained.

Sustaining hostile relationships over time

Having shown some general features of social workers' and involuntary clients' experiences, the paper will now develop these insights by exploring in-depth how hostile relationships developed and were sustained over time. This will be done by focussing on one case-study, which makes possible the kind of in-depth analysis necessary to show how the casework was done, the dynamics of hostile relationships and the ebbs and flows of the social worker - service user encounters and organisational life over the course of the year.

'Roberta Dixon' had two children, who were not in her care but resident with their relatives for the past two years, and she saw them occasionally. They had been on child protection plans due to concerns about physical abuse. Roberta was now pregnant and described in the referral as having a history of violent and abusive relationships where she was at times suspected to be the perpetrator. In the 12 months there were 68 face to face encounters between social care and the family. Some 30 of these were done by social workers and their managers. The Family Support worker based in the team also made eight home visits, while the intensive family support service (external to the local authority) made 21 visits in a short period at the end of the year of casework we shadowed. Most of this work was done in the second half of the year. Despite her overt hostility to social care, Roberta consented to being part of the research. Twenty-one of her encounters with social care were observed by the researchers (12 social worker home visits, two family support worker home visits, three child protection case conferences, two inter-agency 'Core Groups' and two court sessions). Practitioners were interviewed numerous times about the case, both in situ as events were unfolding and in formal research interviews. Roberta was interviewed for the research on three occasions: in Months 6, 8, and 12.

The initial social work response was to ring Roberta who responded by saying she does not want anything to do with social workers and would not meet with them. She told the worker they were being rude and that she would search their name on the internet and then hung up. Soon after, Roberta rang the office twice to tell the team manager (Olivia) she was angry with her, and the researcher could hear her shouting a barrage of abuse at Olivia and demanding a complaint form. Because Roberta's two children were not in her care, it was treated as an 'Unborn' referral and not urgent. So it was seven weeks after the initial referral that face to face contact was made with Roberta on a home visit. While this lack of contact could have been a relief to Roberta, it may also have triggered feelings of abandonment and meant that the opportunity to intervene early to try and build a relationship was squandered.

The first home visit was done by the team manager, Olivia, due to the social worker Susan's unavailability. From the start social workers always visited in pairs because Roberta was regarded as dangerous. Roberta showed her feelings as soon as the two social workers arrived and were parking up, by standing on the doorstep and then forcefully slamming the door to her house. The atmosphere of the visit was extremely tense, as typified in this scene:

Olivia mentions the assessment document and goes through the different columns of the assessment and acknowledges it was filled in without having met Roberta. Olivia is good at asking Roberta to help her fill it in - it is an attempt to involve her in the process and address power imbalances. ... Seven minutes into the visit Roberta taps the pen in her hand against her pad of paper irritably while she talks; it feels like she is very angry. The atmosphere feels incredibly tense. Olivia still seems nervous, she talks quietly. Roberta is much louder and really dominates the room. ... Roberta asks for the document that Olivia is writing on, she takes it and nods as she reads through it, but she does so irritably and the atmosphere, which was better, starts to become tense again. She disputes that she has harmed her children. She sort of laughs dismissively when she looks at things. She tries to gain control of the meeting. She hums a bit while she reads through things, and writes things down on her own pad of paper. Olivia remains largely still, except for nodding to her occasionally. ... Roberta questions the 'history of drug use' [even though she did agree earlier that she had a history of drug use]. Olivia scratches her face absent-mindedly and then moves her hair out of her face. Otherwise she remains largely still while they talk.

In a staff supervision session a few weeks after this visit, Olivia and the social worker, Susan, agreed that Roberta was preventing the pre-birth assessment by refusing to cooperate. They were alarmed by her aggression, mental health problems and history of alleged violence and concerned that Roberta may hit the (as yet unborn) baby:

Although Susan had some telephone contact with Roberta, she had not yet met her face to face and it would be another two months before she does. The social worker and manager both used this supervision to offload anxiety and fears about Roberta, which served to cement her identity as dangerous. Whilst Roberta's behaviour was frightening, if one function of supervision is for managers to support workers emotionally and in being critically reflective about parent-child relationships (Davys & Beddoe, ) it didn't happen. It is striking how these two colleagues wound themselves up into a kind of frenzy about Roberta's dangerousness, including imagining and enacting the 'whack!' of her assaulting the baby. But Olivia had been on the receiving end of Roberta's anger and was already deeply emotionally enmeshed in the casework, which prevented her from achieving the kind of detachment necessary to critically reflect and think clearly about the work.

It was nine weeks after the first home visit when the next face-to-face contact with Roberta occurred, at a multi-agency 'Core Group' meeting. Prior to the birth, two case conferences took place, at the first of which Roberta expressed huge anger towards all the professionals and her unborn child was placed on a child protection plan. The decision was that it was highly unlikely that she would be allowed to keep her baby and Roberta stormed out before the end of the meeting.

In Months 5 and 6, a pre-birth Parenting Assessment was completed by an independent social worker that involved four home visits and over the same period two home visits were undertaken by the family social worker. As time passed, Roberta became more cooperative with professionals and was seen in a very positive light by the independent social worker. The statutory social workers recognised that Roberta seemed different - as Susan put it, 'she's a changed woman' - but their narrative remained negative, that she was manipulative, hadn't really changed and that it was 'disguised compliance'. This use of the notion of disguised compliance was highly problematic because it placed the service user in a lose-lose position where they could never prove their sincerity or worthiness as a parent (Leigh et al., ). The social worker and manager were very annoyed by what they saw as the independent social worker's overly positive assessment, implying that tough questions about Roberta's anger and alleged violence had been avoided. The independent social worker's report had a significant impact on the second case conference and the decision was that Roberta would be allowed to keep the baby, who would remain on a child protection plan.

It is possible that Roberta was showing a capacity to respond to the empathetic approach of the independent social worker, whose report did indeed give limited attention to the risks represented by her. Statutory social workers on the other hand, by seeing Roberta through a lens of dangerousness, did not relate to the caring, loving side of her. Following the work of Klein () there is evidence of psychological 'splitting' occurring here, which is a defence mechanism for dealing with intense anxiety and other unbearable feelings. Cooper (, p. 32) describes how individual professionals and whole systems can 'lose their heads' with anxiety, become reactive and stop thinking and how 'case dynamics become split very quickly'. A 'bad' object is created into whom unbearable feelings are projected and a 'good object' becomes the recipient of positive evaluations, respectful loving feelings and is idealised. From the outset the child protection social workers internalised a view of this mother as a 'bad object', which was the lens though which they made sense of her. Meanwhile the independent social worker who completed the pre-birth parenting assessment related to the mother as a 'good object' and could see nothing of the danger others were preoccupied with. This splitting into love and hate was also evident in Roberta's narratives when interviewed for the research as she expressed her complete admiration for the independent social worker and her intense dislike of the statutory social workers, Olivia in particular. When such splitting occurs, relationships and the work suffers because sound assessments and decision-making require practitioners and the whole system to be in touch with as many dimensions of the emotional dynamics as possible and connected to the complexity of being human - the 'good' and the 'bad' in us all (Cooper, , p. 32).

Roberta's baby, Amy, was born in Month 6 and very regular social care visits began. Four home visits were made by social workers in the first few days after Roberta and Amy went home from hospital, after which in Months 7 and 8 the pattern settled into weekly home visits, which were either announced, ie Roberta knew when they were happening, or unannounced, when she didn't.

The initial couple of home visits by Olivia after mother and baby went home were quite harmonious, as the following typical scene illustrates:

Roberta talks about how she has changed as a person - she was only 16 when she had [first child]. She says it's important for her that Amy and her other children have a relationship. Roberta does sound quite different - she gives off the impression that she understands she did harm her other children. She wants to show us photos of them, she retrieves them from the sofa next to me. I help hold open the box so she can grab the photos as she is also holding Amy ... There is a much warmer and comfortable atmosphere suddenly. Olivia has responded so well to the photos, smiling and saying how lovely they are, how nice the children look.

A visit that Susan and Olivia made together later in Month 6 was more typical of the pattern of relating that became established:

Susan took the lead, knocked on the door and Roberta led us into the kitchen. Amy is in a car seat under the sink in the gap where a dishwasher or washing machine usually goes. Roberta is cooking. Susan tells Roberta how gorgeous the baby is. Olivia and Susan ask Roberta lots of questions about the practicalities of baby care. Seven minutes into the visit Roberta moves forward and picks the baby up. Susan moves to her right to allow this and suggests they move to another room. This move is engineered by the social worker who leads the way despite Roberta saying there are no seats in the sitting-room. Eight minutes into the visit and everyone has moved into the sitting room where Roberta sat on a stool. There is in fact a settee and other chair but they are covered in stuff, so Olivia and Susan remain on their feet and stand for the entirety of the visit. The social worker offers financial help while benefits are being sorted to take account of the baby's arrival. Susan has a powerful tone of helpfulness in her voice, really encouraging Roberta to accept help and conveying the genuineness of the offer.

Here Susan was meeting Amy for the first time and while she made genuine efforts to recognise the baby's presence, she did not get physically close to her, which we had observed her doing on visits to other infants. There were occasions when the relationship between Susan and Roberta seemed better, however this didn't last. During Month 7 another social worker co-worked with the family with Olivia because Susan was unavailable, and this is a scene from their first/introductory visit:

Roberta leads the social worker into the sitting-room. There is nowhere to sit and after 2 minutes the social worker gets down on her hunkers. She gives a minimal explanation as to why she is getting involved and where Susan is. Roberta tries to get more information from the social worker about Susan but is given a vague reply that this new social worker will be coming to visit for a while. Within five minutes the social worker tells Roberta to be careful to hold the baby's head so that it doesn't flop and Roberta responds angrily that she knows how to care for a baby. The social worker is very emotionally flat. She shows no excitement or pleasure at meeting the baby. In fact she does not actually properly meet the baby at all in the sense of going up to her and attuning to her by, for instance, looking into her eyes, making noises. Amy was awake when we arrived and the social worker kept a significant physical distance from her and her mother for the duration of the 21 minute visit. To the worker she seemed to be merely an appendage to her mother.

The new social worker's withholding of information about where Susan was, her lack of attention to the child and disrespectful approach to the mother felt punitive and made a difficult situation and hostile relationship even worse.

Social care then began to worry about an apparent downturn in Roberta's mental health and other agencies also expressed concerns about her well-being and capacity to care well enough for Amy. Due to this, nine social care visits occurred in the first half of Month 10 alone, mostly by Susan. The difficult, tense, conflict laden dynamics of these visits replicated those above. The pattern was for social care workers to ask Roberta questions about baby care and other practical things like housing, but there was little attention to her feelings about and relationship with the baby. On most of the visits Roberta sat on the stool holding the baby and there continued to be nowhere for practitioners to sit, which meant they mostly stood for the entire duration of the visit, or spent it crouched on their hunkers, which they repeatedly described (to researchers) as awkward and painful. When interviewed for the research around the time these encounters were happening Roberta admitted she deliberately covered the seating to prevent professionals from sitting down, orchestrating discomfort. There is nothing surprising about families who do not want social work involvement using such tactics to keep them at a distance or drive them out. What is striking is that social workers did so little to try and work through these barriers and defences. It seemed like their anxious state of mind was such that unconsciously they colluded in their own distancing, because they did not want to be there.

Then, in Month 11, at a meeting Roberta aggressively challenged everything Olivia said and - as Olivia put it - 'exploded' with rage and threatened her. Olivia was shadowed in the office for the rest of the day and said she was not happy with how she handled the meeting because she felt stressed due to pressure of work and enough attention wasn't given to Roberta's views and feelings. After this meeting the professionals feared that Roberta would act out her anger on her daughter. Olivia was very upset by Roberta's threatening behaviour and cried at her desk. In talking about it, it is notable how she brought up other times when Roberta was really aggressive towards her and others. Many of the social workers in the team had worked closely together for several years and the researcher established that it was extremely rare for one of them to openly cry in the office. Olivia said she was more worried about the administrative staff seeing her upset than social work colleagues and it being seen as a weakness. She was also trying to contain her emotions to undertake the several phone calls and other tasks now required to ensure this child is safe. She practiced what Ferguson () has called 'suspended self-preservation', where social workers consciously suppress reflection on and acknowledgement of the depths of their feelings to help them get through the work they have to do and protect themselves and colleagues from their suffering.

On a home visit a few days later Olivia was still feeling traumatised by Roberta's attack, couldn't stop crying, felt ill and stayed in the car while Susan and the researcher went into the house. Olivia was observed in supervision that week with her senior manager, who recognised that she was upset but did not pursue this with her, instead moving on to address other high risk cases and staff performance issues in the team Olivia managed. This was discussed with the senior manager in a research interview straight after the supervision:

Researcher: Olivia said she didn't want to talk any more about what happened in that situation with Roberta because she'd only get upset again. What were you thinking when she said that?

Senior manager - supervisor: I was thinking we'd spoken about it earlier in the week and she had got upset then and I'd heard the story, you know. So, and she, I felt, chose, and it seemed OK to come to the supervision and she didn't want in that setting to be upset and ... so I sort of thought, well maybe that's OK, I don't want to press her on that. But yeah it's a hard balance between, and then you're just avoiding it and let's move on and that's not intelligent, that's just kind of colluding with shutting that sort of discussion down and that emotion down. So, yeah, it's hard and there's, you know, a limit to how much you can get involved in the in-depth of one case when you know you've got another 60 to, to make sure get covered and so on too, really. I mean, you know, there I am talking about that emotion at the beginning of the supervision, half way through I'm talking about, "right, how are you going to a get a grip with this member of staff?" It's quite tough to balance.

The manager is aware of the importance of providing emotional support to staff in Olivia's situation and in order to protect her had ensured the case was now transferred to a new team. Ultimately however, the emotional support provided was compromised by the manager's regulatory role and their need to address issues such as staff performance, timescales and targets for completing work. The opportunity for reflective, emotionally supportive supervision was sacrificed to the organisational imperative to comply with government-imposed performance indicators that are inspected by the regulatory body, Ofsted. Audit requirements and the pressure for performance data over-rode the need for attention to what was occurring emotionally and viscerally for the workers, mother and baby, alongside analysis of what was going on in the relationship, especially below the surface. This echoes Smith et al.'s (, p. 1474) finding that while managerial regimes often advocate a sensitive focus on service user's needs, in reality they 'act against its meaningful realisation by eroding the social work relationship in favour of bureaucratic, procedural systems'.

When interviewed after the supervision, Olivia said she was hesitant about accessing her distressed feelings and reluctant to show vulnerability because she feared judgement. She felt that managerial responsibilities were what mattered most to the organisation and defended herself from unbearable feelings accordingly. Once again, 'suspended self-preservation' was regarded as the safest course, but it only really works as a healthy long-term strategy if the attention to the emotional impact of the work that is being postponed is provided as soon as possible. And it never was. This lack of attention to the emotional dynamics and effects of the casework contributed to social workers' relationship with the child remaining detached. As the social worker Susan explained at the end of the year of research, this was the first baby she had worked with in several years as a social worker who she had never got close to, touched or held as part of forming a relationship. This shows how even in long-term work where such children are regularly 'seen' by practitioners, they can be kept at a physical and emotional distance (Ferguson, ; Winter et al., ).

By month 11 of the fieldwork the cumulative concerns about Roberta and her parenting resulted in the local authority trying to remove Amy from her. This was averted in part by Roberta agreeing to the intensive family support service working with her. In her final research interview at the end of the research fieldwork (month 12) Roberta still had custody of her daughter but expressed how she regarded the attempt to remove her as a persecutory, punitive response. While there is no doubt that Roberta could be a frightening person, and that she and her child were vulnerable, the possibility that she was right and that at an unconscious level this was a retaliatory act cannot be ruled out.

Discussion

This paper has presented what the research shows about the nature of hostile relationships in social work and how enormously difficult it is for all concerned to begin, develop and sustain them over time. It has sought to convey the lived experience of being involved in such casework, the struggles over space and the rights service users have, or don't have, to refuse professionals access to their lives, the tactics of resistance that get played out and the deep emotional effects of such work. Many of the parents in the study began by disliking, fearing and even hating social workers. Through empathetic, strengths oriented practice and skilful use of relationship-based practice, some of these parents were helped to transform ambivalence and hostility into a capacity for cooperation, care and love and they and their children thrived together (for extended examples, see Ferguson, Warwick, Disney, et al., ). But in the 12 months of casework we observed where hostile relationships persisted professionals and parents remained deeply mutually suspicious of one another. It is vital to understand the mutuality of this dislike. It is service users who typically are characterised as 'hard to reach', 'resistant', 'difficult', but the social care staff were also often emotionally detached and unwilling or unable to tolerate and 'reach' the parents and children.

As Brett Kahr () shows, when Winnicott () first published his work on 'hate in the counter-transference' there was considerable resistance to it within psychoanalysis and the idea that therapists sometimes hated their clients, but this is now a fully accepted part of psychotherapeutic knowledge. The same cannot be said of social work however, which urgently needs to face the harsh realities of hostile relationships, the risks of abuses of power they contain, and the enormously difficult feelings they bring up for service users, social workers and their effects on the emotional life of whole organisational systems. The dynamics of how hostile relationships occurred and their implications will now be drawn together on two levels: practice experience and the organisational, and we will focus further on the Dixon case in particular for what it reveals about the impact of trying to sustain hostile relationships over time.

The embodied nature of practice and limitations of home visits

As has been shown, on most occasions interactions between social care and families went on in the home. Visits to families where there were hostile relationships were consistently fewer, more infrequent and shorter than in the other more cooperative long-term casework observed in the research, which in some cases typically lasted up to an hour (Ferguson, Warwick, Cooner, et al., ). The longest home visit to Roberta Dixon lasted 45 minutes and was the very first, as Roberta angrily sought explanations for why social care needed to be involved. After the birth of the baby social work visits lasted between 18 and 33 minutes, which given the high level of concern was short. This can be explained, in part, by how uncomfortable workers felt in the home having to face such anger and aggression (see also, Henderson, ; Sudland, ). While, as we have seen, some parents, like the Jones's and the Lewis's, sometimes walked out of their own home for some of the time social workers were there, Roberta's resistance was more subtle in how she made sure there was nowhere for practitioners to sit, which left professionals having to awkwardly stand, crouch or sit on the floor.

Workers so often having to stand contributed to an atmosphere that felt like they had not properly settled into the visit. Professionals towering over Roberta merely emphasised their dominance and power - precisely that which she most feared. Social workers told us they were aware of this dynamic and the need to, as they put it, 'get down to the service user's level', which (it was assumed) would create a greater sense of equality in the relating and enable conversation to flow, which was why they crouched for as long as they could physically bear it. It is crucial to recognise however the role the service user played in placing the professionals either in an upright, standing position, gazing down at her, or crouching or sat on the floor with her gazing down at them. For Roberta, workers standing over her did not simply signal professional dominance, but because she engineered it, her taking back some power from those she regarded as persecuting her. She told us she took pleasure in their discomfort. However, ultimately for Roberta it was the professionals who had the power, and she felt strongly that they misused it:

(Roberta - final interview)

Being 'squared off' with was in a variety of ways at the heart of how parents saw their experience of hostile relationships. With Roberta Dixon, for instance, some critical thinking and use of good authority by practitioners could have resulted in 'clear the air' conversations and firm but respectful requests to clear seats to enable them to sit down and an overall much more open, negotiated approach (Ferguson, , chapter 12). Its absence arose from how fear and anxiety cause the self to become defended, which stops reflection in action and how this is compounded by the absence of help with critical reflection afterwards in supervision (Ferguson, ). Nor did it seem thinkable that sometimes these involuntary clients could be seen somewhere other than in their home, whereas this did happen in some cases we observed that involved cooperative relationships as parents and children were seen in community centres, parks, cafes, or in cars (Jeyasingham, ). The emotional impact of hostile relationships paralysed workers and organisations, restricting their minds and actions, confining them in highly constricted spaces where they and parents effectively enacted pathological relationships, taunting and punishing one another. The consequences for parents and children could be huge.

Organisational life and the psycho-social dynamics of hostile relationships

Trying to sustain these torturous hostile relationships is incredibly emotionally demanding. The challenges involved were all the greater because typically social workers had several such cases at the same time and team managers had to provide support for their entire team's caseload of involuntary clients. This was on top of their many other duties. On one occasion when parked outside Roberta Dixon's home the team manager Olivia spoke of how exhausted she felt having the day before responded to 180 emails and covered home visits for social workers who were on sick leave. She felt at breaking point. Such pressures made giving children and families the full attention they needed and maintaining a capacity to think clearly about them and the dynamics of the relationship enormously difficult.

The workers were conscious that they were, in their own language, 'monitoring' Roberta Dixon's mothering. However, they were not really aware of the primitively anxious nature of their surveillance, the splitting and framing of the mother as a dangerous 'bad object' and the effect of this on the mother and baby. There was genuine fear for the baby's safety, however, a contradiction was that no actual evidence of harmful parenting was discovered by social care. The perceived risk lay in the mother's dangerousness and explosive nature.

Roberta explained vividly in research interviews how she felt persecuted by the surveillance, how she would be watchful at the sitting room window wondering when they were going to call unannounced again and also fearing the announced visits. This mother internalised the anxious surveillance by social care, experiencing it as persecutory anxiety, which in turn made her even more defensive and anxious about their involvement and her capabilities as a mother. It is very possible that the nature and style of the social work surveillance contributed to the worsening of Roberta's well-being and it certainly contributed to her reactions to professionals.

In their encounters with families, social care staff brought with them a highly pressurised organisational space which made maintaining a capacity to think analytically about what was occurring in their relationships with service users very challenging, especially at unconscious levels. The reason workers lacked awareness of these dynamics was because there was so little help with getting it. The social work team manager was deeply immersed in the case and had been on the end of Roberta's rage from the start. Thus in supervisions, social worker-manager interactions were fuelled by deep anxiety which at times built up into a frenzy of fear for the baby, and also for their own safety. This left no space for thinking that could help them become aware of the transference and counter-transference, the pathological nature of the relationship and communication and how they could negotiate things like having a place to sit on home visits and having meaningful relationships with children, where they were held as well as seen. As Cook () argues, it is crucial that the risks arising from the complex emotions experienced on home visits and elsewhere are brought to awareness and made into a resource for insight and thoughtful practice.

The nature and depth of organisational defences employed was particularly evident after Roberta 'exploded' and attacked Olivia. She did not want colleagues to see her crying and this avoidance of showing the impact of traumatic experience was compounded by her senior manager not enabling her to express her emotions, so that the managerial goals of improving staff performance in compliance with targets and audits could be achieved. This demonstrates how standardisation and neoliberal governance can impact on social work organisations and influence manager's and worker's experiences (La Rose, ). Social work practitioners and managers walk a very delicate line between acknowledging how emotionally demanding and sometimes deeply distressing the work is and not showing that distress and the effects it has on them. They protect one another from the painful realities of the work even whilst deeply immersed in enduring it - feeling it yet not showing it. The teams where the casework with involuntary clients occurred that we have featured in this paper were not uncaring. We regularly observed a culture of attentiveness and mutual support amongst staff and relationships were collegial. They were often helpful to children and parents and many families confirmed this in research interviews. But this must not be taken to mean the teams and their organisations were comfortable with acknowledging the very difficult feelings the work cultivated. Somewhat paradoxically these were not workplaces where sadness, fear, anger, guilt and other painful feelings were easily or openly expressed. There was a deep investment in not showing or fully feeling what was there deep down to be felt. The net result was an entire workforce fleeing from painful feelings. The basis for this was pragmatic in that feelings were suppressed and 'suspended self-preservation' practiced due to the need to keep going to ensure the work got done; and it was psychological, unconscious and defensive arising from the need for organisations as well as individuals to defend the self from unbearable feelings (Cooper & Lousada, ; Whittaker, ).

The research on the other hand did gain some access to the deeper emotional life of individuals and the organisation. The longer we were in the field the more participants revealed their interior worlds and distress to us. This is exemplified by a social worker we shadowed on several occasions who, as he talked about the deep emotional effects the work had on him, cried, shook and sweated so profusely that his shirt became soaking wet. This finding is supported by O'Sullivan's () research, where she used psycho-dynamically informed work discussion groups to reach the deep emotional experience of child protection workers. These are the 'suspended' feelings social workers were not getting help to deal with, which because they remain repressed can easily be unconsciously acted out against service users in retaliatory ways and that ultimately traumatise workers and burn them out.

Conclusion

Involuntary clients and hostile relationships have a very powerful presence in statutory social work. Acknowledging this and the presence of difficult emotions in the dynamics of hostile and avoidant relationships is a very important way to begin to overcome them. Anxious surveillance infused with persecutory anxiety is clearly not an effective way to deal with the primitive fears such work and relationships bring up. Practitioners and managers need to be provided with supervision that goes below the surface and enables them to recognise how they are really thinking and feeling about children and families and identify the effects of fear, anxiety, and defences such as splitting and the dangers of hate and retaliation (Trevithick, ). Professionals need much more training to help them learn strategies that defuse these potentially explosive relationships, recognise their role in co-constructing the hostility, and how to work through resistance and engage with children and parents in respectful, reciprocal ways (Smith et al., ; Turnell & Essex, ; Turney, ). Much greater awareness of spatial dynamics is required and the value of seeing service users in places beyond the home, at least some of the time (Jeyasingham, ). Providing parents with advocates who can support them and processes like family group conferences (Mason et al., ) can help to re-balance the power dynamics of vulnerable parents, often lone mothers, coping with constant visits by two social care workers. Parental allies can provide a person who has lived experience of the child protection system, who can offer emotional containment, genuine understanding and enable parents to feel valued, not just 'bad objects' (Tobias, ).

Creating supervisory practices and cultures where these deep feelings, unconscious processes and states of mind can be accessed is very difficult. In attempting to help social work managers provide a model of supervision that could include emotional thinking, Turney and Ruch found that for supervisors it was 'a significant challenge to hold thinking and feeling, process and task together' because they were so used to providing case management orientated supervision which precludes attention to detail and more open-ended conversations (Turney & Ruch, , p. 134). Meeting emotional needs and enabling critical thinking is more likely to happen if the reflective, analytical aspects of supervisory practice ('clinical' supervision) is provided separately from 'administrative' supervision in which managers address performance and audit issues and targets. The more opportunities workers have to reflect on and analyse their feelings and relationships with involuntary clients, the less chance there is they will become hostile relationships and the surer they can be that their work and major decisions (including to remove children) will be done ethically and free from hate and retaliation.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Marta Bolognani, Linda Cooper, Simon Haworth, Claire Mackinnon and Liz Salter for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and for the feedback of the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Number ES/N012453/2].

References

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, , , Littlechild, B. , & (2016). 'If I feel like this, how does the child feel? Child protection workers, supervision, management and organisational responses to parental violence. Journal of Social Work Practice, 30(1), 5-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2015.1073145

Jeyasingham, D. (2013). The production of space in children's social work: Insights from Henri Lefebvre's spatial dialectics. British Journal of SocialWork. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bct053

, , & (2019). Disguised compliance or undisguised nonsense: A critical discourse analysis of compliance and resistance in social work practice. Families, Relationships and Societies, 9(2), 269-285. https://doi.org/10.1332/204674319X15536730156921

(2019). What is qualitative longitudinal research?Bloomsbury.

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(2015). Working with involuntary clients: A guide to practice (2nd ed.). Sage Publications, Allen Lane.

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Hostile relationships in social work practice: anxiety, hate and conflict in long-term work with involuntary service users

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ABSTRACT While recognition that some service users do not want social work involvement has grown in recent years, little research has explored what relationships between social workers and 'involuntary clients' look and feel like in practice and how they are conducted in real time.

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Sometimes the most caring thing to do is to remove a child from their family | Sonia Sodha | The Guardian

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Sometimes the most caring thing to do is to remove a child from their family | Sonia Sodha

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Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was failed fatally, left to be terrorised in his own home. The idea that care should be avoided at all costs is wrongheaded

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Green lights, speed bumps and cul-de-sacs: the road to Contextual Safeguard Tickets, Wed 26 Jan 2022 at 16:00 | Eventbrite

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speed bumps and cul-de-sacs: the road to contextual safeguard

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Green lights, speed bumps and cul-de-sacs: the road to Contextual Safeguard

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Woodland walks save UK £185m a year in mental health costs, report finds | Trees and forests | The Guardian

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Walks taken by people in UK woodlands save £185m a year in mental health costs, according to a report.

Spending time in nature is known to boost mental health, but the report by Forest Research is the first to estimate the amount that woodlands save the NHS through fewer GP visits and prescriptions, reduced hospital and social service care, and the costs of lost days of work. The research also calculated that street trees in towns and cities cut an additional £16m a year from antidepressant costs.

The researchers believe the true savings are likely to be significantly higher. The report shows the importance of woodlands, they said, which the government is already aiming to expand to tackle the climate and wildlife crises.

The coronavirus pandemic has increased the prevalence of mental illness, and the NHS was already increasing its spending on treatments. This includes green social prescribing, where activities including nature visits are used to help sufferers. In polling by Forest Research, more than 90% of respondents said woodlands were important to them in reducing stress.

"If people spend 30 minutes a week in trees, doing whatever they like - walking, sitting meditating - there are noticeable benefits," said Vadim Saraev at Forest Research. "It's amazing how small that is in terms of time. You will feel much better than if you spent the 30 minutes looking at social media."

"After a couple of years of researching this, I really became a convert," he said. "When you walk through woods, it's always different. It also feels fresher there, the air is less polluted and you are totally cut off from traffic noise. At the moment, if you pay a little attention, you will notice the rustling of leaves and interesting musty smells of wet earth and wood."

Sir William Worsley, the chair of the Forestry Commission, which funded the report, said: "It demonstrates just how vital it is to invest in healthy trees and woodlands." It makes medical, economic and environmental sense, he said.

The government has committed to ramping up tree planting to 30,000 hectares (74,100 acres) a year by 2024, but last year just 13,300 hectares were planted. The Woodland Trust warned recently that the UK's native woodlands are reaching a crisis point, with just 7% in good condition.

"Forest Research have been leading the way in terms of estimating the economic values of the hard-to-measure health and wellbeing benefits of woodlands and forests for some years and this report adds further important new insights," said Mathew White at the University of Vienna in Austria. "It would be great in the future if the team could estimate the effects of different types of woodlands, eg conifer plantations versus old deciduous woodlands, given the clear implications for forest management."

Alistair Maltby, at the Woodland Trust, said: "If we want to maximise the benefits for people and society, we need more trees and woods that are both closer and more accessible. We urge the government to set a legal target for increasing tree cover."

The Forest Research report uses evidence of reduced depression and anxiety as a result of regular nature visits, as well as data on woodland visitor numbers, and prevalence of mental health conditions and the associated costs.

The evidence included an Australian study, showing that visits to green spaces of 30 minutes or more during a week reduced overall rates of depression by 7%, and a UK study led by White that found a two-hour "dose" of nature a week significantly boosted wellbeing. The evidence on the benefits of street trees came from studies in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.

The researchers said the calculated savings were based on conservative estimates of mental health costs. These only included NHS treatment, did not account for any illness prevented by woodland visits, and used the minimum living wage to calculate the value of lost work days, which accounted for about half the overall costs.

The estimated £185m cost savings are comparable to estimates of the value of all recreation, which the Office for National Statistics puts at £557m a year. Saraev said woodlands have value in their own right but that economic valuations aimed to make them relevant for policymakers: "If there is no value, it is not considered in decision making."

Many people visit woodlands at least once a year, according to Forest Research surveys: 63% in England and about 80% in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. More than a third of people in England and Northern Ireland visit at least several times a month, and half of those in Scotland.

"Although many of us feel like hibernating in winter, getting outside in green spaces and making the most of the little daylight we get can really benefit both your physical and mental health," said Stephen Buckley at the mental health charity Mind.

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Woodland walks save UK £185m a year in mental health costs, report finds

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Walks taken by people in UK woodlands save £185m a year in mental health costs, according to a report. Spending time in nature is known to boost mental health, but the report by Forest Research is the first to estimate the amount that woodlands save the NHS through fewer GP visits and prescriptions, reduced hospital and social service care, and the costs of lost days of work.

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The Frontline programme: conservative ideology and the creation o...: Ingenta Connect

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The Frontline social work training programme in England represents an attempt to develop an elite entry programme to social work and to develop future social work leaders. It has received significant backing from senior political figures from the right of the political spectrum and from conservative charities and business interests. An adaption of the earlier Teach First programme, it represents an explicit break from previous consensus-based models of educational development in the UK.

Keywords: ELITISM; FRONTLINE; NEOLIBRALISM; SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

Document Type: Research Article

Affiliations: Email:[email protected]

Publication date: August 2016

This article was made available online on 07 June 2016 as a Fast Track article with title: "The Frontline programme: conservative ideology and the creation of a social work officer class".

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It welcomes contributions that consider and question themes relating to the definition of social work and social work professionalism, that look at ways in which organic and 'indigenous' practice can expand concepts of the social work project and that consider alternative and radical histories of social work activity. As a truly international journal it actively encourages contributions from academics, scholars and practitioners from across the global village.
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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Frontline programme: conservative ideology and the creation o...: Ingenta Connect

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Frontline social work training programme in England represents an attempt to develop an elite entry programme to social work and to develop future social work leaders. It has received significant backing from senior political figures from the right of the political spectrum and from conservative charities and business interests.

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The death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes raises hard questions – we must address them all | Harry Ferguson | The Guardian

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he manner of the death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at the hands of his father and stepmother, now convicted of manslaughter and murder respectively, is shocking. The evidence heard in court was some of the most tragic I've seen and heard in a social work career lasting more than 40 years. This was echoed by the judge who said: "[Arthur] was subjected to the most unimaginable suffering at the hands of both of you ... Your behaviour towards him was often spiteful and at times sadistic."

Little wonder serious questions are being asked about how this was allowed to happen. Evidence appears to show that family members reported at least some of their concerns about Arthur to social workers and the police, including sending photos of bruises on his body. It was reported that social workers concluded there were "no safeguarding concerns". A review of the role of children's social work services is under way and an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct is expected to report soon.

How might we begin to make sense of how professionals missed what appears to us now with hindsight as obvious signs of dreadful child abuse? Media reports are placing a great deal of emphasis on the fact that Arthur and his father moved into the home of his stepmother at the start of the first Covid lockdown in March 2020. As soon as April, the wider family had reported suspected abuse and social workers had visited.

I am part of a research team that examined the impact of Covid and social distancing measures on the capacity of social workers to keep children safe and help families during the first nine months of the pandemic. On the basis of our findings it seems likely that Arthur was in part let down due to the restrictions of social distancing and school closures.

Social workers were directed by national and local government to minimise where possible having to go into family homes by seeing children and parents on doorsteps, in their gardens, or through video calls. It was very clear, though, that where serious child abuse was suspected, seeing children inside their homes was essential.

Social workers were advised to wear PPE - especially face masks - and maintain a two-metre distance from children and parents. When adequate, and sometimes any, PPE was unavailable, we found that social workers consistently took significant personal risks to try to protect children.

In the nine months we spoke to social workers, we consistently found that social distancing didn't happen, not least because children often initiated physical contact with the worker. Invariably, social workers responded by providing the play, physical touch and nurture the children were reaching out for. But still, it is very important that inquiries take the effects of poor resourcing and the wider impact of austerity into account when looking into how social workers interacted with Arthur.

Careful analysis of the actual bodily, interpersonal dynamics between Arthur and professionals will be crucial. Did social workers, the police and doctors see bruises? Was the child medically examined? It is important to stress that such routine child protection work did go on during lockdowns and our data shows that many children and families were kept safe and helped.

That said, it was clear from our data that child protection workers did not have the same capacity and freedom to get close to children and to find out what their lives are like in the ways they could pre-pandemic. Two factors were crucial to this.

First, especially during the initial lockdown, social workers were often the only professionals visiting children and going into family homes on a regular basis. Health visitors, early help and therapeutic services that normally support young children and parents retreated from homes and either went online or stopped altogether. Many schools made tremendous efforts to stay in touch with vulnerable children, doing telephone and doorstep visits, and the police visited in emergency situations, but the net result was that social workers often ended up being the sole agency going into homes.

Just one in 10 parents of children in the UK aged under two saw a health visitor face-to-face during the first lockdown. This stopping of services for at-risk children was a major error, as the Institute of Health Visiting warned at the time, and should never be allowed to happen again. What abused children like Arthur need are safe spaces to talk about their lives and for as many professionals as possible to have access to them.

In some high-risk cases in our study, social workers were able to make arrangements to see children in schools but this was wholly dependent upon parents allowing it. Lockdown made it possible for Arthur's parents to legitimately keep him off school and torture him at will. Social workers often shared their fears with us that some parents were using the risk of Covid infection as an excuse to deny them the right to visit.

Which brings us to a final hugely influential factor: the parents and their emotional impact. It is clear that they were frighteningly strategic in their abuse of Arthur and no doubt in concealing it. It has become commonplace for inquiries into such cases to conclude that social workers and others lack "professional curiosity" and miss the obvious because they are too "optimistic"; that the "rule of optimism" results in professionals naively and hopefully believing what parents tell them, and denying what is in front of them.

My years of practice and research into child protection social work suggests that far from being optimistic, when faced with such aggressive and manipulative parents, social workers' states of mind are often closer to helplessness. They are outmanoeuvred and overcome by the suffering and sadness in the atmosphere of such homes and in the children's lives.

It's a very painful truth that when faced with the helplessness of children, social workers and other professionals can become helpless because they find the children's suffering unbearable and the organisational support is not available to help them recognise the impact of fear and anxiety and their distorted thinking. It is difficult for us to even think of what Arthur went through, but think the unthinkable we must, and build a child protection system that supports social workers emotionally and practically to do just that.

News reports and social media suggest that the appalling abuse Arthur suffered and the fact that opportunities to protect him were missed are already feeding a public desire to find professionals, usually social workers, to blame. Child protection work has always been difficult, but Covid, social distancing and the personal risks social workers routinely had to take to see children in their homes increased the complexity still further. The more that is taken into account - along with the emotional demands and funding deficits and systemic problems that mean social workers are faced with obstacles that make their job much more difficult than it needs to be - the more can be learned from Arthur's tragic death.

This article was amended on 7 December 2021 to include reference to the Institute of Health Visitors, which in April 2020 was among a group of care organisations who warned government about the risk of redeploying staff away from frontline safeguarding work. For clarity, a reference to a "retreat of services" was amended to "stopping of services".

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The death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes raises hard questions - we must address them all | Harry Ferguson

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he manner of the death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at the hands of his father and stepmother, now convicted of manslaughter and murder respectively, is shocking. The evidence heard in court was some of the most tragic I've seen and heard in a social work career lasting more than 40 years.

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Dismantling the Blueprint: Buurtzorg in English child protection social work: European Journal of Social Work: Vol 24, No 6

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Dismantling the Blueprint: Buurtzorg in English child protection social work

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(2021). Dismantling the Blueprint: Buurtzorg in English child protection social work. European Journal of Social Work: Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 990-1000.

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Vulnerable children unable to access help due to austerity, says inquiry | Children | The Guardian

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More than a million vulnerable children in England are growing up emotionally damaged and with reduced life chances as a result of billions of pounds of austerity cuts to family support and youth services, according to a cross-party House of Lords inquiry.

The Lords Public Services Committee said the pandemic had accelerated a pre-existing "crisis of child vulnerability" in which increasing number of youngsters and parents were unable to access help before their problems spun out of control.

Too many children in deprived areas were taken into care, excluded from school, suffered from poor health, struggled in the job market or ended up in prison because of the lack of services able to intervene early with at-risk youngsters, it said.

It called for early years spending to be "levelled up" after revealing £1.7bn a year funding cuts to Sure Start, youth and other family support services over the past decade had disproportionately affected children in the most deprived communities.

For example, while Walsall had seen early intervention services reduced by 81%, Manchester by 75% and Liverpool by 65%, relatively affluent Surrey had seen cuts of just 10% and a handful of councils such as leafy Buckinghamshire had even increased early years spending.

Lady Armstrong, the chair of the committee, called on ministers to urgently restore early intervention funding to 2010 levels and publish a national strategy to help vulnerable children. "Too many children fall through the gaps, go into care, are excluded from school or end up in prison - all of which costs the public purse more in the long run," she said.

Although the committee welcomed the government's promise to invest £500m in early years services over the next three years, partly through the expansion of so-called "family hubs", the committee said this fell short of what was needed after a decade of massive underinvestment.

Vulnerable children were defined by the committee as aged 0-19 whose lives were not in immediate danger but who without targeted support were at risk of significant harm and diminished life chances. They included children with mental health problems or whose parents were mentally ill, or victims of domestic violence.

While the pandemic had made it impossible to produce formal statistical estimates of the numbers of vulnerable children in 2021, the committee concluded there had been a big increase on the 829,000 vulnerable and "invisible" children identified in 2019 as not in receipt of support from services.

The collapse of council-funded early intervention services between 2010-11 and 2019-20, when spending in England fell by an average of 48%, was linked to a 34% increase in spending over the same period on costlier late interventions such as youth justice, looked-after children's services and safeguarding.

The Local Government Association said the crisis meant many councils were overspending children's budgets by millions of pounds a year. Councillor Anntoinette Bramble, the chair of the Local Government Association's Children and Young People Board, said the report was "a stark reminder of the challenges councils face supporting and protecting vulnerable children".

A government spokesperson said: "We're prioritising the wellbeing and safety of children, which is why we announced significant additional investment in services for families at the spending review.

"We're also providing the largest mental health funding in NHS history, alongside our Mental Health Recovery Plan, and support to improve mental health in schools. In addition, we have provided more than £28m to domestic abuse organisations to keep helplines and vital services running."

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Vulnerable children unable to access help due to austerity, says inquiry

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More than a million vulnerable children in England are growing up emotionally damaged and with reduced life chances as a result of billions of pounds of austerity cuts to family support and youth services, according to a cross-party House of Lords inquiry.

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AoCPP Podcasts | Association of Child Protection Professi

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Association of Child Protection Professi

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Listen Now Frontline practitioners in key worker positions are currently finding themselves overworked, time poor and confused while working under unprecedented circumstances. In an attempt to alleviate the pressure child protection professionals are under, the AoCPP podcast was born. There has never been a more important time to keep up with child protection and safeguarding news.

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Social care in context – Alma’s Not Normal

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Last night I cried watching Sophie Willan's brilliant Alma's not Normal (BBC). In this episode, the show's protagonist, Alma, receives a box full of her social care records. As she sits down to read them she is confronted by sentences such as: " Alma was added to the child protection register under the category 'gravely at risk'", " Alma is not making progress academically", " Alma is an overactive, over sensitive, emotionally distressed child". I know I'm not the only person that will have cried. For those working in social care these sentences won't surprise you. But what is striking is that a lot of these sentences - and those that are a lot worse - are still written down and recorded "on record" (the title of this episode). What this powerful episode does is highlight the impact that these assessments and words can have on a person, and indeed how ridiculous they can seem. Alma quips "that's like some sort of shit Mystic Meg isn't it?" after reading a psychiatric assessment which notes " the level of neglect Alma has suffered is already presenting itself in Alma's chaotic attachment style and low self-esteem this could cause more problems for Alma later in life".

Over the years there been several times that I have cried when 'doing' case file reviews (reviewing young people's case files for research purposes); where young people are described in records, like those of Alma, with statement such as: "Emma seems to be quite controlling towards her parents and can manipulate them", "She is bright, clever and presents herself well. She has also has the potential to get drawn into a cycle of criminality, drug and alcohol use and poor choices" or "school have raised concerns regarding Jade's promiscuous behaviours".

It's easy at times like this to get angry, to think about how terrible the social worker must be that has written these things. And I have to admit that this can often be my first thought; I've, cried down the phone to colleagues or stomped up and down my local park angrily. But what I found so powerful about this episode is that Alma, via the genius of Sophie Willan, doesn't blame the social workers who've written these records, but puts them in context, both in the national policy cuts but also the demands on social workers. When reading them with a friend she jokes about " poor fucking Colin to be fair" - the social worker that arrived at her house to find a man wielding a hammer. Her insights that social workers are overworked and under pressure is summed up concisely at the start of the episode: " Poor fuckers, social workers. They deal with loads of harrowing stuff, take shit off everyone and never get a lunch break".

The careful balance Alma's Not Normal takes between sadness and anger over what is written in records and putting practice in context is what we have been trying to do through the work of the Contextual safeguarding team. Over the last three years we have worked with 10 social care teams across the country. This month we are holding our last 'system reviews' - meetings that we hold with local authorities to provide feedback and insights on the work they have been doing to develop Contextual Safeguarding systems. There's been lots of wins and great successes, but there have also been difficult conversations about practice we've seen for young people affected by extra-familial harm. It could be easy during these meetings to take the stance of 'academic' observer, assessing and inspecting. But that hasn't been the approach we have taken. Over the last three years we have worked together and alongside local authorities to not only develop their systems and processes, but to understand the conditions in which safeguarding takes place. This isn't to say that we don't discuss 'poor practice' when we see it, but that we put this in context to support the changes needed to improve social care.

When we are confronted with practice that doesn't feel right, or case notes like those above, we spend time together as a team talking through what we've seen and where it might be coming from. In many instances what we know is that it's a combination of factors: the risk posed to young people is incredibly high, practitioners are anxious, the interventions are underfunded or don't exist, practitioners aren't supported, and they are under extreme pressure to meet targets and inspection frameworks.

At the same time, social workers, and the systems they operate within are emboldened by networks of power - be that legal, policy, social or cultural. Who social workers deem are 'at risk' and what is understood as responsibility is interwoven with systems of power - sexism, racism, ableism, classism - that mean that it is often marginalised groups that feel the full force of harmful systems and practices. The power practitioners have is not insignificant and the stakes are often very high: in the best-case scenario a child that has been sexually exploited might not see that they have been called 'promiscuous' in their case files notes and the practitioner might be supported to understand that this is problematic. In one of the worst-case scenarios - but also likely - these notes could undermine the conviction of an adult sex offender and contribute to the blame and trauma victims may experience. It is therefore important that we understand the context of social work but work together to change the system and increase the power of those within it.

It's important then that our methodological approach to working with local authorities is done collaboratively and that we place practice in context, just the same way we ask practitioners to do when working with young people affected by extra-familial harm. Without this, what we see are researchers, managers and practitioners who take an adversarial approach - exactly as we see in this episode with her manager at the subway shop. The use of the behaviour chart (which the manager uses in this episode) feels scarily close to what we see in schools, and the new social worker who appears to have taken a particular stance to get through a tough job. Done badly, the methods we have developed to support Contextual Safeguarding - such as case reviews, systems reviews or 'RAG rating' could be used as a stick to beat practitioners with, not an opportunity to learn and develop. Sometimes this route is hard to do, but we work together to keep going, and we can see already the huge strides that local authorities have taken.

This isn't about letting social workers 'off the hook' but an invitation to engage approaches, methods and stances to systems change that works with practitioners to improve the safety and support of the young people and families they work with.

*Alma's not normal is available via BBC iPlayer

*all names used in quotes are pseudonyms.

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Social care in context - Alma's Not Normal

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Last night I cried watching Sophie Willan's brilliant Alma's not Normal (BBC). In this episode, the show's protagonist, Alma, receives a box full of her social care records.

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Still we rise podcast on migration in Britain 

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Still we rise podcast on migration in Britain 

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We invite you to join us on our podcast channel, "Still We Rise". We will be talking to people affected by the UK's Asylum process, front line workers who work with asylum seekers. Keep up to date by subscribing, we are available on all major streaming services.

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Hello and welcome, we are a grass-roots migrant-led community organisation that works to dismantle the UK's 'hostile' immigration infrastructure and we focus on helping our communities settle in the UK. We invite you to join us on our new podcasts channel, "Still We Rise".

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Social workers' sensual bodies during COVID-19

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Social workers' sensual bodies during COVID-19

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Social Workers’ Sensual Bodies during COVID-19: The Suspended, Displaced and Reconstituted Body in Social Work Practice | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic

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Abstract

Introduction

Social workers were named as key workers at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK and in other countries ( IFSW, 2020), and remain pivotal to the post-COVID-19 recovery/transformation. In September 2020, Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) published Beyond COVID: New thinking on the future of adult social care, suggesting three shifts to: (1) ensure respective Governments' long-term and sustainable investment in the sector; (2) enable the commissioning of preventive and community-based services and (3) empower social care workers through reasonable pay and recognition. The Department of Health and Social Care released a consultation, COVID-19: Our action plan for adult social care ( Department of Health and Social Care, 2021) which looked to improve the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) provision to social workers, workforce stabilisation and the development of end-of-life care in England. These responses are partly reactive to the widening service gap (increase demand in social services and the decreased formal and informal services and care capacities) during the pandemic, but can also be considered as overdue acknowledgement of the impact that ongoing austerity measures have brought, specifically to the most vulnerable members of society.

Amidst this crisis, we started a collaborative project, 'Empowering Social Work during COVID-19' (funded by ESRC IAA and BASW), to bring social workers and academic researchers together to co-produce and consolidate the best practice available to social workers. The full report is available here. This paper is produced from the same project to examine how social workers sensual bodies changed as they coped with the challenges presented by COVID-19. Informed by sociology of senses, this paper examines social workers' experiences during COVID-19 as embodied and linked to gut feelings and body sensations that are sometimes 'sensible' and sometimes 'sensual'.

Social work during COVID-19

Throughout the first national lockdown, UK social workers continuously experienced a lack of PPE, unclear/contradictory guidance and inadequate supervision ( Banks et al., 2020; Kong et al., 2021). Many social workers voiced the increased health risks to themselves, their families and service users as a result ( Kong et al., 2021), and reported increased psychological distress. In the UK, 75 per cent of social workers reported feeling more negative about their work-life balance due to COVID-19 ( Community Care, 2020). Here, 69 per cent said their mental health was slightly (43 per cent) or significantly (27 per cent) worse than it was 1 year prior to December 2020 (Ibid). Greene et al. (2021) also found that, amidst COVID-19, over 57 per cent of health and social care practitioners reached the threshold for PTSD, anxiety and/or depression. Compassion fatigue, a sub-category of burnout, has been identified as a risk factor for the mental health of social workers, with practitioners supporting people in distress considered at increased risk ( Grant and Kinman, 2020).

Shifting to remote working, such as online meetings and telephone calls appeared to be a temporary compromise at the beginning of the pandemic. For example, in May 2020, NHS England issued legal guidance for medical practitioners and Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs), of which 95 per cent are social workers, permitting digital assessments under the 1983 Mental Health Act. Given the clear departure from 'best practice', Devon Partnerships Trust sought clarification on the meaning of 'personally examined' in the case of the medics, and 'personally seen' in relation to the statutory duties of the AMHP. The High Court ruled that both phrases required the physical presence of each professional, citing one of six considerations in the decision that psychiatric assessments may involve a multi-sensory assessment ( Devon Partnership NHS Trust v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, 2021. Despite this ruling, in many other areas of practice, digital working has largely been integrated into mainstream social work ( Ferguson et al., 2021b).

Social workers, especially in developed economies, have been able to embed technologies, digital skills, socially distanced practices and digital ethics in their everyday work life ( IFSW, 2020). Thus far, doing social work digitally by default has received mixed reviews. Social workers have expressed concern about missing non-verbal cues critical for identifying safeguarding issues; with the effectiveness of digital practice called into question for working with individuals who have severe mental health problems, learning disabilities, other health issues and communication needs ( Kong et al., 2021). Whereas some evidence has shown that digital practice can support more active engagement with young people ( Ferguson et al., 2021a). Cook et al. (2020) identified further benefits of remote working, including increased informal support with colleagues and reduced travel time which made practitioners feel more energised and supported as a result. Pink et al. (2021) acknowledged the positives of digital social work when employed as a 'hybrid, anticipatory and flexible practice' to bridge the digital and physical elements of child protection. This emerging body of evidence shows the dynamic and evolving nature of hybrid practice during COVID-19, and the need for contextualised appraisal of the utility of such practices.

COVID-19 presented unique ethical challenges to social work practice. Banks et al. (2020) conducted an international study to explore the ethical dilemmas that social workers had experienced during COVID-19 and raised concerns about digital assessments placing more risks to both the service user and social worker especially where safeguarding issues were present. The fusion of digital and socially distanced face-to-face practice still has the potential of compromising confidentiality, practitioners' health and wellbeing and professional boundaries ( BASW and SCIE, 2020). Banks et al. (2020) argued that the ethical dilemmas stem from the conflicting rights, needs and risks of service users and their families as well as the need for weighing up individual rights and public safety. The pandemic has also urged social workers to re-consider their ethical duties to social justice in terms of addressing social inequalities highlighted and exacerbated by the pandemic ( Garcia et al., 2021).

Up until now, with a few exceptions ( Ferguson et al., 2021a; Green, 2021; Green and Moran, 2021; Pink et al., 2020; van Rhyn et al., 2021), little research has focused on social workers' ways of seeing, hearing/listening, smelling, touching and moving into/out of/across practices and how these have been altered through the pandemic. Even less has been said about how social workers re-appropriated their body and re-configured their practice to ascertain social connections, empathy and social justice which are conducive to doing 'proper social work'.

Social workers' body in professional practice and research

The importance of the sensual body in social work practice is undeniable but debased. We have always known that social workers walk into people's homes, refuges, hostels and other health and care settings to make sense of how people live in their 'natural environment'. It involves social workers observing, smelling, touching, hearing and possibly even tasting the situation whilst making sense of these sensations through a professional lens. However, the 'body' of social workers remains largely absent in social work practice and research ( Mensinga and Pyles, 2021). When body is rediscovered, the focus is usually on professional burnout, fatigue, wellbeing and resilience ( McFadden, 2015; McFadden et al., 2015) or tacit knowledge and practice wisdom ( Imre, 1985; Fook, 2002; Martinez-Brawley and Zorita, 2007; Reinders, 2010).

Social workers' experience of an exhausted body is found to be linked to heavy caseloads, long working hours, low wages and ethical predicaments ( McFadden et al., 2015; Peinado and Anderson, 2020). As Mensinga and Pyles (2021) argued, the persistent concerns over social workers' wellbeing and burnout are proof of the violence against, and the marginalisation of, social workers' body in practice. In the study of social workers' burnout, fatigue, ill-being and need for resilience, there is a predominant focus on social workers' body as an atomised biomedical body that is self-sufficient, independent and able to recover through sufficient self-care. Rather than attributing the neglected and exhausted body of social workers to the prevailing instrumental rationality, reinforced through years of austerity and neo-liberalisation of welfare ( King et al., 2021), the emphasis on 'self-care practices' and 'personal resilience' further individualises social workers' bodily and mental experience.

The bio-medical body of social workers continued to gain attention during COVID-19 as medical science became the championed knowledge for navigating and managing the new health risks that the novel coronavirus brought to society. Social workers quickly developed strategies to reduce infection and increase protection of their health and others'. This included remote working, forming of staff bubbles, socially distanced walking and digital practice. Whilst these reactive practical strategies are forming and settling as the new normal, the less talked about issue is how these measures might have created different experiences for social workers' sensual body when practising. Green and Moran (2021) discussed how 'touch' is reconfigured through COVID-19 and the varying social distancing responses. 'Natural touch' and 'good touch' that brought comfort to the dying person and their family or to those who have fled the home where domestic violence occurred was reconstructed as 'contagious touch' or 'bad touch' during the pandemic. This echoes with social workers' worries, expressed at the beginning of the pandemic, about how social disconnection might turn into them delivering 'anti-social social work' ( Banks et al., 2020, p. 3). As the scientific advice on how to 'socially distance' varied, social workers' best and proper way to 'touch' people's lives also changed.

Alternative to the biomedical body is the sensual body which mediates sense-making of the world through sensing in the personal, interpersonal, social, cultural, historical and political contexts ( Green and Moran, 2021). The sensual body is therefore strongly linked to social work professional learning ( Imre, 1985; Fook, 2002; Reinders, 2010). Roberta Imre (1985) applied Polanyi's concept of 'in-dwelling' to link social workers' body to professional learning: 'It [social work knowledge] must be learned by doing, by discovering how to call forth the necessary processes from one's body' (p. 140). Irme emphasised the importance of understanding the very nature of how social workers produce knowledge beyond a focus on practice outcome-how their learning as well as their passion and imagination for understanding people (users, other professionals and researchers) are shaped by their experiences and interactions with others ( Fook, 2002; Reinders, 2010).

Social workers' sensual body is also central to the literature of 'practice wisdom' and 'professional intuition' ( Goldstein, 1990; Scott, 1990; Klein and Bloom, 1995; O'Sullivan, 2005; Martinez-Brawley and Zorita, 2007; Chu and Tsui, 2008; Cheung, 2016). These sets of literature commonly perceive social workers' sensual body to be key to professional development, with tacit knowledge more concerned about learning through doing (bodily experience), and practice wisdom and professional intuition focusing more on the practical utility (effectiveness in professional problem solving) of such knowledge. O'Sullivan (2005) made a distinction of the two by arguing that experienced social workers (with a lot of tacit knowledge) might not necessarily have a lot of practice wisdom, depending on their attitudes towards knowledge and ability to reflect.

Methodology

Secondary qualitative data analysis of the BASW survey

In July 2020, Durham University and BASW started the project Empowering Social Workers in Challenging Times: Learning from Best Practice during COVID-19. It aimed to involve both practitioner researchers and academic researchers collaboratively in research activities to inform social work learning, improve practice, create desirable social change and promote social justice. The project set up the first BASW UK Social Work Practitioner Research Network in August 2020, through which social work practitioners and academics co-analysed data collected by the BASW Survey on Social Work during COVID-19 (the BASW Survey hereafter). Secondary data analysis (SDA) of qualitative data was employed to explore UK social workers' experiences and best practice during COVID-19. This approach has been used to study a range of topics, including healthcare, crime and deviance, childhood poverty and gender and masculinities (see the articles reviewed by Ruggiano and Perry (2019)) although it is still less popular than SDA of quantitative data. The collaborative analysis carried out by the Network has led to the publication of a full report, a practice toolkit and a professional magazine article. This paper is based on the analysis of a subset of data created to capture the bodily experiences reported by social workers during COVID-19.

The BASW survey, data processing and data analysis

The BASW Survey was launched on 16 March 2020 to collect professional experiences and views from the social work community. The survey collected 2,222 UK responses from different sectors of social services (i.e. adult services, children and families, mental health, criminal justice and other) and from different nations in the UK by the end of August 2020. The survey consisted of mostly open questions that collected qualitative data on the work experiences and views of social workers during the pandemic.

To deepen the understanding of social workers' body experiences during COVID-19, a subset of data, consisting of responses from 176 social workers, was created on NVivo2020 (see Table 1 for details). The authors devised search strategies to maximise the number of relevant data entries by individually searching the following words across the full dataset: bod* ( n = 44), face-to-face ( n = 585), hear ( n = 141), listen ( n = 60), sens* ( n = 92), smell* ( n = 6), speak* ( n = 106), talk ( n = 83), touch ( n = 78), visit* ( n = 1972) and walk* ( n = 20). Tast* and bubble* returned no results. Query results ( N = 280) were then individually assessed for relevance to the topic area and coded into 'disruption of senses' ( n = 102), 're-orientation of senses' ( n = 62), 'implications of disruptions' ( n = 52), 'impact on professional practice' ( n = 45), 'captured signs' ( n = 7) and 'missing signs' ( n = 12). Each of these codes were then further analysed by the authors.

Interpretive content analysis ( Drisko and Maschi, 2015) was performed to enable the authors, who were trained as social workers and have been collaborating with practising social workers in the ESRC IAA-funded project, to infer how the bodily experiences of social workers in the UK changed during COVID-19. Given the brief nature of the qualitative responses in the BASW Survey, their interpretation beyond the literal level was needed to enable an understanding of the how chaos, ethical challenges and professional transitions were experienced and mediated through the changing bodies of social workers and its wider impact on the profession. The brevity of the responses also puts restriction on making sense of the processes and contexts in which social workers acquire, reflect on and alter their body skills to realise their professional goals and values during COVID-19.

This study adopts an abductive approach to data analysis which intends to facilitate the development of new conceptual insights through continuous dialogue between existing theory with new research evidence ( Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). It was maintained by constantly comparing in vivo codes (bottom-up coding) with concepts borrowed from the sociology of senses and social work literature on tacit knowledge and practice wisdom as laid out at the beginning of the paper. This approach also shapes the writing style of the analysis which, differing from conventional reporting of results, incorporates concepts/theories that have informed the interpretation of data to increase accessibility to the abductive process.

Ethics

This study conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines and has been granted ethical approval by Durham University's departmental ethical review board before the project commenced (SOC-2020-06-15T14_47_46-plmb53). Participants' consent to participate in the survey was implicit to the completion of the survey itself. The transfer of dataset from BASW to Durham University presented no risk to individuals as no identifiable information had been collected. The transferring of the anonymised dataset conformed with both GDPR and their code of practice for data protection standards.

The changing sensual body of social workers during Covid-19

Social workers in the UK experienced three different phases during the first national lockdown (March 2020-August 2020) ( Kong et al., 2021). Commencing with chaotic change (March 2020), social workers then re-established new ways to continue practising professionally and ethically (April-May 2020). The creative practices consolidated through the rest of the year (June 2020 onwards) then served as the foundations for social workers to engage critically with the emerging 'new normal', characterised by a digital-by-default approach and a degree of social disconnection in professional practice. To understand the chaos, uncertainty and anxiety experienced by social workers we must first establish how practitioners' sensual body was suspended, displaced and re-constituted during the pandemic.

Suspended sensual body: the disrupted professional sensing and use of sensations

The non-verbal cues may include how an older adult or a person with disabilities eats, walks, showers and socialises in their own living environment, or how children relate to their parents or foster parents in their living space and how they address conflict in the family setting. Obtaining these 'cues' requires social workers to immerse their bodies in the environment and interactions where social workers/service users identify as being potentially problematic and to move around in the physical and social spaces to 'sense' how users 'feel about their situation'.

I need to assess with all my senses. I need a visual inspection of the fridge, bathroom, kitchen, where the bed is, whatever the bed is, what, sadly, is in the dustbins, what bills are unpaid, what the landlord has said, what substances are being used by whom and who is looking after the animals ... it is frustrating to be unable to properly assess, and nothing beats a proper home visit.

(Experienced social worker, Adult services).

COVID-19, especially at the beginning of the national lockdown, created huge disruptions to home visits and suspended social workers' sensual body from the situations in which the service users lived. Social workers, at times, felt that they were not 'in touch' with the feelings and situations of their service users; and worse still were required to suspend and forbid human touch in their intervention. For example, suspending family visits to nursing homes whilst considered vital to preventing the virus spread was also dehumanising and demoralising to social workers, service users, their relatives and carers.

A lady's husband went to hospital, and she was unable to visit for 8 weeks and then was told he was being transferred to a nursing home for end-of-life care. She saw him once before he died and received poor treatment from the nursing home. I was unable to change any of this.

(Experienced social worker, Adult services).

Green (2021) argued that many types of 'good touch' are now considered as 'dangerous' and 'contagious' touch since the pandemic. Even when a person has come to the end of their life, the co-presence of their loved ones' bodies had to be avoided at all costs for public interests. Social workers' survey responses questioned if they were really doing 'proper social work' if they could not honour service users' rights to family lives and realise compassionate care in their practice. Rather than seeing the sensual body as a site for making sense of service users' situation, COVID-19 re-framed social workers' body as a source of illness.

We are currently staying away from the door on visits until the family have confirmed they are well and not symptomatic, we will then enter the home and wash our hands, we will then wash our hands before we leave ... We are encouraged to wash our clothes when we get home and I am antibacterial cleaning my steering wheel, gear stick and car door handles after visits.

(Student social worker, Children and families services).

The anxiety induced by this way of moving around in users' living space developed a new sensual process encoded in social workers' body during home visits. As the sensual body of social workers was suspended or restricted in practice during COVID-19, social workers were forced to concentrate their sensual focus into those senses that were available in remote practices.

Displaced sensual body: One body in many worlds

Reduced face-to-face contact during COVID-19 did not reduce the demand on social workers' sensual body in professional practice. Social workers' sensual body was displaced from the work environment of home visits and offices, and relocated to their own home and digital workspaces, which affected how social workers could sense and make sense of service users' needs.

My listening skills have been greatly enhanced and I cannot stress enough just how important active listening is at this time as we can rarely add body language, vibes, intuition or environment into the equation right now therefore every single word, answer, context and reaction is so valuable in providing support and comfort and for making decisions.

(Newly qualified social worker, Adult services).

Social workers were more likely to compensate for their restricted senses through increased reliance on their residual senses, which were majorly visual images, speech and hearing. Social workers talked about reading and listening between the lines and taking every single word seriously to help their assessment. This heightened use of listening for assessment and intervention can be considered as a form of sensual compensation. It required a lot more concentration from social workers which then made it very challenging for those with caring responsibilities at home.

The displaced sensual body also created situations of 'sensual overload' when social workers had to simultaneously deal with multiple realities that required very different ways of sensing, use of sensations and bodily responses. For example, social workers with caring responsibilities at home often talked about how they were torn by the multiple realities for working remotely on a phone/computer with children in the background. As seen below, the presence of practitioner's own children demanded a level of alertness and sensual focus, regardless of whether social workers chose to disclose their child's presence to the service user.

Be honest! I have a young child in the background and when making calls to families it is vital they know this .... On one call he lost a tooth, unexpectedly and panicked and screamed. I had to explain to the service user that I would need to call back once I had settled him.

(Student social worker, Children and families services).

When you have difficult cases/phone calls etc your colleagues aren't around you in an office to speak to about it and get those emotions out. You end up internalising it when you work at home for a long period of time.

(Experienced social worker, Adult services).

When social workers were working from home, instant exchange of information or offloading of emotions became more difficult. Whilst social workers used phone calls, peer support WhatsApp groups and regular catch-up online meetings to enable communication of emotions with colleagues, the quality of these exchanges were not replicable to real life. The embodied and social nature of emotions means that emotions are not readily articulable ( Prinz, 2004) nor immediately understandable without someone participating in noticing, responding to and interpreting the bodily changes that indicate those feelings ( Turner and Stets, 2005). Practitioners appeared unable therefore, to achieve their desired level of emotional engagement with colleagues. The idea of 'internalising' the work emotion also tells us how social workers' bodies, after being exposed to multiple sets of sensual demands, could not easily shift back to sensing the home interactions and environment even when they were 'off work'.

The reconstituted sensual body for social connection, empathy and social justice?

The body is the site for the making of the social and the cultural. Through touch, movement, smell, voice, sight, the feeling of balance and its engagement with space, time and artefacts, human beings communicate and build connections with each other ( Finnegan, 2005). When social workers are given less sensual and bodily resources for building and maintaining social connections with their service users and carers, because of restrictions on face-to-face contact, they have to alter their way of sensing and utilising sensual engagements at work. Changing their intonation and the way they used their voice, appearing (digitally) more often in users' life and walking outdoors with service users rather than walking into their life became social workers' new sensual strategies for communicating care and empathy in the times of 'social distancing'. An experienced mental health social worker shared how they and the service user both felt 'more relaxed' walking in a park, and how the informal environment enabled them to use their 'instincts' to encourage sharing of key thoughts and engage service users as 'a person'.

Social workers also employed digital technologies to develop a 'little and often' approach to keep in touch with families and understand their everyday lives (Cook and Zschomler, 2020) and support digital intimacy ( Pink et al., 2021). For a children and families practitioner, this could mean 'seeing families more and talking more with them', but the impact of this way of working on the social workers' sensual body remains over-looked. The pandemic, at some level, brought new sensual and cognitive experiences to social workers. These new experiences enabled them to empathise with the sense of isolation experienced by their colleagues, service users and carers because of ill health, various forms of disabilities and poverty. Yet social disconnection also, paradoxically, created barriers for them to empathise and to feel empathised.

I feel we cannot always trust service user's family when they provide information because they often have their own agenda.

(Experienced social worker, Adults services).

Some social workers questioned the legitimacy of service users' realities whilst others were left feeling as though contact from their manager 'was lacking any compassion/empathy or support'. Practitioners also talked about how digital/remote practice made them physically inactive and strained from working long hours in front of the computer screen. To compensate for the physical tolls, a student children and families social worker felt compelled to complete 'a 15-30 minute workout to get the blood flowing around the body..to stay as fit as possible'.

Understanding how social workers' bodies have reconstituted through COVID-19 is also an issue of social justice. Whilst committed to anti-oppressive practice, adjusting to the new remote practices saw instances of individuals and institutions being less sensitive to the power issues embedded in the new ways of working. For example, for social workers with a hearing impairment, lip reading became very challenging online (especially with an unstable internet connection) and literally impossible when service users had their masks on.

I am hearing impaired. The prolific but necessary use of masks means I can no longer lip read and am struggling to understand people.

(Independent social worker, Adult mental health services).

Kong et al. (2021) also found that the new threshold for face-to-face visits developed during the pandemic risked undermining some families' chance to face-to-face engagement with social workers if they were not considered as being at 'crisis point'. The pandemic forced social workers to develop new body skills to practice without touching, meeting people and home visiting unless it is 'absolutely necessary'. The new threshold for face-to-face visits as well as the disappearance of early help during the pandemic caused worries amongst social workers, especially on whether they are implicitly endorsing a risk-avoiding approach versus a positive risk-taking approach to safeguarding work.

It makes me uncomfortable as a social worker as I feel powerless and can literally see the people I work with facing crisis situations in the next few weeks. Where is the early intervention, being creative and social justice, we advocate for? I feel like I have been living a lie... this goes against social work values.

(Experienced social worker, Adult services).

Therefore, social workers' new bodily habits of remote working must be examined to identify who is at risk of exclusion and marginalisation ( Smoyer et al., 2021); and to unpack the politics and power structure that underpin these emerging practices.

Discussion

This paper focuses on the changing sensual body of social workers in understanding social workers' experiences during COVID-19. It demonstrates that transitioning from the old normal to new normal is an embodied process. To enable the development of a 'better normal' for our future, rather than settling for whatever has come along, we must offer a critical reflection on whether the newly established and embodied practices are necessarily 'better'. For example, to what extent can(not) remote working be more useful for building social connections, fostering empathy and promoting social justice and whether social workers sense differently when infrequent home visits are combined with the 'little and often' approach using digital technologies. Pink et al. (2021) argued that creative use of technologies enabled social workers to develop digital intimacy with service users through more frequent contacts and informal exchanges. They further suggested that, looking into the future, we should seek an anticipatory approach to hybrid practice. Understanding the changing sensual body of social workers through COVID-19 offered insights into how social workers' bodies engaged with hybrid practice and were torn by sometimes incompatible and even competing sensual demands when working from home and how the 'little and often' approach might cause physical exhaustion which requires stricter body management to allow time for regular exercise in order to compensate the physical toll that digital practice might cause on social workers.

Although this paper is based on the data collected during the first UK national lockdown, when social workers were arguably still coping with the initial shock brought by the pandemic, the restrictions and demands that digital practice might have posed on social workers' sensual bodies are still relevant to future hybrid social work practices. In considering how to embed digital practices to enable the understanding of service users' everyday life beyond a snapshot approach ( Ferguson, 2006), we must contextualise the previously documented success of the 'little and often' approach ( Ferguson et al., 2021a) in social workers' efforts in managing increased and competing sensual demands. Added to that is the relaxed bureaucracy ( Ferguson et al., 2021b) that many social workers considered as a key condition for creativity and innovation in gauging their hybrid practice. As we move towards a 'hybrid digital social work' ( Pink et al., 2021) approach in the post-COVID-19 times, our paper emphasises that digital social work can be together sensually enabling, demanding and restricting.

This paper has also contributed to the discussion of tacit knowledge and practice wisdom as well as their distinction in the context of COVID-19. As social workers embodied new digital literacy and competency to control and adapt to the professional and personal risks associated with the pandemic, they also embodied the power relations and ideologies that shape and organise these digital and hybrid practices. Examining how social workers' body was re-constituted through COVID-19 offered unique opportunities to explore how little attention we have paid to disabled social workers' experiences in adapting to the pandemic, the continuous marginalisation of social workers' body and physical health when working remotely ( Kong et al., 2021b), and the normalisation of a risk-based approach, rather than a needs-based approach, in responding to families' needs. We argue that critical reflection on how social workers learned through sensing in the pandemic is a crucial step for transforming tacit knowledge into practice wisdom.

Social workers' vision for building a better normal for the profession and the society should not be circumvented by the UK Government's recovery narrative which positions social care almost exclusively in supporting hospital discharge and infection control ( Cabinet Office, 2021). A more transformative agenda for social work professional development demands efforts for distilling out practice wisdom from tacitly learned knowledge during COVID-19. By building critical awareness of how social workers' bodies have been re-constituted through COVID-19, we can unpick how the power relations and neoliberal practices (re)embed in emerging professional practices.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Angelic Quintana, Cherryl Pharoah, Diane Wills, Jane Shears, Kerry Sildatke, Wendy Roberts, Vyomesh Thanki, Evgenia Stepanova, Helen Charnley, Roger Smith, Sarah Banks and Susie Hawkes who collaborated with us in the Empowering Social Work during COVID-19 project and offered incredible insights into the lives of social workers in this trying time. Our gratitude is extended to those who completed the BASW Survey on Social Work during COVID-19. Without their contribution, our project and this paper will not be possible.

Funding

This project was funded by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and the Economic and Social Care Research Council Impact Acceleration Account (ESRC IAA) (RF900056).

Conflict of interest. No conflict of interest to disclose.

References

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Social Workers' Sensual Bodies during COVID-19: The Suspended, Displaced and Reconstituted Body in Social Work Practice

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Social workers were named as key workers at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK and in other countries ( IFSW, 2020), and remain pivotal to the post-COVID-19 recovery/transformation.

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New figures re children at risk of criminal exploitation 

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New figures re children at risk of criminal exploitation 

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New figures reveal 12,720 children in England were identified by social services as being at risk of criminal exploitation by gangs in 2020/21

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New figures reveal 12,720 children in England were identified by social services as being at risk of criminal exploitation by gangs in 2020/21
New figures published this morning by the Department for Education reveal 12,720 children assessed by children's social services in England between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 were deemed to be at risk due to gang involvement. The figures also show there were 16,830 children where child sexual exploitation was a factor during their assessment and 2710 children where trafficking was a factor.

The overall statistics, in the DfE's annual Children in Need data, also reveal a fall in the number of children being referred to social services during the Covid pandemic lockdown. The figures show there was a 31% drop in referrals via schools during the period when schools were closed twice to most children. This suggests some vulnerable children did drop out of the sight of teachers, who are often the first to spot the need for children's social services to assess a child.

The Commission on Young Lives, the independent year-long commission looking at how to develop a national plan to divert vulnerable children away from gangs and serious violence chaired by former Children's Commissioner Anne Longfield, is warning that the number of children referred for gangs is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with overall referrals falling over the last year during lockdown.

Today's statistics show:

There were 496,030 episodes of a child being referred to social services in 2020/21 compared to 522,990 in 2019/20, a fall of 5%.

The number of times a school made a referral to social services fell from 117,010 in pre-Covid 2019/20 to 81,180 in 2020/21 when there were two school lockdowns - a drop of 31%.

There were 12,720 children identified by children's social services as at risk due to involvement in gangs in 2020/21. This is 13% lower than pre-Covid 2019/20 (14,700) but still 16% higher than 2018/19 (10,960).

In London, 3500 children were identified as a being at risk as a result of involvement with gangs, while 2650 children were identified as being at risk as a result of child sexual exploitation.

In the North West, 1750 children were identified as a being at risk as a result of involvement with gangs while 2440 were identified as being at risk as a result of child sexual exploitation.

In Yorkshire and the Humber, 1090 children were identified as being at risk as a result of involvement with gangs and 1760 as a result of child sexual exploitation.

In the South East, 1510 children were identified as being at risk as a result of involvement with gangs and 2540 were identified as being at risk as a result of child sexual exploitation.

In the West Midlands, 1550 children were identified as being at risk as a result of involvement with gangs and 1910 children were identified as being at risk as a result of child sexual exploitation.

In the East of England, 1170 children were identified as being at risk as a result of involvement with gangs and 1480 were identified as being at risk as a result of child sexual exploitation.

Anne Longfield, Chair of the Commission on Young Lives and former Children's Commissioner for England, responding to the figures, said:
"The number of children being referred to social services because of fears of gang exploitation is extremely troubling and likely only the tip of the iceberg. During a period when the country was in lockdown twice, thousands of vulnerable children were still being sucked into gangs, serious violence and crime or sexually exploited.

"I am particularly worried about the very sharp drop in referrals during the two school lockdowns. Even though schools were open for vulnerable children, many did not attend, and it is very concerning that many have dropped off the radar since.

"We need to ask why we are still losing thousands of marginalised teenagers to the ruthless criminals who are so adept at spotting and exploiting vulnerable children and how we can find better solutions to stop it from happening.

"It is clear these problems are not going to solve themselves and we are still giving too many abusers and exploiters a free pass to use and harm children.

"The systems that are supposed to be there to help vulnerable children are under pressure and badly need reforming. It is time to find new ways of bringing hope and success to young people who fall through the gaps and end up in danger.

"I welcome the announcements of funding for children and families in the Budget. But this needs to be the start of something much bigger to enable all children and young people to be part of this new era, and so that the most vulnerable children are given the same chances to level up as any other child."
ENDS

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New figures reveal 12,720 children in England were identified by social services as being at risk of criminal exploitation by gangs in 2020/21

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New figures reveal 12,720 children in England were identified by social services as being at risk of criminal exploitation by gangs in 2020/21 New figures published this morning by the Department for Education reveal 12,720 children assessed by children's social services in England between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 were deemed to be at risk due to gang involvement.

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Lecture re children and consent to medical treatment. Register to watch the lecture for free 

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Lecture re children and consent to medical treatment. Register to watch the lecture for free 

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Children and Consent to Medical Treatment

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How does the law consider children in cases involving medical consent?

This lecture will look at how doctors (and parents) should talk their children about illness. It will also consider what should happen when parents and doctors disagree about what a child should be told. The overall law on consent has changed markedly in England and Wales since Montgomery (2015), and requires doctors to share and explain risks, but it is not clear how far this applies to children, particularly older children.
Register to Watch Now
Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation.

Dr Imogen Goold is Associate Professor, Faculty of Law at University of Oxford and Fellow of St Anne's College

In 2021, Imogen was appointed Visiting Gresham Professor of Medical Law.

Professor Goold's lecture series are as follows:

2021/22 Medical Law

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Children and Consent to Medical Treatment

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How does the law consider children in cases involving medical consent? This lecture will look at how doctors (and parents) should talk their children about illness. It will also consider what should happen when parents and doctors disagree about what a child should be told.

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Housing, homelessness and children's social care

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Housing, homelessness and children's social care

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Housing, Homelessness and Children’s Social Care: Towards an Urgent Research Agenda | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic

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Housing, Homelessness and Children's Social Care: Towards an Urgent Research Agenda

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A secure, safe and affordable home is essential for a good childhood. But large numbers of children and parents in the UK are excluded from this because of a ho

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Webinar: What does blackness have to do with deportation?

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Webinar: What does blackness have to do with deportation?

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‘What does Blackness have to do with deportation?’ Luke de Noronha, University College London - YouTube

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‘What does Blackness have to do with deportation?’ Luke de Noronha, University College London

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A well written letter by a judge to a child

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A well written letter by a judge to a child

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Yet another wonderfully crafted letter by a judge to a child at the centre of a case I’ve been involved in.

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Yet another wonderfully crafted letter by a judge to a child at the centre of a case I’ve been involved in. https://t.co/HZHyRozTLi

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Yet another wonderfully crafted letter by a judge to a child at the centre of a case I’ve been involved in. pic.twitter.com/HZHyRozTLi
— Gareth Noble (@GarNob) October 18, 2021

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Yet another wonderfully crafted letter by a judge to a child at the centre of a case I’ve been involved in. https://t.co/HZHyRozTLi

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Yet another wonderfully crafted letter by a judge to a child at the centre of a case I’ve been involved in. https://t.co/HZHyRozTLi

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Yet another wonderfully crafted letter by a judge to a child at the centre of a case I’ve been involved in.

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The role of early childhood education and care in shaping life chances - new research report 

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The role of early childhood education and care in shaping life chances - new research report 

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The role of early childhood education and care in shaping life chances - Nuffield Foundation

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Overview

Early childhood education and care can take many forms and is more than just preparation for primary school. It focuses on the holistic development of a child's social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs in order to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning and well‑being.

Provision of early childhood education and care has grown exponentially over the last 25 years, from limited availability in the mid-1990s to an established UK-wide infrastructure on which many children and parents depend. But this expansion has been piecemeal, built up over years as successive governments have sought to address different objectives: improving child outcomes, increasing parental employment, and addressing disadvantage. This has led to a complex and confusing system that is failing to meet any of these objectives as fairly or comprehensively as it should.

Organisation and funding

In 2019 there were over 1.6 million registered early education and care places, of which almost half (47%) were in private nurseries, 20% in state-maintained schools, 18% in the voluntary sector, and 15% provided by childminders.

Government funding in England amounts to £5.7 billion a year, including Sure Start, and is split between free entitlements that go directly to providers, and support for parents to reduce the cost of childcare through the benefit system or tax-free childcare and employer childcare vouchers.

Real term spending per hour for places fell by 9% between 2018/19 and 2019/20 and government funding is not meeting the true cost of provision of funded places.

Inequalities in access, take-up and outcomes

Although 93% of three- and four-year-olds accessed their 15 funded hours a week in 2019, the most disadvantaged families are least likely to take-up their places. Take-up is also lower among children from some ethnic minority backgrounds, and among children with English as an additional language and those with SEND.

In some cases, policies designed to increase provision for working parents have inadvertently accentuated disadvantage, such as the 30 hour policy, which effectively gives children of higher-earning parents double the amount of funded early education than many disadvantaged children.

Support targeted specifically at disadvantaged children, such as funded places for two‑year-olds, is subject to wide regional variations in take-up, and close to a third of eligible children are missing out. There is a large gap in provision for children under two, particularly in light of the closure of many Sure Start centres.

This inequality of access and take-up is important because by the time children start school, there are already gaps in development between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more advantaged peers.

Short-term impacts suggest children starting school since the pandemic have fallen behind in relation to their learning and personal and social development, especially in the case of disadvantaged children.

Quality and the workforce

The recognition of the importance of early childhood education and care is not matched by the rewards for those working in the system. The average wage in the sector was £7.42 an hour in 2018, compared to £11.37 an hour across the female workforce and in 2019, 45% of childcare workers were claiming state benefits or tax credits.

There is a strong relationship between the level of staff qualifications and the quality of early childhood education and care, but despite cumulative reforms, qualification levels still vary across the sector.

In the private, voluntary and independent sector, the proportion of staff with an NVQ Level 3 qualification fell from 83% in 2014/15 to 52% in 2018/19.

The impact of early childhood education and care

Pre‑school provision can have positive impacts on early childhood cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This is particularly true for children from disadvantaged backgrounds when quality is high and provision is accessed at a young age and for a sustained period. However, more recent research shows that some of these impacts fade out in primary school.

There is also evidence of positive longer-term impacts of early childhood education and care provision for young people and adults in relation to exam performance, the labour market and some other outcomes.

Points for discussion

Given the complexity of a mixed market of early childhood education and care provision-is there a case for more structured standardisation akin to schools, or are there advantages in a plurality of provision?

Should public policy and investment be prioritising the early childhood education of disadvantaged children over the childcare needs of the wider population, and if so, what are the implications for the funding and structure of early education and care provision?

What type of funding model would increase quality as well as affordability for parents and sustainability of provision?

What action can be taken to improve take-up of funded places by children who are most likely to benefit from early childhood education and care provision?

How might a long-term strategy, including a review of the funding model, improve the low pay and low status of the early childhood education and care workforce?

Can quality in early childhood education and care be effectively but efficiently measured, and if so, who should be doing it?

How can early childhood education and care settings further engage and support parents and carers to enhance the learning and development of young children at home?

How can multiple services for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers be better integrated and coordinated, starting from the places and services that children already access?

The changing face of early childhood in Britain

A series that brings together the research evidence on early childhood in the UK and presents recommendations for policy and practice, as well as priorities for research.

View Series

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The role of early childhood education and care in shaping life chances - Nuffield Foundation

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Early childhood education and care can take many forms and is more than just preparation for primary school. It focuses on the holistic development of a child's social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs in order to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning and well‑being.

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Article on social work, the state and Black Lives Matter

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Article on social work, the state and Black Lives Matter

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Soft Cops or Social Justice Activists: Social Work’s Relationship to the state in the context of BLM and Neoliberalism | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic

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Soft Cops or Social Justice Activists: Social Work's Relationship to the state in the context of BLM and Neoliberalism

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This article returns to the debate on state theory in the context of Black Lives Matter/defund the police and calls for accountability to those whom social work

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Podcast: A new career pathway for social workers - Community Care

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Podcast: A new career pathway for social workers - Community Care

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Podcast: A new career pathway for social workers - Community Care

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Listen to "Community Care Employer Zone Insights" on Spreaker.
Every social worker remembers those key people in their teams that were pivotal in helping them learn and develop practice in the early stages of their careers. They also remember how important that input was. The London Borough of Newham does too and has introduced a new role - practice development social worker (PDSW) - that allows experienced social workers, with a passion for supporting education and learning, to progress their careers.

Principal social worker in children's and families Beverley Halligan, who also heads up Newham's social care academy, tells us more about this new training and development offer. We also hear from two social workers Jane and Jessica, who will be two of five new PDSWs at Newham.
This episode of Employer Zone Insights covers:
- An overview of what a PDSW is and how that role fits into the larger children's services at Newham

- Insights from Jane and Jessica about what excites them about their new roles

- An overview of how these roles will help social workers and the children and families they support

- An outline of ways in which practice development learning is strengthened at Newham

- Download the transcript here: Podcast A new career pathway for social workers.
Listen to "Community Care Employer Zone Insights" on Spreaker.

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Podcast: A new career pathway for social workers

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Listen to "Community Care Employer Zone Insights" on Spreaker. Every social worker remembers those key people in their teams that were pivotal in helping them learn and develop practice in the early stages of their careers. They also remember how important that input was. The London Borough of Newham does too and has introduced a [...]

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Cruel legal change affects children in care

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Cruel legal change affects children in care

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‘Cruel’ legal change affects children in care | Social care | The Guardian

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The existence of adult social care waiting lists is deeply shocking ( Nearly 300,000 on adult social care 'waiting lists' in England, 8 September). Children's social care has also taken a terrible turn this week.

New legislation has come into force which rations care on the basis of age. The law now requires that children in care always receive day‑to-day care and supervision where they live, but only if they are aged 15 and younger. No such guarantee has been given to 16- and 17-year-olds, who are increasingly placed into accommodation without any adult carers and only occasional support.

Fourteen children in care died in properties where they were receiving no care between April 2018 and September 2020; the Department for Education told BBC Newsnight that 53% of the children had taken their own lives. We know that others have suffered serious abuse and exploitation and that children feel unwanted and alone. Boys and children from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities will be hardest hit, because they are already disproportionately housed by local authorities in cheaper, non-care settings.

By law, children must continue their education or training until the age of 18, yet here we have government ministers deciding vulnerable teenagers can fend for themselves. Care leavers we know have described this legal change as vicious, cruel and heartbreaking.
Carolyne Willow Director, Article 39, David Graham National director, The Care Leavers' Association, Isabelle Kirkham Reclaim Care

Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.

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'Cruel' legal change affects children in care | Letters

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The existence of adult social care waiting lists is deeply shocking ( Nearly 300,000 on adult social care 'waiting lists' in England, 8 September). Children's social care has also taken a terrible turn this week. New legislation has come into force which rations care on the basis of age.

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Frontline workers warn Policing Bill puts young people at risk

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Frontline workers warn Policing Bill puts young people at risk

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Frontline workers warn Policing Bill puts young people at risk - Liberty

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Over 660 GPs, nurses, social workers and more sound warning over Policing Bill

Letter to Home Secretary says Bill would force them to breach professional duty

Liberty and rights groups call for Lords to scrap oppressive legislation

Over 660 frontline healthcare, community, social and education workers backed by Liberty, the British Association of Social Workers and healthcare campaign group Medact, have called for parts of the Policing Bill to be scrapped ahead of a key debate in the House of Lords next week.

In a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel, sent today, Monday 13 September, the signatories warned that the Serious Violence proposals in the Bill would require them to breach their professional duties of confidentiality and put young people in danger.

The 665 signatories, including GPs, nurses, social workers, community youth and outreach workers, teachers, therapists, and many others, also objected to the creation of Serious Violence Reduction Orders. These will create a new stop and search power that removes the requirement of "reasonable suspicion" for police to search certain people.

"As frontline community workers who have made a professional and personal commitment to supporting and caring for people, including young people, we are appalled by these proposals, which we believe directly conflict with our duties and will actively put people we work with in harm's way..."We may soon be forced to betray the hard-earned trust and relationships we have built with young people, as well as our professional duties, in order to comply with police requests. This will only have the effect of fomenting alienation and exclusion and making young people and their communities less safe."

While the Government has said it aims to follow a public health approach to tackling serious violence, these proposals constitute a police-led approach that will cause further harm, the letter says.

The Policing Bill is due to be debated in the House of Lords next week. Since it was officially tabled earlier this year, the Bill has caused widespread outrage and the petition is the latest sign of a groundswell of objection to the Government's dangerous proposals, including:

Over 600,000 people signed a petition against the Bill coordinated between human rights groups, environmentalists, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller advocates and other charities.

Over 700 academics called for the Bill to be dropped.

Three UN Special Rapporteurs warned the Bill threatens our rights.

Polling found nearly two thirds of the public concerned about the protest crackdown.

Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights said its proposals are "oppressive and wrong".

Jun Pang, Policy and Campaigns Officer at Liberty, said: "We all want to feel safe in our communities and live our lives free from discrimination and harassment. The proposals in the Policing Bill will not make us safer, they double down on failed and oppressive strategies that will ultimately put more people at risk.

"The Policing Bill creates dangerous restrictions on our right to protest and threatens the way of life of Gypsy and Traveller communities. The new police powers it creates will lead to harassment and oppressive monitoring of young people, working class people and people of colour - especially Black people - in particular, and expand existing measures that will funnel more people into the criminal punishment system.

"Peers must stand up for our rights and reject this Bill, and the Government needs to reverse course on the array of dangerous proposals it contains."

Dr Abi Deivanayagam - Specialty Registrar/Trainee in Public Health, said: "The serious violence duty in the Policing Bill pushes health workers to give information on patients to the police, which undermines confidentiality and risks breaking the trust patients have in health workers. The police are agents of a system that relies on punishment to solve deep-seated social and economic problems that results in criminalised behaviours. Public health is rooted in collective wellbeing, prevention and fairness for everyone in the community.

"The Policing Bill does not align with the principles of public health, which is why hundreds of health workers are calling for it to be scrapped immediately."

Reem Abu-Hayyeh, Interim Co-Director of Medact, said: "It's extremely likely that the proposed serious violence duty will lead to racial profiling, a loss of trust in clinicians, and psychological distress. We know this because it mirrors the Prevent counter-extremism policy in its focus on 'pre-crime' interventions and its entry into patient-practitioner relationships.

"Our research has shown that the Prevent duty in healthcare causes serious harms to public health, and it is clear that this new duty will too. The government must scrap the PCSC Bill if it wants to be serious about public health, and particularly it must scrap the serious violence duty."

Gavin Moorghen, Professional Officer at British Association of Social Workers, said: "As social workers, our priority is to support the people we work with, and to uphold the highest professional standards and ethics in doing so. The duty of confidentiality is crucial to our ability to protect people's dignity and privacy, foster relationships of trust, and deliver high quality care. The Policing Bill may soon force us to betray the hard-earned trust and relationships we have built with young people, as well as our professional duties, by requiring us to be complicit in their criminalisation, surveillance, and punishment.

"The only effective approach to serious violence is to focus on the root causes - such as poverty, racism, and other forms of structural injustice."
Contact the Liberty press office on 07973 831 128 or pressoffice@libertyhumanrights.org.uk

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Frontline workers warn Policing Bill puts young people at risk - Liberty

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Over 660 GPs, nurses, social workers and more sound warning over Policing Bill Letter to Home Secretary says Bill would force them to breach professional duty Liberty and rights groups call for Lords to scrap oppressive legislation Over 660 frontline healthcare, community, social and education workers backed by Liberty, the British Association of Social Workers and healthcare campaign group Medact, have called for parts of the Policing Bill to be scrapped ahead of a key debate in the House of Lords next week.

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Social work provision for asylum-seeking children in hotels is insufficient, say charities - Community Care

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Charities have criticised the Home Office's continued use of hotels to accommodate unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and said the level of social work support children are receiving is insufficient.

Asylum support charity Social Workers Without Borders and anti-trafficking organisation Love 146 said the department's use of such accommodation proved its relaunched national transfer scheme to assign unaccompanied children to councils was not working well enough.

Love 146 called on councils to stand up to the Home Office over its use of hotels, which both charities said went against children's social care legislation.

'Social worker provision insufficient'

Speaking to the home affairs select committee last week, second permanent secretary of the Home Office Tricia Hayes said it was accommodating 70 unaccompanied children in hotels as of 16 September, 16 of which were 15-years-old or younger.

She said "dedicated care workers" were in place at the hotels for all the children and social workers and nurses were visiting three times a week.

These social workers, contracted by the Home Office, are based at the Kent Intake Unit, as a "temporary measure" to help improve the asylum reception site's age assessment and child safeguarding processes.

The Home Office is using several hotels around the country as "bridging accommodation" for asylum seekers with two, in Hythe and Brighton, being used for unaccompanied children.

Naomi Jackson, development lead at Social Workers Without Borders, said the support offered by social workers to these children was insufficient as they were not attached to a local authority's children's services.

"We are of the view that all children are entitled to statutory services and that neoliberal, privatised, provision of services is not in children's best interest," she said.

"We consider what is happening for the children in hotels to be a two-tier approach to children's rights in the UK, which is discriminatory and racist. Whilst unaccompanied children are treated as less-than-equal they will be at increased risk of harm."

300 children transferred to councils since July

Charities and councils have said the use of temporary accommodation indicates that the Home Office's voluntary national transfer scheme (NTS), used to distribute unaccompanied children to local authorities' care, is not working well enough, with some calling for it to be made mandatory.

Originally launched in 2016, the scheme is designed to ensure local authorities only care for asylum-seeking children amounting to 0.07% of their overall child population, but many councils have refused to sign up so authorities like Kent and Croydon have taken more than their share.

The department relaunched the scheme in July this year to include more funding for local authorities and a rota system, and Hayes told the committee that 300 children had been transferred since then, with those evacuated from Afghanistan still in hotels.

But the Home Office refused to tell Community Care how many children were transferred through the scheme in the same period last year, by way of comparison, so it is unclear what impact the relaunch has had.

Basic care needs 'not being met'

"Currently there are unaccompanied children placed in two hotels and in the care of the Home Office because no local authority is willing to be their corporate parent," said Jackson.

"We question whether the government's new approach to the national transfer scheme is fit for purpose because the new NTS has been in place since July and there are many children still not being adequately accommodated with no end in sight for these circumstances.

"We are hearing reports from NGOs in the area that children are sometimes spending weeks in these facilities and their most basic care needs, such as appropriate clothing and food, have not been met.

"These children do not routinely have access to legal advice and are not subject to the care planning we would expect for a looked-after-child in the care of a local authority."

The Home Office has said that it allowed legal representatives access to unaccompanied children at hotels "once they have provided evidence they have been instructed".

'Councils should challenge the Home Office'

Imogen Chapman, senior social worker at Love 146, urged local authorities to "stand up against the actions of the Home Office" and reject its process of placing children in hotels.

Both she and Jackson said the hotel accommodation undermined improvements to the safeguarding of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children over the past 20 years and went against provisions of the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004.

"This is a failing system, which goes against the most basic of protections guaranteed in child protection acts, and is placing children at increased risk of abuse, exploitation and trafficking," said Chapman.

"These are children and must be seen as children first. Hotels aren't homes, and every child deserves a home to be safe in."

Home Office admits 'failures of communication'

Permanent secretary of the Home Office Matthew Rycroft told the select committee that his department was responsible for finding appropriate hotels to place asylum-seeking adults and children and that it was responsible for their safeguarding, not the local authority.

Conservative MP and committee member Tim Loughton accused the Home Office of placing the unaccompanied children in "inappropriate hotel accommodation" without speaking to the local authority where they would be based first.

Rycroft said in response that he and his colleagues "absolutely accept that on not every occasion the Home Office have done everything that we would have ideally have liked to have done in consultation in advance".

But he said these "failures of communication" were due to the pressure of evacuating 15,000 people from Afghanistan.

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Social work provision for asylum-seeking children in hotels is insufficient, say charities

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Charities have criticised the Home Office's continued use of hotels to accommodate unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and said the level of social work support children are receiving is insufficient. Asylum support charity Social Workers Without Borders and anti-trafficking organisation Love 146 said the department's use of such accommodation proved its relaunched national transfer scheme to assign [...]

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Article: The Use of Children as a Tactic of Intimate Partner Violence and its Relationship to Survivors’ Mental Health

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Article: The Use of Children as a Tactic of Intimate Partner Violence and its Relationship to Survivors’ Mental Health

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(PDF) The Use of Children as a Tactic of Intimate Partner Violence and its Relationship to Survivors’ Mental Health

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British Red Cross podcasts | The British Red Cross

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The power of personal experience

Our podcasts give voice to the millions of people we support every year. It's only through the power of personal experience that we can step into another's shoes and see the world through their eyes. We hope that our podcasts build empathy and understanding for the people we support, connecting communities and building stronger futures together.

New: the kind place VOICES, episode 5

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With immersive sound design and video game-style narration, the episode is released as 10 different levels. Guided by Carlos and Ngozi - two of the series' producers - listeners have to make decisions on what to do next, with each leading new challenges.

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Katy Long investigates 100 years of refugee politics.

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Article 39 is a small, independent charity which fights for the rights of children living in state and privately-run institutions (boarding and residential schools, children's homes, immigration detention, mental health inpatient units and prisons) in England.
We take our name from Article 39 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which grants every child who has been abused or suffered other violations of their rights to recover in environments where their health, self-respect and dignity are nurtured. We are very lucky to be supported by some amazing funders.
Article 39 does not seek or receive any central government funds.

We are extremely grateful to the trusts and foundations who support our vital work.

THE HADLEY TRUST

We are also very lucky to receive regular and one-off donations from supportive members of the public. If you would like to support our work, please visit our donate section.

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Article 39 is a small, independent charity which fights for the rights of children living in state and privately-run institutions (boarding and residential schools, children's homes, immigration detention, mental health inpatient units and prisons) in England. We take our name from Article 39 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which...

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An exploration of how gender stereotypes influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of child sexual exploitation - Hill - - Child 

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Abstract

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) has been found to have a detrimental and long-lasting impact upon a victim's physical and emotional well-being. A large body of research has raised concerns about how practitioners identify and respond to CSE. In particular, research has indicated that male victims of CSE are commonly being overlooked by practitioners. It has been suggested that this may occur as a result of gender stereotypes. However, this has not been specifically explored by existing research. Therefore, this research project explored how gender stereotypes may influence how practitioners identify and respond to children and young people who are victims (or at risk) of CSE. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight practitioners from one Youth Offending Service in the South West of England. Three key themes emerged from the interviews. These themes highlight that as a result of gender stereotypes, practitioners may be less likely and/or slower to identify males as victims and may be less likely to provide males with supportive multi-agency responses. This paper makes recommendations about how this issue can be addressed to ensure that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

1 INTRODUCTION

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) can have wide-ranging impacts upon children and young people's physical, emotional and psychological well-being (Barnardo's, ; Beckett et al., ), and as highlighted by Jay (, p. 35), these impacts can be 'absolutely devastating, not just when they were being abused, but for many years afterwards'. This highlights the importance of ensuring early identification and effective intervention (Beckett et al., ; Mason-Jones & Loggie, ), which may help to prevent revictimization (Public Health England [PHE], ) and mitigate the risks to the victim's well-being (Alaggia et al., ). This research project seeks to explore how gender stereotypes may act as barriers to early identification and effective responses, in order to make recommendations about how practitioners and policymakers can address this to ensure that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

1.1 Background

Two decades ago, in England, children and young people who were manipulated, coerced or forced into sexual activity were viewed as 'prostitutes' rather than being seen as victims of abuse (Hallett, ). As such, they were often dealt with by way of punishment and charged with soliciting offences (Scott et al., ). The issue of 'CSE' was first addressed by the National Plan for Safeguarding Children from Commercial Sexual Exploitation (Department of Health, ). However, as the name suggests, this guidance focused solely on victims 'who are induced or coerced into unlawful sexual activities for the commercial advantage of others' (p. 2). In England, policy, legislation and guidance relating to CSE has developed significantly over the last decade (Coy, ), and the definition has evolved accordingly. In England, CSE is currently defined within the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance as:

... a form of child sexual abuse. It occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into sexual activity (a) in exchange for something the victim needs or wants, and/or (b) for the financial advantage or increased status of the perpetrator or facilitator. The victim may have been sexually exploited even if the sexual activity appears consensual. Child sexual exploitation does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology. (HM Government, , p. 103).

Although the first specific statutory guidance was published by HM Government (), this definition was first introduced by non-statutory guidance published by the Department for Education (DfE, ) and has been included within statutory guidance since February 2017, when Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government, ) was updated.

The increased impetus and urgency to tackle CSE has also been influenced by a series of high-profile criminal cases, public inquiries and serious case reviews (SCRs) relating to widespread and organized CSE in English towns and cities, including Rochdale (Griffiths, ), Rotherham (Jay, ), Oxford (Bedford, ), Peterborough (Davies, ) and Bristol (Myers & Carmi, ), which were heavily featured within the national media (Fox, ). This placed increasing pressure on policymakers and practitioners to develop their understanding of CSE and improve their identification of and responses to victims (Cockbain et al., ), as these cases highlighted 'profound professional failures to act when children were being groomed or exploited' (Lefevre et al., , p. 2). A large body of research has also raised concerns about how practitioners identify and respond to CSE (Hickle & Hallett, ; Melrose, ; Pearce, ; Shuker, ). In particular, research has indicated that CSE involving male victims is commonly being overlooked by practitioners (Berelowitz et al., ; Lefevre et al., ; McNaughton Nicholls, Harvey, & Paskell, ).

1.2 Prevalence

Due to the 'hidden nature' of the issue (Beckett et al., , p. 11), no recent studies or inquiries have published up-to-date findings on the prevalence of CSE, and thus, the exact number of young people at risk of CSE remains unknown. However, a comprehensive two-year inquiry by the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England explored the nature and extent of CSE in England. The inquiry found that between August 2010 and October 2011, 16,500 children and young people were at 'high risk' of CSE (Berelowitz et al., ). This estimate is in line with statistics published by the DfE (), which show that CSE was identified as a concern in 17,600 (3.9%) of the total 'child in need' assessments conducted by Children's Social Care in England in 2015/2016.

Practitioners should also be aware that 'any child, regardless of where they live, their cultural, ethnic and religious background, their sexuality or gender identity' can become a victim of CSE (Fox, , p. 2). Despite this, it has been found that the majority of known victims are aged 14 to 15 and white (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre [CEOPC], ). Furthermore, numerous studies have found that the majority of known victims are female (CEOPC, ; Coy, ), with Hallett et al. () finding that females are seven times more likely to experience CSE than males. Although genuine gender differences in CSE victimization may exist, it is important to highlight that certain victim groups (such as males and those from minority ethnic groups) are likely to be under-represented within these figures as a result of barriers to reporting and accessing services, as well as the potential biases, prejudices and stereotypical beliefs held by practitioners, which may influence their identification of CSE in these groups (Berelowitz et al., ).

1.3 Hidden victims

One potential reason for male victims of CSE remaining hidden is due to gender differences in the tendency to disclose sexual abuse (Popović, ). Many studies have highlighted the low rates of disclosure amongst male victims of CSE (Cockbain et al., ; Fox, ; Leon & Raws, ; Thomas & Speyer, ). This issue is further underscored by Barnardo's (), who found that when approached by a practitioner in relation to concerns about CSE, 63% of suspected male victims dismissed or minimised these concerns. It has been suggested that one key reason for these gender differences is that stereotypes about gender may act as barriers to disclosure for male victims (Price-Robertson, ).

1.4 Gender stereotypes

Stereotypes act as cognitive shortcuts, which help individuals organise and simplify their social worlds (Banaji et al., ). According to social categorisation theory, first conceived by Allport (), the process of person perception involves subsuming individuals into the wider social categories (such as gender) to which they belong (Banaji et al., ). In doing so, the stereotypical beliefs held about a particular social group are applied to all group members (Banaji et al., ). According to identity theory, proposed by McCall and Simmons (), gender plays a primary role in social categorisation, as it is salient across all contexts and interactions (Abrams, ; Ellemers, ). It has been argued, therefore, that practitioners, who have been found to rely on cognitive shortcuts in professional contexts may utilise gender stereotypes (Blumenthal-Barby & Krieger, ; Kirkman & Melrose, ; Mulkeen, ).

This suggestion is supported by the aforementioned inquiry led by the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England, which collected qualitative data from site visits to 11 agencies and conducted interviews and workshops with 74 practitioners. The inquiry found that practitioners often failed to identify male victims of CSE, as they did not conform to their stereotypical beliefs that 'only girls are subjected to these assaults' (Berelowitz et al., , p. 56). However, this research focused specifically on examining practice relating to CSE perpetrated by gangs and groups, and the researchers purposively selected research sites that had been recognized for effective practice in this area. Therefore, although they provide a valuable insight, these findings may not be representative of practice with CSE more generally. This highlights a significant gap in knowledge relating to current practice with regard to CSE.

1.5 Research aim

This research project aims to explore how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE, in order to make recommendations about how practice and policy can combat the gender-based discrimination that appears to exist in this area of practice. Consequently, this research project hopes to contribute to ensuring that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

This research project poses the following two research questions:

1. How do gender stereotypes influence practitioners' identification of victims (or those at risk) of CSE?

2. How do gender stereotypes influence practitioners' responses to victims (or those at risk) of CSE?

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research method and sampling

This research project used semi-structured qualitative interviews and sought to interview practitioners with a wide range of experience, including those who do not have prior experience of working with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. Practitioners were recruited from one Youth Offending Service (YOS) in a local authority in the South West of England. The team manager of the YOS was asked to forward an invitation letter and participant information sheet to all members of the service who regularly work with children or young people as part of their current role and practitioners volunteered to take part. This research site was selected based upon the belief that practitioners would be able to provide an insight into the phenomenon of interest (Abrams, ), as CSE has been associated with high rates of youth offending (Cockbain & Brayley, ; PHE, ). As the research site was strategically selected, a purposive sampling method was used.

YOSs are multi-agency partnerships (made up of representatives from the local authority, police, probation and health) that deliver youth justice services locally (Youth Justice Board, ). Although their statutory aim, as set out by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, is to prevent offending by youths aged 10 to 18, a large body of research attests to complex support needs of young offenders, including mental health problems, learning and communication difficulties, low educational attainment and social care needs (Jacobson et al., ; Johns et al., ; Youth Justice Board, ). Therefore, although no specific statutory safeguarding duties are placed on YOSs, the Youth Justice Board (the government body that oversees the youth justice system in England and Wales) highlights that YOSs should embed the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance (Youth Justice Board, ).

2.2 Data collection

2.3 Data analysis

Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data, and the six stages of thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clarke () were followed. It was felt that this would enable the researchers to fully immerse themselves in the data and subsequently gain a richer and more detailed understanding of it. The researchers used a thematic map to review and refine initial themes, which revealed that some of the initial themes overlapped or were redundant and enabled the researchers to remove and/or merge these.

2.4 Ethical considerations

2.4.1 Confidentiality and anonymity

Confidentiality cannot be fully achieved in qualitative research, as researchers are expected to report on their findings (Wiles et al., ). Thus, in order to ensure anonymity in this research project, all identifiable data were removed from transcripts and all participants were referred to using participant numbers. Due to the small research population and sample size, to ensure that participants could not identify each other from the final report, participant numbers were not linked to gender, years of experience or job role.

2.4.2 Informed consent

In order to enable participants to provide informed consent, within the information sheet provided to potential participants, the aims and purpose of the research were outlined and practitioners were provided with a full explanation of what the research would entail. This was reiterated at the beginning of each interview.

2.5 Limitations

One limitation of this research project is the small sample size and the fact that all eight participants were recruited from one YOS within one local authority. Therefore, despite the fact that participants represent a wide variety of job roles and varying levels of experience, the transferability of the findings is limited. In order to explore whether these findings can be generalised to other teams and local authorities, future research could repeat this study with larger samples in other statutory and voluntary services, both nationally and internationally.

3 FINDINGS

3.1 Sample characteristics

Eight practitioners were interviewed in total: six females and two males. These practitioners were from four different teams within the participating YOS: three from the statutory team (who supervise youths on court orders), three from the prevention team (who work with youths on a voluntary early intervention programme), one from the substance advice team and one from the mentoring and advocacy team. The eight practitioners had varying amounts of experience of working with children and young people, ranging from 4 to 20 years.

3.2 Themes

The data gathered from the interviews were detailed and complex. Through analysis and careful refining, three key themes emerged: (i) vulnerability, (ii) child or young person's gender and (iii) gender stereotypes.

3.2.1 Theme 1: Vulnerability

As the majority of participants demonstrated a belief that 'every single' child and young person (regardless of gender) is 'equally' vulnerable to CSE, it would be expected that gender would have a limited impact on how participants identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE, with regard to both their 'real-world' practice and responses to the vignettes.

3.2.2 Theme 2: Child or young person's gender

In contrast to this, however, the second theme (which was evidenced within all eight interviews) revealed that a child or young person's gender may influence how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. For example, participants suggested that gender may influence how practitioners identify CSE:

I do think there's probably people that would lean more towards it being girls. (P5)

I do not think sexual exploitation was considered because he was a young male. (P6)

I think that you might identify it quicker if it was a female. (P7)

In particular, these quotes highlight participants' beliefs that female victims (or those at risk) of CSE would be more likely to receive a multi-agency and supportive response than males. P3's suggestion that females' disclosures of CSE are more likely to be believed by practitioners is also pertinent, as this is likely to influence whether the victim is offered any support, resources and/or intervention at all.

In addition to highlighting that gender may influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE more generally, six of the participants made reference to one particular way in which they feel this occurs. These six participants reported feeling that in comparison to females, males displaying risk indicators for CSE are more likely to be identified as victims (or at risk) of CCE:

It's funny, like, even though I didn't feel like he [a 12-year-old male] was at risk of sexual exploitation, I felt he was at risk of exploitation from a criminal perspective. So I kind of came at it from that angle really because even though he could be .... The sexual exploitation could be there, I felt it was more from the criminal side. My mind didn't really go down that route but on reflection it could've been that. (P4)

It's all around criminal more for the boys, whereas girls .... There seems to be more emphasis on sexual exploitation rather than the criminal. (P6)

I think if it was me and I saw this I'd be more thinking drug running for Dominic [male vignette character], whereas the female, I'd be thinking CSE. (P7)

These excerpts reveal that practitioners find it difficult to untangle the issues of CCE and CSE, possibly due to there being an overlap between the risk indicators for these forms of exploitation, and that these can occur simultaneously.

3.2.3 Theme 3: Gender stereotypes

The third theme, which was evident within six of the interviews, highlights that participants feel as though their own and/or others' practice in relation to CSE may be influenced by gender stereotypes:

I guess it's just the whole, like, gender stereotyping, isn't it? That, you know, boys are more capable and able of looking after themselves and girls are viewed to be more vulnerable and in need of protection. (P1)

I suppose a lot of people would probably think that males are able to protect themselves, to be a bit stronger, to be a bit more, sort of, dominant in situations where they might be being abused or coerced. (P3)

You kind of assume that men have got it .... They're tough and they can handle themselves, whereas women are more vulnerable. (P4)

I think there's a stereotype that girls are more susceptible to being exploited ... I'd like to think I don't do it, but I think with males, they are seen as tough and like they can manage it on their own. (P7)

I do see sometimes .... More dated attitudes towards girls rules and boys rules and he should be a bit tougher and stuff like that which could get in the way of identifying or just being aware of a risk there. (P8)

These data extracts suggest that stereotypes about masculinity may impact how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE, as they include references to a number of the traits that are stereotypically associated with masculinity, including independence, strength and dominance. In particular, participants suggested that these gender stereotypes may lead some practitioners to view males as less in need of protection and support.

This could indicate that these six participants do not possess stereotypical beliefs about gender or, alternatively, could suggest that they may have difficulty recognising or admitting to these beliefs, as well as the impact these beliefs may have upon their practice.

4 DISCUSSION

4.1 Gender

As highlighted by the first theme, all of the participants' acknowledged that both males and females are vulnerable to CSE. It was therefore expected that gender would have a limited influence on how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. However, in contrast to this, the second theme highlights that gender may influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE. More specifically, the data indicate that participants feel as though practitioners are less likely and/or slower to identify males as victims of CSE than females. This is in accordance with the findings of Barnardo's (), who found that practitioners find it harder to identify CSE for males than females.

Furthermore, the second theme indicates that participants feel as though practitioners are more likely to provide a multi-agency and supportive response to females affected by CSE, in comparison with males. National guidance states that effective responses to CSE should involve a multi-agency approach (DfE, ), and thus, it can be suggested that practitioners may be providing males with a less effective response than females. This is similar to the findings of McNaughton Nicholls, Cockbain, et al. (), who found that male victims (or those at risk) of CSE are significantly less likely to be referred to specialist CSE support services than females. This is also in line with the findings of a SCR published by Sunderland Safeguarding Children Board (), which focused on the significant harm suffered by a young male referred to as 'Mark'. Despite Mark being identified by practitioners to be at risk of CSE, no preventative or disruptive actions were taken. The SCR concluded that 'had Mark been female there may well have been a far more urgent response by professionals' (p. 10).

4.2 Gender stereotypes

The third theme further emphasises that gender stereotypes may influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE, as six of the participants explicitly reported that they feel these have an influence on their own and/or others' practice in this area. In particular, participants referred to a number of stereotypically masculine traits (such as being 'tough', 'strong' and 'dominant'), which they feel lead practitioners to view males as less vulnerable to CSE than females and therefore, less in need of protection and support. Participants feel that this leads practitioners to be slower and/or less likely to identify males as victims of CSE, as well as less likely to provide male victims (or those at risk) with a multi-agency and supportive response, in comparison with females. This aligns with the findings of McNaughton Nicholls, Harvey, and Paskell (), who found that practitioners often perceive males to be less vulnerable to CSE than females. As previously highlighted, this may consequently lead practitioners to provide male victims (or those at risk) with a less effective response (McNaughton Nicholls, Cockbain, et al., ).

4.3 Unconscious gender stereotypes

4.4 Implications, recommendations and future research

The researchers therefore recommend that supervision should be used to support practitioners to identify their stereotypical beliefs about gender (Van Den Bergh & Crisp, ; Wonnacott, ). To aid this, we recommend that supervisors should routinely incorporate tools that explicitly explore these unconscious biases into supervision. One such tool is the cultural review (devised by McCracken, ), which provides a number of questions for practitioners to consider before commencing an assessment or intervention, for example: if you had any bias in this case, what would it be? (Wonnacott, ).

An increased awareness of gender stereotypes can also be achieved through unconscious bias training (UBT). UBT aims to increase practitioners' awareness of their unconscious biases and teach bias reduction strategies and has been found to be moderately effective in doing so (Atewologun et al., ). Therefore, the researchers posit that UBT could be incorporated into the training delivered by local authorities. To date, however, no studies have examined the effectiveness of UBT within social work, so it may be beneficial for future research to explore this.

4.5 Conclusion

Despite being a small-scale study, as the first study to specifically explore gender stereotypes within the context of CSE, this research project has contributed some new findings to the relatively underdeveloped evidence base in this area. Its aim was to explore how gender stereotypes influence how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. It found that gender stereotypes may influence practitioners' identification of and responses to victims (or those at risk) of CSE, as they can lead practitioners to view males as less vulnerable than females. Subsequently, practitioners may be less likely and/or slower to identify males as victims of CSE than females. Furthermore, when males are identified as victims (or at risk), practitioners may be less likely to provide them with effective responses. These findings therefore highlight that gender stereotypes may lead to gender-based discrimination in this area of practice. This research project has made recommendations about how these biases can be addressed in practice and policy to ensure that male victims of CSE do not remain hidden and, therefore, that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

ENDNOTE

A national public sector organization that aims to promote children's rights in accordance with United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Abstract

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) has been found to have a detrimental and long-lasting impact upon a victim's physical and emotional well-being. A large body of research has raised concerns about how practitioners identify and respond to CSE. In particular, research has indicated that male victims of CSE are commonly being overlooked by practitioners. It has been suggested that this may occur as a result of gender stereotypes. However, this has not been specifically explored by existing research. Therefore, this research project explored how gender stereotypes may influence how practitioners identify and respond to children and young people who are victims (or at risk) of CSE. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight practitioners from one Youth Offending Service in the South West of England. Three key themes emerged from the interviews. These themes highlight that as a result of gender stereotypes, practitioners may be less likely and/or slower to identify males as victims and may be less likely to provide males with supportive multi-agency responses. This paper makes recommendations about how this issue can be addressed to ensure that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

1 INTRODUCTION

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) can have wide-ranging impacts upon children and young people's physical, emotional and psychological well-being (Barnardo's, ; Beckett et al., ), and as highlighted by Jay (, p. 35), these impacts can be 'absolutely devastating, not just when they were being abused, but for many years afterwards'. This highlights the importance of ensuring early identification and effective intervention (Beckett et al., ; Mason-Jones & Loggie, ), which may help to prevent revictimization (Public Health England [PHE], ) and mitigate the risks to the victim's well-being (Alaggia et al., ). This research project seeks to explore how gender stereotypes may act as barriers to early identification and effective responses, in order to make recommendations about how practitioners and policymakers can address this to ensure that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

1.1 Background

Two decades ago, in England, children and young people who were manipulated, coerced or forced into sexual activity were viewed as 'prostitutes' rather than being seen as victims of abuse (Hallett, ). As such, they were often dealt with by way of punishment and charged with soliciting offences (Scott et al., ). The issue of 'CSE' was first addressed by the National Plan for Safeguarding Children from Commercial Sexual Exploitation (Department of Health, ). However, as the name suggests, this guidance focused solely on victims 'who are induced or coerced into unlawful sexual activities for the commercial advantage of others' (p. 2). In England, policy, legislation and guidance relating to CSE has developed significantly over the last decade (Coy, ), and the definition has evolved accordingly. In England, CSE is currently defined within the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance as:

... a form of child sexual abuse. It occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into sexual activity (a) in exchange for something the victim needs or wants, and/or (b) for the financial advantage or increased status of the perpetrator or facilitator. The victim may have been sexually exploited even if the sexual activity appears consensual. Child sexual exploitation does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology. (HM Government, , p. 103).

Although the first specific statutory guidance was published by HM Government (), this definition was first introduced by non-statutory guidance published by the Department for Education (DfE, ) and has been included within statutory guidance since February 2017, when Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government, ) was updated.

The increased impetus and urgency to tackle CSE has also been influenced by a series of high-profile criminal cases, public inquiries and serious case reviews (SCRs) relating to widespread and organized CSE in English towns and cities, including Rochdale (Griffiths, ), Rotherham (Jay, ), Oxford (Bedford, ), Peterborough (Davies, ) and Bristol (Myers & Carmi, ), which were heavily featured within the national media (Fox, ). This placed increasing pressure on policymakers and practitioners to develop their understanding of CSE and improve their identification of and responses to victims (Cockbain et al., ), as these cases highlighted 'profound professional failures to act when children were being groomed or exploited' (Lefevre et al., , p. 2). A large body of research has also raised concerns about how practitioners identify and respond to CSE (Hickle & Hallett, ; Melrose, ; Pearce, ; Shuker, ). In particular, research has indicated that CSE involving male victims is commonly being overlooked by practitioners (Berelowitz et al., ; Lefevre et al., ; McNaughton Nicholls, Harvey, & Paskell, ).

1.2 Prevalence

Due to the 'hidden nature' of the issue (Beckett et al., , p. 11), no recent studies or inquiries have published up-to-date findings on the prevalence of CSE, and thus, the exact number of young people at risk of CSE remains unknown. However, a comprehensive two-year inquiry by the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England explored the nature and extent of CSE in England. The inquiry found that between August 2010 and October 2011, 16,500 children and young people were at 'high risk' of CSE (Berelowitz et al., ). This estimate is in line with statistics published by the DfE (), which show that CSE was identified as a concern in 17,600 (3.9%) of the total 'child in need' assessments conducted by Children's Social Care in England in 2015/2016.

Practitioners should also be aware that 'any child, regardless of where they live, their cultural, ethnic and religious background, their sexuality or gender identity' can become a victim of CSE (Fox, , p. 2). Despite this, it has been found that the majority of known victims are aged 14 to 15 and white (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre [CEOPC], ). Furthermore, numerous studies have found that the majority of known victims are female (CEOPC, ; Coy, ), with Hallett et al. () finding that females are seven times more likely to experience CSE than males. Although genuine gender differences in CSE victimization may exist, it is important to highlight that certain victim groups (such as males and those from minority ethnic groups) are likely to be under-represented within these figures as a result of barriers to reporting and accessing services, as well as the potential biases, prejudices and stereotypical beliefs held by practitioners, which may influence their identification of CSE in these groups (Berelowitz et al., ).

1.3 Hidden victims

One potential reason for male victims of CSE remaining hidden is due to gender differences in the tendency to disclose sexual abuse (Popović, ). Many studies have highlighted the low rates of disclosure amongst male victims of CSE (Cockbain et al., ; Fox, ; Leon & Raws, ; Thomas & Speyer, ). This issue is further underscored by Barnardo's (), who found that when approached by a practitioner in relation to concerns about CSE, 63% of suspected male victims dismissed or minimised these concerns. It has been suggested that one key reason for these gender differences is that stereotypes about gender may act as barriers to disclosure for male victims (Price-Robertson, ).

1.4 Gender stereotypes

Stereotypes act as cognitive shortcuts, which help individuals organise and simplify their social worlds (Banaji et al., ). According to social categorisation theory, first conceived by Allport (), the process of person perception involves subsuming individuals into the wider social categories (such as gender) to which they belong (Banaji et al., ). In doing so, the stereotypical beliefs held about a particular social group are applied to all group members (Banaji et al., ). According to identity theory, proposed by McCall and Simmons (), gender plays a primary role in social categorisation, as it is salient across all contexts and interactions (Abrams, ; Ellemers, ). It has been argued, therefore, that practitioners, who have been found to rely on cognitive shortcuts in professional contexts may utilise gender stereotypes (Blumenthal-Barby & Krieger, ; Kirkman & Melrose, ; Mulkeen, ).

This suggestion is supported by the aforementioned inquiry led by the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England, which collected qualitative data from site visits to 11 agencies and conducted interviews and workshops with 74 practitioners. The inquiry found that practitioners often failed to identify male victims of CSE, as they did not conform to their stereotypical beliefs that 'only girls are subjected to these assaults' (Berelowitz et al., , p. 56). However, this research focused specifically on examining practice relating to CSE perpetrated by gangs and groups, and the researchers purposively selected research sites that had been recognized for effective practice in this area. Therefore, although they provide a valuable insight, these findings may not be representative of practice with CSE more generally. This highlights a significant gap in knowledge relating to current practice with regard to CSE.

1.5 Research aim

This research project aims to explore how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE, in order to make recommendations about how practice and policy can combat the gender-based discrimination that appears to exist in this area of practice. Consequently, this research project hopes to contribute to ensuring that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

This research project poses the following two research questions:

1. How do gender stereotypes influence practitioners' identification of victims (or those at risk) of CSE?

2. How do gender stereotypes influence practitioners' responses to victims (or those at risk) of CSE?

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research method and sampling

This research project used semi-structured qualitative interviews and sought to interview practitioners with a wide range of experience, including those who do not have prior experience of working with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. Practitioners were recruited from one Youth Offending Service (YOS) in a local authority in the South West of England. The team manager of the YOS was asked to forward an invitation letter and participant information sheet to all members of the service who regularly work with children or young people as part of their current role and practitioners volunteered to take part. This research site was selected based upon the belief that practitioners would be able to provide an insight into the phenomenon of interest (Abrams, ), as CSE has been associated with high rates of youth offending (Cockbain & Brayley, ; PHE, ). As the research site was strategically selected, a purposive sampling method was used.

YOSs are multi-agency partnerships (made up of representatives from the local authority, police, probation and health) that deliver youth justice services locally (Youth Justice Board, ). Although their statutory aim, as set out by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, is to prevent offending by youths aged 10 to 18, a large body of research attests to complex support needs of young offenders, including mental health problems, learning and communication difficulties, low educational attainment and social care needs (Jacobson et al., ; Johns et al., ; Youth Justice Board, ). Therefore, although no specific statutory safeguarding duties are placed on YOSs, the Youth Justice Board (the government body that oversees the youth justice system in England and Wales) highlights that YOSs should embed the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance (Youth Justice Board, ).

2.2 Data collection

2.3 Data analysis

Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data, and the six stages of thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clarke () were followed. It was felt that this would enable the researchers to fully immerse themselves in the data and subsequently gain a richer and more detailed understanding of it. The researchers used a thematic map to review and refine initial themes, which revealed that some of the initial themes overlapped or were redundant and enabled the researchers to remove and/or merge these.

2.4 Ethical considerations

2.4.1 Confidentiality and anonymity

Confidentiality cannot be fully achieved in qualitative research, as researchers are expected to report on their findings (Wiles et al., ). Thus, in order to ensure anonymity in this research project, all identifiable data were removed from transcripts and all participants were referred to using participant numbers. Due to the small research population and sample size, to ensure that participants could not identify each other from the final report, participant numbers were not linked to gender, years of experience or job role.

2.4.2 Informed consent

In order to enable participants to provide informed consent, within the information sheet provided to potential participants, the aims and purpose of the research were outlined and practitioners were provided with a full explanation of what the research would entail. This was reiterated at the beginning of each interview.

2.5 Limitations

One limitation of this research project is the small sample size and the fact that all eight participants were recruited from one YOS within one local authority. Therefore, despite the fact that participants represent a wide variety of job roles and varying levels of experience, the transferability of the findings is limited. In order to explore whether these findings can be generalised to other teams and local authorities, future research could repeat this study with larger samples in other statutory and voluntary services, both nationally and internationally.

3 FINDINGS

3.1 Sample characteristics

Eight practitioners were interviewed in total: six females and two males. These practitioners were from four different teams within the participating YOS: three from the statutory team (who supervise youths on court orders), three from the prevention team (who work with youths on a voluntary early intervention programme), one from the substance advice team and one from the mentoring and advocacy team. The eight practitioners had varying amounts of experience of working with children and young people, ranging from 4 to 20 years.

3.2 Themes

The data gathered from the interviews were detailed and complex. Through analysis and careful refining, three key themes emerged: (i) vulnerability, (ii) child or young person's gender and (iii) gender stereotypes.

3.2.1 Theme 1: Vulnerability

As the majority of participants demonstrated a belief that 'every single' child and young person (regardless of gender) is 'equally' vulnerable to CSE, it would be expected that gender would have a limited impact on how participants identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE, with regard to both their 'real-world' practice and responses to the vignettes.

3.2.2 Theme 2: Child or young person's gender

In contrast to this, however, the second theme (which was evidenced within all eight interviews) revealed that a child or young person's gender may influence how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. For example, participants suggested that gender may influence how practitioners identify CSE:

I do think there's probably people that would lean more towards it being girls. (P5)

I do not think sexual exploitation was considered because he was a young male. (P6)

I think that you might identify it quicker if it was a female. (P7)

In particular, these quotes highlight participants' beliefs that female victims (or those at risk) of CSE would be more likely to receive a multi-agency and supportive response than males. P3's suggestion that females' disclosures of CSE are more likely to be believed by practitioners is also pertinent, as this is likely to influence whether the victim is offered any support, resources and/or intervention at all.

In addition to highlighting that gender may influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE more generally, six of the participants made reference to one particular way in which they feel this occurs. These six participants reported feeling that in comparison to females, males displaying risk indicators for CSE are more likely to be identified as victims (or at risk) of CCE:

It's funny, like, even though I didn't feel like he [a 12-year-old male] was at risk of sexual exploitation, I felt he was at risk of exploitation from a criminal perspective. So I kind of came at it from that angle really because even though he could be .... The sexual exploitation could be there, I felt it was more from the criminal side. My mind didn't really go down that route but on reflection it could've been that. (P4)

It's all around criminal more for the boys, whereas girls .... There seems to be more emphasis on sexual exploitation rather than the criminal. (P6)

I think if it was me and I saw this I'd be more thinking drug running for Dominic [male vignette character], whereas the female, I'd be thinking CSE. (P7)

These excerpts reveal that practitioners find it difficult to untangle the issues of CCE and CSE, possibly due to there being an overlap between the risk indicators for these forms of exploitation, and that these can occur simultaneously.

3.2.3 Theme 3: Gender stereotypes

The third theme, which was evident within six of the interviews, highlights that participants feel as though their own and/or others' practice in relation to CSE may be influenced by gender stereotypes:

I guess it's just the whole, like, gender stereotyping, isn't it? That, you know, boys are more capable and able of looking after themselves and girls are viewed to be more vulnerable and in need of protection. (P1)

I suppose a lot of people would probably think that males are able to protect themselves, to be a bit stronger, to be a bit more, sort of, dominant in situations where they might be being abused or coerced. (P3)

You kind of assume that men have got it .... They're tough and they can handle themselves, whereas women are more vulnerable. (P4)

I think there's a stereotype that girls are more susceptible to being exploited ... I'd like to think I don't do it, but I think with males, they are seen as tough and like they can manage it on their own. (P7)

I do see sometimes .... More dated attitudes towards girls rules and boys rules and he should be a bit tougher and stuff like that which could get in the way of identifying or just being aware of a risk there. (P8)

These data extracts suggest that stereotypes about masculinity may impact how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE, as they include references to a number of the traits that are stereotypically associated with masculinity, including independence, strength and dominance. In particular, participants suggested that these gender stereotypes may lead some practitioners to view males as less in need of protection and support.

This could indicate that these six participants do not possess stereotypical beliefs about gender or, alternatively, could suggest that they may have difficulty recognising or admitting to these beliefs, as well as the impact these beliefs may have upon their practice.

4 DISCUSSION

4.1 Gender

As highlighted by the first theme, all of the participants' acknowledged that both males and females are vulnerable to CSE. It was therefore expected that gender would have a limited influence on how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. However, in contrast to this, the second theme highlights that gender may influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE. More specifically, the data indicate that participants feel as though practitioners are less likely and/or slower to identify males as victims of CSE than females. This is in accordance with the findings of Barnardo's (), who found that practitioners find it harder to identify CSE for males than females.

Furthermore, the second theme indicates that participants feel as though practitioners are more likely to provide a multi-agency and supportive response to females affected by CSE, in comparison with males. National guidance states that effective responses to CSE should involve a multi-agency approach (DfE, ), and thus, it can be suggested that practitioners may be providing males with a less effective response than females. This is similar to the findings of McNaughton Nicholls, Cockbain, et al. (), who found that male victims (or those at risk) of CSE are significantly less likely to be referred to specialist CSE support services than females. This is also in line with the findings of a SCR published by Sunderland Safeguarding Children Board (), which focused on the significant harm suffered by a young male referred to as 'Mark'. Despite Mark being identified by practitioners to be at risk of CSE, no preventative or disruptive actions were taken. The SCR concluded that 'had Mark been female there may well have been a far more urgent response by professionals' (p. 10).

4.2 Gender stereotypes

The third theme further emphasises that gender stereotypes may influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of CSE, as six of the participants explicitly reported that they feel these have an influence on their own and/or others' practice in this area. In particular, participants referred to a number of stereotypically masculine traits (such as being 'tough', 'strong' and 'dominant'), which they feel lead practitioners to view males as less vulnerable to CSE than females and therefore, less in need of protection and support. Participants feel that this leads practitioners to be slower and/or less likely to identify males as victims of CSE, as well as less likely to provide male victims (or those at risk) with a multi-agency and supportive response, in comparison with females. This aligns with the findings of McNaughton Nicholls, Harvey, and Paskell (), who found that practitioners often perceive males to be less vulnerable to CSE than females. As previously highlighted, this may consequently lead practitioners to provide male victims (or those at risk) with a less effective response (McNaughton Nicholls, Cockbain, et al., ).

4.3 Unconscious gender stereotypes

4.4 Implications, recommendations and future research

The researchers therefore recommend that supervision should be used to support practitioners to identify their stereotypical beliefs about gender (Van Den Bergh & Crisp, ; Wonnacott, ). To aid this, we recommend that supervisors should routinely incorporate tools that explicitly explore these unconscious biases into supervision. One such tool is the cultural review (devised by McCracken, ), which provides a number of questions for practitioners to consider before commencing an assessment or intervention, for example: if you had any bias in this case, what would it be? (Wonnacott, ).

An increased awareness of gender stereotypes can also be achieved through unconscious bias training (UBT). UBT aims to increase practitioners' awareness of their unconscious biases and teach bias reduction strategies and has been found to be moderately effective in doing so (Atewologun et al., ). Therefore, the researchers posit that UBT could be incorporated into the training delivered by local authorities. To date, however, no studies have examined the effectiveness of UBT within social work, so it may be beneficial for future research to explore this.

4.5 Conclusion

Despite being a small-scale study, as the first study to specifically explore gender stereotypes within the context of CSE, this research project has contributed some new findings to the relatively underdeveloped evidence base in this area. Its aim was to explore how gender stereotypes influence how practitioners work with victims (or those at risk) of CSE. It found that gender stereotypes may influence practitioners' identification of and responses to victims (or those at risk) of CSE, as they can lead practitioners to view males as less vulnerable than females. Subsequently, practitioners may be less likely and/or slower to identify males as victims of CSE than females. Furthermore, when males are identified as victims (or at risk), practitioners may be less likely to provide them with effective responses. These findings therefore highlight that gender stereotypes may lead to gender-based discrimination in this area of practice. This research project has made recommendations about how these biases can be addressed in practice and policy to ensure that male victims of CSE do not remain hidden and, therefore, that all victims of CSE are adequately safeguarded.

ENDNOTE

A national public sector organization that aims to promote children's rights in accordance with United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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An exploration of how gender stereotypes influence how practitioners identify and respond to victims (or those at risk) of child sexual exploitation

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Child sexual exploitation (CSE) has been found to have a detrimental and long-lasting impact upon a victim's physical and emotional well-being. A large body of research has raised concerns about how practitioners identify and respond to CSE. In particular, research has indicated that male victims of CSE are commonly being overlooked by practitioners.

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Supporting Parents in and Leaving Care: #MessagestoCorporateParents – ExChange

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From January 2021 Dr Louise Roberts, Dr Dawn Mannay and Rachael Vaughan have been working on an ESRC funded Impact project to challenge stigma, discrimination, and poor outcomes for young parents in and leaving care. As part of this project they have drawn on the research of Dr Louise Roberts, working with care experienced parents and partner organisation Voices From Care Cymru, NYAS Cymru and TGP Cymru to produce a best practice charter and wider resources.
This page will host all the resources produced as part of this project to raise awareness and hope to create meaningful change for parents in and leaving care. We will also share best practice examples from across Wales and the UK
Supporting Parents in and Leaving Care: #MessagestoCorporateParents
Research

The Charter

The Charter will be published soon.

Podcast

Webinar
Supporting Parents in and Leaving Care
Dr. Louise Roberts and Rachael Vaughan, Cardiff University.
9th November 2021, 11am-12 noon.
This event will detail recent efforts to co-develop a best practice charter, aimed at creating meaningful change for parents in and leaving local authority care. Co-produced with care experienced parents, practitioners and policy makers, the charter is aimed at Corporate Parents; professionals with responsibility for supporting young people in state care. In Wales, corporate parents are directed to seek the same outcomes for children in local authority care as any good parent would seek for their own child. This event will share the best practice charter and wider resources developed about this important topic including discussion on research conduction in this area by Dr Louise Roberts. Parents in and leaving care will support the development of this event.

The webinar forms part of the annual Economic and Social Research Council's Festival of Social Science.
Register for your space

Best practice examples

If you would like to share best practice examples with us about how you work with parents in and leaving care in your local authority, please get in touch at cascade@cardiff.ac.uk

Policy Press | The Children of Looked After Children - Outcomes, Experiences and Ensuring Meaningful Support to Young Parents In and Leaving Care : By Louise Roberts
Roberts, L., Maxwell, N. and Elliott, M. 2019. When young people in and leaving state care become parents: What happens and why?. Children and Youth Services Review 104, pp. 104387. (10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104387)

Roberts, L. 2019. 'A family of my own': When Young People in and Leaving State Care become Parents in Wales. In: Mannay, D., Rees, A. and Roberts, L. eds. 2019. Children and young people 'looked after'? Education, intervention and the everyday culture of care in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Roberts, L.et al. 2018. Sexual health outcomes for young people in state care: Cross-sectional analysis of a national survey and views of social care professionals in Wales. Children and Youth Services Review 89, pp. 281-288. (10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.04.044 Care-leavers and their children placed for adoption. Children and Youth Services Review 79, pp. 355-361. (10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.06.030 A small-scale qualitative scoping study into the experiences of looked after children and care leavers who are parents in Wales. Child & Family Social Work 22(3), pp. 1274-1282. (10.1111/cfs.12344)
Publications

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Supporting Parents in and Leaving Care: #MessagestoCorporateParents

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From January 2021 Dr Louise Roberts, Dr Dawn Mannay and Rachael Vaughan have been working on an ESRC funded Impact project to challenge stigma, discrimination, and poor outcomes for young parents in and leaving care.

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Report: The State of the Social Service Workforce 2020 

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Report: The State of the Social Service Workforce 2020 

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The State of the Social Service Workforce 2020 | Global Social Service Workforce Alliance

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Global Social Service Workforce Alliance

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The COVID-19 pandemic has placed great strain on the social service workforce. The virus and the measures adopted to contain it have required social service organizations and workers to reorganize the way they operate to ensure the health and well-being of the communities they serve.

Since the pandemic began, social service organizations throughout the world have shifted how they supervise and train their workers. In many countries, they have moved primarily to remote methods for delivery of services and supervision of staff. They have also devised means of dealing with increased levels of occupational stress and burnout resulting from a range of challenges, including workers' increased caseloads and increased complexity of cases, workers' fears of being infected with the virus or passing it on to a loved one, and, in some cases, workers' feelings of inadequacy in their ability to meet their clients' wideranging and evolving needs. In many countries, the social service workforce has needed to advocate with governments to be recognized as an essential service, and to obtain personal protective equipment to enable them to continue in-person services when necessary.

In most countries worldwide, social service workers have served at the frontline during the pandemic, adapting and innovating what type of services they offer and how. They have learned how to make best use of technology to provide remote counselling and support and, in doing so, have developed new ways to facilitate connections and build trust. In other contexts, they have risked their own safety to reach high-risk clients in-person, sometimes without access to personal protective equipment.

Drawing from a review of global reports and case studies, as well as from information sourced from Global Social Service Workforce Alliance members, this report explores the key challenges social service organizations and workers have faced since the beginning of the pandemic and showcases how they have been able to adapt and innovate in response to such challenges. It further considers the wide-ranging health, social, psychological, and economic impacts and magnified structural inequalities that have resulted from the pandemic and it explores the lasting impact of the pandemic on organizations and workers and the way they work, including their future needs, their changing roles and the opportunities they now have to further innovate and raise awareness of their work. It concludes with recommendations for how to build on these adaptations and innovations in practice and strengthen advocacy for further reinforcing the essential roles of the workforce. The aim of these recommendations is to help ensure the workforce is better able to respond and adjust, not only to this, but to future pandemics and global crises, and to tackle the complex social problems and deepening social inequalities that result.

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The State of the Social Service Workforce 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed great strain on the social service workforce. The virus and the measures adopted to contain it have required social service organizations and workers to reorganize the way they operate to ensure the health and well-being of the communities they serve.

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'Out There’ Fostering Film 2021 - YouTube

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Blog post: The No Recourse to Public Funds rule is child neglect

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Blog post: The No Recourse to Public Funds rule is child neglect

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The No Recourse to Public Funds rule is child neglect. | by Institute for Community Research and Development | Medium

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Institute for Community Research and Development

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The No Recourse to Public Funds rule is child neglect.

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Blog post re contextual safeguarding and intersectionality

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Blog post re contextual safeguarding and intersectionality

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In this blog, Molly examines whether intersectional feminism could be a tool for understanding feelings of power/disempowerment that young people experience which are linked to identity. She asks how this lens could help us understand the ways in which young people experience the different contexts they move through, and what questions we can begin to ask as practitioners to inform interventions into the spaces where young people spend their time.
Molly Manister is a Research Assistant currently working on the National Scale Up and on strategic projects in the Contextual Safeguarding team. Molly previously worked at The Children's Society, and she has a particular interest in women and children's rights, gender, race and identity. Contextual Safeguarding and intersectionality
I joined the Contextual Safeguarding Team as a Research Assistant in July 2020. Coming into this team from a voluntary and community sector (VCS) and human rights background, I wanted to learn as much as I could about Contextual Safeguarding and social care systems, whilst also thinking about how I can incorporate my experience as my knowledge and understanding of this world deepened. My personal research interests are broadly centred around feminist theory, power, and identity. More specifically, I'm interested in understanding how exploitation and violence are shaped by structural inequalities.

Feminist theory in social care is not new. However, the focus has largely been on how the concept of "the family" is constructed - particularly how we understand motherhood. There is also a wealth of rich thinking around how intersectional feminism can strengthen social work - from domestic violence, to community-led approaches, to work with refugees. First coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectional feminism was developed to unpack the issue of black women's marginalisation in critical legal studies, specifically in the USA, highlighting that "all inequality is not created equal". This means that viewing experiences of inequality as separate from one another cannot account for the ways in which overlapping forms of oppression and disempowerment are experienced by individuals.

[1] See also Dominelli; Fook and Featherstone

How might the lens of intersectional feminism help us in making young people safer? When we think about the foundational theory underpinning contextual safeguarding, we explore how young people draw on various forms of 'capital' as they move and live in different spaces, and what this means for their levels of risk. Yet as we are all aware, contexts, such as parks or schools, do not exist in a vacuum. As we consider changing our practice to make the spaces where young people spend their time safer, we must acknowledge that these spaces are not experienced equally by young people. To understand how a young person navigates the rules at play within a context, we must also look to the rules at play in the wider economic, political and social spheres that exacerbate inequality. In doing so we become mindful of how identities - including race, gender, poverty, (dis)ability, sexuality etc., - shape young people's experiences of these 'contexts in context'.
Intersectionality and context
I began thinking about this around 7 months into my role when I was sitting in on my first Contextual Safeguarding seminar to a class of Masters students. We were discussing a case study about an incident involving a peer group in a park, and were considering approaches to assessing the context and the harm faced by the young people within it. As the discussion was closing, one of the students raised a question about the wider context of the community, asking if we knew whether Sasha, as a mixed race young person central to the case study, was living in a predominantly white community? He then expanded on this further, talking about how she might experience the park and her wider community differently to her peers if this were the case. Others started discussing the impact this might have on other contexts - one person flagged that she may have experienced racially motivated abuse if she were at a predominantly white school. If so, how might that influence how she experiences the park and her peer group? Are there any other identity-based power structures at play here - such as hegemonic misogyny - within the peer group? How could/should this inform our interventions?

Thinking about Contextual Safeguarding through an intersectional lens has brought up more questions than answers for me around the role power and space have in facilitating safety and risk. How can intersectionality help us to understand how power and identity impact young people's experiences of context? Considering all of the contexts young people experience within a day, how do feelings of power shift and change as young people move through the world based on their intersecting identities in these spaces? How can we utilise this knowledge of young people's varying experiences of power in different contexts to help keep them safe?
Reflexivity and intersectionality
There are levels of structural power held by those of us who work in the field of child protection and this must also remain a central focus (some useful tools are being developed which might help with this). Unpacking power dynamics that maintain structural harm requires a lot of critical thought; identifying and understanding our own positionality - and the power that comes with it - can feel complex, messy, and often uncomfortable. Ultimately though we must ask what we can do to remain reflexive and to consider how this might impact the young people we are working with. If social capital is central to our understanding of how power shifts as young people move through contexts - for example, moving from home, to the bus, to school, to the park etc., then this must include their interactions professionals as well. This reflexivity must - of course - include those of us who research and write about young people.

Acknowledging the importance of power
"I have been stopped and searched for no reason. I think it was because of the race card. It is like the police have something over you. But at the same time we need to police.'
This example encapsulates how important it is for us to have an understanding of structural inequality and how this feeds into young people's feelings of power within the contexts they move through. How do race and gender - as just some of the identities young people hold - play into encounters with the police? What could be the implications of this when we are trying to build trust with young people and keep them safe? If a young person feels that a knife grants them more protection than a police presence, then we cannot ignore that this will have a drastic impact on the way in which harm manifests, the level of risk they could face, and how they might interact with police. We know that heightened police presence - as an intervention - does not equal feelings of safety for all young people. It might for some, but it certainly does not for others.

By acknowledging the importance of how feelings of power/disempowerment follow young people throughout their lives, we may begin to understand more about how they experience, and operate within, different contexts. Intersectional feminist theory is of course just one tool we can use to do this. Asking questions about how intersecting identities may influence the ways young people experience the world can feel confronting and uncomfortable. Yet if we accept that certain identities hold more power in a wider sense - dis(ability), gender, race, poverty etc. - then perhaps we can use this lens to help us understand how individual young people experience the contexts we seek to make safer.

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In this blog, Molly examines whether intersectional feminism could be a tool for understanding feelings of power/disempowerment that young people experience which are linked to identity. She asks how this lens could help us understand the ways in which young people experience the different contexts they move through, and what questions we can begin to ask as practitioners to inform interventions into the spaces where young people spend their time.

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Child safeguarding expert becomes one of UK’s youngest black female professors - Voice Online

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Child safeguarding expert becomes one of UK’s youngest black female professors

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Child safeguarding expert becomes one of UK’s youngest black female professors

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Child safeguarding expert becomes one of UK’s youngest black female professors

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‘County lines’, inequalities and young people’s rights: a moment of pause and reflection - Tackling Child Exploitation

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Dr Lauren Wroe is a Research Fellow at the University of Bedfordshire, one of TCE's consortium partners. Lauren was commissioned to write this think piece by TCE, both as an expert in her field and as part of her roles as a Research Fellow at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre.

In responding to child harm via 'county lines', a moment of pause and reflection is required. Critical challenge must be brought to the wave of urgency that comes about when a 'new' and seemingly 'out of control' form of child harm is thrust into the spotlight. My research is on the application and development of 'contextualised' responses to extra-familial harm (EFH) in adolescence. For two and a half years, I have been studying multi-agency responses to child harm via 'county lines'. To support this moment of pause and reflection, this blog offers some key points of action arising from my research that are of particular relevance for strategic leaders in child safeguarding. The learning I am sharing here is borne out of:

research observations of multi-agency partnership meetings

reviews of children's social care (CSC) and voluntary and community sector (VCS) casefiles

interviews with professionals

surveys with young people

policy and literature reviews

theory and resource development

conversations with key stakeholders.

Disproportionality, harm and the multi-agency response to 'county lines'

'Safeguarding' is not benign. It can cause more harm than good without constant reflection, checks and measures - including consultation with young people and communities. A 2020 Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (CSPRP) report on Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) notes the use of 'gangs matrices', 'mapping meetings' and 'soft intelligence from the police' as tools for identifying at-risk children, with 'mapping' at the top of its key recommendations for a CCE practice model. In pausing and reflecting, however, the use of police intelligence to identify vulnerability, alongside mapping and matrixing practices, can have significantly deleterious consequences for young people. Aside from such methods being weighted toward identification and monitoring over prevention and intervention, the same report also notes a disproportional representation of Black (in particular) and minoritised ethnic boys and young men in CCE cohorts (at 71%, mirroring other regional figures).

The use of police intelligence to identify vulnerability should be approached critically given what we know about widespread disproportional policing practices (particularly in relation to 'gangs' and 'drugs'), where Black and minoritised ethnic young people are targeted and pulled into the criminal justice system at a disproportionate rate to their white peers. Although the purpose outlined in the CSPRP report is ostensibly to identify young people for the purposes of safeguarding, there is an (evidenced) danger that mapping and matrixing practices have a 'net widening' effect that pull young people and their associates into a system that has traditionally used the same methods to label and criminalise them.

How so? In 2018, Amnesty (2018) published a report into the Metropolitan Police's gangs matrix that revealed a significant over-representation of Black young people: 80% were aged 12-24, and 87% were from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic backgrounds (78% of whom were Black), similar demographics to the 'county lines' cohorts noted above. Crucially, they concluded that, by being identified on this matrix, young people were later denied access to a range of supportive services and educational opportunities due to the stigma and labelling that followed them as a result.

Indeed, through my work I have seen large quantities of young people's data shared from CSC to police databases with insufficient safeguards in place around how this data might be used when later accessible by on-the-ground police officers at the point of an arrest (Wroe, 2021). In some instances, assessments of vulnerability and decisions about pathways for young people involved in 'county lines' have been based on insufficient determiners of vulnerability such as age. This can have significant consequences for young people. Ongoing investigative research by Insa Koch exploring the use of modern slavery legislation to convict 'county lines' offences indicates that all convictions to date have been of Black and Asian young men. We already know that Black and minoritised ethnic children are over identified as perpetrators and under identified as victims, often engaged through youth justice services rather than being supported as victims. There is emerging evidence that the methods used to profile gangs are being applied to 'county lines' and therefore affecting young people in a similarly disproportionate and deleterious way.

There is an urgency for strategic leaders to ensure that the rights and welfare of young people are not compromised through profiling and data sharing agreements across partnerships. An ecological and intersectional approach that seeks to understand the full context of vulnerability (including personal, contextual and institutional risk factors) could support this. Rather than profiling Black young people and their communities, strategic leaders could ask of their services:

' How do multi-agency processes and partnerships contribute to the disproportional treatment of Black young people?'

Peer mapping - a contentious terrain

The disproportional application of the gang label to Black (in particular) young people escalates the perceived riskiness of their association to one another, but it also escalates the seriousness of the offences they are charged with and the ongoing monitoring and profiling of families and communities. Mapping is used to understand associations between young people as a mechanism for identifying risk. However, this process of association can itself pose risks to young people.

In the report 'Dangerous Associations', Williams and Clarke make exactly this point. They demonstrate that the 'gang' label is disproportionately used in Joint Enterprise (JE) convictions involving BAME defendants, citing that 37% of individuals in prison for JE offences are Black. This is more alarming when we consider that Williams and Clarke's report also reveals that in Manchester 81% of individuals profiled as 'gang affiliated' are Black whereas only 6% of those involved in serious youth violence are Black (and 72% to 27% respectively in London). Here, associations between young people are a pathway to criminalisation rather than safety, and it is hard to argue against this being rooted in racialised notions of where (or in whom) risk is located.

Given the inequalities described above, strategic leaders in the sector must ensure that the approaches being used to understand relationships between young people, and the sharing of this information with safeguarding partners, is transparent, proportional and has young people's safety at heart. What are the thresholds for including young people on peer maps? Is the welfare of all young people prioritised? This would require robust agreements across partnerships about who has access to young people's data and how it can be used. Whilst approaches to peer mapping in the sector vary significantly, and legal and ethical questions around the use of peer mapping by child welfare agencies remain unanswered, safety mapping with young people, with clear agreements in relation to consent and confidentiality, can support the safety of young people and their relationships with services.
How will strategic leaders mitigate against the well evidenced risk of 'mapping meetings and frameworks used to share intelligence'When commissioning services, have the ethical and rights implications of risk monitoring work, and its proportionality to meaningful service and resource delivery (that makes a difference to young people's lives), been weighted? reproducing and compounding the disproportional targeting of Black children and their funnelling into the criminal justice system? (1) Are the material needs of young people and local communities met? (2) In understanding risk, are professionals supported to ensure protective factors are (equally) understood and in place for all young people? (3) Is monitoring and data sharing underpinned by an evidence-informed and ethical understanding across partnerships that prioritises the safety (including safety from criminalisation) of all young people?
'Watching over' or 'working with'?[17]

Whilst mapping of friendships and associates has been promoted, and has certainly featured persistently in my observations of practice, actual work with friendship groups remains taboo within the sector ('we can't bring them together'). Indeed this has left practitioners working in one project I observed questioning what they should do with their knowledge of associations between young people when they don't understand the context of their relationships and lives. Another VCS sector worker asked, ' [With all of the information the project holds] what is our unique offer to young people?'. In my experience interventions can swing between 'awareness raising' programmes aimed at tackling young people's 'lifestyle choices', to highly restrictive and disruptive interventions such as out-of-area placements, tagging, curfews, secure placements, and managed school moves. What opportunities are there to work with young people and communities to address the space in between?

Whilst significant resource is invested in profiling, mapping, assessing and monitoring risk, young people are often left to navigate a range of systems and structures that increase their vulnerability, including a lack of safe public spaces and youth provision, zero tolerance school policies and exclusions, impoverished neighbourhoods and disproportional policing. Indeed, significant questions remain about how to actually keep young people safe, how to safely manage drug debts (often escalated by police confiscation) or confront the steady increase and disproportional nature of fixed-period and permanent school exclusions. In one study of 13 local authorities in England and Wales, we noted that 10% of all young people who were harmed in extra-familial contexts were relocated out of their local area (rising to 25% in a minority of areas). There is a clear opportunity for commissioning to focus on addressing contextual risk by working with young people in the everyday contexts of their lives - contexts that often feature protection and risk simultaneously. Contextual safety could be supported by resourcing existing protective structures including families, youth provisions and schools.

Conclusion: looking backwards, to move forwards

The Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter and associated struggles to expose state violence towards Black people, and the #Metoo and Everyone's Invited movements each demand a moment of pause and reflection, and aim to shine a light on the inequalities that permeate our institutions. Not only do these factors present the sector with the opportunity to do things differently, they insist on it.

Three key points of reflection and action for strategic leaders:

References

[1] Wroe, L. E. (2021) Young people and "county lines": A contextual and social account. Journal of Children's Services, 16, 1, 39-55.

[2] Wroe, L. E. & Lloyd, J. (2020). Watching over or working with? Understanding social work innovation in response to extra-familial harm. Social Sciences, 9, 4, 37.

[3] https://contextualsafeguarding.org.uk/a-2020-update-on-the-operational-strategic-and-conceptual-framework/

[4] https://www.csnetwork.org.uk/en/publications/contextual-safeguarding-and-county-lines

[5] 'It was hard to escape' - safeguarding children at risk from child criminal exploitation. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/870035/Safeguarding_children_at_risk_from_criminal_exploitation_review.pdf

[6] Rescue and Response County Lines Project: Year Two Strategic Assessment https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/rescue_recovery_year_2_sa_-_sept_2020.pdf

[7] Williams, P. (2018), Being Matrixed: The (Over) Policing of Gang Suspects in London, Stop Watch, London.

[8] Release (2019), "The colour of injustice: 'race', drugs and law enforcement in England and Wales", available at: www.release.org.uk/publications/ColourOfInjustice

[9] Amnesty (2018). 'Trapped in the matrix: secrecy, stigma and bias in the met's gangs database'. www.amnesty.org.uk/files/reports/Trapped%20in%20the%20Matrix%20Amnesty% 20report.pdf

[10] Wroe, L. E. (2021). Young people and 'county lines': A contextual and social account. Journal of Children's Services, 16, 1, 39-55 and Wroe, L. E. & Lloyd, J. (2020). Watching over or working with? Understanding social work innovation in response to extra-familial harm. Social Sciences, 9, 4, 37.

[11] Koch, I. (2019). 'Who are the slave masters of today? County lines, drug trafficking, and modern slavery policies' www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/who-are-slave-masters-today-countylines-drug-trafficking-and-modern-slavery-policies

[12] Berelowitz, S., Clifton, J., Firmin, C., Gulyurtlu, S., & Edwards, G. (2013). If Only Someone Had Listened: Office of the Children's Commissioner's Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups. Office of the Children's Commissioner.

[13] Davis, J. & Marsh, N. (2020). Boys to men: the cost of adultification in safeguarding responses to black boys. Critical and Radical Social Work, 8, 2, 255-259.

[14] Williams, P. and Clarke, B. (2016). Dangerous Associations: Joint Enterprise, Gangs and Racism: An Analysis of the Process of Criminalisation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Individuals. Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

[15] https://contextualsafeguarding.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CS-Legal-Briefing-2020-FINAL-1-1.pdf

[16] Firmin, C. (2020). Contextual Safeguarding and Child Protection: rewriting the Rules. Routledge.

[17] Wroe, L. E. & Lloyd, J. (2020). Watching over or working with? Understanding social work innovation in response to extra-familial harm. Social Sciences, 9, 4, 37.

[18] 'It was hard to escape.' Safeguarding children at risk from child criminal exploitation. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/870035/Safeguarding_children_at_risk_from_criminal_exploitation_review.pdf

[19] Cody, C., Bovarnick, S., & Peace, D. (2020b). Research findings: Peer support initiatives for young people who have experienced sexual violence - tensions, challenges and strategies: Briefing paper four. University of Bedfordshire.

[20] https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-in-england

[21] https://contextualsafeguarding.org.uk/portfolio-items/securing-safety-a-study-into-the-scale-and-experience-of-relocation-in-response-to-extra-familial-abuse/

[22] Mason, W., Brasab, S., Stone, B., Soutar, J., Mohamed, A., & Mwale, T. (2019). Youth violence, masculinity and mental health: learning from communities most affected. Sheffield.

[23] https://contextualsafeguarding.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CS-Legal-Briefing-2020-FINAL-1-1.pdf

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'County lines', inequalities and young people's rights: a moment of pause and reflection - Tackling Child Exploitation

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''County lines', inequalities and young people's rights: a moment of pause and reflection' is an asset related to Programme Blogs on the Tackling Child Exploitation website.

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Fast forward to 10.25 re child protection and contextual safeguarding 

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Fast forward to 10.25 re child protection and contextual safeguarding 

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BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Singer-Songwriter Josie Proto, Child protection changes, Women and COP26, UTIs

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Singer Josie Proto, women and UTIs, why do we need to rewrite the rules of child protection? Is the key to the climate crisis having more women leading at the negotiating table?

An estimated 50% of women in the UK will have a urinary tract infection at some point in their lives and between 20-30% are likely to have a recurrence. For some, these recurrent infections can lead to a significant impact on their health and way of life. Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster, a medical historian from McGill University with a personal history of UTIs has produced a documentary with two others, to shine a light on the experiences of women with UTIs. She and Dr Catriona Anderson, a GP specialised in treating UTIs, discuss why some women feel failed by the system.

We need to rewrite the rules of child protection says Professor Carlene Firmin. She talks to Jessica Creighton about her work in this area, how it differs from previous approaches and how it might help the 'disappearing girls' Woman's Hour has talked about recently - those young girls, often in care, at risk of sexual exploitation who regularly go missing. Anna Holland a consultant social worker for the NSPCC joins them.

Rising singer-songwriter, Josie Proto, started out playing her grandmother's guitar. Her frustration towards the extreme measures women feel they need to take in order to simply get home safely has inspired her new song. She talks about her music and performs live with "I Just Wanna Walk Home", described by Radio 1's Annie Mac as "The Hottest Record in the World".

There are three months to go before the start of COP26 negotiations in Glasgow - the 26th attempt to agree on actions to combat the climate crisis. But if the past 25 meetings haven't provided a solution, what needs to change to get the results the planet needs? Bianca Pitt, one of the co-founders of the campaign SHE Changes Climate, is convinced that the key is having a lot more women leading at the negotiating table. Bianca explains why women will make a difference. She is joined by environmental lawyer and expert in international climate negotiations, Farhana Yamin - who describes her experience of getting 197 countries to agree, and what she thinks women can bring to a sustainable future.

Presenter: Jessica Creighton
Producer: Kirsty Starkey

Interviewed Guest: Dr Agnes Arnold-Foster
Interviewed Guest: Dr Catriona Anderson
Interviewed Guest: Professor Carlene Firmin
Interviewed Guest: Anna Holland
Interviewed Guest: Josie Proto
Interviewed Guest: Farhana Yamin
Interviewed Guest: Bianca Pitt

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BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Singer-Songwriter Josie Proto, Child protection changes, Women and COP26, UTIs

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Singer Josie Proto, women and UTIs, why do we need to rewrite the rules of child protection? Is the key to the climate crisis having more women leading at the negotiating table? An estimated 50% of women in the UK will have a urinary tract infection at some point in their lives and between 20-30% are likely to have a recurrence.

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An excellent podcast examining contemporary social work research

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An excellent podcast examining contemporary social work research

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Professor Harry Ferguson explores why children are sometimes ‘invisible’ in social workers’ home visits

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Full article: The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice

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Full article: The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice

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Full article: The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice

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The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice

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(2020). The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice. Journal of Technology in Human Services: Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 137-158.

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Securing Safety: Relocations and extra-familial harm on Vimeo

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Securing Safety: Relocations and extra-familial harm

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Research findings from the first phase of the Securing Safety study, on the rate, cost and impact of relocations of young people in response to extra-familial harm.

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Article: Networks of power and counterpower in social work with children and families in England

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Article: Networks of power and counterpower in social work with children and families in England

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Networks of power and counterpower in social work with children and families in England - Joe Hanley, 2021

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This article applies the work of Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells to contemporary children and families' social work in England. Castells' work suggests that the intractability of many of the issues facing the profession is the result of the new type of society that emerged around the turn of the millennium: the network society. Within this society, the interests and values of dominant networks are imposed upon those who are selectively excluded. Several challenges for the social work profession stemming from this analysis are posed, including in relation to challenging networks and promoting transparency. However, it is suggested that the most significant contribution Castells' work has for social work lies in shifting the discussion from an analysis of dominant networks, as has been undertaken elsewhere, towards an understanding of how social workers can, and do, build networks of counterpower capable of effectively challenging dominant networks in the space they occupy.

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Networks of power and counterpower in social work with children and families in England - Joe Hanley, 2021

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article applies the work of Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells to contemporary children and families' social work in England. Castells' work suggests that the intractability of many of the issues facing the profession is the result of the new type of society that emerged around the turn of the millennium: the network society.