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ENGAGING WITH INVOLUNTARY SERVICE USERS:

A LITERATURE REVIEW AND CASE STUDY

Helen Wosu Employee Development Officer, CEC

Jane Stewart Senior Practitioner,

Children & families Department, CEC

Funders:

ESRC; The Scottish Funding Council; The Local Authority Research Council Initiative

Supporting Institutions:

Centre for Research on Families and Relationships; University of Edinburgh

Engaging with involuntary service usersHelen Wosu, Jane Stewart

September 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Literature Review 3

INTRODUCTION 3ENGAGING WITH PARENTS IN THE CHILD PROTECTION PROCESS 4WHAT IMPEDES RELATIONSHIP BUILDING? 5FACTORS WHICH ENCOURAGE AND ASSIST ENGAGEMENT. 7CLIENTS’ VIEWS ON THE NATURE OF THE PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP 8CHALLENGES TO CURRENT CHILD PROTECTION POLICIES 8CONCLUSION 9REFERENCES 10

CASE STUDY 11

INTRODUCTION 11METHOD 12FINDINGS 12TRUST 13TIME 14FEAR 16HONEST AND OPEN DIALOGUE 17TIME SCHEDULE: WORKING AT A RELATIONSHIP LEVEL 19PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS. 20CONCLUSION 23References 25

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September 2010

Literature Review

Engaging with involuntary service users

Introduction

This brief literature review aims to give an overview of research looking at

engagement with involuntary service users of social work and explores some of the

challenges. The term ‘involuntary service user’ was defined for this study as clients

who do not initially engage with the social worker to address concerns about the

welfare and/or protection of a child in their care. The term ‘engagement’ means here

the willingness to participate in the process of addressing concerns by meeting

appointments, answering phone calls and agreeing to sit down and talk over the issues

of concern and begin to make positive changes in child care. Box 1. summarises the

key points from a review of the social work literature on client engagement .

Key points from the literature on client engagement

Protecting children requires that relationships be formed with children and

families. This takes time and requires certain skills. The current systems are

skewed towards data collection, form filling and deadlines for reports being

met. This does not allow sufficient time to be spent on developing

relationships with children and their families.

Children and their families want to feel they have been listened to, have been

heard and understood. They want to be asked for their views of changes

needed.

Working in collaboration with parents where there are child safety concerns,

rather than in opposition to them, is likely to encourage more cooperation

If parents feel blamed or judged in any way then a positive relationship is

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September 2010unlikely to develop.

Where there is no good working relationship, children remain vulnerable to

further abuse and neglect.

Box 1. Key points from the literature on client engagement

Engaging with parents in the child protection process

The involuntary client is one who does not willingly seek the services of a helper or

agency. Child Protection social workers are only too familiar with the experience of

working with families who are resistant to intervention from the social services and

express this in a variety of ways, including overt hostility (Stanley and Goddard,

2002). Brown, Bute and Ford (1986) identified power, authority and control as key

factors in aggression towards social workers. Further work carried out by Littlechild

(2002) explored the issues highlighted by Brown, Bute and Ford (1986) to provide a

more in-depth understanding of the underlying reasons for this. The study suggests

that the more invasive child protection investigations of the last few decades impinge

on the power and control dynamics within the family, and elicit a response of

violence, threats and abuse directed at social workers, especially “in situations where

decisions are being made concerning parents’ control over and retention of their

children” (Littlechild, 2002).

Working with families in these situations, some of which personal safety is a concern,

has only recently been addressed in social work theory, literature or research. A

review and analysis commissioned by the Department of Health (1995) called Child

Protection: Messages from research puts relationships at the centre of social work

practice and credits it as the ‘tipping point’ at which change may occur see Box 2.

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September 2010“Relationship is considered the most fundamental tool in social work practice…..it is

acknowledged in social work literature and practice that it is the power of

relationship that brings about change, not programmes and services.”

Department of Health Child Protection: Messages from research (1995)

Box 2. Putting relationships at the heart of social work practice

However, it is important to note that there are factors which might make this difficult

to achieve or dangerous for the worker. Dangers include both personal safety and also

the effect of vicarious trauma – being exposed to threats or implied threats of violence

over a period of time. Stanley and Goddard (2002) found that when these were a

significant feature of the client/social worker relationship, some workers’ assessments

became skewed, with under-reporting of abuse. Workers routinely exposed to threats

of aggression may unconsciously begin to minimise the threats not only to them but to

the children they are monitoring.

Service users do not always resist in ways which are violent or aggressive. Passivity

and non-compliance are also common behaviours social workers face. Eileen Munro

(2008) suggests the structure of our practice defines the parameters in which service

users are able to act and manifests itself through encounters where service users are

seen “as either by being submissively docile or by being obstreperous and refusing to

engage. In the latter case these are then labelled a nuisance or resistant. They are

never seen as intelligent rational people who happen to disagree with you”.

What impedes relationship building?

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September 2010

Child protection social workers regularly report that clients are either hostile or

fearful.1 Fear impedes the gathering of information necessary to make a

comprehensive assessment because clients do not trust social workers enough to share

sensitive information. Social workers have statutory powers to protect individuals or

communities, which we have seen can create a barrier to partnership working with

families. Parents feel threatened when decisions are made about their children which

could result in removal. Yet without cooperation, the necessary work to achieve

positive outcomes is compromised. As Chapman (2004) states, “You can deliver a

pizza but you can’t deliver a child welfare service. You need the customer to be an

active agent in the production of the required outcomes”. However research

highlights that choices can be offered to involuntary clients giving them some control

over how they engage, as long as the social worker is clear, open and honest about

what elements are not negotiable.

Other barriers are less obvious but of growing concern. Social workers have been

increasingly required to spend a considerable proportion of their time on recording

contact with clients on computer systems, some of them quite complex to use. Recent

studies have looked at the impact of information and communication technologies

(ICTs) on social work. The concern is this process does not lend itself to the

traditional social work values of presenting a holistic biographical narrative as, in the

process of fitting subjects into the database, it is likely much of the critical contextual

information which gives depth and meaning to behaviour may be left out (Aas, 2004).

It has also significantly reduced the face-to-face time with families.

1 Sharon Daly, Children & Families social worker in conversation with Helen Wosu 2009

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September 2010

Factors which encourage and assist engagement.

Research findings suggest that there are a number of key factors in determining client

cooperation in the child protection process.

Communication: Research repeatedly highlights the importance of social workers

giving a clear explanation to clients of what they are going to do and why, at every

stage of the intervention. This is all the more important when actions are planned

which go against the expressed wishes of clients, and about which clients might feel

angry and resentful. Forrester et al’s (2008b) most striking finding was ‘the high level

of confrontation and low level of listening’ shown by the qualified social workers

towards clients in their study. They go on to say that the types of responses generated

in their study could be categorised as ‘roadblocks to listening’ in counselling theory

and research. Trust and respect are unlikely to develop without honest, clear

communication on the part of the social worker. A similar study highlighted the

importance of social workers remaining empathic when raising difficult issues with

clients and suggest that counselling skills training may be helpful in dealing with such

situations (Forrester et. al. 2008a).

Deficit models: Another factor in determining client engagement is that traditional

risk assessment procedures tend to be focused on deficits. This approach creates

fundamental barriers to engaging in relationships with families. In part this may be the

social worker’s way of counteracting the fear of being accused of professional

dangerousness and goes along with the practice of challenging families suspected of

abuse and or neglect. It is a form of defensive, paternalistic practice which Howe

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September 2010(2008) attributes to the social worker’s changed role over the past two decades. He

says the social worker has “become investigator, reporter, gatherer of evidence” as a

result of the “welter of procedures and guidelines”.

Clients’ views on the nature of the professional relationship.

Unsurprisingly, research suggests that clients are likely to feel better able to

contribute to decision-making processes if they have been prepared, informed and

supported through the process. Families want to be listened to in respect of any

decisions made that affect them; to be cared for as individuals, asked for their views,

feel they have been listened to and understood and get clear, honest explanations for

actions taken (Cleaver et al).

Challenges to current child protection policies

It could be argued that the reported increased incidence of non-engagement,

aggression and hostility are symptoms of a greater malaise in the child protection

system. A number of respected academics, including Eileen Munro and Nigel Parton

are voicing concerns that the current protective policies are not working and may even

be unworkable: “Continuing with overly harsh, punitive and intrusive processes will

only further marginalise those groups who are already significantly marginalised”

(Lonne et. al. 2009). They suggest a re-thinking of the language of child protection

such as “harm”, “abuse”, and “safety”, a commitment to “broader understandings to

what is in children’s (and families’) best interests” and “a strong evidence base to

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September 2010ascertain the success or otherwise of these social interventions, and to guide the

necessary reforms”.2

Conclusion

There is a growing claim for a radical reform of child protection practice from both

academic and practitioner communities. The paternalistic, punitive approach not only

fails to protect the most vulnerable but is making the job harder by clients’ increasing

unwillingness to engage with a system which they feel gives them no control and

which does not respect them as individuals.

However research shows that choices can be offered to involuntary clients giving

them some control over how they engage, as long as the social worker is clear, open

and honest about what elements are not negotiable. The importance of the social

work/client relationship to the protection of children has been a consistent finding in

research over the past decade and yet the increase in procedurally driven ways of

working imposed on social workers has created a barrier to building this relationship.

We need to find new ways of assessing and reducing risk to children which, as far as

is possible in child protection work, brings families into the process as working

partners. The following section explores, through a series of interviews, some of the

perspectives, concerns and opinions of involuntary service users and social workers in

Edinburgh.

References 2 ibid

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September 2010Brown,R Bute S, and Ford, P (1986) Social Workers at Risk: The prevention and management of violence. Basingstoke. MacMillan

Chapman, J (2004) System failure: why governments must learn to think differently. Demos

Cleaver,H.,Unell,I.,Aldgate,J., (1999) Children’s Needs – Parenting Capacity Norwich. HMSO

Department of Health (1995) Child Protection: Messages from research. London. HMSO

Forrester,D.,Kershaw,S.,Moss,H.,and Hughes,L.,(2008a) Communication skills in Child protection: How do social workers talk to parents? Child and Family Social Work, (13) pp 41-51

Forrester, D McCambridge,J. Waissbein,C and Rollnick, S (2008b) ‘How do Child and Family Social Workers Talk to Parents about Child Welfare Concerns’ Child Abuse Review 17 (1) pp23-35

Howe, D (2008) Child Abuse and the Bureaucratisation of Social Work The Sociological Review, 40. (3) pp491-508

Littlechild,B (2002) The Management of conflict and service user violence against staff in child protection work Centre for Community Research, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.

Lonne, B., Parton, N.,Thomson,J.,Harries,M (2009) Reforming Child Protection Routledge Oxon

Munro, Eileen (2008) Signs of Safety Gathering, Gateshead 2008, Keynote speech

(www.signsofsafety.net)

Stanley,J and Goddard, C (2002) In the Firing Line: Violence and Power in Child Protection Work. Wiley Chichester

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September 2010

Case Study

Tipping Point: From resistance to engagement in child welfare and

protection work

Introduction

Recent social work history shows a trend of increased hostility and aggression from

service users towards social workers in the statutory services (Stanley & Goddard

2002). Studies have consistently shown that where there is no working relationship

between service user and social worker, outcomes for children are negatively

affected.3 Recent studies that have looked at the impact on social work assessments

when social workers are faced with hostility and aggression from service users,

suggest that there is a risk of minimizing dangers when working in this environment

(Stanley & Goddard 2002).

At the same time there has been a trend towards more paternalist approaches to child

protection work over the past two decades. This has been linked to increased high

profile media coverage and apportioning blame in the most direct way (usually onto

the social worker) without looking at the many other factors which influence failed

child protection. The political and managerial response has been to increase the

number of policies and procedures to be followed which has led to increased desk

time and less social worker/client time. This has had an impact on the ability to

develop a relationship for working effectively together. This aim of this study was to

highlight some of the ways in which service users and social workers have been

affected.

3 Messages from research (1995)

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September 2010Method

Five families were identified by social workers as having had a past history of poor

engagement with social workers, but who were now working successfully with them

to achieve safe care for their children. Although the child is the registered client, for

this study the parent (or parents) and the allocated social worker were interviewed.

The interviews took place between July and August 2010 and were conducted by

social workers Helen Wosu and Jane Stewart. A semi-structured questionnaire was

used and the interviews recorded and transcribed. All participants are anonymous.

Findings

The key finding of the study showed that the quality of the relationship between

service user and social worker determines whether there will be a successful outcome.

The study highlighted some of the features which both service users and social

workers felt were critical to building a working relationship. It also highlighted

professional meetings as being a block to creating good working relationships.

Box 1 below lists these characteristics as they were identified:

Box 1. List of key findings

These features are interwoven and interact with each other so it is hard to separate

them. For example, it takes time to build trust but then it is difficult to have ‘honest

and open dialogue’ until trust is established. Fear of, principally, the removal of

children inhibits the development of trust, and so forth.

Features critical to building a working relationship:

A. Trust

B. Time: needed to build the relationship

C. Fear: allaying service user fears

D. Honesty: open and honest dialogue

E. Time schedule: working at a relationship level

F. Professional meetings

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September 2010A. Trust

Changing Lives emphasises the importance of trust and respect in relationships

between clients and social work staff but how this is achieved is not addressed.4 It was

clear from this study that both service users and social workers recognised its

importance:

Initial contact between social worker and client was described by both sides as

uneasy. In only one case did the social worker consider that the relationship was good

from the start.

Social worker:

Another social worker describes herself as being “very much the enemy” because the

children were removed early in the relationship.

Clients also expressed reservations:

4 Changing Lives :21st Century Review of Social Work

“Initially she was very mistrustful of us thinking, “How do I know you are going

to follow through on these things?” Social worker

“I don’t feel I can be honest with you cos if I tell you the truth you are going to

take my child away for ever” Social worker quoting parent.

“Initially it was quite tense because her child had been taken off her due to a child

protection order. She was placed in care and then I [picked up the case] a week

later and became her social worker after all this happened, so already she had her

back up. She was angry, she was volatile………..if you would try to speak to her

about something she would blow up and storm out. Lots of storming out went on.

That’s one thing I remember about her. She was very, very volatile.”

“She looked strict.”

“I judged her from the beginning and thought she was a bad person.”

“I didnie agree with what she was daeing. I just didnie like the fact that social

work were involved and I didnie want them involved.”

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September 2010

What helped was the ability to listen, which clients’ evidenced by the social worker

acting on the information and openness and admission of fallibility on the part of the

social worker:

Trust also builds up in small practical ways, like keeping appointments and doing

what you say you will do.

B. Time

“Someone actually listening to my opinion rather than just putting it on paper

and doing nothing about it.”

“she’s actually apologised on behalf of the social work department,

which I have never heard a social worker do in my life” Client

“If you don’t phone when you say you are going to phone or something, then you

will get a very angry response, “I trusted you”,…..on quite a basic level.” Social

worker

“Stick to your word. Say you will do something and do it because that builds

trust and if you don’t [do it] why would they trust us?” Social worker

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September 2010It can take time for trust to build on both sides, particularly for service users who have

had a negative experience with a previous social worker.

For parents with addiction problems it can be even harder to meet the social workers’

time-scales as one client said:

So, building trust takes time and there doesn’t seem to be a shortcut, although one

client said that his social worker saying early on, “you don’t bullshit me and I won’t

bullshit you” helped the process along. In child protection cases, this can make things

difficult as social workers are working to tight time-scales fixed by departmental

procedures and guidelines. Parents are faced with charges of neglect or abuse, alleged

or proven, often before good working relationships are built. One father says:

“They just tell you, ‘you need to do it’ and just expect you to do it and that’s not

how it worked for me. I think if she just understood a wee bit – put herself in my

shoes and thought…because if you love someone it’s hard [to give them up] and

you’ve just got to do it in your own pace, in your own time, instead of social

workers having timescales on everything.”

“You have got to be ready in your self tae dae it, before you can dae it and that

makes you seem really selfish but if you are no ready to come off it personally

you are no gonnie dae it for your kids, I mean, and that makes you sound

really nasty….”

“The [previous] social worker told us we had took the childhood away from our

daughter [because of our drug problems] and you end up kinda depressed, just

everything. We went through a horrible time o’ it”

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September 2010

In two cases trust was established slowly, over time:

C. Fear

Fear plays a bit part in delaying the building of trust and therefore how much and how

willingly information is shared. Clients talked about the fear of telling the truth and

sharing problems with the social worker:

One social worker said that as the relationship and trust developed so did honesty:

“over the years that we have been working with her, I think she sort of

understands me a bit better than when she first saw me” Client

“Now, I think we have a reasonably open and honest relationship. Over the

years this has not been the case. It has changed.” Social worker.

“When I was honest and open wi’ them about using drugs, wi’ ma other social

worker she never gave you the chance to break away from the stigma and that

was the way she was going to label you”

“I don’t feel I can be honest and open with you cos if I tell the truth you are

going to take my child away forever”

”she would tell me what happened and I would say ‘Fine. We can work with

honesty. What we can’t work with is dishonesty’.”

And when there was a blip,

“I would say to her, but you did do that and it was a boo-boo, but…when we go

to the Hearing you need to tell them what you have learned from that”.

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September 2010Fear can be crippling. It can manifest as aggression. One client said her husband was

accused of being arrogant and pig-headed, whereas he said “it’s just sticking up for

ma kids”.

Another said it has stopped her having another child for fear it would be removed.

The fears expressed in this study were all about loosing their children. This seems to

have a damaging effect on families. If this fear was removed, change was more likely

to happen:

D. Honest and open dialogue

Although all social workers cite “being honest and open” as important to the

client/social work relationship, stating the facts of the case without some

understanding, compassion and a sense of the possibility of change, does not in

themselves build a positive relationship and often had the opposite of the intended

effect, making clients resentful and resistant :

Clients also felt that social workers didn’t understand how difficult it is to change, and

felt they were ‘spoken down to’ and put under pressure:

Successful trust-building requires the ability to listen and follow through and to

project a non-judgmental attitude, all basic social work skills. Praise and

encouragement were particularly appreciated.

“When [this worker] came along she was different. From that day it has been

brilliant. We’ve not got the fear of loosing the kids and that’s quite daunting, to

wake up and look at your kids and think they may be removed from school the

day.”

“Like, she was just going on more about the bad…you already know what you

have done wrong.” Client

“I think her telling me what I already knew was just making me more stressed, if

that makes sense.”

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September 2010However not all clients felt at the receiving end of them. They were very sensitive to

body language and feeling they were being judged or lumped together as a

homogenous group and not seen as an individual. As one mother said about a

previous social worker:

One social worker emphasised the need to connect with the client on a personal level

which recognised the positive steps the client was making:

One client believes the turning point in their relationship came when open dialogue

identified the need to work on the client’s personal time schedule as opposed to a

schedule imposed from outside which does not recognise the local context specific

situation.

“That’s what the other social worker couldnie understand. Normally [when

people] take drugs you go wi’ certain people, but I wasnie. I took it on my own.”

“She classified you as a liar. Things that we would say to her she would go

‘Hmm’. I can remember being at a conference and I can remember us saying

something to her and she really shook her head and kinda looked…”

“You have to find a way of tapping in, something they can connect with you so

that they can see I am human as well and I see the human side of them and I

think by doing that that’s the key to building the first steps of the relationship,”

“The [previous] social worker was all happy to jump on us when we did stuff

wrong but when we done stuff right she never commented on it, she never said

nothing..”

“when I discussed that you just need to take your time with me because I have

minor learning difficulties and I said that I will get there, you just need to give

me time and work slowly with me, instead of saying we need to do this by this

time and just take her time really with me and just be patient”

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September 2010The social worker remembers that conversation and says that she then adjusted her

timescales to accommodate this. When the same young mother was struggling with

caring tasks at the foster carer’s house, it would have been easy to simply relate this to

the client’s limited capabilities. However, the young mother told the social worker

that it was because she couldn’t relax there so the social worker set up one supervised

contact at her own home each week and this was enough to start building confidence

in her own caring skills and eventually being reunited with the baby she had had

removed at birth. However, the social worker made the point that it was not easy to

arrange this, with very limited resources, and she had to swim against the tide to get it

through.

E. Time schedule: Working at a relationship level

Social workers have to carry the burden of risk to children in child protection cases.

Not all children are best served and kept safe simply by removal from home. We now

understand more about the impact of this on growing brains and how separation and

loss, even from neglectful parents, can also be harmful. If relationship-building and

change take time, the social worker has to work skilfully to create safety within the

family or extended family network while the process of change is taking place. In

other words, social workers have to be able to hold some risk while the work is going

on. This can be extremely stressful and requires good support in supervision. The

alternative to this is a procedural driven, paternalistic approach which tells the family

what is required and the timescales the family have to do this and this study shows the

impact of this on already damaged and stressed families.

One social worker said she fought the client’s corner at a Hearing for the return of the

children. Although there were some risks because of the mother’s mental health

problems, the social worker felt the children would be better off at home and was

willing to argue the case to sceptical Panel members. This worker said she felt this

was the turning point in their relationship and that the mother began to trust her more.

Another social worker inherited a case which had a long history of concerns of

neglect related to the parents’ drug misuse. In that case the parents said the social

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September 2010worker came in right at the beginning and said she had read all the reports but wanted

to hear their story. She seemed to understand the difficulties addicts have in

overcoming addictions and be more willing to give them time and also work with

their relapses. All the time she encouraged them by pointing out how far they had

come and at the same time maintain her role as a child protection worker. They said,

‘she was quite strict’ but that she listened. She was ‘open and pleasant and nice to

speak to’.

F. Professional Meetings.

A big part of case management is taken up with professional meetings. Social workers

are bound by law or by departmental procedures to hold or attend these. Child

protection meetings have to be held within very short time scales and Core group

meetings have to be held at least every 4-6 weeks (departmental child protection

procedures), Children’s Hearings of course are bound by the law. Information sharing,

decision-making and promoting partnership working (with other professionals and

with families) are the main reasons for these meetings. Service users in this study

found professional meetings very difficult. The word ‘intimidating’ was used quite

spontaneously by nearly everyone, including some social workers. One client also

talked about how isolated she felt. After giving birth her partner was not allowed into

the Child protection case conference because, the interviewer was told, he had a

previous conviction 10 years earlier of assaulting a police officer.

A social worker considered a Child Protection Case Conference held at the hospital

just after the birth of a child (which she herself did not attend as she was not yet

assigned to the case) must have been particularly harrowing:

She went on to talk about the hospital environment being hostile and intimidating,

“they just take place wherever there is a room available”:

“When you think about these meetings, here is a young woman who had just had

a baby, she has been told her baby is going to be taken off her. And you have got

a group of professionals that she doesn’t know, all sitting round her talking

about how bad things are…and nobody, well, preparing her for it.”

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September 2010

At a point in the meeting the young woman stood up and practically threw the baby at

the midwife, saying, “you f***ing take her then”. The social worker commented that

this behaviour alone could have resulted in the baby going straight to permanency, if

she hadn’t actually managed to forge a working relationship with the young woman

which ended in a very successful outcome. When this mother was asked what might

have made it easier she suggested “in a more comfy room…you know just not so

professional really – fewer people maybe”.

Not seeing Reports ahead of time also added stress;

Meetings are not always easy for the social workers either. One cited “other

professionals” making meetings difficult. They also have to work to very tight

timescales to produce the reports, the priority given to the report itself, not the time

taken with the family to prepare it. Even so, social workers didn’t always appreciate

how difficult meetings were for their clients:

“I think [meetings] just confuse people. [This young mother] felt absolutely

overwhelmed, intimidated and didn’t hear anything”.

“I was really nervous and always worried. It was like they were judging you....it

was just such an intense thing to sit there and listen” client

”it wasn’t until we were actually at the big meeting that we got this bit of paper

in front of us. We weren’t prepared for this. Sometimes we came across as

aggressive because if somebody says, ‘the kids were’nie maintained right, they

were’nie washed properly’, you’re put on the spot and I’m like, wait a minute,

you’ve not even gi’en us time to look at this.”

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September 2010

When one social worker introduced a new way of conducting a meeting, using the

Signs of Safety approach which gives equal weighting and attention to both strengths

and deficits and to the family and the professional concerns, the father said “it was

brilliant. That actually made it clear what we needed to do”. However the

professional reactions in this case were somewhat different. The social worker who

had set up the meeting said she thought the other professionals found it very difficult

to talk about strengths and to ‘talk about it in language that was normal,

understandable’, and that they ‘relaxed back into professional jargon’. She asked for

feedback from them and one said it ‘felt quite uncomfortable to be challenged by the

parents’.

The other social worker who used the Signs of Safety approach introduced scaling into

the core group meetings. Initially she met with considerable opposition from the

professionals who felt it was not their job to openly rate how well the client was

doing. However the social worker persisted and insisted and this became the tool

which really turned things around for the client and brought the core group working

together very effectively. This client also said she knew exactly what she was

expected to do to achieve a 5, “just bit by bit they did it gradually and that helped”.

“She [the mother] doesn’t see it as threatening. She knows it is for all the

professionals to make sure that we have got everything in place and to share

information…she can put her own point of view at the meeting. She is able to do

that.”

However the client’s view was:

“Intimidating. You’ve got the social worker and somebody else voicing their

concerns and so it is like…is there any point in going because they are going tae

go by what the social worker and everybody else says anyway so there is nae

point voicing your own opinion”

“it was like an encouragement for me. Like say I got a 4 [one week] I would be,

like, ‘Oh, I’m nearly half way there’ – that encouraged me to get higher and to

do really well and also it was more like a fun thing. It just wasn’t all

professional…so that took the stress and the worry of it away” client

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September 2010

Conclusion

This study has highlighted the same issues other studies have raised. Without a

working relationship, safety for the children in the family can not be assured.

As Eileen Munro asserts, “we can begin to understand the dynamic flow of a family’s

life and detect abuse only by spending time with parents and children. We can

improve childcare only by forming relationships and working with parents.”5

The strong message from the service users interviewed was ‘see me not my label’:

“she made you feel like you couldnie change…they label you …and to me that’s no

fair.”

One family even suggested social workers should bring in reformed drug users, “as

they really know how you feel and where you have been.”

The use of praise and encouragement was particularly appreciated.

Both clients and social workers stated what they feel are the basic requirements of

building that relationship; trust, time, removing fears and compassionate open and

honest dialogue. Meetings were universally stressful for clients who feel they are

structured for the benefit of professionals who fail to understand how difficult and, in

some cases, pointless clients feel they are. Building this relationship involves the one

thing social workers are pressed to be able to provide – time. Social workers also have

to be alert to the knowledge that the safety of children and the environment they grow

up in are both affected by the passing of time. More time is needed, but the passing of

time may increase risk to the child and it also places stress on social workers who

have to hold the risks within the case management.

One management solution recently has been to increase emphasis on time scales.

Reports have to be submitted and child protection meetings are held to very rigid 5 Eileen Munro Independent 16 Nov 2008

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September 2010timescales and social workers complain that the reports take precedence over the one-

to-one work with clients. Clients in this study said they found meetings intimidating

and difficult to participate in. Instead of the emphasis on finding solutions, we appear

to be stuck on assessments and even then, clients feel those assessments are often

judgemental and failing to take account of the difficulty of making changes. They are

particularly distressed at the frequently cited notion that if they loved their children,

they would ‘put them first’. As one client said, “just for her to come out and say

you’re not putting your child first, but when deeply I did care for my child, but at the

same time it was hard, you know, to break that cycle…..”

The Signs of safety approach to child protection cases was being used in three of the

cases reviewed. No questions were directly asked about this, but two clients identified

the different approach as being “brilliant” and “it took the stress and worry of it

away”. However, some professionals found it difficult to concede the power balance

finding it quite challenging to have to articulate their concerns in simple language. In

the one case where the professionals took up this challenge, the child and mother were

reunited and two years down the line are not only doing well, but the mother wants to

be part of helping other parents to work with social workers.

Clearly there are many influences on successfully building relationships with clients.

Often there is no one tipping point as such but a process (and often a hard slog) of

building relationships. Fear and anxiety are recognised as feelings which can generate

aggressive behaviour and service users in this study all talked about the fear of

loosing their children. Clients were able to respond more positively when they

understood clearly the steps they had to take and were given time plus understanding

plus support whilst making the changes necessary. A Signs of Safety approach might

be a useful tool in this process. Using this approach the statutory authority still sets

the standard of care and safety required from the parents but the balance of power is

shifted to include families in solution finding. This gives them choice. Research

literature consistently suggests that parents want to be asked for their views of

changes needed, they don’t want to be condemned to their past by feelings of blame

or judgement and they want to be heard and understood.

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September 2010Ultimately, it is important to recognise that in classifying service users as resistant, or

uncooperative, some of the negative influences may come not from the clients, but

from the way social work practice itself is structured.

References

Stanley,J and Goddard, C (2002) In the Firing Line: Violence and Power in Child Protection Work. Wiley Chichester

Department of Health (1995) Child Protection: Messages from research HMSO London

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