Building Relationships and Communicating with Young Children

A Practical Guide for Social Workers

Karen Winter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136865480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Why is it important for social workers to form meaningful relationships with young children on their caseloads? And how can social workers develop meaningful relationships with these young children?

This book provides a timely, invaluable resource and practical guide for social work students specialising in family and child care and for practitioners who have young children on their caseloads. Packed with real life examples of in-depth interviews conducted with young children known to social services, it outlines what can be done to improve practice in this challenging and demanding area.

Building Relationships and Communicating with Young Children is the first book to bring to life the perspectives of young children and to highlight their competency within the interview process. It:

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• explores the key ingredients required by social workers to establish, maintain, nurture and value their relationships with young children

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• highlights what young children, within the context of meaningful relationships with social workers, can tell us about their circumstances, their perspectives, their feelings and their views

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• uses case examples to identify best practice guidelines including methods and techniques for social workers to build meaningful relationships with young children on their caseloads

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• makes recommendations regarding how best to positively engage and work with young children.

Written by a social worker and university lecturer with 16 years experience of working in the field of child protection, this textbook is full of case studies and practical advice about how to form relationships with young children known to social services, the most appropriate methods to use and how to represent their perspectives. It is essential reading for all social work students as well as social work practitioners and other social and health care professionals.

1
Setting the scene

Summary of chapter content

This chapter focuses on concerns about social worker relationships with young children through an overview of the findings of some of the key child abuse inquiries and serious case reviews that have taken place in the UK over the last 60 years. The chapter shows that strikingly similar difficulties have emerged at different times, in different places and with different children. These difficulties have included infrequent and inconsistent visits, visits that focus on the parents and the lack of direct personal communication by the social worker with the children. The chapter concludes by arguing that there is a need for practitioners to refocus on the importance and value of effective relationships with young children.

Introduction

Within the UK, the reports of over 70 child abuse public inquiries have been published since 1945 (Corby et al. 1998). Within the social work profession there have been mixed reactions to these. For example, Corby (2000: 220) has highlighted that ‘there is considerable disagreement among social work professionals, trainers and educators about the value of utilizing inquiry reports in […] teaching [and training]’. He has argued this is because some professionals have felt that, following public inquiries, a number of negative consequences tend to follow for the profession including an increased emphasis on bureaucracy and managerialism. Others have thought that there is an overemphasis on the ‘individual pathology’ of abusers as opposed to social and structural failings (Corby 2000: 220). Still others have felt that inquiry reports focus on individual practice in a vacuum and do not relate failings in practice to wider organizational and structural issues such as the lack of resources. While understanding these concerns, this chapter takes the view that engaging with and understanding the findings of child abuse inquiries is a critical part of social workers’ reflection and learning. As Corby has argued, inquiries ‘provide detailed accounts of professional involvement in child abuse cases of a kind which is rare elsewhere in social work literature: in effect, detailed ‘real-life’ case scenarios’ (Corby 2000: 220). Furthermore, it is possible to see the huge influence that inquiries have on social work legislation, policy and practice. Most recently this has involved the social work reforms that have followed the Laming reports (2003, 2009), which investigated the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Peter Connelly (see DCSF 2009c, 2009d; DH and DCSF 2009).

The focus for this chapter is not so much on the myriad of recommendations that have flowed from each of the inquiry reports but rather on the reported descriptions about the quality and nature of the social workers’ relationships with the children involved. This approach does risk perpetuating the view that it is individual social workers who are to be named, blamed and shamed. However, it is argued that individual social work practice is a product of its broader context while also being able to shape that context. What this means is that while individual social workers need to take responsibility for their own practice, it is also important to recognize that their assumptions and working practices are also an embodiment of the norms and expectations of their organization. Within this context, it is therefore not acceptable simply to place the blame for failings squarely onto the shoulders of individuals. However, neither is it acceptable to lay blame solely at the level of the organization (the local authority, the trust, the team and the office). This is because social workers are free, within the constraints of the organization, to reflect on their assumptions and practices, to adapt them and thus to play some role, however limited, in helping to reshape and redefine their broader organizational context.

In considering some of the key findings that have emerged from the official inquiry reports, the chapter provides a chronological account of some of the major and most well-known inquiries that have taken place in each decade since the 1940s and uses these to draw out the key lessons for practitioners in their relationships with young children. I make no apologies for reviewing the findings in this way. Inquiries deal with the lives of real children and detail some of the horrific consequences they have faced when adults have failed to develop meaningful relationships with them. Moreover, in describing some of the case details contained in a number of reports and considering them side by side in this way, the key messages for social workers become abundantly clear.

The Monckton Report into the death of Dennis O’Neill (Home Department 1945)

The ‘fit person’, local authority or individual, must care for the children as his own: the relation is a personal one. The duty must neither be evaded nor scamped.

(Home Department 1945: 15, para. 46)

These were the words of Sir Monckton in his inquiry report (Home Department 1945) into the death of Dennis O’Neill, a 12-year-old boy who was known to social services and who died following sustained neglect and physical abuse at the hands of his foster carers. The case was the first of its kind to highlight the vulnerabilities of children placed in alternative care without adequate social worker supervision and support. In November 1939, Dennis and his three siblings (Terence, Freddie and Rosina) were removed from their parents’ home and were, under the then existing legal provisions, taken to a place of safety following long-standing neglect and abuse. They remained under this arrangement until the end of May 1940 when a magistrate’s court decided that Rosina could live with her maternal grandmother and the three boys should be committed to the care of Newport Council.

Newport Council was required to board out the children with suitable foster-parents. Between 30 May 1940 and 28 June 1944 the three brothers were boarded out with two sets of foster carers. Then, on 28 June 1944, Dennis was boarded out with Mr and Mrs Gough who lived at Bank Farm in Shropshire. Terence joined him a week later, whereas Freddie was placed with other foster carers nearby. Six months later, on 9 January 1945, Dennis died having endured sustained abuse and neglect in the foster home. The cause of death was noted as ‘acute cardiac failure following violence applied to the front of the chest and the back while in a state of under-nourishment’ (Home Department 1945: 3, para. 3). Dennis had been beaten on the chest and back with a stick used by his foster-father. At the post-mortem he was noted to have septic ulcers on his feet and severely chapped legs. It was later revealed that the night before his death Dennis had been stripped naked, tied to a bench and beaten about the legs with a stick until his legs were blue and swollen and he could no longer stand. He was then locked in a small cupboard area. The testimony of his brother, Terence O’Neill, at the court proceedings of Mr and Mrs Gough, and his recently published book about their experiences (O’Neill 2010), reveal a catalogue of terrifying and appalling abuse.

In trying to understand how Dennis could have been so catastrophically let down, Sir Monckton’s official inquiry concluded that Dennis’s death could be in part attributed to the social worker’s lack of personal relationship with him. Sir Monckton outlined three concerns in this regard: infrequent visits by the social worker to the new placement; lack of personal, direct individual engagement with Dennis by the social worker when visits did occur; and failure of the social worker to act decisively when concerns were noted.

On the third point, Sir Monckton said the social worker, on a home visit, saw that

Dennis looked ill and frightened, answered questions extremely nervously and did not look up when answering [and that very] early in the interview she reached the conclusion that the children ought to be immediately removed.

(Home Department 1945: 14, para. 38)

Although this was an unequivocal opinion, it was not followed up by decisive action. Rather than act on these observations and ‘take the children away there and then’ (Home Department 1945: 14, para. 41) Dennis and Terence were left in their placement while a request for a placement move was processed internally. During the time the request was being processed Dennis died. In summing up, Sir Monckton stated,

I cannot escape the conclusion that there was in neither [local] authority a sufficient realisation of the direct and personal nature of the relationship between a supervising authority and boarded-out children, that there was too great a readiness to assume that all was well without making sure.

(Home Department 1945: 17, para. 50)

In highlighting the failures, Sir Monckton compared the social worker–child relationship with the parent–child relationship. He ascribed the former the same significance as the latter, arguing that both should be underpinned by the same qualities and characteristics. In effect what he was saying was that we, as social workers, need to think, feel, communicate, invest and act as if the children on our caseloads are our own. What is it in positive parent–child relationships that Sir Monckton was appealing to?

In reading the inquiry report, these characteristics seem to include: the nature of the parent–child relationship (based on responsibilities carried out within the context of a long-term, warm and consistent relationship); parenting skills (advocacy, insight, responsiveness, ability to offer ‘care’); and the right conditions (resources and time). Sir Monckton’s views on the relationships among the state, parenthood and social work practice have some relevance still today in terms of informing debates about the nature, quality and expectations of social workers’ relationships with young children. These debates regarding the ‘corporate parent’ (that is, the nature of the professional caring roles and responsibilities for children in state care) are contentious (Leeson 2009). While there is not the room to summarize them here, nonetheless it is important to consider the broad issues as indicated through the exercise below.

EXERCISE

Consider the following questions:

• Are Sir Monckton’s expectations regarding the social worker role realistic or too idealistic? Explore with examples from your own experience.

• What might be the impacts on social workers of implementing the model above?

• What might be the impacts on birth parents/main carers of implementing the model above?

Report of the Care of Children Committee: The Curtis Report (Curtis 1946)

The importance of a personal relationship between a social worker and children on their caseload was reiterated in the Curtis report that examined the care arrangements for children who lived in various types of residential facility. The care of children outside their family was of great concern in the 1940s in the UK. During the Second World War, the government organized the evacuation of huge numbers of children away from areas that were being bombed. Parents died during the war and many others had to abandon their children. Babies were adopted but most children lived in institutions. The Curtis Report (1946) investigated the conditions within a number of different types of institution including workhouses, public assistance children’s homes and homes run by voluntary organizations, to name a few. In a summary of their general impressions about how some of the children were then cared for in some of the homes they specifically commented on the relationships between staff and children, noting that they were often characterized by a

lack of personal interest and affection for the children which we found shocking. The child in these homes was not recognised as an individual with his own rights and possessions, his own life to live and his own contribution to offer. […] He was without the feeling that there was anyone to whom he could turn who was vitally interested in his welfare or who cared for him as a person.

(Curtis 1946: 134, para. 418)

Furthermore, in relation to children boarded out (placed with foster carers) they said that

[t]here is no doubt that the O’Neill case had put authorities on their guard […] and we thought that the individuals in charge were doing their best, though sometimes in a remote and impersonal way, to serve the interests of the children. But the present administrative system seems to us full of pitfalls. Divided responsibility, office delays, misunderstandings and misjudgments of people, irregular visiting and failure to visit promptly in emergency, may easily under present conditions facilitate a tragedy, as they have done in the past.

(Curtis 1946: 135, para. 421)

In light of their investigations the Curtis Committee made 62 recommendations in its report, and on the ‘personal relation’ stated:

We attach great importance to establishing and maintaining a continuing personal relation between the child deprived of a home and the official of the local authority respons...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Setting the scene
• 2 The importance and value of relationships
• 3 Barriers to building relationships
• 4 A child rights-based approach
• 5 Communicating with young children
• 6 Communicating with young children
• 7 Communicating with young children
• 8 Summary and ways forward
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index