The Child's World, Third Edition

The Essential Guide to Assessing Vulnerable Children, Young People and their Families

Jan Horwath, Dendy Platt

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781784503826
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This definitive textbook provides accessible information on best practice for assessing the needs and strengths of vulnerable children and their families. It explores the challenges that practitioners face routinely - with suggestions as to how to address them - as well as the established areas for assessment, of children's developmental needs, parenting ability and motivation, and socio-economic factors.

This new edition has been extended substantially to include recent practice, policy and theoretical developments, such as understanding the lived experience of children, young people, and family members. It also considers children's neurological development, assessing parental capacity to change, early help assessments, emerging areas of practice such as child sexual exploitation, and working with asylum-seeking and trafficked children.

Crucially, this updated edition takes a broader approach in offering relevant information to a range of professionals working with vulnerable children. The importance of inter-professional working is emphasised throughout.

1

Introduction

Jan Horwath and Dendy Platt

Background

This is the third edition of The Child’s World. It is a completely rewritten and expanded edition, yet remains committed to the core assessment principles set out in previous versions. The core principles are that:

• practitioners should recognise the lived experience of children and view assessment as part of an ongoing, dynamic process that leads to positive child-centred outcomes reflected in quality changes to their daily lives

• effective assessment requires an ecological approach and a recognition of the contribution that practitioners from different disciplines make in understanding the world of the child and their family

• engaging children and families in the assessment process is the first step to establishing a meaningful working relationship with them that is most likely to lead to change

• it is important to build on strengths whilst recognising difficulties and understanding that each family is different

• practice should be grounded in evidence-based research and practice knowledge that should be used to inform professional judgement.

We are aware that the working context has changed significantly over the last 20 years since the first edition of this book was produced (see Chapter 2). To ensure that we address the expectations placed on practitioners in current practice, we have broadened the scope of this edition. We recognise that safeguarding in the 21st century means both protecting children from harm and preventing that harm from recurring, or from happening in the first place. We have therefore focused not only on the assessment task and process for children with significant care, support and safeguarding needs, but also on vulnerable children and families requiring early help. Similarly, public and professional awareness has grown in recent years regarding different manifestations of child maltreatment, and we have been concerned to include relevant new topics in this edition. They include child sexual exploitation, trafficking and online abuse and are topics only recently subject to research, policy and practice developments.

Our approach

Given the expanded nature of the book, two editors became necessary for this edition, and Dendy Platt joined Jan Horwath, who was the sole editor of the two previous editions. As editors we are keen that this resource book is user friendly. We want it to support assessments that are not overly ambitious, bearing in mind the resource constraints on workers, but lead to positive outcomes for children and young people. To ensure that we achieve these aims we consulted with practitioners, managers and students from a range of disciplines. Drawing on their views we seek to achieve the following:

• Provide a guide to assessment for anyone in contact with children and families who, because of their role, may be involved in or lead an early help, child in need or child protection assessment. In using these terms, we acknowledge that different terminology is used to describe assessments across the range of organisations. The key point for us, however, is to make the content relevant to low-key assessments at a preventive level, as well as all the way through to complex assessments that contribute to court or children’s hearing processes where removal of children into the care system is under consideration.

• Recognise the pressures on practitioners and managers dealing with complex and challenging situations routinely. The structure of the book is such that, apart from the three chapters on assessment task and process (Chapters 2–4), each chapter stands alone so that the reader can use the book as a ‘go to’ resource for initial advice and suggestions on specific topics.

• Draw on up-to-date policy, research and practice developments to provide practical but evidence-based advice as to how this knowledge should inform practice in the current working environment.

• Ensure that specific guidance, tools, etc. are included with suggestions as to how they should be used as an aid to inform professional judgements. We do not want practitioners just to look for tools or questionnaires that simply offer a convenient assessment vehicle or a shortcut to careful, child-centred thinking. Rather, by reading about the various tools and assessment approaches in the context of a chapter as whole, practitioners can use them with appropriate analysis and professional judgement.

• Recognise that effective assessment practice is underpinned by multidisciplinary working. We have attempted to pay attention to what practitioners from different disciplines can contribute to assessments as well as the part played by practitioners leading the assessment. We have tried to avoid the use of jargon and abbreviations in the text. Our view is that the use of such terms is not the basis of good practice; rather, it can be alienating to both families and practitioners from disciplines who are not familiar with the terms.

• Address issues of diversity. This is arguably our greatest challenge. In preparing this book we have remained aware of the increasingly diverse groups within society, the ways in which some minority groups are marginalised and the hostility encountered by others. All chapters contribute in different ways to addressing these issues.

• Offer practice examples. We have provided a case study that runs through Chapters 3, 4 and 11. Our aim is to do more than give our view on what practitioners should do but also demonstrate how we believe it should be done – for example, by providing a chronology, genogram and assessment of what needs to change. Other authors have also found innovative ways of enabling practitioners to apply theory to practice, such as an exchange between a child and a worker (Chapter 6) and quotes from service users.

We not only consulted with practitioners regarding our approach, but we also had practitioners and students from different disciplines undertake peer reviews of the chapters, alongside academics involved in research and teaching. We hope that this process means that the book is relevant to current practice and the content is applicable to those completing assessments in a diverse range of child and family settings.

The political context

The first edition of The Child’s World was produced in 2000 to support the implementation of the English and Welsh Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DH, DfEE and Home Office 2000). Since then there have been significant changes in the political context (see Chapter 2). For example, since the 2010 edition was prepared, the devolved governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have consolidated their positions and developed policies with more distinctive differences from those in England. Consequently, throughout this edition, we have identified policy and legislative requirements relevant to all four UK nations. Some chapters, however, may emphasise legislation in one or another of the four nations, depending on the expertise of the authors concerned.

Irrespective of the relevant nation, our approach to assessment in this book is driven by good practice rather than policy, and key messages (e.g. about the role of assessments or specific topics such as child sexual abuse or assessing parenting) are widely applicable irrespective of jurisdiction. There are many common policy themes in the assessment of children and families, both in the UK and in countries beyond our borders (subject, of course, to adjustments for cultural differences). These themes include the economic and social costs of populist and neo-liberal political ideologies, the effects of economic austerity on resource allocation, as well as specific approaches to children and families (e.g. for early help or removal of children into the care system).

Publication of the present edition coincides with a widespread return to populist, often neo-liberal, politics in several countries across the world. The ideology of neo-liberalism means an increase in free markets, growth in inequalities and privatisation and deregulation of public services, all of which are having a disproportionate impact on the poor. Populism accompanied by neoliberalism can lead to the apportioning of blame to vulnerable groups for the problems in society. These are the very groups with which this book is concerned.

Whilst it has been argued that the Brexit vote and the growth in populism have been driven partly by economic insecurity and disenfranchisement of society’s least powerful members (Goodwin and Heath 2016), these developments have been accompanied by increased immigration in Europe arising from political instability in the Middle East and Africa. In the UK, these conditions have set the scene for growing public intolerance of difference, and in particular of immigration. Indeed, a perceived threat from immigration is believed to have been a contributory factor affecting the referendum decision to leave the European Union (Abrams and Travaglino 2018), and there is evidence of an increase in racist incidents following the vote (Burnett 2017). Many families coming to the attention of services will have personal experiences of intolerance – for a wide variety of reasons, including homelessness, reliance on benefits, mental health problems and racial difference or immigration status (see also Chapter 30 for a discussion of intersectionality where factors such as these interact).

In the context of immigration, there may be limited grounds for some optimism. Sympathies have grown recently for individuals affected by the current Conservative government’s ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants. The recent scandal of the ‘Windrush generation’ is one example, whereby the general public voiced concern about Caribbean immigrants who were encouraged to come to the UK after the Second World War and have been found decades later to have ‘inadequate’ identity-related documentation. In some cases, individuals were even threatened with deportation (The Week 2018).

Linked to the neo-liberal political climate, severe austerity measures have been in place since the financial crisis of 2008. In the UK, economic growth was more or less stagnant from the time of the referendum decision to leave the European Union in 2016 (Office for National Statistics 2018) and into 2018. Future economic health in the UK and elsewhere is extremely uncertain, given the challenges, for example, of negotiating the country’s departure from the European Union and the threat of protectionist policies from the United States. Against this background, there have been significant cuts to welfare services and changes to the benefit system, and poverty rates amongst children have again been rising after falling for several years in the early 2000s (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2017; see also Chapter 28).

At a time when the demand for services is rising because of the increased pressures and stresses placed on vulnerable families, a recent report commissioned by the Children’s Commissioner in England demonstrated a 60 per cent decrease in funding for preventive services, such as children’s centres and youth services, between 2009/10 and 2016/17 (Kelly et al. 2018). This decrease is already putting pressure on local authority services for children with more complex needs, for which demand has been increasing; and a report by three UK charities highlighted the likelihood of a £2 billion funding gap for local authority children’s services in England by 2020 (Action for Children, National Children’s Bureau and The Children’s Society 2017). Thus, whilst overall spending on children (excluding healthcare) has increased since 2000/01 (Kelly et al. 2018), there have been significant decreases in the support for children with whom this book is concerned. The effects of these changes on vulnerable children and families are potentially huge and are unlikely to be helped by future economi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• 1:  Introduction
• Part 1: Undertaking Assessments
• Part 2: Assessing Parenting
• Part 3: Assessing the Child’s Developmental Needs
• Part 4: Assessing Safety, Care and Support Needs
• Part 5: Assessing the World of the Child and Family
• The Editors
• The Contributors
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Join our mailing list
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• Of Related Interest