The Finnish Approach to Errors and Mistakes in Child Protection: Trust in Practitioners and Service Users?

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Essi Julin ◽  
Tarja Pösö
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Service Users

scholarly journals Social workers’ views about children’s and parents’ competence in child protection decision-making

2020 ◽  
pp. 146801732094063 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Korpinen ◽  
Tarja Pösö
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Children And Parents ◽  
The Social ◽  
Strength Based ◽  
Professional Ethos ◽  
Controversial Nature

Summary Competence is an essential part of any decision-making process. In child protection, it is challenged by the controversial nature of child removals and the vulnerable situations which children and parents experience therein. This article examines how and on what grounds social workers view parents and children to be competent to give their informed view in care order proceedings and what they do if doubts about competence arise. The analysis is based on 30 interviews with social workers in Finland. Findings The professional ethos and ethics of social work were embedded in the social workers’ descriptions of children’s and parents’ competence. The social workers were confident that the parents and children (of certain age) were competent to give their informed view about whether to consent to the care order proposal and the proposed substitute home. When they spoke about competence ascribed with hesitation, they described the vulnerability of service users, as well as their attitudes and withdrawal from contact. In the cases, social workers emphasized a strength-based view of children and parents and aimed to ‘talk more’ with them and to ‘give them more time’ to support their right to give an informed view. Applications Social vulnerability and competence should be explored reflectively in relation to decision-making in child protection. A better understanding of their interrelation makes social workers more competent to support the service users’ right to be included in decision-making. Critical awareness is needed to recognize when ‘more talk’ is not enough to realize children’s and parents’ rights.

scholarly journals Embodied Social Work Practice Within Risk Society

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 673-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Smeeton ◽  
Patrick O’Connor
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Extreme Risk

This paper critically discusses the limitations of theorising social work from psychological and sociological perspectives and argues that phenomenology offers more opportunity to understand the embodied experiences of service users and social workers themselves. The paper argues that psychology and sociology have a limited analysis of being-in-the-world, which ought to be social work’s primary consideration. The paper offers an overview of the sociology of risk before embarking on an extensive description and discussion of Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology applied to the lived experience of child protection social workers working within risk society. The argument is put that phenomenology is a useful tool for understanding the lived experience of social work practitioners. Findings: The authors conclude that embodied social work practice containing fear and anxiety can be thought of as akin to taking part in extreme risk sports and that this is an unhealthy experience that is likely to skew decision-making and adversely affect the lives of social workers and service users. Applications: The authors argue that phenomenology can enhance understanding of practice and decision-making and offers insights into the lived experience of social workers. Phenomenology is useful for helping social workers negotiate risk-saturated environments, through a focus on meaning.

Parental participation in child protection practice: The experiences of parents and workers in Ghana

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebenezer Cudjoe ◽  
Alhassan Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Western World ◽  
Parental Participation ◽  
User Needs ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Child Protection Workers ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Participatory Practices ◽  
Parents Experiences

Promoting parental participation is one of the complex and delicate areas of child protection practice. Several authors argue that ensuring the participation of service users in child protection is a way to ensure a fit between service user needs and services. Studies on parental participation exist in some countries in the Western world, however, this is lacking in Ghana. This is the first study in Ghana to explore child protection workers and parents’ experiences on participatory practices. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 8 child protection workers and 19 parents, this study reports participants’ experiences of participatory practices. Workers indicated they ensured transparency and diversity while promoting participatory practices and parents reported their engagement in decision making as a prominent feature of their participation in case meetings. Barriers to participation were identified by the participants. The study findings suggested some measures to be put in place to overcome these barriers to ensure the full participation of parents during case meetings.

The Finnish approach to errors and mistakes in child protection: trust in practitioners and service users?

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Essi Julin ◽  
Tarja Pösö
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Learning From Errors ◽  
Whistle Blowing ◽  
Care Services ◽  
The Right

The shortcomings of the Finnish child protection system have been vividly highlighted by the reports of historic abuse in residential and foster care and by some fatal tragedies. Nevertheless, very little academic research on errors and mistakes in child protection exists. The chapter thus aims to capture this fragmented and unexpressed field in the Finnish system. In doing so, the chapter presents and analyses the preventative and reactive approaches to errors as defined by child welfare legislation. Examples of preventative approaches are regulations requiring some services and practitioners to be licenced and registered, a rather recent way to regulate practice and its quality. Examples of reactive approaches are the rights given to service-users (parents as well as children) to make complaints about and appeal decisions and the treatment they receive. A new practice is the regulation introduced in 2014 giving social workers the right and duty to report problems they encounter in their practice, a form of request for ‘institutional whistle-blowing’. In addition to the legal guidelines, the chapter will examine the national policy programmes which indirectly address errors. These programmes aim to guarantee that services are ‘rightly timed and tailored’ and that the assessments of children’s needs and risks are ‘correctly’ made. These reactive and preventative approaches may, however, have some unintended consequences which will be empirically highlighted. Consequently, it becomes clear that the Finnish approach is coloured by trust in practitioners and service-users and their skills, competences and good intentions to tackle errors, mistakes and wrongdoings. This reflects the overall rationale of child protection as a form of service provided by public administration. Trust may overrule a critical examination of – and learning from – errors and mistakes. As the very organisation of social and health care services is rapidly changing, the trust-based approach might soon be challenged.

scholarly journals From Snapshots of Practice to a Movie: Researching Long-Term Social Work and Child Protection by Getting as Close as Possible to Practice and Organisational Life

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1706-1723
Author(s):  
Harry Ferguson ◽  
Jadwiga Leigh ◽  
Tarsem Singh Cooner ◽  
Liz Beddoe ◽  
Tom Disney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Work Teams ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Longitudinal Approach ◽  
Staff Supervision

Abstract Research into social work and child protection has begun to observe practice to find out what social workers actually do, however, no such ethnographic research has been done into long-term practice. This article outlines and analyses the methods used in a study of long-term social work and child protection practice. Researchers spent fifteen months embedded in two social work departments observing organisational practices, culture and staff supervision. We also regularly observed social worker’s encounters with children and families in a sample of thirty cases for up to a year, doing up to twenty-one observations of practice in the same cases. Family members were also interviewed up to 3 times during that time. This article argues that a methodology that gets as close as possible to practitioners and managers as they are doing the work and that takes a longitudinal approach can provide deep insights into what social work practice is, how helpful relationships with service users are established and sustained over time, or not, and the influence of organisations. The challenges and ethical dilemmas involved in doing long-term research that gets so close to social work teams, casework and service users for up to a year are considered.

scholarly journals Digital social work: Conceptualising a hybrid anticipatory practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 147332502110036
Author(s):  
Sarah Pink ◽  
Harry Ferguson ◽  
Laura Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
New Concepts

While the use of digital media and technologies has impacted social work for several years, the Covid-19 pandemic and need for physical distancing dramatically accelerated the systematic use of video calls and other digital practices to interact with service users. This article draws from our research into child protection to show how digital social work was used during the pandemic, critically analyse the policy responses, and make new concepts drawn from digital and design anthropology available to the profession to help it make sense of these developments. While policy responses downgraded digital practices to at best a last resort, we argue that the digital is now an inevitable and necessary element of social work practice, which must be understood as a hybrid practice that integrates digital practices such as video calls and face-to-face interactions. Moving forward, hybrid digital social work should be a future-ready element of practice, designed to accommodate uncertainties as they arise and sensitive to the improvisatory practice of social workers.

scholarly journals Regulation and inspection of social work: costly distraction or stimulus to improve?

Social Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
David N. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Psychiatric Hospitals ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Safety Considerations ◽  
Work Method

Has social work practice changed so much in the last fifty years that it is no longer recognisable as social work? This question is discussed and illustrated by accounts of personal experience. There has been a retrograde move from theory-based to policy-based practice, with accompanying proceduralisation, and a concentration in child and family social work on child protection, with a similar narrowing-down of work with adults to assessment. Foregrounding of safety considerations in descriptions of what social workers do has accompanied increasing numbers of care orders and formal admissions to psychiatric hospitals. On the other hand, more, although by no means enough, attention is now paid to the experiential knowledge of service users. There have been various positive developments in social work method, perhaps as reactions to the perception that previous methods were too much influenced by psychoanalytic theory. These include task-centred practice, which both requires and engenders a collaborative user-worker relationship. In the C21st there has been a shift from a deficit-based to a strengths-based approach. What has remained constant is the commitment of so many social workers to practise in accordance with the values of their profession. Whether or not collective activity and campaigning can form part of practice itself, they are greatly needed.

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