Young people’s participation: views from social workers and independent reviewing officers

In this chapter social workers’ and independent reviewing officers’ views on the work they carry out with children in care are presented. Pressures on professionals were a recurrent concern. It was also noted that social workers’ understanding of the concept of participation was limited and the examples provided illustrated that children’s and young people’s participation was largely tokenistic. There appeared to be a disconnect/dissonance between professionals’ views of how important participation is and their actual practice with families. Social workers and IROs both stated that children’s participation was very important to them but then went onto explain that generally children played no role in deciding where the review took place, when it took place, who was invited and what was on the agenda. Social workers and IROs also stated that reviews took place without children to meet statutory timescales and that on occasions CIC reviews would take place just after Personal Education Planning meetings leading to very long meetings. Despite legislation giving children rights to have a say in their care and their wishes taken into consideration, there remains a lack of commitment to this from professionals, high caseloads, systemic pressures and a focus on completing paperwork rather than engaging meaningfully with children seems to be the reason for this. This appears to resonate with Forrester’s (2016) idea of ‘zombie social work’, and appears clear evidence of ‘doing things right instead of doing the right thing’ (Munro 2012).

How parents and children view the system

This chapter considers children and parent’s perspectives of child protection conferences and whether they feel actively involved in decision making. It is based on interviews with 40 children and 52 parents in two local authorities whose children were subject to a child protection plan at the time. Most parents felt unsupported throughout the child protection process, reporting feelings of powerlessness, intimidation and fear. Parents reported that they found child protection conference particularly stigmatizing and oppressive and this led to them not trusting social workers and often other key agencies. A further interesting finding was that some parents felt sorry for their social workers and stated that they seemed stressed, clearly under too much pressure and often did not do what that said they could do. The chapter also considered young people’s views of social workers and what the barriers and enablers of good child protection practice are. This chapter highlights the high number of social workers young participants had; their relationships with their social worker and their perception of the child protection conference. The extent to which the young participants were aware of the impact of bureaucracy and high caseloads on the service they receive, coupled with the impact of the high turnover of social workers, was also examined. These factors impacted on how much the children and young people participated in the work that social workers were carrying out with them and the extent to which they trusted their social workers.

Introduction

This chapter sets the context for the book, examining the increase in numbers of children in care and subject to a child protection plan in England and Wales, outcomes for children in care and an overview of the child protection system in England. This chapter reviews the literature available on this subject as I explore the background of the care and child protection systems in England and Wales. It will further examine how the outcomes for children in care can be related to education, employment, mental health, early parenthood, and the criminal justice system. Chapter 1 will also discuss the methodology used during this research, as well as ethical considerations and the familiarity problem that needed to be considered when carrying out this research.

Children’s and parents’ participation: current thinking

This chapter seeks to ground the reader in some of the key concepts and thinking relevant to the research that populates the following chapters. It starts by considering what participation means, and for whom, exploring theoretical concepts such as Arnstein’s ladder of participation (1969) and Hart’s (1992) later adaption for the context of children’s participation, as well as other frameworks particularly useful for exploring participation in public services. This is followed by an exploration of some of the key issues and considerations specific participation in the context of children’s social care. How participation is defined tends to differ depending on who is ‘participating’, in what context, and for what end. In this chapter, we are particularly interested in participation within children’s social care, meaning the two groups that we will be exploring when discussing participation will be children and young people and parents within children’s social care. The rest of the chapter is then given to exploring some of the research relevant to the involvement of parents and children in social care decision making – namely through meetings held with professionals. In particularly, this section focuses on the roles of professionals in enabling meaningful participation in decision making, and some of the challenges involved.

When it goes wrong

This chapter looks at the complaints process - what happens when children in care are dissatisfied with the services they receive. Despite the introduction of guidelines and procedures aimed at encouraging and supporting children and young people to complain about the services they receive, children in care still face barriers to doing so in practice. Following semi-structured interviews with children in care, social workers, senior managers and independent reviewing officers from two English local authorities, the research uncovered issues of concern. Complaints by children in care are managed at the lowest possible level and senior managers have an overly optimistic view about children in care being informed of complaint procedures and being encouraged to do so. Children in care are worried about complaining and their voices are often not heard. However, when issues are clearly defined, independent reviewing officers have some degree of success in resolving complaints from children in care.

Summary and conclusions

In the last chapter, I provide my conclusions and a summary of the key research findings from the different participants in this research. Key messages as well as recommendations for policy and practice are also outlined. This chapter highlights what changes need to take place - both systemically, but also in terms of practice - by individual IROs and social workers. It particularly outlines how the caseloads of social workers need to be reduced and their needs to be much clearer focus on doing the right thing rather than just ‘doing things right’ (Munro 2012).

Senior managers’ perspectives

This chapter considers the views of senior managers, which are presented alongside a discussion of the rise in managerialism in social work. There was a contrast between the views of senior managers and the perspectives of the other participants interviewed for this study, particularly in relation to workload challenges that social workers and independent review officers faced. Senior managers appeared to blame individual social workers when things went wrong. Despite some social workers in this local authority having a caseload of 40 children, senior managers did not see this as an issue. Senior managers also displayed limited understanding of meaningful participation, were unsure what opportunities children had to participate or how they could support this. They reported that little seemed to have changed with children’s participation in their reviews over the last twenty-five years. Young people had a better understanding of the pressures faced by social workers than social managers.

Young people’s perspectives

This chapter details the views of 35 young people in care about their experiences of social workers, independent reviewing officers (IROs), the care system and the extent to which they felt their voice was being heard both in review meetings and in day to day practice. They reported finding Child-in-Care reviews frustrating and stressful, often due in part to poor relationships with social workers. Young people also reported scepticism about the value of the review process. The importance of the role of independent review officers, who generally stay longer in their role than social workers and therefore offer consistent relationships with young people in care, is stressed. Young people discussed how at times they were not invited to meetings as the social worker and IROs priority was ensuring the meeting took place within certain timescales. Overall young people reported that they did not feel that children in care reviews enabled them to meaningfully participate. One ray of light is the developing practice of children chairing their own reviews and this chapter ends with a call for this to be developed alongside other creative methods of allowing young people to play a meaningful part in meetings that affect them.