Changing practice: The possibilities and limits for reshaping social work practice

Abstract

Since 2010, the United Kingdom has witnessed a number of initiatives that shift away from reliance on performance management to improve social work with children and families, towards a renewed interest in practice models. This study reports on the evaluation of a local government programme in England to introduce and embed systemic family practice through the roll out of intensive training to social workers and frontline managers. It was anticipated through the programme that child protection social workers would undertake more direct work with families and build more positive relationships, resulting in a fall in the number of child protection plans and children experiencing repeat periods of care. The evaluation adopted a mixed-method approach encompassing an online survey of social workers, interviews with team managers and family members, a case audit and statistical analysis of local level metrics. It found limited employment of systemic family practice or improvement due to the programme. Adopting the 7 S framework, this study examines the barriers to and facilitators of successful change and identifies generic considerations for change programmes in child protection social work.

Family experiences of children’s social care involvement following a social work change programme

“…This article details findings from family interviews undertaken as part of an independent evaluation of a change programme in a single local authority. The article does not cover the entire evaluation (see, instead, Laird, Morris, Archard & Clawson 2017), but rather seeks to attend to these families' narratives of social care involvement in depth to afford insight into the influence change programmes have on engaging with and supporting families, service user-worker relationships, and the context in which these relationships are embedded. Furthermore, as part of the article, we offer some reflections on issues surrounding the recruitment of families for evaluative study as a means of assisting other researchers or local authority professionals who may be involved with comparable evaluations in future.…”

Family support services delivered using a restorative approach: A framework for relationship and strengths‐based whole‐family practice

“…Potentially, such work could inform whether one model should be preferred, whether applicability varies with context, or whether a single model combining all effective elements of practice is called for. The need for this body of work is strengthened by the varying costs of the training for different methods, especially in the current economic climate, which sees many services adversely affected by financial constraints (Laid, Morris, & Archard, ).…”

Effectiveness of child protection practice models: a systematic review

“…The small number of studies meeting our inclusion criteria is likely related to our stringent inclusion criteria, which were targeted at identifying studies of practice models with child-and family-level outcome measures in public child protection services. Although there is a growing body of literature regarding practice models, the terms used to describe these vary significantly (e.g., "practice frameworks", "change programmes", and "intervention models" - Gillingham, 2018;Lwin, Versanov, Cheung, Goodman, & Andrews, 2014;Laird, Morris, Archard, & Clawson, 2018); and as such, while we developed a comprehensive set of search terms with the aim of increasing the sensitivity of the search, we may not have identified all existing models. Furthermore, the focus on studies written in English means that we may well have failed to identify evaluations of other practice models published in non-English language journals (e.g., Holmgård Sørensen, 2009;Vink, de Wolff, van Dommelen, Bartelink, & van der Veen 2017).…”

“…During the past two decades, child protection practice models (also known as practice frameworks) that are embedded in a particular theory and practice approach, have become increasingly popular in multiple countries, e.g., the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom and other European countries (e.g., Baginsky, Moriarty, & Manthorpe, 2019;Gillingham, 2018;Laird, Morris, Archard, & Clawson, 2018). Barbee, Christensen, Antle, Wandersman, and Cahn (2011) define a practice model as follows:…”