Social defences and organisational culture in a local authority child protection setting: challenges for the Munro Review?

Self Cite

As parents we hand on the best and worst of ourselves to our children, and much more in between. Philip Larkin's famous poem, best known for its startling opening line 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad' recalls only the damage done, the inter-generational erosion of joy and potential stemming from bad parenting that 'deepens like a coastal shelf'. As a society we create conditions in which different childhoods can be lived out. We say that smacking children is OK, or not. We recognise and respond to the prevalence of sexual abuse and exploitation in ordinary families, or not. We do something about child trafficking, or not. These social conditions evolve, but slowly and ambivalently, suffer reversals of fortune, and vary widely among nation states and across continents. However, if one test of civilised development in a nation were to examine its treatment of child welfare professionals, then Britain, and especially England, would fare badly. Social workers have been taking a public beating in England for 40 years in a manner unknown in any other country, and the haemorrhaging has spread so there is now a crisis in paediatric recruitment and other child medical specialities. Few want to risk their careers against the possibility of a public lynching for failing to ask the right questions about a child who ends up on the mortuary slab a few days later.This crisis is just one symptom of the long, complex cultural narrative of child maltreatment and child protection work in Britain that has been profoundly shaped by recurrent episodes of moral panic and febrile media scandal mongering, usually centring on individual cases of child death. The Cleveland crisis of 1987 was different, and marked a radical, though highly contested turning point in our recognition of the prevalence of intra-familial child sexual abuse. Moral panics over 'Satanic abuse' followed in its wake, and then the 'recovered memory' wars. The North Wales and Leicestershire 'pindown' inquiries disclosed systematic institutional abuse to be an uncomfortably widespread phenomenon. Child protection policy and practice in Britain is an uneasy settlement between reactions to these events, the pendulum swings of family policy and government ideology, and obstinately ambivalent attitudes towards children and childhood in the wider society.

Section: Challenges For the Munro Reformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges For the Munro Reformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

History as tragedy, never as farce: tracing the long cultural narrative of child protection in England

Cooper¹,

Whittaker²

2014

Self Cite

“…Recent publications which develop and adapt Menzies-Lyth's (1988) theoretical framework of social systems as defences against anxiety offer a fruitful way for thinking about the challenges involved in maintaining a balanced relational professional mindset (Armstrong andRustin 2015, Lees, Meyer andRafferty, 2013;Cooper and Lees, 2015;Whittaker, 2011). In his paper based on empirical research conducted in frontline child care social work teams in the wake of the Munro Review into Child Protection, Andrew Whittaker heeds caution in relation to how the bureaucratic stranglehold on the profession is addressed.…”

Section: Vignette: Encouraging Relationship-based Supervisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Stumbling through’? Relationship-based social work practice in austere times

Hingley‐Jones¹,

Ruch²

2016

Abstract:In recent times relationship-based practice has become a familiar term in social work practice and education. Despite its widespread adoption, how relationship-based practice is understood varies widely. Drawing on contemporary conceptualisations of the child and family and individuals as psychosocial subjects experiencing social suffering, this paper explores how current social work practice can be understood in the context of neoliberalism and austerity. Setting these ideas in an historical context helps to inform our understanding as to why social work seems to be the focus of sustained political discontent and scrutiny, making it difficult to retain a balanced relationship-based professional stance. Contemporary responses to the current challenges of everyday practice are outlined and the contribution of psychodynamic and systemic ideas to promoting relationship-based practice is explored. The paper concludes by considering how the concept of social systems as defences against anxiety can inform our understanding of the resistance amongst practitioners to relationship-based practice and emphasises the importance of reflective spaces and places for developing and maintaining integrated, mature relational approaches to practice which both impact on practice at the individual casework and social structural level.

“…Another author from that tradition who is relevant here is Isabel Menzies-Lyth, whose nowfamous work on nurses (1960; see also Whittaker, 2011) has accustomed us to understanding organisational structures, practices and cultures as defences against anxiety. For example, rigid bureaucratic systems and notions of 'professional detachment' provide staff with mechanisms for reducing anxiety by distancing themselves from human suffering and personal responsibility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Delay and Anxiety in Care Proceedings: Grounds for Hope?

Beckett

Dickens

2014

This paper draws on an evaluation of a pilot project in three London boroughs (the ‘Tri-borough’ authorities) which had the aim of reducing the length of care proceedings to 26 weeks, in advance of nationwide moves in the same direction. Rather than looking at this as yet another battleground between professional autonomy and bureaucratic rigidity, the authors focus on the psychological aspects both of court delay itself and of setting time limits, considering the impact of each on the children, parents and professionals involved. The challenge is to balance the pressures of time and the need for thoroughness, being mindful of the uncertainty and anxiety that pervade care proceedings. The pilot succeeded in greatly reducing the average length of care proceedings. Professionals involved in the project, including those whose job was to represent the interests of parents and children, seemed satisfied that this had not been achieved at the expense of thoroughness, and indeed that shorter proceedings might help to reduce the overall level of distress and anxiety that children and parents endure. On the other hand, the new approach adds to the pressures on the professionals themselves. If the changes are to be sustained, the anxiety involved in making these life-changing decisions about children must be recognised, and adequate support offered to those who have to make them