What social workers do in performing child protection work: evidence from research into face‐to‐face practice

Ferguson, Harry

doi:10.1111/cfs.12142

Cited by 103 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Munro 2011;Nordlander 2006;Osmond 2001). The importance of building client-professional relationships in social work practice has been well documented in previous research (Broadhurst et al 2010;Ferguson 2014;McCracken & Marsh 2008; Van de Luitgaarden 2011). Nordlander's (2006) study on social worker's knowledge use in investigation work showed that once facts were established, social workers tended to choose interventions that had the capacity to lead to desirable results.…”

Section: Knowledge For Decision Making In Practicementioning

confidence: 78%

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Evidence in Practice : On Knowledge Use and Learning in Social Work

Avby¹

2015

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Section: Knowledge For Decision Making In Practicementioning

confidence: 78%

“…Although there are exceptions (e.g. Ferguson 2014;Nordlander 2006;Osmond 2001;White 1997;, there is a paucity of studies on professionals' actual knowledge use.…”

Section: Implications For Practice and Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence in Practice : On Knowledge Use and Learning in Social Work

Avby¹

2015

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“…A recent ethnographic study of face-to-face encounters that social workers have with children and their families found that practitioners had varying levels of communication skills, playfulness and comfort with getting close to children. In those cases where practitioners did have these relational capacities, they were found to have developed deep and meaningful relationships but this was not consistent across practitioners (Ferguson, 2014). There is a drought of good literature in this area, and most social work educators have forgotten or lost interest in what they once knew, and never practice themselves.…”

Section: Moving Beyond Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 94%

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

Cooper¹,

Whittaker²

2014

Journal of Social Work Practice

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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.

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“…Children and young people ordinarily understand the importance of the quality of worker-client relationships, which can take time to develop, compared to those that feel robotic and rushed (Ferguson, 2014). Ferguson (2014, p. 8) contrasted this latter style to the social worker who:…”

Section: Qualitative Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young people empathising with other animals: reflections on an Australian RSPCA Humane Education Program

Fraser

Taylor

Signal

2017

ANZSWJ

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INTRODUCTION:Empathy is associated with engagement, compassion, social support and emotional sensitivity, and it is a hallmark of good social work practice. Empathy rightfully receives much attention in social work practice, however, interspecies empathy has yet to be included. This article has been written to address this gap. METHODS:Two main research questions guide our conceptual discussion of young people, interspecies empathy and social work: (1) Why is empathy important to social work with young people?; (2) What can an Australian RSPCA Humane Education Programme (HEP) teach social workers about the benefits of interspecies empathy for young people? After our literature review, we examine our illustrative example, which is an HEP offered mostly to newly arrived refugee and migrant young people living in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, whose prior experiences of and/or attitudes towards animals may not have been positive. FINDINGS:Social workers are wise to prioritise empathy because extensive research has shown that, across a diverse range of fields, modes of practice in and beyond social work, empathic practitioners are more effective, achieving better outcomes with their clients. From the letters the young people sent to the RSPCA Victoria after completing an HEP, we note their self-reported increases in empathy for animals, including those they had previously feared or shunned. CONCLUSION:There are many potential benefits of recognising, fostering and valuing interspecies empathy through humane education programmes. However, for these to be ethical, care and empathy must be shown towards the wellbeing of the animals involved, not just the human participants.

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What social workers do in performing child protection work: evidence from research into face‐to‐face practice

Cited by 103 publications

References 21 publications

Evidence in Practice : On Knowledge Use and Learning in Social Work

Evidence in Practice : On Knowledge Use and Learning in Social Work

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

Young people empathising with other animals: reflections on an Australian RSPCA Humane Education Program

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