Nigel Parton

Reforming Child Protection

Child protection is one of the most high profile and challenging areas of social work, as well as one where childrens lives and family life are seen to be at stake. Vital as child protection work is, this book argues that there is a pressing need for change in the understanding and consequent organization of child protection in many English speaking countries. The authors present compelling evidence from around the globe demonstrating that systems across the Western world are failing children, families and social workers. They then set out a radical plan for reform: Providing an overview of contemporary child protection policies and practices across the English speaking world. Presenting a clear and innovative theoretical framework for understanding the problems in the child protection system. Developing an alternative, ethical framework which locates child protection in the broader context of effective and comprehensive support for children, young people and families at the neighbourhood and community levels. Grounded in the recent and contemporary literature, research and scholarly inquiry, this book capitalises on the experiences and voices of children, young people, families and workers who are the most significant stakeholders in child protection. It will be an essential read for those who work, research, teach or study in the area.

Governing the family : child care, child protection and the state

Social Work, Social Regulation and the Family - Child Care, Prevention and Partnership - Child Abuse, Authority and Risk - Sexual Abuse, the Cleveland Affair and the Private Family - Co-ordination, Management and Social Assessment - The Children Act 1989: Reconstructing the Consensus - A Contemporary Political Economy of Child Protection

Promotion of children's rights and prevention of child maltreatment

In medical literature, child maltreatment is considered as a public-health problem or an issue of harm to individuals, but less frequently as a violation of childrens human rights. Public-health approaches emphasise monitoring, prevention, cost-effectiveness, and population strategies; protective approaches concentrate on the legal and professional response to cases of maltreatment. Both approaches have been associated with improvement in outcomes for children, yet maltreatment remains a major global problem. We describe how childrens rights provide a different perspective on child maltreatment, and contribute to both public-health and protective responses. Childrens rights as laid out in the UN convention on the rights of the child (UNCRC) provide a framework for understanding child maltreatment as part of a range of violence, harm, and exploitation of children at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. Rights of participation and provision are as important as rights of protection. The principles embodied in the UNCRC are concordant with those of medical ethics. The greatest strength of an approach based on the UNCRC is that it provides a legal instrument for implementing policy, accountability, and social justice, all of which enhance public-health responses. Incorporation of the principles of the UNCRC into laws, research, public-health policy, and professional training and practice will result in further progress in the area of child maltreatment.

Child protection and family support : tensions, contradictions and possibilities

1. Child Protection and Family Support: Current Debates and Future Prospects Nigel Parton 2. The Re-Focusing of Childrens Services: The Contribution of Research Mike Little 3. Implementing the Family Support Clauses of the 1989 Children Act: Legislative, Professional and Organisational Obstacles Jane Tunstill 4. Policing Minority Child Rearing Practices in Australia David Thorpe 5. Relating Outcomes to Objectives in Child Protection Policy Jane Gibbons 6. Introducing Non-Punitive Approaches into Child Protection: Legal Issues Judith Masson 7. Can Filtering Processes be Rationalised Corinne Wattam 8. Children abused within the care system - do current representation procedures offer the child protection and the family support? Christine Lyon 9. Protection and Child Welfare: Striking the Balance Elaine Farmer 10. Need, Risk and Significant Harm June Thoburn, Marion Brandon and Anne Lewis 11. Delivering Family Support: Issues and Themes in Service Development Nick Frost 12. Partnership with Service Users in Child Protection and Family Support Bill Jordan 13. Putting Child and Family Support and Protection into Practice Barbara Hearn

The ‘Change for Children’ Programme in England: Towards the ‘Preventive‐Surveillance State’

Following the Children Act 2004 and the launch of the Every Child Matters: Change for Children program, England has embarked on the most ambitious changes in childrens services for over a generation. While the government presented the changes as a response to the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbie, they are much more than this. They build on a number of ideas and policies that had been developed over a number of years, which emphasize the importance of intervening in childrens lives at an early stage in order to prevent problems in later life. This paper provides a critical analysis of the assumptions that underpin the changes and argues that the relationships between parents, children, professionals, and the state, and their respective responsibilities, are being reconfigured as a result, and that the priority given to the accumulation, monitoring, and exchange of electronic information has taken on a central significance. What we are witnessing is the emergence of the preventive-surveillance state, where the role of the state is becoming broader, more interventive, and regulatory at the same time.

Child-Centric Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Fragmentation of Child Welfare Practice in England

The ways in which government supports families and protects children are always a fine balance. In recent years, we suggest that this balance can be characterised increasingly as ‘child-centric’, less concerned with families and more focused on individual children and their needs. This article charts the changes in families and government responses over the last 40 years, and the way this is reflected in organisational and administrative arrangements. It notes in particular the impact on everyday practice of the introduction of information and communication technologies. Findings are reported from recent research which shows the struggles faced by practitioners who try to manage systems which separate children from their familial, social and relational contexts. As a consequence, we suggest, the work has become increasingly fragmented and less mindful of childrens life within families. While the data and analysis draw on research carried out in England, we suggest that similar changes may be going on in other Western liberal democracies.

'From dangerousness to risk': The growing importance of screening and surveillance systems for safeguarding and promoting the well-being of children in England

England is in the process of introducing the most radical changes to childrens services since the Second World War. The ‘Every Child Matters’ Change for Children programme aims to integrate services in order to enhance prevention and early intervention and thereby improve the outcomes for all children while paying particular attention to the most disadvantaged. It places a particular importance on professionals sharing information and has introduced a whole range of new Information Communication Technology (ICT) systems for the screening and surveillance of the child population to make this possible. This paper provides a critical analysis of the changes, and argues that we are witnessing a significant shift in the responsibilities of and relationships between children, parents, professionals and the state and that this poses significant challenges for all concerned.

Portrayals of child abuse scandals in the media in Australia and England: impacts on practice, policy, and systems: most media coverage distorts the public understandings of the nature of child maltreatment

This article describes how the media have played a key role in placing the issue of child maltreatment and the problems associated with child protection high on public and political agendas over the last 50 years. It also describes how the influence of the media is far from unambiguous. Although the media has been crucial in bringing the problems into the open, it often does so in particular ways. In being so concerned with scandals and tragedies in a variety of institutionalized and community settings, the media have portrayed the nature of child maltreatment in ways which deflect attention from many of its core characteristics and causes. A focus on the media is important because of the power the media have to help transform the private into the public, but at the same time, to undermine trust, reputation, and legitimacy of the professionals working in the field. This concern is key for those working in the child protection field and has been a source of tension in public policy in both Australia and England for many years...

Women, the family and child protection

This article examines the recent trends in child abuse policy and practice, particularly the shift towards child protection. This is centrally concerned with the identification and assessment of the risk of abuse in families. The authors suggest that resources are increasingly beng targeted on certain ’dangerous’ families and away from a broader, preventative strategy of support for families in bringing up children. They examine the implications of such a policy, set within the wider context of an increasingly residual model of welfare services, for women, whose parenting will be subject to both tighter control and scrutiny yet at the same time receive less positive welfare services. A significant development that has emerged from recent public inquiries, DHSS guidelines and practice developments in the field of child abuse is a new activity called child protection (see Parton and Parton, 1989). Central to this new concept of child protection is the assessment by welfare professionals of the degree of risk or danger of child abuse in a situation brought to their attention. There is an increased emphasis on surveillance by all those working with families and children; schools, health, police, social workers as well as by the general community. The primary role for social workers is the assessment of dangerousness, to separate out the high risk from the low risk and then take decisive action that is firmly located within the statutory framework of child care legislation. The law is seen as central in defining the nature and boundaries of social work, as articulated by the Beckford Report: ’We are strongly of the view that social work can in fact be defined only in terms of the functions required of it by their employment agency operating within a statutory framework.’ (London Borough of Brent, 1986) The recently issued DHSS guidelines on inter-agency co-operation and responsibilities for child abuse also emphasises the importance of the law in defining the social work role as well as that of other agencies (DHSS, 1988). That increased use of the law is a significant trend in child abuse work is clear from the growing use of Place of Safety Orders generally (Norris and Parton, 1987; Parton, 1986), and the development of a practice based on ’therapeutic

Postmodernism and discourse approaches to social work

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that there have recently been a number of major debates in social theory associated with the notion of postmodernity that should be taken seriously by social workers. Our essential argument is that such debates provide important insights into helping us to understand and conceptualise contemporary social work in a way which can inform practice itself. While the chapter can provide no more than an introduction to the area, we hope to provide sufficient signposts for readers to find their way through an ever-expanding and increasingly complex literature in a way which they will want to take forward. In particular, we will suggest that such a way of thinking is very instructive for articulating and developing notions of reflective practice.