Emily Keddell - University of Otago – emily.keddell@otago.ac.nz

Risk – unavoidable, uncertain, contingent

‘To be alive at all involves some risk’ Harold Macmillan in (Stalker, 2003:211).

Infusion means:

“To steep or soak without boiling in order to extract soluble elements or active principles” (The Free Dictonary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/infuse)

Empowerment? Shaped by divergence of rights, social control, managerialist environment, risk society and more…

The risks of ‘risk’ Individualised constructions of client problems: blame,

sanctions and removal of the offender or child, with little regard for the restoration of relationships or actual needs of the child.

A ‘risk’ society (Beck 1992) assumes the ubiquitous presence of risk, and the ability to both quantify and regulate risks of all kinds. Turns social workers into technocrats.

Neutralisation of ethics.

So are social work practices therefore hopelessly doomed to reproduce these dominant discourses? …and be reactionary, risk averse, defensive, blaming, technocratic, paternalistic, individualistic and operate in congruence with neo-liberal political aspirations?

Empowerment? Participation? Collaboration?

Participation is often taken as “ an unquestionable good, whilst practices that do not conform to this ideal are associated with paternalism and considered to be antithetical to just child protection practice…This is because these discourses do not engage with the expectations associated with child protection work, in particular the use of statutory power that such practice demands” (Healy 1999: 897).

SO must be adapted to the context, most obviously to the at times conflicting rights of parents and children

How social workers deal with these

tensions Qualitative study of 22 social workers and 13 other

case stakeholders including, where appropriate, parents, young people, foster carers.

Large NGO

Showed more complex reactions to the negative forces described earlier – and many were successful in implementing aspects of empowerment in self-defined ‘pleasing cases’. Clients generally supported this, although they had divergence in their views of risk and evaluations of empowerment at points in time during the life of the case.

So what did they do?

Used the concept of ‘respect’ to delimit the areas of clients’ lives that were subject to social control – that is, those specifically and rigorously defined as harmful to children

Communicated in language understandable to clients – both adults and children

Took a long-term view of child well-being, and ascertained children’s views

Avoided reactivity – helps calm the stresses of practice (Howe, 2010)

Promoted relationship maintenance as a method of managing risk – strong commitment to honesty and trustworthiness

Used safety oriented assessment and planning tools

Incorporated Indigenous models and worldviews

Long term view, avoiding reactivity, relationship focus

“Yeah, and trying to balance out what would be – what’s the gain of keeping them in care longer versus the damage of putting them into another family when they’ve already had heaps of instability….So it’s been pretty scary, and I – at times I would have liked to have jumped ahead and just pulled the kids out, you know, because that felt like the safest – the safest way to go. But… I think that looking back on it I can see the way we’ve done things has meant that she’s made changes that she wouldn’t have made otherwise …And that she’s been willing to work with us. That she wouldn’t be otherwise. Um, but, yeah – ah, just so draining. And often feeling like you might take two steps forward and one step back”. SW14, C8.

Using safety oriented tools – in

this case Signs of Safety (Turnell &

Edwards, 1999) This provides a format for detailed information

gathering and ‘changing the focus’ from trying to evaluate risk based on previous abusive behaviour to what needs to happen for future safety:

Int: “And so how do you think doing the signs of safety approach has affected the way you think about risk?

Because we’ve done the history, we’ve done the family stuff … you know, just more questions that actually give you a better picture of the risk, not just the risk but, if the child stays with you, then how is it going to be safe?” SW10 S, C2.

More on SoS: finding exceptions

and bringing in others to

contribute to safety:“ ..we had two baby cases where – one where Dad said I’m gonna smash this baby against the wall and squash it like a bug, and another one who said let’s throw it out the window – like in a really short space of time – quite high risk! – um, and we – we were able to use the Signs of Safety approach in safety planning and not remove those children. And we’ve never taken it to FGC. Which, I’m like, that’s pretty cool. (laughs)

Int: Because what would have happened without that?

Oh, well we would have freaked out.

Int: You think?

Safety continued…increasing

response options by focussing

on safety“Int: Right. So when someone makes it a sort of

hugely provocative statement like that…before you would have just acted on that statement?

Oh we would have gone ‘Baby – unsafe!’ Take it out now. Done. Easily. Probably. Or, ‘Dad leave the home right now’. That would have been our only way of …of dealing with it… we did Signs of Safety that afternoon – it just happened to be that everyone was in the office when they came back from that visit and so we mapped it straight away and then went back out within a day and put a plan in place in an afternoon so we were good…

Safety cont…using exceptions to build safety

instead of react to risk…But whereas I absolutely know that if we hadn’t

used that approach we would have just gone straight to take the baby. Yeah. Cause you could have easily written an affadavit, it wouldn’t have been hard to convince a judge.

Int: So what … convinced you that the child was safe?

…they (social workers) had a conversation with the mum about what she did when she – how she acted protectively in those times….so it was pretty… um, and it was all around saying what was she gonna do when she saw him begin to escalate…

Safety cont… planning, ‘good enough’ parent

..cause he … had PTSD and all sorts of stuff, flashbacks. And sometimes he would just click like that …So it was about him never being left alone with the baby and putting the supports around all of that stuff.

Int: And the mother was obviously able to do it?

Yeah. She wasn’t… (laughs) you know – she was alright. She was good enough. And we dragged in some family and some support people that they had to also be involved so... yeah. That was good …the baby’s fine”. SW17, C10.

Incorporation of indigenous knowledge, commitment to transparency and openness

“The kopu – I do their kopu, and the signs of safety I take from the kopu, what is concerning and what is helpful and that … and with the signs of safety I take it to the family, after I’ve finished doing that up I give it to them and I get them to look at that, they get blown away, they go, ‘oh, sheeks, really, oh God’, but they’re really good, they think it’s good when they can see it and that’s what they have found with (the agency) and the families I’ve worked with, that nothing’s hidden, nothing’s hidden from them” SW21.

Indigenous worldview

continued…“It’s been really interesting because I’ve spoken to a family and I said

ok, where shall we start? and they say, ‘tapu, what does that mean?’, because tapu can mean so many things to different Māori you see, so it’s a good place to start, - and what I would usually say, is ok, it’s your bottom lines … what do you hold so dear that you will protect that thing, but it can also be ...something that is precious that has been broken; and the whanau said to me, ‘well you know we had our children removed from us and placed with ...caregivers without consulting the wider whanau, the mother was the only one that’s consulted, so therefore we feel that’s tapu, that’s broken and the brokenness is that we now have grandchildren living outside the whanau’, so they wanted to put that right up there, and that was their bottom line, that was what they wanted to work against.

Int: And how did you try and deal with that?

I didn’t, I just recorded it for them, I just put it up there and I said, ‘fine’” SW20.

What challenges the ability of

these practices to be experienced

as empowering? In some cases, safety/solution focused practices and the

exclusive reliance on mental health discourses to explain clients’ problems can obscure macro level causes of client situations such as poverty and gender in equality

Paradoxically, aiming to keep children with their families, or return them, requires high levels of commitment to change from clients – some parents resented the pressure to change.

Confusion about the role of psychological theories such as attachment or psychodynamic theories of the causes of human behavior.

Some parents viewed risk as connected to the withdrawal of social worker support, and used their power to resist this withdrawal.

Lack of resourcing of long term relationships

What helps support these micro practices?

What is the relationship between these empowerment practices in the construction of risk and safety, and the organisational, national policy, and theoretical contexts they are embedded in?

Organisational values as a ‘buffer’ – respect for the person

National orientation – child welfare and child focussed

Ethical engagement and awareness

Strong reflection and supervision processes – employing qualified social workers

Practice tools adapted to the child protection context

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