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The independent review of children's social care (2022) has proposed a radical reset of England's children's services, shifting a remote, assessment heavy system towards one that works alongside communities to help prevent statutory interventions. However, notions around the harnessing of community resources to deliver Early Help are often underpinned by assumptions regarding the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector and the ease with which such organizations can be integrated into preventative strategies. This paper reports findings from embedded research within a unitary authority in Southwest England during remodelling of its Early Help service to work more collaboratively with local VCSE organizations. The study generated data from ethnographic observations, semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with 95 participants, including local parents, service providers, VCSE organizations and Council leaders. The findings illustrate that families value the compassionate, responsive and flexible support available within many VCSE settings. However, differences in practice cultures, regulatory pressures on statutory providers, the need to (re)build trust in communities and sensitivities around power‐sharing and resourcing meant negotiating VCSE sector integration was fraught with complexities. Few studies have gained such privileged access to a Local Authority's remodelling of Early Help services, and this paper has significant insights for the debates surrounding the independent review of children's social care (2022) and its recommendation to bring services 'closer to communities'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study that sought to understand the experiences of frontline staff working in Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) Children's Social Care Services and their views on a new family safeguarding model (Family Solutions Plus). Focus group interviews were conducted with 20 frontline staff and managers in different teams across OCC Children's Social Care Services using video conferencing software. Thematic analysis identified three overarching themes: Preparation for the implementation of Family Solutions Plus, staff views on the implemented model, and challenges to its implementation. Staff voiced strong support for the new model, which places a much greater emphasis than previous practice on supporting the whole family, developing parenting skills and keeping children safe with their families. The challenges associated with the transition to a new model were considerable in the short term, partly due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, but there was optimism that the new model could be sustained and stabilized over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing numbers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) people are becoming foster parents in several western countries. The LGBTQ perspective on the child welfare system has received little attention in practice, research and policy. Despite their increased rights, LGBTQ foster parents continue to face challenges related to fostering. Knowledge is needed on LGBTQ individual perceptions of the process of becoming foster parents, including barriers and facilitating factors. This paper reports on the experiences of 13 gay or lesbian foster parents in Norway. The study shows a lack of knowledge about the possibility of becoming foster parents due to lack of information directed at them as a minority group. Participants felt vulnerable and experienced "minority stress" before encountering the child welfare system, while mainly experienced the encounter with the staff as good and respectful. Although several valued being treated "like everyone else" by the system, others questioned why LGBTQ‐specific parenting issues were not raised and discussed. Apart from lack of information, the process towards foster parenting seemed mostly hampered by participants' own assumptions that sexual identity would be a barrier and to some extent biological parents' refusal. The study suggests that foster care and child welfare services would benefit from information in recruitment of foster parents, aiming at being more inclusive. Furthermore, we address gender and sexuality diversity related to foster care work and highlight the strengths and challenges it may offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Family Group Conference (FGC) is grounded in a rights‐based framework, whereby children and their families have the right and responsibility to be primary decision‐makers when child protection issues arise, and the statutory agency has the responsibility to convene the entitled members of the family network to lead the decision‐making. A distinct core component of FGC—private family time (PFT)—allows families to discuss the information and formulate their responses and plans privately during conferencing. This paper describes how a large child welfare agency in the United States adapted PFT in two ways: (1) including a parent advocate (PA) and (2) abbreviating the amount of time allowed for this discussion. Given the lack of empirical research on the PFT component, this qualitative exploratory study sought to understand the functions and perceived impacts of PA‐supported PFT during initial child protective services (CPS) conferences at which decisions of child removal or placement were being contemplated. PFT served multiple beneficial functions and impacted families in several positive ways: families gained greater awareness of safety concerns, felt empowered and confident in the preferred safety and service plan, became increasingly engaged and involved in the case decision‐making process and ultimately felt less apprehensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gathering of 'wishes and feelings' in UK child protection proceedings (s.53 Children Act 2004) should highlight the child's opinion of social work intervention and services provided. However, with no statutory social work guidance on participation currently in place, children frequently miss opportunities to be involved in their own child protection planning. This paper is drawn from a 3‐year study into participation in child protection social work. It includes findings from qualitative interviews, and one focus group, with social workers, parents, children and participation workers, from three local authorities in the United Kingdom. The findings revealed some examples of significant gaps in service provision, particularly from the perspective and understanding of the child. The skewed translation of wishes and feelings legislation, along with its subsequent (and often inadequate) application to practice, prevents children from understanding and responding to social work intervention and can lead to idiosyncratic practice. This paper provides recommendations for a practical response to practitioner dilemmas regarding wishes and feelings and bridges the gap between research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between professional work and standardization. There has been an increase in the use of standardized programmes in child welfare services (CWS) in Western society. Some researchers have criticized standardized programmes suggesting that they undermine professionals expertise and threaten their position, whereas others argue that such programmes strengthen professional practice. In this paper, we examine how standardized tools, in this case, a standardized parenting programme and a standardized Norwegian assessment tool, influence professional roles as experienced by child welfare workers (CWS professionals) in Norway. Semistructured individual and group interviews were conducted with 31 frontline workers in two CWS agencies. Our findings suggest that standardized tools increase the social workers experienced professional competence but challenge their professional knowledge base, reflective practice, and professional accountability. Professional and practical implications for CWS work are discussed in the light of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Siblings are key actors in the social network of young people in care. This paper explores young people's perceptions of changes in the quality of sibling relationships and the pathways relationships follow during the transition from the biological family into care. A thematic analysis of interviews with young Norwegian people (n = 25) in care showed that, in the biological family, sibling relationships are characterized by alliances, parentification, conflicts or nonexistence. After admission to child welfare services care, sibling relationships developed along multiple pathways. Their sibling relationships reshaped into either close and supportive, conflictual or completely broken relationships. Sibling relationships were dynamic, complex, with the pathway, and its impact on well‐being, being unique to each young person. Sibling relationship quality in the biological home did not predict relationship quality after admission to child welfare services. The implications for social worker practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how social workers intervene with affluent parents when there are child protection concerns about neglect. Based on data gathered from a small‐scale exploratory qualitative study with 30 practitioners from 12 local authorities across England, this study examined three overarching questions: (a) How do social workers identify risk factors for vulnerable children in affluent circumstances? (b) Which factors inhibit or enable social workers' engagement with resistant affluent parents when there are child protection concerns? (c) What kind of skills, knowledge, and experience is necessary for social workers to effectively assert their professional authority with affluent parents when there are concerns about abuse and neglect? The findings revealed that indicators of neglect can be difficult to identify and challenging to respond to when parents are affluent. Results indicate that social workers have to navigate complex power relationships with parents who are able to use their class privileges to resist their interventions. The paper concludes with a discussion of social workers' skills and capacities for engaging highly‐resistant affluent parents in the child protection system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper adopts a qualitative case study on the generalist service delivery model of I‐Care, a Durban‐based non‐governmental organization that works with male street children. Fifteen face‐to‐face interviews were conducted with 10 I‐Care employees and 5 former street children. A focus group was set up with I‐Care employees. Although existing literature is forthright about a generalist approach for children at risk, it remains unclear how to implement this approach in practice. This paper reviews a continuity of 5 fundamental social work practices for working with street children: (a) outreach work, (b) child–family and child–community mediation, (c) transitory care centres and programmes, (d) brokerage, and (e) mentorship and follow‐ups. The study analyses how these practices contribute to the capability and agency expansion of the street children and outlines challenges that service providers and former street children experience. The main challenges acknowledged are balancing between the agency and protection of street children and the adaptation of children to street life. The study proposes intervention strategies to overcome these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child and family social workers in Britain are increasingly working in multidisciplinary settings such as Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASHs). This article uses discourse analysis techniques to examine data from an ethnographic study of children's social workers and police officers working together in a MASH, considering the corporeal forms and movements that practitioners evoked in their talk about practice. Social workers used metaphors of slow movements and soft, small, and malleable bodies, in contrast to the fast movements and firm trajectories alluded to in police officers' talk. The paper draws on this analysis to identify differences in social workers' and police officers' forms of knowledge and ways of valuing practice implicit in their accounts of good practice. It contributes to recent discussions of space, mobility, and embodiment in social work literature and shows how discursive analyses can add to the developing knowledge about these matters. The paper suggests that evaluations of multiagency settings such as MASHs should attend to practitioners' distinctive forms of knowledge and imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the accounts given by child protection practitioners of how the current economic climate has impacted on their practice. We build our discussion on empirical findings emerging from a small but rigorous qualitative research project conducted by one of the authors. This original study examined Scottish and Finnish social workers' perceptions of their abilities to engage effectively with children and families in what many have described as an "age of austerity." It set out to explore challenges encountered in daily practice through a cross‐national comparative thematic analysis. The paper illuminates practitioners' shared reality of frontline practice in Scottish and Finnish contexts. Despite differing socio‐political environments, participating practitioners found austerity measures to impact negatively on both their professional resources and on the communities they work with. Significantly, practitioners regarded themselves as the key resource, taking individual responsibility to ensure families received a quality service. For many, austerity had resulted in greater empathy for families and awareness of the wider economic and structural impact on their lives. The increased centrality of social justice was pivotal to everyday practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing numbers of grandparent special guardians (GSGs) are assuming responsibility for increasing numbers of children in the care system in England. Special guardianship arrangements are increasingly used as a permanency option as they allow children to remain in their kinship networks rather than in local authority care or be adopted; yet there is a scarcity of research on GSG carers' experiences. This paper reports a small qualitative research study where 10 sets of grandparents were interviewed to explore their journey to becoming GSGs and to theorize their subsequent experiences. Two themes emerge. First, experiences of the assessment process are elaborated, decisions often being made at a time of family crisis, impacting on GSGs: financial, employment, and relational. Second, GSGs' experiences of managing often challenging relationships and contact arrangements between the grandchildren and the parents reveal three main relationship management approaches emerging: containing‐flexible, containing‐controlled, and uncontained/defeated approaches. Anthropological concepts of affinity help theorize the GSGs' ambivalent responses to becoming carers in later life, enabling reconfigured kinship relationships in new family forms. Family policy and social work practice is critiqued as GSGs appear often left alone to "roll back the years," to heal previous harms done to the grandchildren who end up in their care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As international migration increases, the Australian socio‐cultural and political context in which sub‐Saharan African migrant families are settling is causing tension between traditional sub‐Saharan African migrant definitions of child and childhood experiences and host nation definitions particularly when compared with the child protection system. This paper seeks to explore and highlight the fundamental values and differences that determine perceptions and treatment of children within traditional sub‐Saharan African communities. Using a qualitative design, this study was influenced by acculturation theory. Four major themes emerged from the analysis: (a) culture and the sub‐Saharan African child, (b) moulding good children, (c) family functioning and relationships, and (d) host context: perceptions of Australian mainstream parenting. The study found that in order to successfully make decisions that are in the best interest of sub‐Saharan African migrant children that come to the attention of the child protection system, discussions about children rights can only yield good outcomes when the child's socio‐cultural environment is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of front‐line practices regarding emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection. It examines how the responses to children's immediate danger are framed by legislation and how front‐line practitioners assess the child's situation and make emergency placement decisions. The data consist of interviews with 16 Irish and 33 Finnish social workers. These child welfare protection systems respond differently to a task that appears to be similar. The Irish team‐based practice rests on the social workers' shared assessment of the child's needs, and the formal decision is made by the courts (or police officers at night‐time); and the Finnish practice involves only one single social worker who makes both the assessment and the removal decision. The Irish system is tightly time regulated, whereas the Finnish system provides a more flexible time frame. Both approaches put a lot of stress on social workers' practice, which also includes creative workarounds (e.g., "planned emergency removals" in Finland). Future research will need to explore these features from the point of view of a child's right to protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes data gathered as part of an exploratory study to assess the costs and impact of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), to examine the impact that the lead professional role had on families and workers. The study found that both families and workers believed the lead professional to be central to the CAF process, providing a range of support, coordinating multi‐agency responses to need and acting as a single point of contact between families and workers. The paper highlights the need for consideration to be given to inter‐agency working, data sharing, training for workers and the capacity implications for those taking on the role. The extent to which the lead professional might be more integrated into the continuum of support for vulnerable children and families is also examined. The paper highlights the need to consider the lead professional's role in not only preventing the need for more intensive services, such as those provided by statutory social work, but also maintaining outcomes achieved once a child protection plan is closed, or a child is reunified with his or her birth family after a period of being in care. The implications of the findings for policy and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of child protection in the UK. The research involved children's practitioners from a range of agencies, including social care, education, health and youth offending, who were asked about working together on complex child protection cases. The aim was to explore how participants talked about complexity in these cases, in order to deconstruct influential perspectives on interprofessional working. Interview transcripts were analysed using critical discourse analysis, a qualitative method that examines patterns of language use in relation to social structures of power and control. The findings identified three overall perspectives: clinical, expert system and relation‐centred approaches, which practitioners combined in various ways. These perspectives have a bearing on how the ‘team around the child’ is conceptualized in discourse about child protection. The paper links these findings to the assumptions of predictability and control currently embedded in policy and practice guidance, and explores their implications for social workers and other children's practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT As there are a number of high-profile public inquiries into child death tragedies, 'information sharing' has now become a moral and political imperative across England and Wales for improving the welfare and protection of children. This paper discusses multi-agency information practices, at the stage of referral, which were observed and documented in the day-to-day practice of child protection work. Drawing on transcribed, professional narrative accounts, a 'jigsaw' metaphor is used to describe the process of piecing information together to ascertain a 'full' picture of children and families lives. However, these accounts highlight that there is something of a mismatch between the jigsaw, as articulated in the conceptual abstract accounts, and jigsaw practices operating on the ground. It is argued that abstracting professional information practices from situated contexts creates impoverished understandings of these practices. Thus, reported findings in this paper highlight the inherent complexities of jigsaw practices in the 'everyday' of child protection work, which challenges objectivist assumptions about a stability of meaning, and further highlight that the 'endpoint' of reaching a 'full' picture of a child's life is not fixed, nor does it have the same meaning for all professionals, but rather it is a complex process involving sense-making, translation in context and organizational relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children commonly experience considerable disruption to their care when a parent is incarcerated. Maintaining relationships between children and their incarcerated parents can present particular challenges, and for a growing number of children, continuing contact with their incarcerated parent is a key issue. Most of the research about children's experiences of parental incarceration is filtered through adults who may or may not have spoken with children. This article draws on data collected for a research project which aimed to build an understanding of the needs and issues facing children and young people living in the Australian Capital Territory, who have experienced parental incarceration. This paper considers one key finding; children and young people's perspectives on contact with their incarcerated parent. This was reflected in four thematic clusters: quality of relationships; participation in decision making; the challenges and benefits of contact and practical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper reports findings from a research study on adoption in South Africa conducted in 2009. The research included secondary data analysis of the South African National Adoption Register to establish trends and patterns of adoption in South Africa between 2004 and 2009, and primary data collection through qualitative interviews with key informants in public and private social welfare services to explore attitudes, knowledge and experiences of social work practice related to adoption. The quantitative findings report the number of national and international adoptions along with trends and socio-demographic patterns of national adoptions. Qualitative findings report on social work practice, systemic barriers and social worker attitudes as barriers to improved social work practice around national adoptions. The paper highlights comparisons to adoption literature in the USA, a country with a similar legislative framework and cultural complexities, but significantly more resources for implementation. Recommendations are offered for social work practice, national data collection and policy implementation efforts to support efforts to increase adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During young adulthood, many transitions occur in family relationships. This paper explores family roles for young adults in the transition years who have been in the custody of the child welfare system and have mood challenges. To capture the voices of this less studied subpopulation, we conducted in‐depth qualitative interviews with 44 young adults in a Midwestern state. Through coding interview transcripts, we identified how these young people defined family and issues they were navigating in family relationships. These young people were commonly resolving family history issues especially related to ambiguous and actual losses, as well as the legacy of this history in their present‐day family relationships. Professionals who intervene with this population should be prepared to help young people as they navigate these family transitions and change the future by rewriting family narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study on parenting in the midst of suspicion of child sexual abuse (CSA). Data were drawn from in-depth interviews with 19 parents. Five of these had been accused of CSA. Study methods followed guidelines of grounded theory approaches. Specific parenting conditions during CSA suspicion were identified. Six analytic categories were developed: uncertainty concerning abuse, dilemmas on protection, changes in parent-child relationships, changes in the natural support network, dependency upon professional competence and severe emotional strain. The results are suggested as a tool for identifying themes in order to support and strengthen parenting in ensuring the safety and well-being of children in these kinds of situations. The current paper contributes to the field by exploring the perspectives of both suspected and non-suspected parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The lack of engagement of fathers by child welfare services is well-documented in the literature as a serious problem. Towards addressing this problem, this paper reports the findings of interviews with 18 fathers about their involvement with child welfare services in Ontario, Canada. Qualitative analysis of the interviews yielded themes about what men saw as the positive and negative aspects of their involvement with child welfare. Positive aspects of service involvement for fathers included understanding and supportive workers, useful assistance from workers, being connected to useful resources and being given a 'wake-up call'. Negative aspects of service involvement included uncaring, unhelpful and unprofessional workers; prejudice against fathers; and experiencing the child welfare system as unresponsive, uncaring and rigid. Implications for practice are discussed with a view to improving the engagement of men in, and their experiences with, child welfare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adoption policy in the UK emphasizes its role in providing secure, permanent relationships to children in care who are unable to live with their birth families. Adoptive parents are crucial in providing this life-long, stable experience of family for these vulnerable children. This paper explores the experience of adoptive parenthood in the context of changes to adoptive kinship relationships brought about by new, unplanned contact with birth family during their child's middle adolescence. This contact was initiated via informal social networks and/or social media, with older birth siblings instrumental in negotiating renewed relationships. The contact precipitated a transition in adoptive family life resulting in emotional challenges and changes in parent/child relationships, which were experienced as additional to the normative transitions expected during adolescence. Parental concern as a dominant theme was founded in the child and birth sibling's stage of adolescence, coupled with constraints on adoptive parenthood imposed by the use of social media, by perceived professional attitudes and by parental social cognitions about the importance of birth ties. Adoptive parents' accounts are interpreted with reference to family life-cycle theory and implications are suggested for professional support of adoptive kinship relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Family preservation services (FPS) include a set of services designed to prevent out-of-home placement for children at risk of child maltreatment. Research examining FPS is inconsistent, with some studies reporting positive results, while others fail to demonstrate improved outcomes for many families. To understand the experience of receiving these services from the perspective of consumers, this paper reports the qualitative findings from a mixed methods study to examine families' experiences with FPS. To accomplish this objective, a purposive sample of 36 families was followed from referral to case closure. Specifically, 85 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted at onset, midpoint and case closure to examine the perceptions of clients throughout service delivery. Each interview was audiotaped, transcribed and analysed using open and secondary coding strategies. Findings suggest that similar to other studies, families' perceptions of FPS were mixed. Some found the services relevant and supportive, while others were less satisfied. The four qualitative themes discussed by these participants included service content, service delivery, emotional support and tangible support. These themes help to provide in-depth descriptions of the perspectives of this sample of families. Implications for practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT When children are removed from their families because of maltreatment, the child welfare system seeks reunification whenever possible. Despite the importance of this goal, little is known about families who are able to achieve and maintain successful reunification. This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 15 families who completed their child welfare case plans, were reunited with their children and remained together for at least 1 year post-reunification. Narrative analysis using a combination of thematic and structural coding was completed to examine the strengths and process families discussed related to their successful child welfare outcomes. This paper discusses one of those strengths, spirituality, in greater depth. Specifically, 12 participants situated the strength of spirituality within their stories as an important narrative element they perceived as critical, leading to important changes. Findings highlight the benefits some families receive from their spiritual beliefs, practices and faith communities when working towards reunification, suggesting child welfare practitioners be prepared to identify and honour this family strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Concern about the decision-making abilities of practitioners in child protection has led to the development and implementation of increasingly structured assessment tools, many based on forms of risk assessment. The positive and negative effects of such tools on practice have been widely researched and debated. This paper presents the findings from ethnographic research about the use of a particular set of decision-making tools that provide insights into how tools might affect the professional development of practitioners. The overall finding that the use of decision-making tools may impair professional development draws attention to the importance of the process of implementation, in particular how tools are regarded within an organization in relation to practitioner expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision to take a young person away from his or her family into out-of-home care and treatment is the most drastic intervention within the statutory powers bestowed upon social services. The results of reports on the quality of residential treatment reveal that state supervision has not proven to be a good substitute for parental care. In this paper we analyse the decision-making process when young persons are placed in residential care. Focus groups and individual interviews with different stakeholders were conducted. The results show that the placements are a collective process involving negotiations between the different parties with a coordinating social worker in the middle, with the aim to bring something to build hope on in often desperate situations, regardless of the specific treatment method used. To inform the process, the social workers draw on a 'collective memory' shared among colleagues in the department. Important signs of quality of a residential unit were the relational and collaborative competence from the staff. The inclination to use soft, diffuse information in decision-making shows a striking lack of evidence upon which social workers can build well-informed and knowledge-based decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]