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This paper presents parents' experiences of community support and their recommendations for how their communities, and the services within them, might support their families. Generated through a human‐centred design methodology and using a desire‐centred framework, the findings suggest that parents receiving a family service require support invoking feelings of intimacy, trust, reciprocity, inclusivity, connection and belonging. Parents' recommendations for community support include addressing material and attitudinal constraints impacting on engagement with services; creating non‐judgmental services tailored to their needs but accessed as a last resort; and creating peer‐based opportunities to support each other. Parents reflect that moving beyond basic survival of risk and vulnerability to a position where thriving is possible requires purposeful integration of parent's existing and desired community into service interventions. Facilitating deliberate change at the intersection of community and service support is pertinent to current and future social work policy and practice. Wider opportunities for understanding and enabling the needs and aspirations of parents, which are often overlooked because of a focus on addressing risk and vulnerability, are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Assessment Framework provides a model of early intervention, which is familiar in local authorities throughout England, and asserts a participatory framework of child and family engagement. This paper is based on a qualitative study of parents and children who were subject to a multi‐agency process of early intervention in children's social care in a local authority in the Midlands of England. I advance the concept of assemblage to consider the basis of an active service user participation as rather more a struggle to achieve than something that has been granted by practitioner agencies. Interview extracts are used to show the enrolment and assembly of participation as a process of service users developing their active human agency in a multi‐agency setting. The article explores the assembling of skills in administration and management of meetings and plans, accessing knowledge and expertise through service user networks, and challenging professional expertise and institutional space while developing personal qualities of confidence and voice as a means of marshalling an effective participation in a multi‐agency setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Frontline programme is a social work qualifying route, in England, featuring a different approach to curriculum design and delivery. Students are based in groups of 4, learning through practicing social work in a statutory child and family social work setting, alongside a Consultant Social Worker (in the role of practice educator). They are also supported by an Academic Tutor who works in partnership with the Consultant Social Worker to facilitate learning. A weekly “unit meeting” is a foundational aspect of the programme, providing opportunities for in‐depth discussion, teaching, and reflection on practice with families. The authors worked together over the first 2 cohorts of the programme and undertook action research to explore the learning opportunities that arise when academic staff and practitioners work side by side to support student learning in this model. Three broad themes were identified which were considered to be significant in helping students to learn which are explored in the paper: Learning through engaging in joint dialogue about practice in a unit meeting The influence of relationships on learning in social work The importance of a connected model of learning which has practice with children and families at its heart [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little research has been done into what social workers do in everyday child protection practice. This paper outlines the broad findings from an ethnographic study of face‐to‐face encounters between social workers, children and families, especially on home visits. The social work practice was found to be deeply investigative. Children's bedrooms were routinely inspected and were the most common place where they were seen alone. A high proportion of children were not seen on their own because they were too young and the majority of the time was spent working with parents and children together. Small amounts of time were spent with children on their own and some first encounters were so rushed that social workers did not even introduce themselves to the child. This arose from two key factors: firstly, organisational pressures from high workloads and the short timescales that social workers were expected to adhere to by managers and Government; secondly, practitioners had varying levels of communication skills, playfulness and comfort with getting close to children and skills at family work. Where these skills and relational capacities were present, social workers were found to have developed deep and meaningful relationships with some children and families, for whom it was apparent that therapeutic change had occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]