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This study examines the location of British health visiting in contemporary policy discourses concerned with public health and safeguarding children. It argues that professional identity and orientation can be understood through health visiting's long history of public health work with children and families, which has included an engagement with protecting children. The expansive safeguarding children agenda, which includes the requirement to undertake a progressive universal approach to service provision and which incorporates a broad concept of risk and requires early intervention, has created tensions, particularly given current workforce constraints. The location and visibility of British health visiting in the academic and practice worlds also shape how the profession is understood.

A central element of the Every Child Matters reforms in England are measures which aim at improving information sharing. Amongst these are the children's database and the Common Assessment Framework, both representing technological solutions to long-standing concerns about information sharing in child welfare. This article reports some findings from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded study which examined their introduction and use in everyday professional practice. Substantial differences in policy implementation, access to and use of the technologies, draw attention to the importance of the localised and situated contexts into which these technologies are being introduced, raising serious questions about their future development as national standard systems.

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 4o 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 children's 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. doi: 10.1017/S0047279410000012

In this paper Lorraine Ellis and Sue Peckover discuss the implications of the current NHS Research Governance Framework for the supervision of Masters level students undertaking empirical research as part [...]

Whilst uncertainty about the symptoms being due to a food allergy impacted upon mothers' health-seeking behaviours onc they had decided to seek medical advice most reported a fairly straightforward process and positive experiences of accessing GP and specialist paediatric allergy services. To the editor, Initial evaluation of the Yorkshire-based Itchy, Sneezy, Wheezy project which aimed to improve the delivery of allergy care to children based in Sheffield found children from South Asian families were referred to the specialist community clinic at an older age than white Caucasian children with the presence of more atopic conditions. Data were analysed thematically,8 and themes were "recognition of allergy", "help-seeking", "using health services" and "community understandings of allergy.". [Extracted from the article]

Specialist community public health nurses (SCPHNs)—who provide universal health promoting services to all families with children in the 0–19 age range—are particularly well placed to influence lifestyle-related health behaviours at an early stage. To undertake this work effectively a toolkit of health promotion strategies is required. This paper reports the findings of a small study which aimed to examine student perspectives about if, and how, education in behaviour change skills impacts on the nature and effectiveness of consultations with clients. It was undertaken at a university in the north of England which has pioneered the teaching of motivational interviewing and behaviour change skills within the SCPHN curriculum. The study took place in 2017. Focus groups, attended by 11 SCPHN students examined students' views and perspectives about engaging with clients and utilising behaviour change skills in practice. Key themes arising from the data were: changing approach, skills and techniques, education and learning, use in practice, and time. Findings indicate that SCPHN students had begun to apply an approach based on Motivational Interviewing to consultations in practice as a result of their education. This is likely to have a substantial impact on practice and client outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports upon the learning that emerged from a development project which aimed to facilitate improvements in multiagency work in domestic abuse and safeguarding children. The two-year project (2011-13), funded by the Department for Education and led by WomenCentre, a specialist voluntary sector organisation based in West Yorkshire, was undertaken in nine local authorities in the north of England. Activities undertaken during the project included case mapping, service user and professional engagement exercises, observation of local multiagency meetings and provision of training. An evaluative research study examined the work of the project and the learning that emerged. Drawing upon data from telephone interviews with project participants, analysis of case mapping and project reports, this paper discusses some critical issues which emerged from this project. The paper draws attention to the different understandings and priorities which shape interprofessional practice in relation to safeguarding children and domestic abuse, and the complexities of the wider interagency environment including coordination, resources and expertise. Recommendations for improving multiagency work to achieve better outcomes for women and children experiencing domestic abuse are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Messages Multiagency working in domestic abuse and safeguarding children is complex and could be improved., The impact of professional differences in how cases are understood and managed, particularly in relation to 'risk', as well as different professional priorities and approaches to working with families should be recognised and considered within the multiagency context., Practitioners may want to consider whether 'case mapping' is pertinent to their own safeguarding practices and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care orders within the child protection system are some of the most invasive interventions a state can make. This article examines the discretionary space governments set out for child protection workers when they prepare care orders. We analyse the formalized framework for these decisions in England, Finland, Norway and the United States. We focus on knowledge, timelines, how children and parents are involved and accountability. We find that Norway and Finland have highly de-regulated systems with wide discretionary space, whereas England and the United States are highly regulated systems with narrow discretionary space. The United States differentiates itself with relatively little parent and/or child involvement in decision-making. England and Finland do not have defined deadlines for terminating the process, and Norway has few directives on what information to collect. Such differences will influence the quality of decisions as well as the principles of the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious Case Reviews (SCRs), undertaken when a child has died or been seriously harmed, are an important feature of child protection in England. They are substantial exercises, but little research has examined the everyday work processes associated with their production. This study, undertaken during 2011, explored the views and experiences of NHS Named and Designated Nurses and Doctors for Safeguarding Children about their involvement in SCRs. Nineteen telephone interviews were undertaken and the data thematically analysed. The study found that doing SCRs involved additional work and staff did not always feel fully supported or prepared. Doing SCRs is a rigid and bureaucratic process which sometimes detracted from the case itself. The study also found mixed views about the value of SCRs and the extent to which they promote learning and child-centred practice. The findings contribute to overall understanding of how this process is undertaken, and help open up to scrutiny the work required and the challenges generated for those involved in SCRs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message: SCRs are substantial exercises; little previous research has examined their production., Undertaking SCRs requires considerable time, effort and can be emotionally difficult; NHS staff involved in their production face challenges in doing this work., Producing SCRs may distract from the value of the outcomes and the extent to which they promote learning and child-centred practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MAZE project is an innovative specialist domestic abuse service that undertakes intensive work with women affected by domestic abuse and their partners. This paper will describe the project and present findings from a small evaluation undertaken in 2010. Examples from MAZE work with individual women, direct work with men, and the MAZE project contribution to multi-agency work are used to illustrate how and why the project is successful and the challenges in achieving this. An important theme arising from this work is the central importance of keeping focused upon the safety of women and children, and upon understanding, assessing and addressing the risks and responsibilities of the domestic violence behaviours. Importantly this turns professional attention towards men and their behaviour and benefits women and children. Whilst the MAZE project is an example of innovation in service user-led organisations, it also demonstrates new directions for working with high risk families where domestic abuse is a feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Jane Barlow and Rachel Calam on parenting and child abuse, one by Emily Putnam-Hornstein on child protection prevention interventions and one by Leonie Segal and Kim Dalziel on an evidence-based approach to investing in child protection.

In this article, we lament the effects of practice-distant research and associated policy initiatives on contemporary children's services in England. In the last decade, as a result of high profile inquiries into non-accidental child deaths, statutory children's social care services in the UK have been subject to a wide-reaching 'modernization' programme. We studied decision-making in the high blame environment of local authority children's services. Our research sought to examine the relationship between performance management and the impact of anticipated blame within the decision-making practices of those providing, supervising and managing these services. We show that systems and technologies can be developed which both assist the users in their daily work and achieve desired organizational goals, but without an ethnographically informed, practice-near approach, unsafe work regimes and practices can ensue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Every Child Matters' (ECM) is a government response to longstanding concerns about child welfare and protection. A key feature is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve information sharing and inter-professional communication. One of the proposals requires the establishment of an index, ContactPoint, which is a database containing information on all children in their area, to be used by child welfare professionals to indicate their involvement with a child and, where there is 'cause for concern', to facilitate joint action. Whilst these proposals for harnessing ICTs within child welfare are a central part of the government's modernization strategy, plans for the Index have been heavily criticized for its panoptic potential to invade privacy and override professional discretion and judgement. This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study funded by the ESRC e-Society Programme. Drawing on data collected in one 'Trailblazer' local authority area during the pilot phase, it describes the introduction of a local child index and the ways in which professionals and the technologies are drawn together within the local child welfare network. For the Index to achieve its original purpose of improving information sharing and inter-professional communication it must be 'used' by child welfare practitioners. But establishing the Index as a friend to the child welfare professional is not a straightforward process. The research suggests this is dependent on a set of relations that are being constantly negotiated and accomplished in everyday practice. It is clear the deployment of ICTs in professional practice is highly contingent upon local policy implementation, the local arrangement of services and the everyday practices of busy and sceptical practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments at policy, legislative and practice levels have led to the mainstreaming of domestic violence as a child welfare issue. However, research evidence would suggest that familiar and well established tensions in service provision to women and children continue to be recycled. Moreover, there remains a central dichotomy in relation to men. Constructed as perpetrators or offenders, their identities as fathers remain invisible with serious consequences for the development of policies and practices which engage with them as 'domestically violent fathers'. The discursive removal of violent men from the category of father or indeed parent needs addressing in order to support women and children, but also to offer possibilities for men to develop non-violent parenting and partnering relationship patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

peckover s. (2003) Journal of Advanced Nursing 44(2), 200–208 Health visitors’ understandings of domestic violence Feminist work has made visible the extent and nature of domestic violence and the problems women face in having their experiences recognized by health and welfare professionals. Research has demonstrated that many health care professionals, including nurses, midwives and health visitors have little working knowledge about this issue. This impacts on their ability to recognize and respond to domestic violence within their practice. This paper is based upon a study of British health visitors, which explored their practice in relation to domestic violence. Drawing upon empirical data from interviews with health visitors, it explores their understandings of the extent and nature of domestic violence in the context of their work. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 24 health visitors selected by convenience and purposive sampling. Data collection took place during 1997–1998. The research draws on the theoretical perspectives of feminist poststructuralism. The findings demonstrate considerable differences between health visitors in their understandings of the extent of domestic violence in their caseloads and their recognition of different types of abuse experienced by women. There were also differences between participants in their willingness to name situations other than physical violence as abusive, as well as the extent to which they recognized domestic violence within different social groups. A feminist perspective provides critical insight into the professional knowledge base in relation to domestic violence, demonstrating the need for health visitors to develop their understandings further in order to respond appropriately to women and children experiencing domestic violence. This is discussed in the context of ongoing struggles for professional identity within an ever-changing arena of health and welfare provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]