Parents' Views on Social Work Interventions in Child Welfare Cases.

The article reports the findings of a research report examining the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice. Whilst social workers in Great Britain have been encouraged to make such changes, they have been hampered by concerns to manage risks. There was evidence of the continued influence of child protection processes as social workers sought to manage the risks inherent in child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out to ascertain the views the views of parents who were subject to child welfare interventions. The findings indicate that while parents feel apprehension with regard to contact with social workers, in the majority of cases successful relationships are formed. It is argued that social workers display considerable skill in monitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families and that the subtleties involved in such activity are not captured by official measures of governance which concentrate on more abstract indicators of performance.