Working Ethically in Child Protection

Bob Lonne, Maria Harries, Brid Featherstone, Mel Gray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415729338
• eBook ISBN: 9781317914440
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

In their day-to-day practice, social work and human services practitioners frequently find themselves in confusing ethical quandaries, trying to balance the numerous competing interests of protecting children from harm and promoting family and community capacity. This book explores the ethical issues surrounding child protection interventions and offers a process-oriented approach to ethical practice and decision making in child protection and family welfare practice. Its aim is to prepare students and early-career professionals for roles in the complex and challenging work of child protection and family support.

Beginning with a critical analysis and appreciation of the diverse organisational and cultural contexts of contemporary child protection and ethical decision-making frameworks, the authors outline a practical 'real-world' model for reshaping frontline ethical practice. Moving away from a focus on the child apart from the family, the authors recognise that child safeguarding affects the lives, not just of children, but also of parents, grandparents and communities. Working Ethically in Child Protection eschews dominant rational-technical models for relational ones that are value centred and focus on family well-being as a whole.

Rather than a single focus on assessing risk and diagnosing deficit, this book recognises that our child protection systems bear down disproportionately on those from disadvantaged and marginalised communities and argues that what is needed is real support and practical assistance for poor and vulnerable parents and children. It uses real-world case examples to illustrate the relevant ethical and practice principles, and ways in which students and practitioners can practise ethically when dealing with complex, multi-faceted issues.

Part 1 Ethical theory and historical frameworks for practice

1 The ethical landscape in child protection

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People involved in caring for the welfare and safety of children make choices and decisions that have profound consequences, and nobody would argue against the need to be ethical in this work. Indeed, to do so would be unorthodox and unprofessional as well as immoral. All people working in the caring professions ‘sign off’ on a commitment to act ethically and most organisations have codes of ethics and codes of conduct with which employees are expected to comply along with their particular profession's ethical code. In various countries, there are significant sanctions applied to employees or self-employed professionals who are found to have acted unethically. In this book, we explore the ethical issues involved in this very difficult though rewarding area of work. We offer insights from the work over the centuries by human beings concerned with the most profoundly important questions that confront us as human beings: what does it take ‘to be good’? ‘What makes a good person’? How do we know that we are ‘doing good’? How do we weigh up what ‘is good’? On what basis do ‘good people’ act towards others? What are ‘good people's responsibilities’ towards others, especially those suffering hurt and harm? We also draw from the considerable literature that has specifically concerned itself with the issues for children, young people and families and we have a particular interest in exploring the implications of the research evidence of adverse intervention for the ethics of contemporary practice.

Challenges and rewards of child protection work

As attested throughout this book, child protection work is not for the fainthearted; it is intellectually and emotionally demanding, and sometimes exceedingly stressful. It entails relating to others with integrity and thinking through fraught human interactions, while simultaneously wending one's way through a complex web of legal, organisational and ethical requirements. It can involve dealing with confronting events and egregious behaviours, particularly where children and other vulnerable people have suffered greatly. Such cases can expose practitioners to secondary trauma as the result of involvement with confronting matters that offend one's moral sensi-bilities. Personal costs can result.

All the while, in this work, there is an imperative of assuring others’ safety through considering all the relevant factors when making assessments and decisions regarding the protection of children. At times, working effectively with service users involves making inquiries into matters they find painful and wish to avoid, asking awkward questions that can appear intrusive, and broaching subjects that trigger grief and trauma reactions. Practitioners can feel as though there is not enough time or resources to do the job properly; they are often under pressure to get things done quickly with insufficient space provided for proper engagement with service users. The work also involves being on the receiving end of others’ displeasure or anger, acting with grace and humility while ‘under fire’ and giving ‘bad’ or ‘unwelcome’ news about events, assessments and the use of statutory authority. Understandably, practitioners may often feel overwhelmed and exhausted by these demands.

Many child protection and family welfare professionals report high levels of work stress (Lonne et al., 2012). In many countries, the media has added to this stress, blaming practitioners for making the ‘wrong’ decisions as to whether or not to remove children. Retaining the capacity for equanimity, so central to ethical practice when one is feeling ‘under siege’ and fearful of failure and the very public consequences that entails, is no easy matter. There is clearly a huge vulnerability associated with the work given the public perception of the ‘moral failure’ of those mandated to protect children, especially when a child dies or is seriously injured (Hollis and Howe, 1986).

However, this work is also immensely rewarding. While it exposes practitioners to others’ pain and trauma, and perhaps their own, it nonetheless entails being centrally involved in healing and recovery for service users. It can entail deep connection with others in relationships that are growth producing for all, and enable practitioners to discover and develop themselves – making them richer and wiser for the experience (see Chapters 11 and 12). Perhaps most importantly, this relational work can enable practitioners to feel elation, satisfaction and immense self-worth from travelling with others on their life-changing journeys. The rewards gained from joining with service users who undergo profound change and betterment should not be underestimated as they go to the fundamental motivations for practitioners in the helping professions: caring for others; being there when needed; helping others who are in a fix; experiencing emotional and spiritual connections; and furthering social justice – ‘making the world a better place’. Helping others brings ‘its own rewards’.

This work, which some see as a vocation, involves the head and the heart, thinking and feeling on one's feet as new information comes to hand, questions come to mind and emotional reactions occur. It can be a roller-coaster experience for all concerned. These sorts of inter- and intra-personal environments and relational demands require much from practitioners. This forms a critical part of the landscape in which ethics are required in day-to-day practice. So, while ethical decision making is a logical process, it also entails managing the emotional aspects through reflective and reflexive thinking. Further, neither the intellect nor the emotions should dominate to the point where they hinder sound relational and ethical practice. Throughout this book we seek to address the presenting issues in a balanced way that recognises the need for logical reasoning and emotional engagement.

Ethical practice in child protection

Fundamental to understanding the ethical challenges facing those working in child protection and family welfare is an appreciation of client vulnerability, unequal power relationships and the centrality of relationship in effective ethical practice. Children are generally less powerful than adults, but, as we identify throughout this book, the adults involved have often suffered or are suffering greatly themselves. Herein lies a central ethical tension requiring the most careful engagement with issues of power and powerlessness, and responsibility and choice. Most organising principles in child protection practice involve power relationships between the powerful and not so powerful. The potency of statutory powers to enter the ‘sacred’ domain of families, investigate them and remove children is weighty. These legal powers are generally located in large, seemingly impervious, bureaucracies, the collective strength of which sits in marked contrast to the vulnerability of those who experience their power. Professional status locates power and authority in certain individuals rather than others.

The evidence is clear that most of the families and communities targeted by statutory child protection and family welfare systems are among the least powerful in society, with little access to powerful allies. Poverty, unemployment, ethnic minority status, mental illness, ill health, alcohol and drug addictions, disability and cultural dislocation define some of the major demographics for those who come under the ‘gaze’ of child protection services (Gilbert et al., 2009a, 2009b). Increasing debate concerning inequality in child protection and family welfare, along with the health inequalities literature, talks to the profound injustices in a public policy world that leaves the social determinants of disadvantage and involvement in child welfare largely unacknowledged (Bywaters, 2015). In this book, we suggest too little attention has been paid to the explicit power differentials between ‘at risk’ cohorts and the bureaucracies legislated to intervene in their lives when a child's safety is in question. Recognising these power differentials is an essential first step in finding a balance to enable children's well-being and safety to be ensured while not further threatening or indeed compounding the vulnerability of their families and communities.

Practitioners are acutely aware of the relevant legislation that underpins their work and the demands of legal compliance. But what do we mean by ethics? How do we understand the requirements of ethical practice? Codes of ethics are well established, of course, as well as organisational codes of practice. However, these often provide little guidance in a practice world of immense complexity and which is often highly risk averse. To highlight some the features of this practice world, let us consider the following example of contemporary practice.

Case example: distance and danger

This is a story from England. While carrying its own specifics, it epitomises some themes around the increasing distances between statutory practitioners and families and communities. It also emphasises the omnipresent focus on risk and danger that characterises practitioner and family interactions lending them a choreographed quality that can impede the possibilities for truthful and healing encounters.

Jo has been qualified as a social worker for two years. She works from a new office in the centre of town, based above the ‘one stop shop’ access point for local authority services. Most days she visits families in their homes, driving to a large social housing estate where many of those on her caseload live. Jo visits the estate in her car. She has never walked around it, shopped there or stopped for a coffee, sandwich or a drink. Indeed, there are few places to buy food and drink on the estate. She has noticed that the corner shop has just closed and some of her families have complained to her that the supermarket is two bus rides away. There is a children's centre and she has visited it for meetings but she has no time to be involved in any of the activities run there (activities that are ceasing at an alarming rate because of cuts in government spending).

When she visits family homes, she is very aware of the importance of seeing and talking to the children and occasionally tries to take them out for a trip to town on their own. The importance of engaging directly with children has been drummed into her at training events where successive child deaths have been held up as salutary warnings about the dangers of not doing so. She has been told repeatedly that children can become invisible especially if workers are too caught up with the needs of parents or immobilised by their angry and resistant behaviour. So she works very hard to adopt a firm and consistent approach with parents. She is always aware of the dangers of being too trusting of their accounts or becoming too involved with them. After all, her job is to be there for the child. She is careful to keep conversations with parents very clearly focused on the children's welfare and not let matters stray onto problems parents might say they have with each other unless of course it is domestic abuse. She knows that such abuse can have very damaging impacts upon children and should be dealt with decisively, often through getting the perpetrator to leave. She is also aware of the need to see the contents of cupboards and fridges and also to check bedrooms.

Source: Featherstone et al. (2013)

Featherstone and colleagues (2013, 2014a, 2014b) have questioned the effects of this system design and the underpinning ethos on children, families and practitioners themselves. While boxes are ticked and the ‘right’ people are seen and talked to, we suggest there is too high a price being paid by children, families and practitioners. Although the system is ostensibly all about them, children and young people seldom self-refer in England and tell researchers that when they are troubled, they prefer to seek help from those they know and trust (or helplines where they can remain anonymous). They tell of their fear of talking to child protection workers as they may lose control over what is done and how. Research with their parents and wider family networks suggests encounters that are experienced as frightening and deficit-focused. Moreover, their distrust of services can be furthered when they see practitioners operating within an instrumental approach that treats them as means rather than ends. Thus, they are considered only insofar as their actions/inactions impact upon children, not as people in their own right. They know and resent it when no attempt is made to understand them as relational, emoting beings and there is apparently little appreciation of their everyday struggles in a context of little money and neighbourhoods with rapidly disappearing facilities.

Parents who can afford little for themselves and, indeed, forego things to ensure children have birthday presents can find it quite painful when child protection workers take their children out for treats. It is therefore not that surprising that they become angry and resentful when they pick up that the intent of such activities, on the part of workers, is to assess for abuse. Indeed, we also know from children themselves that they can experience this kind of practice very ambivalently. We understand that the phrase ‘I'm only here for the child’ heard from many child protection workers supports the performance of a moral identity in a confusing and frightening landscape where there are multiple vulnerabilities and risks. However, for all its rhetorical and moral potency, it reflects, in our view, a profound and damaging misrecognition of children's relational identities and needs across the life course (Featherstone et al., 2014b).

This case study highlights the complexities of work that is subject to strong legal and organisational mandates where there are multiple stakeholders. What values inform and underpin this ethical practice in general, and in our work with vulnerable children and families in particular? What does it mean to act ethically? And how does one act ethically on behalf of all the people one serves if the needs of some conflict with those of others? How do we protect children and concurrently care for their families and communities? Is this possible? How do we conc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• PART 1 Ethical theory and historical frameworks for practice
• 1 The ethical landscape in child protection
• 2 Established ethical frameworks
• 3 Emergent ethical theories
• 4 Ethical decision making
• PART 2 The context of child protection practice
• 5 Competing perspectives on child protection and family welfare
• 6 System mandates, policy, theory and practice
• 7 Service-user and other perspectives
• 8 Needs and circumstances of service users
• PART 3 Professional ethics and ethical child protection and family welfare practice
• 9 Ethics, organisations and the law
• 10 Ethical principles in child protection
• PART 4 Practising ethically
• 11 A relational approach to child protection
• 12 Applying an integrated framework: the DECIDE model
• 13 Working ethically across cultures: a focus on fathers
• 14 Using information ethically
• 15 Travelling hopefully
• References
• Index