Professional Development in Social Work

Complex Issues in Practice

Janet Seden, Sarah Matthews, Mick McCormick, Alun Morgan, Janet Seden, Sarah Matthews, Mick McCormick, Alun Morgan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136909573
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Social work practice in the twenty-first century is continually changing. Contemporary practitioners work in complex areas and have to do so quickly and competently. This text helps qualified social workers, as well as those about to qualify, to build on their initial studies in order to develop professionally.

The volume considers not just what you need to know to practice, but how you develop in criticality and capability – in particular, how you can respond effectively in times of uncertainty and change to become more effective. It examines new roles, identities and contexts, including some international perspectives and the impact of globalisation. Each chapter discusses the contexts of practice (such as law, policies and theories); the contributions made both by those who practice social work and those who use its services; and the capabilities and skills that social workers need to develop in order to deal with complexity in social work.

Making use of The Open University's expertise in providing cutting edge but accessible course materials and its distinct approach to social work practice, this textbook includes underpinning knowledge, practical applications and critical reflexivity. It includes questions for further reflection and application, plentiful examples and suggestions for further reading.

Aimed at the newly qualified practitioner and the developing professional, Professional Development in Social Work is written by a team of authors with extensive practice and teaching experience. It will be particularly useful to students undertaking post-qualifying training or in the final year of their qualifying studies.

Part I
Complex contexts

Janet Seden

For Part I, we commissioned chapters which paint the bigger picture and consider the contexts within which social workers operate and the complexities of them. While social workers’ daily practice is with individuals, this is always set in the complex context of the societal climate of the time. Thus, the way practice is organized and the ethics and values that underpin it depend heavily on the ideologies of governments, social and economic situations and public opinion. It can be argued that practice at the beginning of the twenty-first century has been particularly influenced by media criticism of its supposed failures, the impact of globalization changing communities and groupings with whom practitioners work and the managerialism which has taken hold of the agencies where social workers are employed. It is also set in the context of political philosophies which shape law and policy, postmodernism and modernity, concepts which several authors consider in this first section.

This book opens with a chapter on effective multi-agency work in children’s services. This may, at first, seem a strange choice, but the criticisms of children’s services following child abuse scandals has been the biggest driver for re-evaluating practice. The situation of ‘Baby P’ led directly to the Social Work Task Force (DCSF 2009b) and its examination of practice. It is on the assumed ‘failures’ of childcare professionals that the most media abuse has been focused, and where – given the tragedy of child deaths – public concern is most obvious. Given the almost ubiquitous finding of child death inquiries that professionals fail to work together to protect children, this seemed a good place to start.

Rose (Chapter 1) has contributed hugely to developments in children’s services and here she identifies from research and literature that the aspiration of working together to protect children has been alive for the past fifty years. Despite the cynicism that this reflection might induce, she is able to suggest some grounds for optimism, identify some success factors and offer a fresh perspective on what is often seen as an intractable ‘problem’. Inter-agency collaboration is also, of course, very important when working to improve the circumstances of adult service users and there may well be some transferable practice ideas. Multi-agency work with adults is also considered within the chapters in Part II.

Building on the theme of context, Buchanan (Chapter 2) seeks to capture some of the history of the political environment for social work and to bring that up to date with some thoughts on current social and political issues. He draws attention to the long-standing nature of some social ills, such as poverty, and reminds us that despite the uncertainties, the social work profession continues to strive for the rights of marginalized groups.

Cooper (Chapter 3), following a discussion of postmodern dilemmas, focuses on criticality and reflexivity to offer practitioners tools for responding to complex and changing environments. Given the widely held view that the only certainty in social work and care over the past few decades has been the certainty of change, it is critical that practitioners can find ways of responding which enable them to make sense of changing situations and environments. Uncertainty is a constant dilemma of practice and Cooper argues that criticality and reflexivity are the tools which enable social workers to provide a good-quality person-centred service, while handling the systems within which practitioners work. He concludes that best judgement in uncertain situations is the most that can be expected.

This is followed by a linked chapter which undertakes a similar brief in relation to values and ethics in which McCormick and Fraser (Chapter 4) argue that perhaps social workers’ concern with values has been at the expense of exploring what is morally or ethically acceptable. Their discussion explores why this may be and considers how practitioners might find the space to examine their actions.

Social workers’ values and ethics are clearly linked to suitability issues and registration. The question of who is suitable to be a social worker is ultimately a question of the character and values of professionals and the behaviours that society expects from them. Registration is a relatively new expectation for practitioners, but one with which they will continue to engage throughout their professional careers, and social workers will need to be consistently mindful of codes of practice and how their work adheres to these. Wiles (Chapter 5) draws from codes of practice, some controversies in the literature and her own research in order to explore the dilemmas of social work registration.

The final two chapters in this section look at the widest contexts of all – the impact of globalization and the international scene for social work. Morgan (Chapter 6) considers the inevitability of globalization, its impact on social work and the diversity of service users and workers now in the UK. This challenges social workers to make sure they act in anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory ways, and also to develop a cultural competence that enables them to engage with and deliver appropriate services to service users with a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives.

Finally, Fraser (Chapter 7) examines the concept of ‘international social work’, discussing the exchange of ideas between different countries and social workers in different regimes. He argues that the views and practices of social workers from outside the UK both illuminate and enhance local practices. In considering the local and global, Chapters 6 and 7 remind us that the context and complexities of social work require a wider set of concepts and engagements.

1
Effective multi-agency work in children’s services

Wendy Rose

This chapter … reinforces the centrality of multi-agency working and the difficulties in achieving this in practice … offered a new perspective on an old and often intractable ‘problem’ and pointed me in the direction of exciting research and literature to inform and improve practice.

(Independent social worker – Child Protection)

Introduction

This chapter focuses on frontline practice with children and families and explores why practitioners from different agencies and disciplines need to work together to achieve better outcomes for the most vulnerable children. The literature about multi-agency working underlines what a contested area it is – a football continuously in play between politicians, professions and service agencies. The chapter argues, however, that by starting with children and families and by taking a child’s perspective, it is possible to develop a clearer understanding of its importance and how and why it is important and what can help professionals to work together more effectively. The chapter concludes with suggestions of how multi-agency work can be developed to be successful and have a positive impact on the lives of children and their families. The most persuasive advocates for agencies and practitioners working together are undoubtedly children and families themselves, and their perspectives illustrate their experience of contact with services and practitioners, and what they find makes a difference for them.

What is known about multi-agency work?

The current emphasis of governments on the importance of agencies working together in children’s services is not new (Hallett and Birchall 1992). It has been a thread running through child welfare policy, research and practice for at least the past half-century. Hallett and Stevenson (1980: 1) cite a Home Office circular of 1950 on ill-treated children which recognizes that inter-agency cooperation is required to deal with the problems of child abuse and recommends setting up ‘children’s coordinating committees’. Reinforced as a key principle in the Children Act 1989 it has received even more prominence and impetus in public policy guidance since the late 1990s (Allnock et al. 2006). Achieving effective multi-agency working, however, is not entirely straightforward and three broad reasons for this are discussed in this chapter.

First, inter-agency collaboration is generally regarded as a good thing but still remains conceptually and practically elusive. A plethora of different terms, such as collaboration, joint working, coordination, consultation, communication, cooperation, partnership and teamwork are employed to describe multi-agency work. Underpinning all these terms is the general idea that by working together, professionals can achieve ‘an additive component (something more than the sum of their parts)’ (Hallett and Birchall 1992: 8), which is likely to be effective and beneficial. This lack of specificity has the potential to create confusion and misunderstandings for practitioners about respective roles, responsibilities and expectations in collaborative activity with practitioners often using these terms ‘interchangeably’ (Horwath* 2009a: 12).

Second, effective multi-agency collaboration is notoriously difficult to achieve. Inquiries and reviews into the particular circumstances of children who have died or been seriously injured through maltreatment frequently identify the failure of professionals to work together to communicate and share information appropriately, and to acknowledge joint agency responsibility (Brandon et al. 2008; Rose and Barnes 2008). Studies which have examined interdisciplinary teams reveal a range of inhibitors to achieve effective professional collaboration (Hudson et al. 1999; Miller and Freeman 2003). Considerable consensus exists across the inter-professional literature about these inhibitors (McLean 2007). Sidebotham and Weeks* (2010: 100–3) build on earlier work by others to categorize the barriers as structural; procedural and financial; professional; barriers related to status and legitimacy; and personal barriers. These are enough to suggest caution is required in advocating more multi-agency practice without addressing what is already known to support or hinder its effectiveness. Hudson (2000: 253) observes that ‘there is a paradox here, with “collaboration” seen as both problem and solution – failure to work together is the problem, therefore the solution is to work together better!’

The third challenge is that even if professionals are working well together, evidence of the positive difference that collaboration can make to outcomes for children is equivocal and often less than robust. Hallett and Birchall’s (1992) literature review found no clear evidence that coordinated multi-agency practice resulted in better protection for vulnerable children. Two issues stood out: a ‘pro-coordination bias’ and little reporting of failures (1992: 324). They also found that studies identified more methodological difficulties in trying to establish outcomes than in examining process. More recently, Webb and Vulliamy’s (2001) study of social work trained home–school support workers in secondary schools, and Wigfall and Moss’s (2001) study of a multi-agency network of childcare services, express uncertainties about how far such multi-agency projects are meeting their aspirations and are capable of producing the desired benefits for children and their families. Further, Glissen and Hemmelgarn (1998) found that focusing on inter-agency coordination was likely to have less benefit in terms of outcomes for children than improving the organizational climate within agencies. Gardner (2003: 156) sums up the current position:

While the vision and rationale for joint work between specialist groups are powerful, there is as yet insufficient evidence to argue that greater collaboration between services will necessarily produce better outcomes for all children and families.

This has led researchers such as Allnock et al. (2006: 36) to see the future as being ‘to design and commission research that is capable of addressing both process and impact in the context of these increasingly complex multi-agency systems’.

Starting with the child and family’s perspective

What happens if these uncertainties about multi-agency working are considered in the context of the contemporary experience of children and families? Sidebotham and Weeks (2010: 80) assert that ‘children are complex social actors living in complex social worlds’. Layard and Dunn (2009) suggest that the current generation of UK children are generally facing a more difficult world than previous generations, despite the apparent overall improvement in prosperity. In their inquiry into contemporary childhood, they identify some of the multiple factors contributing to the complexity of the world children need to negotiate.

For example, there are major changes and transitions in family circumstances so that ‘by 16 years old one in eight children has been through parental separation and is living with a “new” parent’, and ‘20 per cent of children are currently living with a single parent’ (Dunn 2008: 7). Many children also experience adversity in their homes, schools and neighbourhoods, such as substance misuse, mental illness and domestic violence within families; school pressures and bullying; and living in poverty and growing up in poor and rundown communities. In a UNICEF (2007) overview of child well-being, UK children, compared with a number of measures with children in twenty-one of the world’s richest countries, had the lowest overall ranking.

All four nations of the UK have expressed their commitment to improving outcomes for children and ensuring priority is given to children’s well-being in preparation for adult life. It is acknowledged that if improvement is to include all children and young people, special attention has to be given to helping those children who, for whatever reason, are likely to experience difficulties in doing well (DfES 2004a, b). This requires policies and structural building blocks that will help children flourish. For individual children and families policies aim for early identification of difficulties or concerns, before children reach crisis points, to protect ...

Table of contents

• Post-qualifying Social Work
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Complex contexts
• Part II Complex roles, responsibilities and relationships
• Part III Complex challenges in the workplace
• Endnote
• References
• Index