Communicating and Engaging with Children and Young People

Making a Difference

Lefevre, Michelle, Michelle Lefevre

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781447343530
• eBook ISBN: 9781447343547
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Practitioners must be able to listen, talk, communicate and engage with children and young people if they are going to make a real difference to their lives. The key principles of collaborative, relational, child-centred working underpin all the ideas in this bestselling, practice-focused textbook.

Using an innovative 'Knowing, Being, Doing' model, it features reflective exercises, practice examples, vignettes, cutting-edge research findings and theoretical perspectives.

This new edition includes:

•Updated references to policy, legislation, professional requirements, practice tools and research, including around unaccompanied young refugees and asylum seekers, and child sexual exploitation;

•New learning from ethnographic and observational research of social workers' direct practice with children;

•Added focus on the context for practice, including the role of supervision and organisational containment in developing practitioners' emotional capabilities.

With detailed coverage of key skills, this book will equip students and practitioners with the critical thinking and tools needed for effective practice in order to promote the welfare, protection and rights of children and young people.

1
Setting the scene

Introduction

The importance of mutual engagement and communication between children, young people and their social workers can no longer be ignored. It is now clear that, if they are to understand them and make a real difference to their lives, practitioners must be able to relate to children and young people, listen to them, support them and fully involve them in matters that concern them. Indeed this can be a matter of life and death. Inquiries into the abuse, neglect, and non-accidental deaths of children and young people reveal time and time again how risks to them may be increased if professionals charged with their care and protection do not spend time getting to know them, finding out what they think and feel, and trying to make sense of their experiences (Ofsted, 2011; Sidebotham et al, 2016).

Numerous research studies report how professionals’ engagement with children and young people and the extent to which they are able to facilitate their participation make a significant difference to the quality of assessments, planning and service provision. Children and young people want to be actively included when decisions are being made about them. They also have a right to this, as set out in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: a right to express their views in all matters that affect them and for these views to be taken into account. As outlined in Chapter Two, this principle has now been enshrined in law, policy and practice guidance across services for children, young people and families in the UK (Thomas, 2015). So, finding out what young people are thinking, feeling, hoping and fearing, about wider service planning as well as decision making that affects them directly, is now a statutory requirement as well as a tenet of ethical practice. Involving young people in these ways makes practical good sense, too, as it draws on the insider expertise they have about their own lives (Braye and Preston-Shoot, 2005).

Certain groups of children and young people, such as those who are at risk of harm, those who require services to maintain and promote their welfare (including disabled children), those involved with judicial processes and those who are looked after, have specific entitlements to effective communication with social workers. As discussed in Chapter Three, many of these children and young people have been able to give a clear indication of what they want and expect from their social workers; for example, those in care have outlined their need and preference for information, consultation, support, reliability and a trusted interpersonal relationship (Jelicic et al, 2014).

And yet, despite these policy aspirations and clear practice guidelines, it is clear that even experienced social workers do not always feel confident in their skills and nor do they or their employers necessarily appreciate the importance of their direct work with children (Munro, 2011). Ethnographic research has shown how practitioners burdened by heavy caseloads and administrative demands in statutory contexts struggle to find the uninterrupted time and energy to create the trusting relationships within which children feel safe to explore and confide complex and sensitive matters (Broadhurst et al, 2010; Ferguson, 2016a; Winter et al, 2016). It is essential that resources to support practice, including adequate staffing and supervision that supports the emotional component of direct work, are made available to practitioners (Hingley-Jones and Ruch, 2016; Horwath, 2016). Standards of social work education and the availability of continuing professional development opportunities are also an important aspect of preparing practitioners for complex and contested conversations and interactions with children in challenging situations who may be frightened, distressed, traumatised, angry or confused.

The aim of this book is to help practitioners and those in their qualifying training to develop their knowledge, values, personal qualities and skills to become more confident and capable in the complex and varied approaches to engagement and communication they will need to meet the ethical aspirations and statutory requirements of their roles. In particular, it aims to enthuse readers to develop the most powerful resource they have to offer in their practice with children and young people: themselves.

How communication and engagement are defined in this book

Chapters Four and Five consider in more depth what might be meant by capability and effectiveness in engagement and communication. In order to begin, though, it is helpful to set out here in brief some of this book’s key ideas in relation to this. An earlier influential definition of skilful communication and engagement was that outlined in the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge for the Children’s Workforce, which the Department for Education and Skills (DfES, 2005) previously set as non-statutory guidance for those working in children and young people’s services in England and Wales:

Good communication is central to working with children…. It involves listening, questioning, understanding and responding to what is being communicated….. Communication is not just about the words you use, but also your manner of speaking, body language and, above all, the effectiveness with which you listen. To communicate effectively it is important to take account of culture and context, for example where English is an additional language. Effective engagement requires the involvement of children … in the design and delivery of services and decisions that affect them. It is important to consult with them and consider their opinions and perspectives from the outset. A key part of effective communication and engagement is trust…. To build a rapport with children … it is important to demonstrate understanding, respect and honesty. Continuity in relationships promotes engagement and the improvement of lives. (DfES, 2005, p 6)

More recently, the Knowledge and skills statement for approved child and family practitioners (DfE, 2014) advises practitioners to display the following capabilities in their relationships, communication and direct work with children and young people:

Be both authoritative and empathic and work in partnership … enabling full participation in assessment, planning, review and decision making…. Communicate clearly and sensitively with children of different ages and abilities, their families and in a range of settings and circumstances. Use methods based on best evidence. Create immediate rapport with people not previously known which facilitates engagement and motivation to participate in child protection enquiries, assessments and services. Act respectfully even when people are angry, hostile and resistant to change…. Listen to the views, wishes and feelings of children and families…. Promote speech, language and communication support, identifying those children and adults who are experiencing difficulties expressing themselves. (DfE, 2014, p 3)

Such practice guidance provides a useful baseline, but, as will become apparent, this book views engagement and communication as a more complex set of processes than this rather straightforward advice suggests. Activities such as ‘informing’ or ‘listening’ rarely involve simple one-way actions, but tend to be interactive and intersubjective1 by their very nature. In social work, as in everyday life, misunderstandings or misinterpretations of what has been said, shown, heard or witnessed are common. Children and young people often struggle to convey clearly what is important to them and practitioners may not fully understand what they hear or see. The reverse is also true: practitioners are not always able to find child-friendly ways of explaining difficult or sensitive issues, leaving young people unable to make sense of the information presented.

These complex communicative processes mean that it is not enough for workers to have a set of standard techniques to draw on when the situation demands. Instead, an approach customised to the needs and preferences of each child and situation is required. Workers will need to develop both themselves and their practice in a range of ways if they are to achieve this bespoke approach. Engagement and communication with children and young people is often more effective if it takes place within a relationship where they have sufficient trust in their workers to feel safe discussing their fears, hopes, distress and concerns with them (Winter, 2009). This means practitioners must engage with children and young people at a real, human level and carry out professional tasks such as assessments in a child-centred manner. This relationship-based approach can support the fundamental ethical principles underpinning child welfare practice outlined above.

These principles begin to highlight how effective communication depends not just on what workers do, but also on who they are – the person inside the professional (Lefevre, 2012). This book aims to inspire practitioners to develop the kind of personal qualities and emotional availability and capability that make children and young people feel safe enough that they risk engaging with workers about issues that matter to them. It also aspires to create a sound ethical basis to professional practice that ensures that workers respect and promote not only children and young people’s needs but also their rights. Practitioners will also be able to use this book to develop their knowledge base, learning more about the different ways in which young people relate and communicate, what might get in the way of mutual engagement and understanding, and evidence-informed approaches.

Focus of the book

While theoretical perspectives and research findings, including my own, underpin the discussions throughout this book, readers are most likely to achieve deeper understandings and self-development through an interactive engagement with the reflective exercises and practice vignettes that present practice dilemmas and illustrate points made. Readers are encouraged throughout to reflect on their current professional context so that their understanding of particular children and how best to work with them can develop through the book. Children and young people will be partners in this endeavour; their expertise on what constitutes effective engagement and communication will be drawn on through quotations and findings from studies in which their views and experiences have been heard.

Who is this book for?

Social workers will find this book particularly relevant and helpful as the practice vignettes used draw on some of the statutory roles and tasks that render their interactions and interventions with children and young people particularly challenging. However, it is also likely to be useful for other front-line workers who engage with young people within statutory services, particularly in roles that include elements of family support, safeguarding, youth justice and work with children in care. As the practice vignettes used within the book are set in England, there are consequently some specific references to English law and policy. However, such references have been kept to a minimum as a way of making the book more accessible to social workers elsewhere and to professionals from other disciplines.

What is meant by ‘children and young people’?

The terms ‘child’ and ‘children’ are often used as shorthand in this book to refer to both children and young people. This is not to minimise the often significant differences between them. Age is likely to be a significant factor in the mode of communication used; interactions with most four-year-olds should employ simple concepts and vocabulary and might need to be play-based, whereas conversations with some 15-year-olds might be more similar to those with an adult. Any attempt to work with both in exactly the same way could confuse younger children and leave teenagers feeling patronised. One 14-year-old, who had been through a child protection investigation, for example, spoke of how annoyed she had felt about workers speaking to her “as if I was a little kid” (quoted in Bell, 2002, p 5).

Age also confers different legal rights and responsibilities in certain aspects of the law, and this varies across jurisdictions. For example, the age of criminal responsibility is eight in Scotland and is shortly to rise to 12, but is 10 in the rest of the UK. Young people can legally gamble, have sexual intercourse and marry at the age of 16 in England, but cannot drive until 17, or vote, buy fireworks or have a tattoo until aged 18.

There is a range of views, often in sharp dispute, on whether it is better to refer to all age groups either as children or as young people, or whether to differentiate on the grounds of specific age or other indicators of relative maturity. The General Medical Council (GMC, 2017) guidance for good medical practice, for example, uses the following definitions:

We use the term ‘children’ to refer to younger children who do not have the maturity and understanding to make important decisions for themselves. We use the term ‘young people’ to refer to older or more experienced children who are more likely to be able to make these decisions for themselves.

Some use the term ‘child’ inclusively to foreground children and young people’s need for support, guidance and protection. For example, many statutory services in England refer to teenagers at risk of child sexual exploitation as children rather than as young people to ensure that their rights to protection and guidance are emphasised alongside their right to voice, autonomy and privacy (Hickle et al, 2017). Others take a child’s rights and/or sociology of childhood perspective to critique such developmentalist paradigms for positioning children primarily as vulnerable, incomplete human ‘becomings’ rather than recognising them additionally as rights-bearing human ‘beings’ who are intentional and autonomous social actors (Uprichard, 2007). These divergent views are difficult to resolve. In its guidance on conducting age assessments with unaccompanied minors, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) approaches this dilemma in the following way:

In this guidance our use of the words ‘children’ and ‘young people’ has been very deliberate. In the majority of cases, we use the word ‘child’ when it is very clear we are discussing an individual that is under the age of 18. We use the term ‘young person’ when we are not yet sure whether the individual is under 18, but if they could very well be. Even if after an age assessment it is acknowledged that a young person is under the age of 18, we may continue to use ‘young person’ as many adolescents do not appreciate being called ‘children’. We have tried to use language which the young people we know and support would be comfortable with. (ADCS, 2015, pp 3-4)

This book leans towards using the terms ‘child’ and ‘young person’ interchangeably, with the term ‘child’ most often used to encompass all age groups. There are three key reasons for this. First, all those up to the age of 18 in England are defined in law as ‘children’ and are thus covered by legislation designed to safeguard them, promote their welfare and facilitate their participation. This entitles them to particular services and to having their views and concerns elicited and taken into account. Second, those aged under 18 share a common legal and social status as ‘minors’, which gives them less power and control over what happens to them and limits the extent to which they can participate in society. This disempowerment of children can render them more vulnerable and rob them of their competence, for example in making decisions, because they have not been provided with the information they need to weigh up options and potential consequences. This vulnerability or lack of capability is often misrepresented or misunderstood as stemming from the young person, rather than resulting from their reduced social and cultural power (Archard and Skivenes, 2009).

A third (and related) point is that those under 18 have a particular need for information, interactions and discussions to be tailored to their individual needs and ways of communicat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Social Work in Practice Series
• Contents
• List of tables, figures and boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Setting the scene
• 2. The role and importance of engagement and communication with children and young people
• 3. Children and young people’s views on what counts as effective engagement and communication with them
• 4. Some theoretical perspectives on the nature of communication
• 5. Knowing, being and doing: developing capability in direct work
• 6. Appraising your capabilities and learning needs
• 7. A facilitating context for practice with children and young people
• 8. Involving and engaging children and young people in assessments
• 9. Observing children and making sense of their play and behaviour
• 10. Communicating with children and young people through play, activities and the expressive arts
• 11. Relational communication as the heart of social work practice
• References