Introducing Child Care Social Work: Contemporary Policy and Practice

Jill Davey, Jenny Bigmore

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781844451807
• eBook ISBN: 9781844455409
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a practitioner?s perspective on the challenges and developments of working in Child Care Social Work in the current context of organisational and social change. Drawing on the experience of social work practitioners who have undertaken the Post-Qualifying Child Care Specialist Award, the book shows how these challenges are being met in everyday practice, providing a forum to share their knowledge and experience with others and contribute to best practice. It will be of interest to social work practitioners and students and all those interested in the reality of current child care practice.

Chapter 1

Child development

Contributors: Vanessa Bomphrey,
Yvonne Mieville and Liz Reilly

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ACHIEVING A POST-QUALIFYING SPECIALIST AWARD IN CHILD CARE

Knowledge of child and young person development is one of the common core of skills and knowledge for the children’s workforce as well as a key area of knowledge identified in the National Occupational Standards at a post-qualifying level (DfES, 2005).

This chapter will help you to develop the required knowledge base.

Human growth and development

• Human growth and development including developmental milestones.
• Factors which promote a positive sense of self.
• Factors which ensure safe and effective care for children and young people, including secure attachment.
• The effects of insecure attachment and loss; the impact of all forms of abuse, violence, including domestic violence and other trauma have on the child/young person.

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The Every Child Matters agenda introduced the government’s aims for all children to:

• be healthy;
• stay safe;
• enjoy and achieve;
• make a positive contribution;
• achieve economic well-being;
  (HMSO, 2003)

Policy and guidance take a developmental perspective to assessing the needs of children and providing universal services with the aim of all children being supported to reach their full potential in all significant areas of their lives. This requires that social workers and all those working with children have a foundation of evidence-based knowledge of child development.

The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DoH, 2000), sets out a number of principles which should underpin all assessments including that they are:

• child-centred;
• rooted in child development.

It is important that practitioners have a comprehensive understanding of child development and all its stages in order to understand how other factors such as trauma, abuse and parenting impact on normal child development and have knowledge of how other factors such as culture, disability and environment must be taken into account when making an assessment from a developmental perspective.

In this chapter we will be including examples of how practitioners apply current knowledge of child development to their own practice including new research findings into brain development and current thinking around attachment and attachment disorders.

Key skills needed to develop an understanding of a child’s developmental stage are observation and judgement. As part of our teaching of child development at a post-qualifying level, we offer students the opportunity to undertake child observations and at the end of the chapter we include some examples of how this has enabled them to reflect on new learning and the implications for their own practice.

The impact of early abuse and trauma on the developing infant brain

The following section is an extract from an assignment written by an education social worker undertaking the Post-Qualifying Specialist Child Care Award.

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CASE STUDY

My first contact with Natasha, a white British child, was in Year 7 of secondary school. After a good primary school experience, Natasha was finding the transition to secondary school difficult and was refusing to attend. Natasha lived with her adoptive parents, also white British, who were reported to be at their wits’ end with her behaviour at home, which included stealing, lying and aggressive behaviours towards her younger siblings. Natasha’s parents explained that she had been removed from her birth parents at five months old, following physical abuse. She had then enjoyed a stable foster placement until the time of her adoptive placement. The adoptive family were increasingly frustrated and bewildered by Natasha’s behaviour. They believed that they had offered a secure, loving home for nine years, the majority of Natasha’s life, yet this love and stability had not been enough and her increasingly dangerous and destructive behaviours were becoming unmanageable within a family setting. They were overwhelmed and feared they would have to give her up.

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Child development

Child development is a broad and diverse topic, and as Cicchetti and Rizley (1981, cited in Aldgate et al., 2006 p53) write, the empirical study of child development is a perplexing scientific problem for which we have no ready answers or simple solutions. There are many factors which impact upon the development of children, including genetic and environmental factors, as well as other theories about the stages of physical and cognitive development.

The following assignment extract focuses on the importance of attachment theory in the early development of infants and considers the impact of early abuse and trauma on attachment and on the developing infant brain. It will consider how these, together with separation and loss, can impact on subsequent development and relationships, and how practitioners can support carers and parents to increase resilience and lessen the long term effects of attachment disorders, abuse and loss. Education social workers are likely to be involved in the more complex issues around the education needs of children and young people, particularly in relation to school attendance.

A possible scenario might be to work with a child who is having difficulties in making the transition into secondary school. Many children and young people have complex histories which may include early trauma, abuse and issues around separation and loss. An example of this might be a child who has experienced some form of substitute care such as foster care, kinship care or adoption. It is very common that early experiences will impact on behaviour either at the time or indeed at a later date and it is therefore very important not to see the behaviour in isolation but to consider it within the context of the child’s history.

Social workers can help parents and other service users understand and make sense of the current behaviour of children and young people by considering their past experiences and how these may have shaped their personality. Understanding a child’s developmental stage and where behaviours come from can inform our practice in choosing appropriate intervention. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that while an understanding of background or a diagnosis of a particular condition can help us to choose interventions, it is only part of the story. The behaviour of the child does not change simply because we understand more about its cause; the stress for the child and carers remains the same. Diagnosis and understanding need to be followed up with appropriate therapy and support.

Nonetheless, theories of attachment can help professionals and carers to understand what babies and young children like Natasha need in their earliest months and years. They can help us to understand what some children have missed in their early development and to consider how, or even if, we can help them overcome any early damage.

Attachment theory involves the study of human relationships, especially early formative relationships. Further, the theory asserts that there is a biological imperative for infants to form attachments and that they exhibit attachment behaviours to promote attachment. In this sense attachment behaviour can be viewed as survival behaviour.

(Daniel et al., 2000, p14)

Bowlby identified the importance of a secure and loving relationship between mother and child from the earliest stages of babyhood in developing the child’s sense of positive identity. Much of Bowlby’s work focused only on the relationship with the mother. Later theorists have criticised this overemphasis on maternal care as simplistic, and have demonstrated that a primary attachment figure may be a father or other adult, and that other attachments from extended family or community members also contribute to healthy development (Smith et al., 2003). Theorists agree generally, however, that children need more than just the physical necessities of life such as food and shelter: they also need human warmth and nurture if they are to grow up as functioning human beings (Stainton Rogers, 2001, p211).

Human babies are born vulnerable and dependent upon their caregivers. Cairns (2002, p48) asserts that from birth, babies show behaviours which actively contribute to (their) own survival. These ‘attachment behaviours’ are designed to elicit a response from the caregiver to meet the baby’s need. Behaviours might include crying or screaming, known as ‘aversive’ behaviours, eliciting an adult response to stop the behaviour by meeting the need, perhaps for food or a nappy change. The baby discovers ‘attractive’ behaviours, such as smiling, which will be enjoyed by a responsive carer and the baby. Later, the baby develops ‘active’ behaviours such as moving towards the carer to get attention and relieve stress.

Davenport (1989), reviewing some of the cross-cultural research, concluded that attachment behaviours in babies appear to be universal, and that babies will still attach to their primary carers even when much of the child-minding is not done by the parents, such as in a kibbutz. Aldgate et al. (2006) concur that attachment is universal but refer to further research suggesting that cultural and religious expectations of child behaviour may lead to differences in how attachment is demonstrated in behaviour. Practitioners need to be aware of these potential cultural differences and show sensitivity in the assessment process.

Howe et al. (1999, cited in Cairns, 2002, p52) describe how theories of attachment were tested and expanded upon in the work of Mary Ainsworth. Ainsworth noted three distinct patterns of attachment behaviour in infants, which she classified as secure attachment, insecure avoidant attachment and insecure anxious ambivalent attachment. Howe et al. (1999, cited in Cairns, 2002, p52) refer to the later work of Main and Soloman, who added a fourth response, disorganised attachment.

Following on from the work of Ainsworth, researchers have considered how the parent responds to the child’s attachment behaviours. George and Soloman (1999, cited in Aldgate et al., 2006, p76) describe three groups of parents; those providing a secure base; those who reject and thereby deactivate the infant’s attachment behaviours; and those who provide disorganised care by uncertain and helpless parenting.

Cairns (2002) asserts that a clear correlation has been found between the attachment style of the parent and the attachment pattern of the child. The attachment behaviours from the baby and the response from the carer are considered to be a two-way process, referred to as the cycle of attunement. Where the carer is responsive and available both adult and child move through a cycle of stress arousal, stress modulation and the pleasurable experience of stress relief.

The quality of these early attachment relationships is believed to affect significantly the quality of emotional relationships throughout a child’s life and provides a template of relationships or internal working model (Howe, cited in Aldgate et al., 2006, p192).

Some children experience disordered attachments from birth. It is possible that a mother or other primary caregiver might have a limited ability to meet the child’s basic needs, offering unpredictable care, which was the case for Natasha. There could be many reasons for this including their own experience of being parented, personality, chaotic home environment, addiction, mental health, domestic violence and other significant environmental factors. In these types of situation it is highly possible that the attunement necessary to secure healthy attachments may be absent.

Adults with unresolved attachment issues may find the attachment needs of their children triggering their own needs. An adult who has been unable to resolve these issues may have a damaged internal working model. They are unable to empathise with the needs of others, even infants, and may attribute unintended meaning to them. Thus a crying baby is perceived by the parent to be intentionally annoying them rather than signalling its need for comfort (Cairns, 2002).

This has implications for professionals assessing parenting capacity, where an understanding of the parent’s attachment style can assist both in judging risk to the child and appropriate treatment for the parent. Indeed, Aldgate et al. (2006, p95) advise that assessments of parenting capacity should give in-depth attention to assessing the sense caregivers have made of their earlier attachment experiences.

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ACTIVITY 1.1

Think of examples from your own casework where a greater understanding of a parent’s own experience of being parented may have contributed to your understanding of the presenting problem and informed your intervention and provision of services.

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Although for the purposes of this discussion we are particularly interested in theories of attachment in child development, it should be remembered that children and their carers are part of a wider society or system. The work of Bronfenbrenner (1989, cited in Daniel et al., p31) emphasises the importance of ecological factors in assessment, and that children should never be assessed in isolation from their environment. A holistic approach to assessment is required.

Early brain development

In recent years, alongside the development of attachment theories, there has been increasing research and understanding in neurophysiology and early brain development. Modern non-invasive techniques for scanning brains have given us significant additional insight into how early attachments seem to affect early brain development and for some children like Natasha may contribute to their ongoing difficulties. The significance of pathological, social and environmental impacts on development is becoming harder to refute.

We know that brain development begins in the womb. The developing foetus may be damaged by toxic substances such as drugs and alcohol, infectious diseases or nutrient deficiencies (Shonkoff, 2000).

Healthy babies are born with a brain which has the biological foundation to build neural connections according to the child’s experiences. Babies with a secure attachment relationship are in the optimal condition for healthy brain development. Cairns (2002, p50) tells us that research shows securely attached children develop bigger brains.

Siegal (2007) refers to the science behind the developing brain, explaining that the brain changes in respo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword to the Post-Qualifying Social Work Practice Series
• About the Authors
• About the Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Child development The impact of early abuse and trauma on the developing infant brain Child development and disability Child observation
• 2 Ecological factors Assessment issues for children with a disability Working with unaccompained asylum-seeking children and young people young people
• 3 Legislation and social policy Child care law and policy – a human rights perspective ‘No legal place to stay’ – issues for Gypsy and Traveller children
• 4 Evidence-based practice and managing the professional task Service delivery to parents with learning disabilities – a critical appraisal Managing and supporting young people with sexually harmful behaviour
• References
• Index