Working with Children, Young People and Families

Graham Brotherton, Helen Davies, Gillian McGillivray, Graham Brotherton, Helen Davies, Gillian McGillivray

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781848609891, 9781848609884
• eBook ISBN: 9781446246795
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Written from a unique interprofessional perspective, this book is an essential introduction to working with children, young people and families. It covers policy, practice and theory, exploring key themes and developments, including:

- poverty and disadvantage

- ethical practice

- child development

- education

- child protection

- children and young people?s rights

- doing research.

The book introduces students to a range of theoretical perspectives, links the key themes to the existing and emerging policy and practice context and supports students in engaging with and evaluating the central debates.

With case studies, reflective questions and sources of further reading, this is an ideal text for students taking courses in childhood studies, working with children, young people and families, interprofessional children?s services, early years, youth work and social work.

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1

Working with children, young people
and families – the policy context

Graham Brotherton

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The aims of this chapter are to:

• Consider what we mean by ‘policy’ in the context of children, young people and families and how this is shaped by government
• Consider how policy has evolved in recent years
• Explore the implications of current policy for those working with children, young people and families.

Anyone working with children young people and families cannot escape the significance of policy – any workplace will have policies on a wide range of issues, for example on health and safety, safeguarding children and young people or equal opportunities. Policies exist at the local level as described here, but also at a national level, for example the broad sweep of policy ideas and issues which comprise Every Child Matters or Youth Matters. The local policies which govern dayto-day practice are a reflection of the concerns and priorities of national policy.

Policy around children, young people and families is therefore an area of social policy which can be described as the study of the way in which governments seek to influence social life. In this sense anyone working in this area can be said to be working in a political arena. It is therefore one of the central arguments of both this chapter and the book more generally that to understand the role of a practitioner working with children, young people and families, we need to understand the political context in which it takes place. In order to understand the way in which policy is created we need to look briefly at how government operates in the United Kingdom but with specific reference to England.

The structure of government in the
United Kingdom

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One of the key features of the UK government, particularly in England, is that it is very centralised, even allowing for the recent impact of devolution (see later section in this chapter). This means that the government in general and the Prime Minister in particular has considerable power and the ability to exert considerable influence on policy. There are a number of overlapping reasons for this. In part this stems from the way in which the government is elected. The ‘first past the post’ system in which Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected on the basis of who gets the greatest number of votes in a geographical constituency means that effectively government will almost always come from one of two parties; Labour or Conservative. This gives the leaders of these two parties considerable power within the party, as, effectively, political careers are dependent upon being successful within party hierarchies. This is reinforced especially in government by the fact that the Leader/Prime Minister (with close colleagues/advisers) has considerable power of patronage, that is the ability to appoint people to positions both within government and in government agencies (see below).

Governments of all political persuasions have been accused of appointing people to significant roles in ‘agencies’ whose views support theirs, though in the last few years there has been a move to a more open selection process, through advertising for suitable applicants.

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Activity: Government Agencies

This is a term used to refer to a range of organisations that are linked to government (often by funding) but are not technically part of government. Perhaps the most important for those working with children, young people and families is Ofsted which despite officially being called the Office for Standards in Education actually regulates not just education but also social care and related services for children and young people.
Whilst you may already have a basic understanding, find out more about the role of Ofsted, for example:

• How does it regulate settings working with children and young people?
• Who does it employ to carry out its inspections?

The use of agencies to implement policy is not without its critics, who highlight the fact that they are not directly accountable to either local or national electorates in the way that governments or local authorities are.

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The structure of government in England

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There are three main elements to central government: the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The Executive consists of those who have decision-making power; that is the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers and those who advise them. In policy terms this is where policy tends to be initiated, that is, where, ‘ideas’ about new policy tend to come from.

The Legislature consists of the two Houses of Parliament, the Commons and the Lords. This is where policy – especially that which requires changes in the law – is discussed or ‘debated’ and sometimes amended. All potential legislation has to go through a series of readings in the two Houses and also through a series of committee stages where it is scrutinised in more detail by committees of MPs. Whilst this process does lead to some changes, it is important to note that the government can still exert considerable influence as it chooses the timetable for the readings and the composition of the committees which scrutinise the legislation.

The Judiciary is comprised of the senior Judges who play a role in terms of defining the way in which legislation ‘works’ in practice, by the creation of ‘case law’ which is the process by which judgements, made in test cases, create a framework for later judgements. The Fraser Guidelines (sometimes called Gillick Competence) referred to later in the chapter provide an example of this.

It is important to note that to a very considerable extent a government’s ability to initiate and push through legislation is dependent upon the size of its majority in Parliament. The larger the majority, the easier it is to maintain control of the process outlined above. Over the past 30 years or so, governments have for most of the time enjoyed sizeable majorities and have therefore been able to push through radical change if they have wished to. We now move on to consider the way in which governments actually develop policy.

The policy process

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The ‘traditional’ view of the policy process is that governments start the process by putting out a consultation document in the form of a Green Paper which organisations are then able to respond to. Green Papers often include a range of options that are then either proceeded with or dropped on the basis of the response from interested parties. This is followed by a White Paper that tends to set out more definite proposals. After the consultation on the White Paper the government will produce draft legislation, a ‘bill’ that then enters the process described previously. At the end of this process the bill becomes a new piece of legislation or Act. To give one recent example of this process which applies in the context of working with children, young people and families, in 2003 the government issued a Green Paper on the future of services for children in the light of the Laming report into the death of Victoria Climbié (discussed more fully in Chapter 7). This was Every Child Matters. After going through the process described above this became the basis for the Children Act 2004.

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Activity

Current consultation documents can be found on the relevant government departments’ websites (Department of Health, Department for Children, Schools and Families, Scottish Executive, Welsh Assembly). Have a look at any relevant consultation documents.
If there are any that are particularly relevant to your area of interest, think about whether and how you might want to respond, either individually, as a student group or as a group of work colleagues.

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It is important to highlight that not all new policy follows this route, as some changes do not require changes in the law and are brought about by government changing the advice or ‘instructions’ it gives to local authorities in the form of policy guidance. A change in the way funding is provided or targeted can also be used to change the direction of policy. There is a good summary of how the process of introducing legislation works, as well as useful information on many other aspects of government at http://www.parliament.uk/works/works.cfm

Whilst the role of local authorities in direct service provision is declining, they remain significant as commissioners of services. This process of utilising the mixed economy as a basis for policy and using non-governmental agencies as a key element of policy implementation has been described as a shift away from government to a broader framework of governance.

The mixed economy of welfare

One of the key changes in the way in which the services provided for children, young people and families have changed over the past 20 years or so has been a move away from the state (through the NHS or local authorities) as the main provider of services to a situation where services are provided by a range of private and non-profit organisations (charities, voluntary organisations, etc.) who are contracted by the state to provide specific services through a process of ‘commissioning’.

Devolution

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One of the key changes of the last few years has been the introduction of devolution, which has led to the creation of a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and the transfer of powers to this ‘new’ tier of government. In the case of the Scottish Parliament this includes full responsibility for children’s services issues. In the case of the Welsh Assembly there is a greater overlap with the UK Parliament but policy in Wales is clearly diverging in some areas.

From a policy point of view, one of the most interesting implications of devolution is the emergence of different emphases and approaches to children’s services policy within the different parts of the United Kingdom.

At present, in the area of policy around children and young people for example, this is most pronounced in the differing roles of the Children’s Commissioners in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are also a range of other issues relating to, for example, testing and the structure of the curriculum especially in the early years.

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Activity

Explore the four Children’s Commissioners’ websites which can be easily found through any search engine. Look at the differences in roles and emphases between the different Commissioners. What might explain the differences in emphasis between the roles in each country?

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Local government

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In Scotland and Wales, the structure of local authorities is quite straightforward with a system of ‘unitary’ authorities: a single layer of local government in which all authorities have the same roles and responsibilities. In the case of England, the system (largely for historical reasons as reform has been incremental) is more complex; some areas of England (mainly the large urban areas) have unitary authorities, whereas other areas have a two-tier system of district and county councils. In this case responsibility for children’s services lies with the county authority. The role of local authorities in the provision of services for children, young people and families has changed significantly in a number of ways.

Firstly there has been a move to Children’s Trusts in which there is integrated management of education, social care and other children and young peoples’ services. Secondly, in many services, for example early years provision, family support or children’s social care, there has been a move away from direct provision towards a purchasing and co-ordination role (the mixed economy as described earlier), with services provided by voluntary and private organisations, though there are still considerable variations in the amount of direct provision between local authorities. Thirdly, in education, there has been a move towards academy schools in which private or charitable organisations take a much greater role in the running of state education.

Implementing policy

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In actually implementing policy, governments have a number of powerful levers in seeking to ensure that policy ‘works’ in the way that was intended. The first is finance. Central government provides the bulk of the money (which is raised through national taxes; income tax, Value Added Tax and National Insurance and then redistributed locally) which local authorities use to provide services, and often this is given in ways which mean that it has to be used in particular ways through targeted funding, which can only be used for specific purposes. A second way in which central government is able to control policy is through using legislation to create ‘statutory duties’, which are duties that local authorities must do, for example providing a child protection service.

A third option open to central government is to give local authorities powers to undertake particular functions. Much of the Community Care legislation works in this way and it gives local authorities greater discretion. However, in many cases the use of ‘powers’ is clarified by the production of guidance or standards, which may in itself create a fairly tight framework within which agencies have to operate (see, for example the Every Child Matters outcomes framework). This links to the final major ‘tool’ available to government which is the use of inspectorates such as Ofsted to scrutinise services, and this is discussed in more detail in a later section.

The development of services for children,
young people and families

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The nineteenth century can be seen as the point at which there emerged a recognisable pattern or system of services for children, young people and families. Key elements of this came from within the charitable movement through organisations like Barnardos which grew very rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century, providing residential childcare in orphanages (though only a relatively small proportion of the children in them were technically ‘orphans’). From 1906 onwards the emphasis switches to increased state intervention as the new Liberal government introduced a series of measures which are still recognisable as key elements of our existing system; school meals, legislation against child neglect, the introduction of school nurses and health visitors and education reform to try to ensure universal primary education. In particular, for the purposes of this chapter, the 1908 Children Act was passed which, for the first time, can be seen as trying to define in a general sense the role of parents in bringing up children.

During the Second World War the government commissioned a senior civil servant, William Beveridge, to look at the technical workings of the benefit system. Beveridge’s report somewhat exceeded his brief and called for wholesale reform of the welfare system, arguing that the interconnected nature of the problems associated with poverty and unemployment, for example, required an interconnected response. The Beveridge report Social Insurance and Allied Services published in 1942 was effectively a blueprint for a welfare state and formed the basis for the general election at the end of the Second World War with the Labour party promising to impleme...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Working with children, young people and families – the policy context
• 2 Changing childhoods, changing families
• 3 Working with parents
• 4 The meaning of poverty: issues and policy development
• 5 Children and young people’s health and well-being
• 6 Listening to children’s voices – in educational settings
• 7 From safeguarding to Safeguarding
• 8 Interpreting risk: factors, fears and judgement
• 9 Situating child development
• 10 Research with children, young people and families
• 11 Developing yourself as a practitioner
• 12 Where are we going?
• References
• Index