Theorising the signs of safety approach to child protection social work: Positioning, codes and power

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.03.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The SoS approach includes safety in the construction of client's ‘riskiness’.

  • The SoS offers clients morally attractive subject positions for investment.

  • It constructs risk in ways that reflect both corrective and appreciative ‘codes’.

  • The SoS has a ‘respect for persons’ ethic that guides discretionary power decisions.

  • Structural contributors to risk are not targeted in the SoS approach.

Abstract

Many countries are struggling to reconcile the conflicting demands of heightened risk aversion cultivated by a reactionary public and media, and recognition of the rights of parents and children to family maintenance where possible. One approach that seeks to grapple with these demands is the signs of safety (SoS) approach (Turnell & Edwards, 1999). This article is a theoretical paper discussing the SoS approach, drawing on a qualitative empirical study of decision-making in a context where the SoS was used. As practice tools affect knowledge production, the SoS approach is analysed using the social constructionist concepts of positioning and investment, Bernstein's codes, and Foucault's knowledge/power and discretion/surveillance ideas. It is argued that the SoS approach offers morally attractive subject positions to parents which may contribute to client engagement and personal change. This is achieved by focussing on future safety, implying future parental competence, and including parents in decision-making processes. The SoS approach uses both corrective and appreciative ‘codes’ in its approach to knowledge production. That is, it allows clients some input into constructing problems and finding solutions and thus de-privileges the social worker's ‘expert’ view, reflecting an appreciative code. However, this does not extend to ‘bottom-line’ concerns that the social worker defines as essential for the case to close, thus reflecting corrective elements. In terms of knowledge/power and discretion/surveillance, the approach helps social workers to differentiate between when to lend discretionary power to clients and include them in knowledge production, and when to retain control over knowledge production. Importantly, it is underpinned by a traditional ‘respect for persons’ ethic that assumes the potential for parental functioning, and parental right to autonomy, in an environment that has traditionally begun from the opposite premise. However, while it holds much potential for humanising responses to risk that are productive in terms of personal change, client engagement and child safety, its focus on the micro context of client's lives only may omit significant structural causes of risks to children, or overstate social worker's power within organisational and wider political policy contexts.

Introduction

Houston and Griffiths (2000) challenge social work to move beyond the ‘risk paradigm’ in child protection social work, arguing that a focus on measuring objective risk factors has resulted in a partialised practice approach that emphasises “prediction, control and culpability” (p.1). They and others argue that this focus damages the client/social worker relationship, dehumanises clients, and promotes practice characterised by blame, hostility, and conservative interventionism. This kind of risk measurement is related to psychological stress for both social worker and client, and a past, rather than future orientation to practice (Ferguson, 2008, Gillingham and Bromfield, 2008, Howe, 2010, Keddell, 2011a, Parton, 2006). Conversely, Baird and Wagner (2000) and Shlonsky and Wagner (2005) argue that validated actuarial risk assessment approaches are an aid to practice, as they improve an ability to assess future risk of harm beyond professional judgment alone. Munro (2010) attempts to embed both actuarial and professional judgment concepts in her systems approach to child protection practice. Both sides of the now well-rehearsed debate agree that an ability to assess and manage risk in child protection social work is a crucial aspect of the role, and requires careful balancing of children's right to protection with their right to, and need for, family relationships (Keddell, 2013, Schwalbe, 2008, Turnell, 2008).

Whichever type of decision-making approach is utilised, the interpretive, constitutive and morally categorical nature of the discourses governing the approach are often under-theorised, despite numerous calls to better understand the underpinning rationalities operating in everyday practice (Broadhurst et al., 2010, Buckley, 2003, Taylor and White, 2000). The discourses implicit in decision-making tools not only affect the ways client behaviour comes to be understood, but also have a direct impact on the relationship formed between social worker and client, as discourses (ways of conceptualising behaviours and situations) determine roles, rules, categories and subject positions in everyday interactions (Gergen, 2003, Parton, 1999, Shotter, 1997). The worker–client relationship, in turn, has an ongoing impact on many of the aims of child protection social work practice including family engagement, goal negotiation, decisions around removal, motivation for personal change, monitoring, empowerment, and the ongoing management of risk. Furthermore, decision-making tools and their associated discourses interact with and reflect the wider politics of practice, that is, politics in a broad sense, those that “…influence the ability of participants in the service process to define needs, implement alternative strategies of helping and evaluate their effectiveness…It determines the roles that social workers and clients play in the helping process, the different forms of authority…and the vocabulary that describes the service transaction itself” (Reisch & Jani, 2012, p. 1136). Thus, the nexus between the discourses used to interpret client behaviour implicit in decision-making approaches, the ongoing relationship between client and social worker, and the process of knowledge production about clients deserves attention. The dynamic between these components influences decisions to remove or return children, as well as the broader goals of the profession including social justice, self-determination, and protection of the vulnerable.

This article theorises these connections between risk assessment tools, discourse, knowledge production, and social worker–client relationships in child protection social work. It draws on a study of decision-making undertaken at a site of practice that uses the signs of safety (SoS) approach (Turnell & Edwards, 1999). This context is a large child and family NGO in Aotearoa/New Zealand that decided to adopt the SoS approach some years ago, and worked closely with one of its founders to ensure consistent and rigorous implementation across the organisation. The influences of the SoS on knowledge production about risk and safety will be analysed drawing on several theoretical tools. These tools are: the constructionist concepts of positioning and investment; Bernstein's codes; and Foucault's knowledge/power and discretion/surveillance ideas (Bernstein, 1977, Burr, 2003, Featherstone and Fawcett, 1994, Foucault, 1980, Healy, 2005, Holloway, 1994, Rodger, 1991). By describing and theorising a relatively recent approach to managing risk and safety, this article hopes to ‘extend the conversation’ about risk by exploring the ethical, philosophical and pragmatic influences of this innovative approach on current risk management practices. It gives particular attention to the discursive production of knowledge that takes place within a relational context of unequal power.

Section snippets

Setting the scene: risk assessment in context

Risk assessment, that is, evaluating the likelihood of future harm to a child is an integral aspect of child protection social work. The ever-increasing need of governments worldwide to be perceived as responding adequately to risks to children, particularly in response to high profile media reports of child deaths and an increased focus on children's rights, places immense pressure on social workers to respond preventively to risk of future harm (Cashmore, 2009). This places an unrealistic

Discourses — constructing reality

A social constructionist paradigm draws attention to the constitutive nature of the ideological and conceptual bases of the language drawn on to interpret client's lives. These bases reflect discourses that are used to understand problems, guide interventions and frame the ongoing aims of practice, yet they reflect our culturally specific assumptions about how behaviour can be known, rather than essential ‘truths’ about that behaviour. These assumptions reflect social, political, chronological,

Conclusion

While specific approaches such as the SoS are not the only drivers of how risk discourses function in practice, they deserve attention as one factor operating in complex organisational, legal, philosophical and personal environments governing risk constructions. The SoS approach challenges many of the taken for granted assumptions of more traditional risk assessment tools by at least beginning risk assessment from these premises: that it is not necessary to understand deeper psychological

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by a University of Otago research grant, and the commitment to transparent practice of the Open Home Foundation NZ/Te Whare Kaupapa Awhina.

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