Social Work with Children and Families of related interest Divorcing Children Children’s Experiences of their Parents’ Divorce Ian Butler, Lesley Scanlan, Margaret Robinson, Gillian Douglas and Mervyn Munch ISBN 1 84310 103 3 Developing World of the Child Edited by Jane Aldgate, David Jones, Wendy Rose and Carole Jeffery ISBN 1 84310 244 7 The Child’s World Assessing Children in Need Edited by Jan Horwath ISBN 1 85302 957 2 Supporting Parents Messages from Research Department of Health ISBN 1 84310 210 2 Child Development for Child Care and Protection Workers Brigid Daniel, Sally Wassel & Robbie Gilligan ISBN 1 85302 633 6 Making an Impact Children and Domestic Violence A Reader Marianne Hester, Chris Pearson and Nicola Harwin ISBN 1 85302 844 4 Competence in Social Work Practice A Practical Guide for Professionals Edited by Kieran O’Hagan ISBN 1 85302 332 9 Handbook of Theory for Practice Teachers in Social Work Edited by Joyce Lishman ISBN 1 85302 098 2 Social Work with Children and Families Getting into Practice Second Edition Ian Butler and Gwenda Roberts Jessica Kingsley Publishers London and New York Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1P 9HE. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher. Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. The right of Ian Butler and Gwenda Roberts to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition first published in the United Kingdom in 1997 This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd 116 Pentonville Road London N1 9JB, England and 29 West 35th Street, 10th fl. New York,NY 10001-2299, USA www.jkp.com Copyright © 2004 Ian Butler and Gwenda Roberts Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 84310 108 4 Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear Contents PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9 Introduction 13 How to Use This Book 15 PART I Developing Basic Knowledge and Skills Unit 1 Children and Childhood 19 Unit 2 The Family 52 Unit 3 Parenting 79 Unit 4 Supporting 111 Unit 5 Looking After 140 Unit 6 Child Abuse 178 PART II Developing Specialist Knowledge and Skills Unit 7 Assessing 207 Unit 8 Planning 240 Unit 9 Child Protection 271 Unit 10 Court Craft 305 Appendix 1 Orders under the Children Act 1989 338 Appendix 2 Index to Exercises 340 Appendix 3 Index to Study Texts 341 REFERENCES 342 SUBJECT INDEX 355 AUTHOR INDEX 362 List of Figures 1.1 Needs/rights grid 27 1.2 A child’s developmental needs 31 1.3 The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 33 1.4 The Human Rights Act 1998 35 3.1 Parenting job description 83 3.2 Dimensions of parenting capacity 87 3.3 Family and environmental factors 90 3.4 Parenting profile 94 4.1 The assessment framework 116 4.2 The population of children in need 120 5.1 Arousal-relaxation cycle 143 5.2 Patterns of attachment 144 5.3 The corporate parent 154 5.4 Objectives for children’s services (selected) 163 5.5 National minimum standards for children’s homes 165 7.1 The flow chart 211 7.2 The genogram 212 7.3 The ecomap 213 7.4 Assessing outcomes in child care 222 7.5 The complete social worker 228 8.1 Pathway plans 258 8.2 Diary sheets 259 9.1 Indicators of physical abuse 282 9.2 Greenland’s check-list 290 9.3 The pitfalls of initial assessments and enquiries 299 10.1 Court structure 315 List of Tables 2.1 Division of household tasks by gender, May 1999 66 Dedication Daniel, Elin, Ffion, Madlen, Mark, Matthew, Richard, and to Holly Welch Acknowledgements Everything we know someone else taught us, although our teachers can take no responsibility for our errors and omissions; those really are all our own work. In the case of the material presented here, we acknowledge our debt to all of those colleagues with whom we worked when we were practitioners ourselves. More immediately, we acknowledge the enormous contribution made by fellow teachers on the qualifying social work course at the University of Wales, Cardiff, where most of the exercises and other teaching materials were first tried and tested. In particular, we would like to thank Dolores Davey, Penny Lloyd, Richard Hibbs, Geoff Waites and Tony Bloore. Thanks are due also to the many students who took part in our experiments. We probably learned more from them than from anyone else, except perhaps those children and families for whom we did our best (and worst) when we were social workers. Our own children and families are probably used to being left until last: we are grateful for your patience and support and promise not to do this sort of thing again (until the next time). A special thanks to Pat Smail for proofreading the manuscript and the typescript and the printer’s proofs. Ian Butler and Gwenda Roberts 8 Preface to the Second Edition The first chapter of this book begins with an account of a cricket match being played in the garden. By the time it came to write the preface to this, second edition, the batsman had finished his first year at secondary school. He has spiked his hair and wears a studded dog collar. His big brother is now a medical student. Neither has touched a cricket bat for years. Their middle brother (who was up in his bedroom playing his guitar when the other two were playing cricket) is the one who has turned out to be the serious sportsman in the family. How times change! On the other hand, the England side has had another disappointing winter and their father is still at his desk, still writing and still thinking he would rather be outside in the sunshine. Some things never change. So, too, with the task in hand. In preparing a second edition of this book, we were struck by how much we had to do to bring the text up to date. Social work education has been transformed and entirely new regulatory struc- tures have come into being. There is another Green Paper out for consulta- tion that may usher in widespread changes in the local delivery of services to children. There is new legislation to consider, both general and specific. There have been new policy initiatives, new inquiries into child deaths, new regulations, new guidance, new jargon, new Jerusalems. But still, much remains the same. There are still a great many children and their families in the UK who are denied the opportunities in life that others are afforded. There are still far too many social workers who think that they can know and understand others without knowing or understanding themselves. There are too many people who think that there are easy 9 10 SOCIAL WORK WITH CHILDREN AND FAMILIES solutions to complex problems (there are, of course, but they are almost always the wrong answers!). In revising this book, we have updated and considerably expanded the ‘hard knowledge’ we include, reflecting changes in the law and incorpo- rating evidence from research published in the period since the first edition of this book went to press. In particular, we have taken much fuller account of the policy context in which contemporary forms of practice are set. This means that we have included detailed reference to a number of central gov- ernment initiatives (such as ‘Quality Protects’) and to the relevant ‘standard forms’ of practice that have developed over recent years (such as the Frame- work for Assessment of Children in Need ). We do not do so uncritically and we make some reference to the controversies that surround the new orthodoxy of evidence-based practice and ‘third way welfare’. We have also taken account of the new regulatory framework that surrounds con- temporary practice and included sections on, for example, the National Care Standards Commission and various National Minimum Standards. There is always more that one could add and so, in order to extend the scope of what can be included within the covers of a single book, we have added to each Unit a section providing access to resources available via the internet. We have however retained the form of the book (how to use this book is explained a little later) and we have not altered in our belief that it is through a process of ‘study, reflection and application’ that we can best ‘get into practice’. We would very much like to acknowledge the additional help we have received in preparing this edition of the book.