Family experiences of children’s social care involvement following a social work change programme

Abstract

Social work change programmes rooted in a particular practice theory and design are increasingly a fixture of UK local authority social work and the focus of a small but developing body of research. However, in this research to date, there has been a lack of engagement with the perspectives of families. In this article, we detail findings from 23 family interviews undertaken as part of an independent evaluation of a social work change programme in a single local authority. These findings afford insight into the positive influence change programmes can have on engaging families and re-routing practitioners to work in a relationship-based way. They also illustrate the limitations for reshaping practice in the context of rising levels of need, a paucity of supportive provision, and administrative burdens remaining the same as before the introduction of a change programme. As part of the article, we offer some brief reflections on the recruitment of families for evaluative study to assist other researchers and local authority professionals who may be involved in comparable evaluations in future.

Keywords:

• Child and family social work
• family experiences
• qualitative evaluation
• social work change programmes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the families who took part for sharing their experiences and Joe Sempik for his contribution as a member of the research team.

Notes

1. Pendry (2012), for example, represents RSW as following a fashion of concern for context evident in the ‘relational frame’ of the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health, 2000) and encouragement of ‘joined up’ support between adult and family services in Think Family approaches.