Social work and child protection for a post-pandemic world: the re-making of practice during COVID-19 and its renewal beyond it

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic presented social workers and managers in child protection with complex practical and moral dilemmas about how to respond to children and families while social distancing. This paper draws on our research into practice during the pandemic to show some of the ways social workers changed their practice and to provide theories and concepts that can help to account for how such change occurs. Drawing on anthropological uses of the concepts of ‘contingency’ and ‘improvisation’ and Hartmut Rosa’s sociological work on ‘adaptive transformation’ and ‘resonance’ we show how social workers creatively ‘re-made’ key aspects of their practice, by recognising inequalities and providing material help, through digital casework, movement and walking encounters, and by going into homes and taking risks by getting close to children and parents. It is vital that such improvisation and remaking are learned from and sustained post-pandemic as this can renew practice and enable social workers to better enhance the lives of service users.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• COVID-19 pandemic
• child protection
• improvisation
• touch
• digital social work
• relationship-based practice

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to the local authorities, managers, social workers, family support workers and families for their generosity in allowing us to research their experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research this article is based on was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Grant Number [ES/V003798/1].

Notes on contributors

Harry Ferguson

Harry Ferguson is Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Work and Social Care, University of Birmingham, England. His research interests include social theory, social work and child protection, domestic abuse, fatherhood, masculinities and using mobile and ethnographic research methods to understand practice and encounters between social workers service users.

Laura Kelly

Laura Kelly is a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Work and Social Care, University of Birmingham, England. Laura is a sociologist and interested in work with children and young people, crime and criminalisation and social inequalities.

Sarah Pink

Sarah Pink is a Design Anthropologist and Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Melbourne. Sarah is known for her development of innovative digital, visual and sensory research and dissemination methodologies, which she engages in interdisciplinary projects with design, engineering and creative practice disciplines to engage with contemporary issues and challenges.