A safe place of one’s own? Exploring practice and policy dilemmas in child welfare practice with families waiting for adequate and secure housing

ABSTRACT

As in many European states, a shortage of housing in England has resulted in some families who are ‘waiting for’ adequate and secure housing in England while also having the ‘weight of’ their children being placed outside their care hanging over them. This paper reports on the development of a practice guidance document that included an online survey with 38 children’s social services practitioners in England regarding their practice experiences of responding to family homelessness. Findings suggest the complexity of the issue of family homelessness and implicitly highlight its neglect within contemporary research and policy in the UK. Homeless families are caught between the constraints of housing shortages and the complexity of the needs underpinning their homelessness. Despite these constraints, social work practice has an important role to play in providing, or facilitating families’ pathway to, housing advocacy and advice. Most importantly of all, social work practice can maximise families’ access to statutory family support provision so that families can be helped to remain together wherever this is safely possible. Suggestions for practice, policy, and research development are outlined.

KEYWORDS:

• Family homelessness
• housing
• social work
• family support
• out-of-home care

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to BASW and Project 17 for assistance with production of the overall guidance. Prof. Malcolm Hill provided helpful feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The survey questions used are made available. Participants were not asked to give consent for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data themselves are not available.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robin Sen

Robin Sen is a qualified social worker and lecturer in social work who has worked in Scotland and England. He has interests in children’s services, the governance of social work and issues related to diversity, social justice and identity in social work.

Joe Smeeton

Joe Smeeton is a Child and Family social worker and academic with a primary interest in social work ethics and the knowledge base that underpins child protection. He uses phenomenology to listen to the lived experiences of people who use social work services and those who provide them and theorises from a position that all practice is embodied. He currently teaches and researches social work practice and also works as a practitioner in the United Kingdom.

June Thoburn

June Thoburn CBE, LittD is an emeritus professor of social work at the University of East Anglia, UK. She worked as a child and family social worker in England and Canada before taking up a joint appointment at University of East Anglia in 1980. Her teaching focuses on social policy and child and family social work. Her research and publications have covered family support in the community and child placement services (including residential care, foster care and adoption). She has a particular interest in collaborative practice (with families and across professions), and in child welfare services in international context.