‘Analysing a parent’s capacity to change: towards a model for child protection social workers’

ABSTRACT

In cases where child protection concerns are evident, a central query within inter-professional, safeguarding assessments, centres on the parents’ capacity to change to enhance their child’s lived experience. Social workers, as key professionals co-ordinating such assessments, require analytical tools and models to enable them and others to reach a considered judgement on this pressing, complex aspect of case inquiry. This article describes one such model. The model builds on the C-Change Approach which reviews the change process from a mainly cognitive-behavioural perspective. While recognising the strengths of this contribution to child protection assessment, the authors have extended it by examining change from a psycho-dynamic orientation. This orientation takes account, not only of the intra-psychic dynamics within the individual, but also the relational forces at work between people. Lastly, the authors consider how this extended model can be utilised to analyse and facilitate desired changes in parenting practices. Here, they draw on the helpful notion of a force-field analysis: a conceptual representation of the dynamics of change within a social situation.

KEYWORDS:

• Child protection
• capacity to change
• parents
• safeguarding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stan Houston

Stan Houston has spent 20 years in practice and 22 years as an academic in higher education. He is interested in the role of theory in shaping social work practice and has published widely on this theme. He is currently working in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin.

Calvin Swords

Calvin Swords is currently completing his PhD in the School of Social Work and Social Policy. He is a qualified social worker with experience in mental health and health care.