‘Signs of Safety’ Practice at the Health and Children’s Social Care Interface

Abstract

Good practice for safeguarding children by health and social care means having the individual confidence to take considered risks in practice and the institutional support that encourages it. Yet, this is not easy to achieve or widely promoted across health and social care organisations. The pressure to ‘get things right’ very much dominates health and social care and this perpetuates a risk aversive culture. Risk measurement regimes based on actuarial methods influences the ‘get things right’ emphasis, with a focus on certainty and knowing ‘for sure’, leaving socially determined or socially constructed notions of risk at the practice margins. In an everyday practical sense, this can mean families being subjected to professional definitions about risk and need, rather than them being part of a working relationship where risk definitions are worked out together. In this paper, we argue that definitions of risk are best conceptually and practically mapped at the interface of health and social care practice, with families, to strengthen the case analysis and social work plans about what needs to happen next. We show how we have adopted the ‘signs of safety’ approach at Tower Hamlets to do just that.

Keywords:

• signs of safety
• risk analysis
• health visitors
• child welfare
• risk assessment

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tony Stanley

Dr Tony Stanley is the Principal Child and Family Social Worker for Children’s Social Care, at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. He is part of the senior management team and is involved in strategic practice reform. Tony provides social work leadership across the local authority.

Rob Mills

Rob Mills is the Nurse Consultant Safeguarding Children in Tower Hamlets. In post since 2004, Rob leads practice development for health professionals, and has strategic responsibility for health across Tower Hamlets.