I am writing this editorial on World Social Work day which launches this years’ theme: ‘Promoting the Importance of Human Relationships’. This is an exciting issue of Practice with four articles that have a strong focus on developing social workers practice skills in their professional relationship work with service users. The issue starts with practice education for trainee social workers and moves through aspects of direct work with children including the use of touch and how to ensure children have a voice, and finally a study of foster carer training and its impact on children’s experiences.
Simon Haworth’s article, ‘Consideration of Practice Education within a Regional Teaching Partnership Employing a Communities of Practice Lens’, offers an analysis of practice education and its role in practice learning, supervision, recruitment and retention. It proposes an expanded role for practice education that could situate it as pivotal to promoting standards of supervision and cultures of learning. A ‘community of practice’ can be defined as ‘a group of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly’. Satisfaction is found through collective learning and knowledge creation, belonging to a motivating group and developing a common shared sense of professional identity. The author considers that the Teaching Partnership’s ‘University at Work’ model seems useful to support the establishment of recognised practice education communities of practice within the region. The model proposes to co-locate research, teaching and practice in the workplace.
The next article from Samuel Baeza, Sarah Butler, Sarah Smith and Janet McCray, ‘Trampolines and Minefields: The Use of Touch during Home-Based Child Protection Visits in England’, reports on a study which explores Social Workers’ feelings about professionals touching children during statutory child protection visits to clients’ homes. Curiosity about the appropriateness of touch in home visits emerged after one of the papers authors heard a senior practitioner describing how she challenged a social work student for trampolining with and tickling a child during a child protection home visit. The study found that most of the Social Workers did touch children in a range of ways and for a variety of reasons during visits. ‘Touch’ was a term which some found uncomfortable and this paper considers whether terminology obstructs open reflection on the topic.
Danielle Kennan, Bernadine Brady and Cormac Forkan in the next article write about ‘Space, Voice, Audience and Influence: The Lundy Model of Participation (2007) in Child Welfare Practice’. Children and young people have a legal right to have their views heard and acted upon as appropriate. The Lundy model of participation (2007) was developed to aid practitioners to meaningfully and effectively implement a child’s right to a voice. This article draws on practitioners’ personal testimonies and a selection of reports published by Ireland’s social care inspectorate. The article presents illustrative examples of approaches taken by professionals when seeking to create a safe and inclusive environments for young people to express a view, identifying approaches to supporting them to express that view and to ensuring it is listened to and acted upon as appropriate. The Lundy model comprises four chronological steps in the realisation of a child’s right to participate. First, ‘space’: children must be provided with the opportunity to express a view in a space that is safe and inclusive. Second, ‘voice’: children must be facilitated to express their view. Third, ‘audience’: the view must be listened to. Fourth, ‘influence’: the view must be acted upon, as appropriate. Hearing and giving due weight to the views of children and young people is a process, comprising a series of steps. The authors conclude that seeking the views of children and young people and acting on them as appropriate respects their rights and benefits service provision but stress that this requires practitioners to actively create the conditions for facilitating and implementing this process.
The final article in this issue, by Jayne Harris-Waller, Priya Bangerh and Hazel Douglas: ‘An Evaluation of the Solihull Approach Foster Carer Course’ reports on an evaluation of the Solihull Approach foster carer training group programme, ‘Understanding your foster child’. It has been reported by foster carers that they view the support they receive for managing challenging behaviour from foster children as insufficient and they feel unprepared to manage challenges that their foster children present. The authors report: significant increases in foster carers’ ratings of their understanding of their children’s difficulties; increases in their understanding of why foster children behaved the way they did; increases in their feeling of having the required skills to manage difficulties; significant decreases in their ratings of foster children’s hyperactivity and attentional behaviour difficulties. It has been suggested that providing effective training and support for foster carers improves the quality of the placement for the child whilst also decreasing foster carer stress and strain Overall, the authors find that using a course based on the Solihull Approach may be helpful to foster carers and the children they look after.
Finally, we would like to welcome Dr Dina Sidhva, Dr Amelia Derr and Dr Paul Bukuluki to our editorial board and to note that Steve Moore and David Hayes have left the editorial board and to thank them for their contributions to Practice over the years.
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