Performing child protection: Social worker's experiences of home visiting and relating to children and parents in the home

The aim of this study is to deepen understandings of social work and child protection through focusing on practitioner's experiences of doing the work and how they go about protecting children in their homes.

The most important reason to focus on the home (visit) is that it is by far the most common place where children and families are seen and actual child protection work goes on. Surprisingly little is known about how social workers generally behave on home visits, whether they move around the house to inspect it, whether or how they interact with children, interview, touch or examine them; or how they conduct interviews with parents in their homes. What is known however, from reviews into cases where children have died or not been protected from serious harm, including high profile cases like that of 'Baby Peter', Victoria Climbie, Jasmine Beckford, Maria Colwell, is that social workers did not directly engage with children while in the same room as them on home visits and this was crucial to why their abuse was not discovered. The reasons for this non-engagement with children are poorly understood. Men who were resident in the home and abusing the children have also gone undiscovered, in part because mothers managed to conceal the men and social workers did not look around the home to establish who resided with the children. Even leaving aside these tragic cases, little is known about how social workers and service users actually communicate with one another in day to day practice.

Research into child protection practice has been predominantly focused on what goes on in the office and how professionals talk about their cases, and on the impact of bureaucracy and performance management. Some recent innovative studies have researched social workers' responses to case vignettes and also how real social workers communicate in simulated interviews with service users played by actors. No research studies have given systematic attention to studying actual practice when social workers are face-to-face with children and parents on home visits. Government guidance issued in 2010 requires social workers to see known at risk children on their own. Yet little or no empirical evidence exists on what are the norms of practice in seeing children and there is little in the literature about where is the safest most reliable place for such contact with children to happen.

The aim of this research is to produce original data on how social workers go about home visiting and engaging with parents and children in the domestic sphere. Participant observation of social workers doing home visits, audio-recordings of the social worker-service user interviews in the home (where informed consent has been given) and interviews with the social worker after the visits about those experiences will provide the basis for a critical analysis of current methods of practice. The study will produce vital knowledge for theory and practice. Theoretically, the experience of home visiting will be conceptualised in terms of workers' lived experiences and what influences whether or not they move towards children and engage directly with them in the home. This will enable the theoretical work on performing child protection and the experience of home visiting that I have developed in a number of recent publications to be tested out and refined to produce original theoretical insights and understandings of practice. A major contribution to education and practice will be made through the production of a model for best practice in home visiting and safeguarding children. This will provide guidance to social workers and other professionals on effective strategies for negotiating one's way into a home, how and where to conduct assessments, ensure the child is regualrly seen and directly engaged with, how to work with parental resistance, and intervene to effect positive change for children and their carers.

Accurate knowledge of how to go about protecting children is essential if practitioners are to be able to perform such tasks as negotiating access to the home to see and talk to children and their parents and to know such things as where is the best room in the home or other places to conduct such interviews. Research into such matters is lacking and this study could barely be more timely and its potential impact on policy, practice and lay understandings of child abuse and child protection practice higher. The 'Baby P' case which came to light in late-2008 has taken levels of public dismay and anger towards professionals when children die, especially social workers, to new levels, and intensified professionals' concerns about knowledge gaps in how to protect children. The results of this research will therefore be of great value to child protection agencies and national and local policy makers by providing theories and practical knowledge which can help resolve core practice dilemmas about how to relate to abused children in their homes and ensure they are safe. It will impact significantly on practitioners from social care and health who are involved in safeguarding children, especially those who do home visits, and also their managers.

The potential benefits to social care agencies is that the findings can promote knowledge and learning about what practitioners and managers actually do and analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of current practices, systems and processes, which will provide the basis for developing (best) practice. This can have a direct impact on agencies in how they implement new Government guidance requiring them to see children alone in terms of how this is best achieved within the home, or in some circumstances beyond the home.

It is hoped that the impact of the research on practice is such that the main and certainly the most important beneficiares will be abused children themselves. Because the research is intended to illuminate the 'intimate' world of practice and whether and how social workers relate to children at home in assessing their safety and well-being, children will benefit from the improvements in practice that the new theoretical insights and model of best practice the research will bring about. Parents too stand to gain from the help received from practitioners whose knowledge and skills have developed as a result of insights and training arising out of the research.

Child protection is a highly controversial area of public policy, especially when it involves the deaths of children in cases known to social workers and other professionals. The commentary and debates played out in the media are invariably simplistic and this research can help to introduce greater understanding among the public of the complexity that lies at the heart of the enterprise of child protection, especially on home visits. I am a regular media contributor and can use these contacts and the opportunities completion and publication of the research findings will create to produce newspaper articles and do radio and television interviews which will ensure the potential impact of a better informed public can be achieved.

I am regularly invited to speak to large audiences of practitioners and policy makers about child protection practice and the findings from this research will be presented at all such future events. My presentation of the findings at national and international academic conferences (see academic beneficiaries section) will also impact on practice because some of these events are attended by practitioners and policy makers, especially the ISPCAN International Congress on Child Abuse and Neglect, which I intend to speak at on this research in September 2013. I anticipate many requests from employers to speak at training events for health and social care professionals when knowledge of the research is in the public domain.