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Two types of parent-citizens out of ten in the citizenship typology are presented. The demanding-responsible consumer-citizen parent and the poor-neglectful parent are political representations of active citizens with choice and voice who should act responsibly. Both conceptions are ill-fitting for child protection social work. The statutory safeguarding powers of social workers restrict parents’ choice and voice. The limitations of choice can lead to involuntary involvement of parents. Voice is mostly limited to procedural rights and the recording of parents’ views and wishes. Neither the framing of parent-citizens as active consumers, who transfer their positive experiences of the private sector into the public sector, nor the citizen with a responsibility to society, speak to the position of parents who are involved with Children’s Services. In the case of the poor-neglectful parents they feel the full negative force of the welfare reforms that make it difficult to parent and to provide their children with adequate care. Social workers try to mitigate some of the impact of poverty with practical help. However, austerity not only shapes parents’ economic position but also the services, especially preventive services, that are less available, leading to social workers being able to offer less support to parents.

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The third parent-citizen representation is the ‘franchisee parent’. The representation of the franchisee parent is rooted in child-centred social work. From this perspective, parents are solely viewed in their role as providers of care for their children, rather than as service users with their own needs or citizens with rights. In that capacity, they are expected to meet certain minimum standards of adequate or good enough parenting. Social workers regard the full range of social work interventions, ranging from family support services, child protection and foster care through to adoption, as tools to achieve adequate care for the child. The overall objective of this representation of parent-citizenship is for the franchisee parent to offer their children a safe home.

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In the replication study, the parent being considered as ‘good enough’ was the threshold at which social workers would either not intervene in family life or end their involvement, potentially referring families to early help or universal services. At first glance, the representation of the ‘good enough’ parent-citizen empowers parents to decline services. On closer inspection it becomes clear that ‘good enough’ and ‘adequate’ are ill-defined words that are infused with meaning through social work assessments. The power to define these terms lies with social workers. While there is consistency in ‘good enough’ being the threshold for no social work involvement, what good enough means is unclear, not only to parents but also to other professionals. There is no shared agreement about the level of parenting and home conditions that are ‘good enough’ to meet the child’s needs and keep them safe. Consequently, parents may not be given sufficient information about what good enough means.

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Children have a right to a safe upbringing. Child protection receives from policy and legislation its mandate to intervene in families where children are at risk of significant harm. Accordingly, social workers mediate between the state and families. Parents are the key players in child protection and working with parents is crucial to effect change and ensure the safe upbringing of the child in the family. As statutory services, child protection agencies are exposed to regular politically generated changes. This chapter introduces the two case studies on which the book is based that explore the representation of parents in policy, organisation and social work practice in one English local authority at two points in time, while different governments were in power.

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Parents who do not co-operate with social workers are represented in policy, organisational procedures and practice as non-compliant. Non-compliant parents are seen as causing problems for governments and social workers as they impede the changes necessary for children to grow up safely within their families and potentially consume large amounts of public money. The non-compliant parent was present in both studies in slightly different variations. In the original study, non-compliance was attributed to parents’ unwillingness to engage and thereby failing their children. In the replication study, there was greater acknowledgement that the complex needs and life situations of parents might prevent engagement. The replication study also introduced the deliberately misleading non-compliant parent who goes through the motions to keep social workers happy without making lasting changes. This is often referred to as disguised compliance. Two responses by social workers to non-engagement are presented: control and support.

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This chapter brings together the key messages from previous chapters and thereby offers a new way to think about parents who are known to Children’s Services. By focusing on a scenario where the concerns were on the margins of child in need and child protection, at two points in time, the Labour governments under Tony Blair (1997–2007) and the Coalition and Conservative governments between 2010 and 2019, and the three levels of national policy, organisational procedures and social work practice, space is created for nuance and complexity that opens up the conversation around child protection responses, highlighting the centrality of parental participation and change for the safety and well-being of children and the potential to include consideration of parents in a more meaningful way.

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An understanding of citizenship helps to capture the experience of parents of children who are the subject of child protection social work. This includes the tension between the right to family life and child protection, the involuntary use of services and the allocation of resources between preventive and protection services. Key dimensions of parent-citizenship are participation and power. A four-level model of parent-citizen participation in social work is introduced. The relationship between social workers and parent-citizens is rooted in the statutory power that Children’s Services have to intervene in family life for the purpose of child protection and to be able to restrict the parents’ rights, if necessary. Social workers, as street-level bureaucrats, have a degree of discretion about how they interpret policies and law, how they perceive the level of risk and need within each family and the support they offer as a result.

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These are two representations of parents who are willing to co-operate with social workers: the partner parent in the original study and the respected parent in the replication study. The partner parent has some limited opportunities to use their voice and influence the social worker’s plan. However, the rhetoric of partnership can be used to minimise parents’ resistance towards social work intervention, rather than indicating power-sharing. The respected parent also co-operates with the social worker and is in the best position of all of the representations of the parent-citizen to utilise their procedural rights. A new practice framework in the local authority where the research took place shifted the social workers’ perception of parents to include strengths and weaknesses in assessments, providing a more balanced view of the family situation. Across both studies social workers retained control over final decision-making in the interests of the child. This supports the frequently expressed perception that parents’ and children’s interests are conflicting and makes the limited opportunities to use voice conditional on co-operating with the social worker.

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The personalised-depersonalised parent was a representation of the parent-citizen in the original study. When adopting this representation, social workers addressed parents as ‘mum’ and ‘dad’, which, on the one hand, is too personal as a form of address for a service user–professional relationship and, on the other hand, is very impersonal as it depersonalises parents as individuals. The focus in this representation was on the parents’ role as carers for their child. Linked to that, was a gendered response to the case vignette where the social workers’ focus was predominantly on the mother. This chapter shows how representations of parent-citizens can change over time and how organisations can support change. In the replication study parents were still talked about among colleagues as ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ but addressed by their name in person, in assessments and in recording. In addition, the social workers’ response to the vignette was not gendered. Social workers acknowledged that working with fathers is a newer development that is still evolving and that the lack of services for men, and especially male perpetrators, can lead to the focus shifting back to the mother.

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There are three key drivers of government-initiated change in Children’s Services: risk, reform and regulation. Relationships are also an important element in child protection. Risk in the family and extrafamilial risks, where young people are exposed to potential harm outside the home, are discussed. Moments of crisis in social work practice are traced as the key driver for policy reform and legislation. Governments have tried to minimise risk of abuse and neglect through increased control, regulation and inspection of social workers and Children’s Services organisations, including performance targets that organisations need to meet. This neoliberal managerialism is at odds with the professional ideal of social workers of a relationship-based, helping practice. Managers have a key role in enabling relationship-based practice, creating spaces for social workers to use their discretion and, through supervision, to engage in decision-making.

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