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This chapter examines the evolution of the social model for child protection in areas such as disability and mental health. In these domains, there has been a very clear ‘other’ to which the social model was responding — medicine and the notion of biological damage. Similar individualised and pathologised stories are dominating thinking about child protection. It is thus timely to discuss the understanding of the possibilities presented by the notion of a social model for protecting children. The chapter then considers the key interrelated elements of reworking a social model: understanding and tackling root causes; rethinking the role of the state; developing relationship-based practice and co-production; and embedding a dialogic approach to ethics and human rights in policy and practice.
This chapter suggests some approaches to practice and offers examples of alternative models for child protection. Within a social model for protecting children, a multi-dimensional and contextualised understanding of social problems is required, as are services and professional practice which address the lack of material, social, and symbolic capital that cause harm to children and their families. For individual social workers working with individual families, as a start this means assessments, reports, and plans recognise and highlight the structural underpinnings of families’ hardships, making them visible to professionals and to the families who are the subject of the assessment/report. There can be a recognition that solutions to problems are not only about individual change, but also reflect the impact of social and economic environments on individuals and families. However, all these developments are difficult in risk-focused case work approaches. The recent turn towards strengths-based case work may open up possibilities.
This chapter focuses on domestic abuse. The recognition that poverty is a factor in domestic abuse and is linked to men’s perceptions of the breadwinner role suggests how vital it is to understand and engage with social constructions of masculinity. Overall, given the extensive evidence that has emerged of the focus by child welfare and protection systems on deprived populations, the levels of domestic abuse that are commonly to be found in families subject to child protection processes are to be expected and add fuel to the concerns about the invisibility of poverty in contemporary child protection policies and practices. Moreover, a range of system interventions can either trap women in abusive relationships or be a driver of their vulnerability to poverty post separation. This reinforces the need to critically interrogate the implications of system interactions including child protection systems.
This chapter assesses how one might change the conversation on child protection. It explores the specific issues of seeking to effect social change within a ‘post-truth’ climate and discusses how one might draw from work in social psychology, cognitive linguistics, and the sociology of emotions to learn the craft of telling stories. It has long been clear that hurling ‘facts’ in the form of statistics at people is likely to change very few minds. Rather than facts and pie charts, it is stories that have the power to animate people and bring them together to change the world. Organisations such as the New Economics Foundation, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have been using methodologies derived from framing theory to explore how different stories could be crafted on poverty, child abuse, and neglect.
This concluding chapter argues that, in order to do differently, people need bigger conversations that involve those from a range of endeavours and disciplines and all those concerned with, and impacted by, child protection. In social work, talking about the relationship between child abuse, neglect, and poverty is currently framed by notions of reinforcing or avoiding stigmatising or oppressive generalisations. However, accepting that poverty means it is more likely that children may be harmed means the societal and individual value of reducing child and family poverty becomes clearer. Poverty is a child protection matter and social work needs a conversation about what this means for the knowledge base and everyday practices. The chapter then explores some possibilities for democratising conversations more generally.
