Answering Back: Parental Perspectives on the Children's Hearings System

Abstract

SUMMARY The potential of client evaluation is explored through a case study of the parental response to the children's hearings system. In particular, drawing upon a tradition which has sought to identify the ideologies of different participants, a number of elements which contribute to individual ideology are specified. It is shown that for many parents the pattern is not of a consistent ideology but of a multiplicity of beliefs, invoked as required and not necessarily coherent. Previous assertions that parents will respond only to a system based on principles of justice are shown to be misplaced. It was once fashionable to bemoan the lack of attention which was afforded to the client perspective within social welfare and to argue vigorously the rationale for its inclusion. The views of the client were placed firmly on the agenda however by Mayer and Timms (1970), and a large number of disparate studies have subsequently been spawned (Rees and Wallace, 1982). For a time, indeed, it appeared that to give voice to the client was to guarantee acceptability: the missing dimension had been included and the total picture was now valid. Many of the attempts to redress the 'hierarchy of credibility' appear somewhat token in nature, however, too ready a response to the call to incorporate the opinions of those on the receiving end. Few of the studies acknowledge the value judgement inherent in approaching the client or recognize the potential for conflict that is thereby created. Moreover, few are sensitive to the methodological implications of client evaluation, although recent attempts to chart worker-client interaction have experimented with a