Abstract
ABSTRACT Relationship-based practice has become an influential theory through which social work practice is understood. However, much more critical attention needs to be given to the kinds of relationships involved. This paper is based on an ethnographic study of long-term social work that spent 15 months observing practice with service users and organisational life to find out how social workers establish and sustain long-term relationships with children and parents in child protection cases, or don’t. The paper introduces into the literature the concept of a ‘holding relationship’, which was present in several of the cases we studied, especially where therapeutic change occurred. The aims of the paper are to document the nature of a holding relationship and to develop it as a concept. A ‘holding relationship’ involved social workers being reliable, immersing themselves in the service user’s day-to-day existence and developing their life-skills, getting physically and emotionally close to them, and practicing critically by taking account of power and inequalities. The concept of a ‘holding relationship’ draws on psycho-dynamic and sociological theory to provide new ways of thinking that can help make sense of the practical and emotional relating involved in social work and promote the development of such helpful relationships.
Highlights
There is a remarkable absence of research literature that illuminates what social workers do by observing their practice as they are doing it and virtually none that has used participant observation to get close to long-term work with service users
This paper seeks to contribute to filling this gap in the literature by drawing on the findings from an ethnographic study of long-term social work with children and families
Social workers establish and sustain long term relationships with children and parents in child protection cases, and what occurs when they don’t, and how practice is influenced by organizational cultures, office designs and forms of staff support
Summary
There is a remarkable absence of research literature that illuminates what social workers do by observing their practice as they are doing it and virtually none that has used participant observation to get close to long-term work with service users. Some such relationships were therapeutic, in the sense that service users were seen regularly on meaningful encounters that had the effect of helping them to change It is the latter kind of relational work on which this paper focuses and introduces into the social work literature the concept of a ‘holding relationship’. After outlining the methodology of the research, the paper focuses in detail on a small number of cases that bring the nature of practice and the relating that went on to life These case studies illustrate findings that were apparent across all of the cases where meaningful therapeutic change occurred through a holding relationship that was skilfully crafted by social care practitioners and service users over the course of a year
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