Taking a Marxist Look at the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and Their Families: Practice Gains

Abstract

Contemporary reforms of social work assessment practice and policy, best evidenced by the 2001 introduction of The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families, principally aimed at ensuring consistent and safer outcomes for children and their families, has resulted in a state of practice paralysis resulting in an over-zealous emphasis on assessment at the expense of intervention work. This paper argues that a sociological consideration to what is happening, through considering historical and contextual influences, and bringing a classical Marxist treatment of Alienation offers fruitful possibilities with both manifest and latent benefits for social work. Importantly, sociological analyses of social work structural shifts and policy initiatives reveal both manifest and latent outcomes, where the rewards planned may not always be those experienced by practitioners or families. While broadly supportive of the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families, this paper notes caution in any wholesale acceptance. Reforms designed to underpin a more inclusive assessment approach have paradoxically narrowed the range and flexibility of practise possibilities for social workers, their managers and the agencies within which they work. Suggestions to tackle this are proposed.