Watching over or Working with? Understanding Social Work Innovation in Response to Extra-Familial Harm

Lauren Elizabeth Wroe,Jenny Lloyd

doi:10.3390/socsci9040037

Abstract

This paper critically reflects on the role of surveillance and trusted relationships in social work in England and Wales. It explores the characteristics of relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance and asks how these approaches apply to emerging policy and practices responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH). Five bodies of research that explore safeguarding responses across a range of public bodies are drawn on to present an analytical framework that explores elements of safeguarding responses, constituting relationships of trust or relationships of surveillance and control. This analytic framework is applied to two case studies, each of which detail a recent practice innovation in response to EFH studied by the authors, as part of a larger body of work under the Contextual Safeguarding programme. The application of this framework signals a number of critical issues related to the focus/rationale, methods and impact of interventions into EFH that should be considered in future work to address EFH, to ensure young people’s rights to privacy and participation are upheld.

Highlights

Since the first social services departments in England and Wales in 1971 were established, social work has seen a seismic shift in its scope and remit, placing increased demands on social workers and, arguably, increased surveillance on a broader population of children and families (Parton 2019).The increased bureaucratization of social work appears alongside the encroachment of neoliberal values into social welfare systems (Eubanks 2018), where families become problems to be managed.One feature of this bureaucratization is the use of surveillance to assess, prevent and monitor social harms, and the subjects of social welfare
We present an analytical framework which explores the components of systems constituting welfare and participatory approaches based on relationships of trust with young people, or systems and interventions where relationships between services and young people are characterized by surveillance and monitoring
The framework presented here provided a lens to examine emerging responses to extra-familial forms of harm (EFH) against long-standing debates in child and family social work, on the ethics of surveillance and relational approaches when working with families and communities

Summary

Introduction

The increased bureaucratization of social work appears alongside the encroachment of neoliberal values into social welfare systems (Eubanks 2018), where families become problems to be managed. One feature of this bureaucratization is the use of surveillance (through data collection, monitoring and risk assessment) to assess, prevent and monitor social harms, and the subjects of social welfare. This has been subject to significant academic (Penna 2005; Edwards 2016; White and Wastell 2017) and sector debate (Shabde and Craft 1999; Mellon 2017). Relational ways of working and the participation of young people and families in social work have been championed as promoting effective social work practice but the rights of children and families that should underpin any such intervention (Cossar et al 2016)

Methods

Results

Conclusion