Abstract
Using data from participatory storytelling research with 65 young people, this article provides a co-created theoretical grounding for radical social work with children and young people. The problems and solutions social work should be seeking are explored in the light of resilience theories and the capability approach. The young people’s perspectives echo but extend existing resilience interventions and definitions of the capability approach, highlighting structural and historical patterns of inequality. They call for a collective response to adverse experiences, which become obvious in one zone of experience but have consequences and roots in other places. Social work could usefully employ expanded understandings of socio-ecological resilience and the capability approach to focus interventions more clearly on the root causes of adversities and shape interventions that highlight capability sustainability and co-created solutions. This would involve professionals working alongside children and young people, as well as their families and allies, to confront enduring patterns of disadvantage.
Highlights
The pursuit of change for children through social work is highly charged
We present an overview of our findings, illustrating how analysis informed by an understanding of socio-ecological zones, time, capability approach (CA) and collective action can guide radical social work with children and young people
We suggest that social work with children, young people and families could focus on the valued functioning of ‘making a difference’.This takes forward calls for social work that confronts neoliberalism (Garrett, 2014, Featherstone et al, 2018) but avoids Garret’s pessimism,recognising that spaces of ambiguity in existing social work practice can be used to name and address macro concerns (Houston, 2014, Roets and Roose, 2014)
Summary
The pursuit of change for children through social work is highly charged. Social workers experience political and media scrutiny, and this affects perceptions of which children are exposed to what risks and which responses are appropriate (Parton,2014). Over the past 50 years, dominant narratives about child protection social work have shifted away from compassion for families in difficulty towards holding parents responsible, focusing on the internal working of individuals’ brains or family dynamics (Featherstone et al, 2018). These factors combine to hide the underlying and systematic impact of deprivation and poverty on the life chances of children and parents (Featherstone et al, 2018). This article learns from children and young people’s own stories of the challenges they have encountered, and sets out a new approach to identifying and addressing underlying causes
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