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42 - Social Worker Decision-Making
- from Part V - Other Legal Decision-Making
- Edited by Monica K. Miller, University of Nevada, Reno, Logan A. Yelderman, Prairie View A & M University, Texas, Matthew T. Huss, Creighton University, Omaha, Jason A. Cantone, George Mason University, Virginia
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Legal Decision-Making
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 29 February 2024, pp 647-663
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Summary
Social workers make decisions every day involving the protection of children and/or adults who are at risk of, or are experiencing, abuse and neglect, exercising power and authority derived from law. Social workers must act within the law: “doing things right.” Accountable, legally literate practice additionally includes standards from administrative law when statutory duties are used. However, decision-making frequently also raises ethical dilemmas, including whether, when, and how to intervene in people’s lives. Practice must, therefore, be ethically literate: “doing right things.” Human rights, equality, and social justice issues will also feature in social work decision-making: “right thinking.” This chapter presents a framework for social worker decision-making that is legally and ethically, but also emotionally, relationally, organizationally and knowledge, literate. It proposes that this framework is transferable across the different jurisdictions within which social workers practice, and that it helps social workers to make good as well as lawful decisions.
9 - Symbolic half-measures? On local safeguarding children boards, their contributions and challenges
- Edited by Maggie Blyth
- Foreword by Eileen Munro
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- Book:
- Moving on from Munro
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 02 April 2014, pp 159-182
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Summary
Introduction
In a speech on child protection, Michael Gove (2012) called for “an open discussion free of cant, obfuscation, emulsifying jargon and euphemism”. This chapter, jointly authored by an independent chair of a local safeguarding children board (LSCB) and a director of children's services (DCS), aspires to promote just such open discussion. It offers a reflective critique of the expectations invested in current systems for embedding accountability, assurance and improvements in children's safeguarding in England and Wales, underpinned by evidence drawn from experience and research. Subsequently, Gove (2013) has questioned whether politicians have been “sufficiently systematic, radical and determined” when reforming children's social care, and whether their responses to child protection failures have promoted “a defensive response based on compliance with bureaucratic demands rather than pursuit of excellence”. The critique offered in this chapter highlights missed opportunities and simplistic assumptions relating to how LSCBs might best ensure effective and accountable child protection practice.
A chapter in an earlier book (Preston-Shoot, 2012) questioned the hope placed in LSCBs to make a difference in promoting accountability, monitoring effectiveness and generating learning from practice. That chapter concluded that despite examples of innovative practice and leadership investment in creating structures, audit and training programmes, and protocols for information sharing and serious case reviews (SCRs), LSCBs had yet to demonstrate the impact of their work, manage effectively the breadth of their safeguarding responsibilities and engage meaningfully with children and young people.
Updated statutory guidance (HM Government, 2013) restates the importance of LSCBs in providing the effective co-ordination of, and challenge to, safeguarding children services. It increased the responsibilities placed on LSCBs, particularly the function to promote learning and improvement, and modified the accountability architecture, giving greater prominence to the role of local authority chief executive officer (CEO) in appointing and holding to account the independent chair. However, little has been done to remedy the arguable weaknesses in how the LSCB mandate has been configured, namely, the resources available to guarantee board capacity to fulfil its statutory functions, the complexity of legal rules surrounding information sharing, the reliance on permissive rather than directive authority to ensure interagency collaboration, and the assumed independent voice when the majority of board members are on the inside of the safeguarding systems and services being scrutinised.
two - Local safeguarding children boards: faith, hope and evidence
- Maggie Blyth, Enver Solomon
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- Book:
- Effective Safeguarding for Children and Young People
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 07 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2012, pp 25-50
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Summary
Introduction
Since their creation for England and Wales in the 2004 Children Act, local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs) have been invested with hope by policymakers and inquiries. Government ministers have expressed optimism about the potential of LSCBs to make a difference in promoting accountability for practice, generating learning from practice, and monitoring the effectiveness of work with children and their families (DfES, 2007; DfE, 2011).
This faith has been reinforced by inquiries. Laming (2009) recommended strengthening LSCBs through clarifying their relationship with, and distinctiveness from, children's trusts, improving scrutiny and challenge through the production of annual reports and the introduction of greater independence for serious case review (SCR) panel chairs and overview report writers, and by the attendance of senior decision-makers. Munro (2011a, 2011b) does not disturb this trend. She regards LSCBs as uniquely placed to take a holistic approach to child protection, a role she argues is even more important in a tight fiscal climate. She argues that LSCBs have a key role in promoting and supporting learning, identifying and challenging poor practice, monitoring outcomes, and advising on service development to reduce gaps and duplication in provision.
Researchers too have endorsed mechanisms, such as LSCBs and children's trusts, for facilitating interagency cooperation and developing mutual and collective accountability in respect of safeguarding children (O’Brien et al, 2006). This calm is, however, occasionally disturbed by more critical perspectives (Parton, 2006; Chief Inspectors, 2008; Watson, 2010), raising the spectre that LSCBs might be active without contributing much to child protection and children's safeguarding more broadly. They are viewed as adding to unnecessary bureaucracy, duplicating the roles and responsibilities of other collaborative mechanisms, such as children's trusts, and thereby consuming expensive staff and financial resources. Doubts are expressed about their capacity for generating positive outcomes for children and families.
So is this faith and hope justified? Have LSCBs promoted positive outcomes and enhanced explanatory and responsive accountability (Leat, 1996) for the work of safeguarding children? Do they have sufficient statutory and positional authority to do so? Have they facilitated professionals and organisations working together, strategically and operationally, and do they have sufficient reach in terms of resources to do this?