Social work assessment in child care - Essay Example

?Social Work Assessment in Child Care Introduction This essay will critically evaluate the current transformation in the way child care law or socialpolicy, and social work assessment, describes vulnerable children and young people. It will clearly show that social policy has transformed from being prevailed by medical theories that vulnerable children, such as those with disabilities, are certainly ‘in need’ and ‘passive’. It implies that this transformation has been oriented by ‘social inclusion’ and ‘social model’ concepts that vulnerable children are citizens, have rights, and should be completely given access to cultural and educational activities. Particularly, it claims that ‘social inclusion’ and ‘social model’ perceptions of social policy are imperfect for they characterise vulnerable children as an exclusive group, working out the difference and challenges in their lives. It proposes that in order for a successful policy agenda for the economic and social discrimination of vulnerable children to be created, social policy should adopt as its frame of reference the stories of vulnerable children. By making use of ethnographic data to verify the intricate and unstable character of the lives of vulnerable children, this essay suggests a multi-dimensional model of social policy. Fundamental to this model are steps that contribute to the creation of discourse, interaction, and empowerment between children, parents, social work professionals, peer group, and young people. This essay will review the social and medical ‘perspectives’ that have reinforced social policy intended for vulnerable children. It proposes that both ‘perspectives’ are based on concepts of dependency and disability. By demonstrating that there is nothing certain about the lives of vulnerable children, this essay wants to propose that we can alter the ways that we make sense of and address ‘vulnerability’ in social policy and social work assessment. This essay will explain the ‘necessity’ for policymakers to take action in response to the complicated and unstable nature of the lives of vulnerable children. Social Work Practice in Child Care Social policy and child care law during the 1970s until the 1990s was frequently criticised for being governed by medical concepts of ‘vulnerability’ or ‘disability’ (Lewis, Gewirtz & Clarke 2000). Prevailing perspectives on the issue of vulnerability within social work and social policy individualised the subject area of ‘vulnerability’ (ibid, p. 82). This model, referred to as ‘the medical model’, was rejected by scholars in the practice of disability studies, who situated the issue of vulnerability in structural discrimination and social relations, rather than in individual disabilities of mind or body (Maluccio, Pine & Tracy 2002). Jenny Morris (1997 as cited in Hendrick 2005), in her study of vulnerable children in care, refuted the ‘medical model’ for overlooking the perspective of children’s lives: There is no room here for recognising that the inability of a 15 year old, who has speech difficulties as a result of cerebral palsy, to be part of the local teenage sub-culture is created by the pre-judicial attitudes and inaccessible environments which restrict his or her activities, rather than cerebral palsy or speech difficulties in themselves (ibid, p. 323). She believed that the medical perspective reduced the experiences of children to biological accounts. Thereby, she thought it overlooked the likelihood that the emotional or social difficulties of vulnerable children may stem from the absence of love, security, interaction and inspiration that are needed by children, and to which they may not have access (Hendrick 2005). Morris (1997 as cited in Hendrick 2005) claims that “to assume that all communication, mobility and behavioural difficulties are solely caused by impairment is further to disable those children by failing to recognise their actual experiences” (ibid, p. 324). Assumptions within social work research formulated by scholars, such as Morris, resembled studies in social gerontology on old age’s controlled dependency (Petr 2004). Estes (1979 as cited in Hendrick 2005) claims, for instance: The needs of older persons are reconceptualised as deficiencies by the professionals charged with treating them, regardless of whether the origins of these needs lie in social conditions over which the individual has little or no control, in the failings of the individual, or in some policymakers’ decision that a need exists (ibid, p. 324). Within the perspective of disability research the medical model assumptions that enclose disabled children are rooted in several ideas (Lewis et al. 2000): ‘that being a disabled child involves a life of suffering; that disabled children are inevitably dependent on others; and that the state will ultimately have to bear the cost of supporting disabled children’ (ibid, p. 55). Scholars of disability research have a rich plethora of findings of such ideas; for instance, during the parliamentary discussion in 1998 regarding abortion, remarks like the following were prevalent (Hendrick 2005): The private financial burden of caring for a severely handicapped child has been estimated by the courts as ?500,000. If one takes into account the cost to the state of statutory provision, the cost could well be another ?500,000... Why should the House consider forcing people to accept such a burden if they do not want it (ibid, p. 324). Assumptions that are medically oriented have a tendency to ‘pathologise’ disability’s physical experience (Hallett & Prout 2003). The issue of impairment was characterised as that of the individual with deficiency. Disability was personalised and separated from the social setting (Taylor & Daniel 2005). As a result, the disabled child or young person was viewed as an unfortunate victim and an ill-fated burden on other people. The fact that survival requires assistance and that everybody is to a certain extent reliant on others was taken for granted (Taylor & Daniel 2005). In the case of human relationships and families, it was argued that there was a major difference between ‘normal’ families, and other, families with vulnerable children. One category of relationships was viewed to be compassionate and normal, and the other was perceived as pathological and problematic (Humphreys 2000). It was stated that the difficulty innate in the disabled individual, not in the broader social setting where in the entire family situated itself. Social work practice with vulnerable children was founded on an array of normative ideas about the consequences of having a disabled child on family dynamics or parental relationships (Dalrymple & Burke 2006). For instance, having a child with a disability implied that the foundation of the family would collapse, or that children would suffer. The idea was that normal affectionate parental relationships were substituted by a bond of physical support and caring rooted around the fulfilment of particular roles (Dalrymple & Burke 2006). Social service assessment of vulnerable families substantiated this idea. For instance, significant emphasis was placed on the requirement for relief support on the basis that the painful duties of having a disabled child ordinarily need a respite, or a break. Very little attention was paid to the issue as to whether young people needed a respite from the difficulties and pressures of being viewed as in deficiency and of having their behaviours and lives stereotyped as ‘pathological’ or ‘abnormal’ (Taylor & Daniel 2005). By treating vulnerable children as weak and ‘passive’, these assumptions failed to examine comprehensively the cultural setting within which the difficulty of social discrimination, isolation, and deprived self-identity are lived. The emphasis on the ‘service needs’ of children and families functioned to preserve an image of vulnerable children as certainly being ‘in need of care’. The varied perceptions of vulnerable children have a tendency not to be identified within this issue. They were frequently represented as an exclusive group; little effort was exerted to acknowledge difference and difficulty in their lives. Numerous policies emphasised the needs and demands of children and parents; it was seldom that vulnerable children themselves were asked for their opinions or perspectives (Dalrymple & Burke 2006). Medical assumptions have not merely vanished. For instance, social work practitioners, like Nicholas Wald, exposed the ways where in assessment procedures are currently reviewed based on cost-benefit analysis concerning the avoidance of the trouble caused by vulnerable children (Hendrick 2005). Nevertheless, over time other interpretations of ‘vulnerability’ surfaced that reconstructed the life challenges of vulnerable children as the outcomes of the social. Child Care Law and the Social Model The evolving policy setting, with an enhanced focus on inclusion and rights, demanded that social work scholars and policy-makers acknowledge the social interpretation of vulnerability and the value of the personal views of vulnerable individuals (Petr 2004). The ‘social model’ was rooted in the idea that individuals are impaired by the larger society, not by their own physical realities (Hallett & Prout 2003): The finger of blame for disabled people’s negative life experience was pointed at the social and environmental barriers, prejudicial attitudes and other processes that served to exclude people with impairments from the mainstream (ibid, p. 128). With regard to social policy, this transition in reflection about the notion of self-sufficient existence was created by the Independent Living Movement (ILM) (Petr 2004). This organisation has its origins in the United States and University of California’s Physically Disabled Students Program, in the 1960s (Hendrick 2005). ILM’s tradition of social work is inspired by four ideas: ‘(1) all human life is of value; (2) anyone, whatever their impairment, is capable of exerting choices; (3) people are disabled by society not by their bodies; and (4) disabled people have a right to participate fully in society’ (Hendrick 2005, 325). Social work assessment has been fundamental to the formation of ILM in the UK. The Community Care Direct Payments Act (1997) helped vulnerable individuals in handling their own support needs (Taylor & Daniel 2005). This led to a large number of vulnerable individuals ceasing to be reliant on social service assistance. Self-sufficient living has generally been linked to adult services. There is quite limited recognition of vulnerable children’s experience within ‘social model’ research on vulnerability (Dalrymple & Burke 2006). Nevertheless, shifts toward self-sufficient living have been reflected by the appearance of a children’s rights programme in the UK. Current political events in the UK have identified the absence of children’s participation in social service provision. The recent decade witnessed the formation of a rights-based model to social work assessment in child care (Hallett & Prout 2003). For instance, the Children (Scotland) Act (1995) protected children’s right in Scotland to have their opinions considered about social services they received (ibid, p. 104). Efforts were exerted to shift to a more ‘communitarian’ model of caring for children (Petr 2004): ‘At any one point in time, with any one particular client, in any one particular programme and setting, the day-to-day work of the social worker may be guided more by one perspective than by another’ (ibid, p. 92). At times social workers should select between conflicting models. This is one explanation why the actual, concrete social work with vulnerable children and families is extremely challenging: there is no single model, no single assumption or method that can inform social work assessment in all conditions. Responsible, competent professionals take into account more than one model, at times even all, when they are giving an effort to make sense of a condition and behave dutifully. In-depth, detailed cases from children’s mental health and child welfare are included in social work literature to show how the practical models affect and guide case-level assessments (Taylor & Daniel 2005). If social work is a task of making decisive value of oneself, in that case, these theories can assist professionals in assessing what is most decisive in a particular setting. Nevertheless, there is no particular equation for their concrete application. No exclusive pragmatic model has the most importance and dominance; no grouping of models takes precedence over other approaches. This may disappoint social workers who, reasonably, are trying to simplify their relationships and work with vulnerable children and families. However, the fact is that social work in children’s mental health and child welfare is a complicated task, and simplistic procedures erroneously lead the social worker to believe that the work is easier and disappointing than it actually is. In an attempt to simplify, the emphasis and scope of the work become quite limited that vital concerns and ideas are neglected or overlooked. The pragmatic models have practical importance at both the policy and social work assessment levels. The customary ‘care’ provision for vulnerable children and families, plus professional outlooks, programmes, and policies, has not been structured or influenced by these pragmatic models. Rather, the system has been typified by the contradictory assumptions: it has been child- and professional-centred and adult-centric instead of family-oriented, deficit centred instead of strengths oriented, culturally unskilled and unsympathetic to diversity, governed by limited contexts rather than the least limited alternative, unproductive and disintegrated, individually rather than environmentally oriented, and concentrated on process instead of realising outcomes. Conclusions Social work professionals, policymakers, and organisations are starting to respond according to the pragmatic ideas and theories discussed here; however, the scope and enormity of the required changes can be overpowering on the onset and to the experienced social work professional alike. Apparently, these models and assumptions may seem to be commonsensical and easy to implement, but in actual practice, where their contradictions have prevailed for several years, they stand for drastic change. Therefore, social workers may realise that they should assume significant risk and considerable resistance when they try to apply these models and assumptions in their agency contexts. Specifically, discrimination and exclusion can emerge in subtle forms that transcend explicit bias. These forms involve unintentionally employing various models to various individuals, employing the same ethnocentric criteria to every individual, and lessening the importance of an episode or situation as viewed through the experiences of vulnerable individuals. The essay discussed models and assumptions that demonstrate characteristics of a good quality social work assessment in child care; specifically, for the benefit of social work professionals in their continuous struggle to respect difference and diversity. References Dalrymple, J. & Burke, B., 2006. Anti-Oppressive Practice: Social Care and the Law. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Hallett, C. & Prout, A., 2003. Hearing the voices of children: social policy for a new century. New York: Routledge Falmer. Hendrick, H., 2005.Child Welfare and Social Policy: An Essential Reader. London: Policy Press. Humphreys, C., 2000. Social Work, Domestic Violence and Child Protection: Challenging Practice. Bristol, England: Policy Press. Lewis, G., Gewirtz, S. & Clarke, J., 2000. Rethinking Social Policy. London: Sage Publications. Maluccio, A., Pine, B. & Tracy, E., 2002. Social Work Practice with Families and Children. New York: Columbia University Press. Petr, S., 2004. Social work with children and their families: pragmatic foundations. London: Oxford University Press. Taylor, J. & Daniel, B., 2005. Child Neglect: Practice Issues for Health and Social Care. London: Jessica Kingsley. Read More