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Saying and Doing
Child Protective Service and participation in decision-making
Judith Bessant
School, of Global, Urban and Social Studies, rmit University,
Melbourne, Australia
[email protected]
Karen Broadley
Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia,
Monash Injury Research Institute, Monash University, Clayton Vic, Australia
[email protected]
Abstract
Modern policy-making communities repeatedly proclaim the idea and value of participation and ‘listening to children and young people’. We note the growing official
recognition of children and young people’s right to participation in policies relating to
child protection and out-of-home care. Indeed, taking their views into account is mandated in many countries with domestic and international legal requirements accompanying the policy commitments to its value.
In this article we explore the disparity or tensions between the ‘espoused theory’ and
the ‘theory-in-use’ within child protection. We observe a gap between what policymakers and practitioners say is the practice and what is actually done, and consider
whether there is an effective commitment to the participation of children in child protection. While we rely primarily on Australian and English material, we suggest the
arguments and findings presented here have a general international relevance.
Keywords
good practice – decision-making – participation – child protection – child rights
Modern policy-making communities have repeatedly proclaimed the idea
and value of ‘youth participation’ and ‘listening to children and young people’.
International Journal of Children’s Rights
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By dint of repetition ‘youth participation’ has achieved a commonsense status.
There has been growing official recognition by governments, ngos and
researchers of children and young people’s right to participation in policies
relating to child protection and out-of-home care (e.g. Bessell, 2011; Cossar,
Brandon and Jordan, 2011). It is possible to explain the status this idea has in
modern policy discourse by pointing to renewed interest in citizenship which
took-off in the 1990s (Pixley, 1993), and which segued into more recent social
inclusion and human rights discourse (Lister 2004). Taking the voice of
children and young people into account is already mandated for signatories
of the un Convention on the Rights of the Child (uncroc), which in
Article 12 states:
States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her
own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting
the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance
with the age and maturity of the child.1
In Europe many countries protected by the European Convention on Human
Rights, and to a lesser extent in countries like Australia, the introduction of
human rights legislation in some jurisdictions2 saw an enhancement of the
appeal of ‘participation’ as part of a broader rights-based approach to the
design and delivery of child and youth programmes and services.
The statutory child protection systems in all jurisdictions in Australia, as in
most countries, have a range of legislative responsibilities including, inter alia,
the requirement to investigate concerns about a child’s safety and well-being
and to take the child’s view into account to inform subsequent decision making. In the state of Victoria, e.g. section 10, 3, (d) of the Children Youth and
Families Act 2005 requires that:
…consideration must be given to the child’s views and wishes if they can
be reasonably ascertained, and they should be given such weight as is
appropriate in the circumstances (p. 22).
In summary, domestic and international legal obligations exist alongside policy rhetoric about the value of ensuring children participate in the decisions
made about their well-being.
1 By children we refer to those under the age of 18 years primarily because it is this age group
which constitutes the ‘client’ base of Child Protection.
2 In some jurisdictions like the Australian Capital Territory (2004) and Victoria (2006).
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Whilst we rely primarily on Australian and English material with a particular focus on the state of Victoria, we suggest that the problem of a major gap
between what is documented in official documents and what is said by policy
makers and researchers and the like, and what is actually practised on the
ground in terms of listening to and giving effect to the voice of children, is not
unique to Australia or England, but a problem common to child protection
systems internationally (e.g. Sanner 2008). In this way we suggest that many of
the arguments, and findings presented in this article have a more general international relevance and applicability.
With both the rhetoric and the formal legal frameworks now in place we
might reasonably expect children to be engaging in deliberations in child protection and out-of-home care systems in respect to matters of direct interest to
them. However, as with other political and policy verities, it is not always wise
to assume that is the case. In this article we explore the possibility that there is
a disparity between what Argyris and Schon (1974) described as a gap, or tension between the ‘espoused theory’ and the ‘theory-in-use’ found in organisations and policy fields. Argyris and Schon suggest that too often there is a gap
between what policy-makers and professionals say they do and what they
actually do and what their interventions achieve. We ask whether there is an
effective commitment to the participation of children in the field of ‘out-ofhome care’ policy and practice in child protection.
We begin by restating the basic case made on behalf of the principle of participation. There are a number of good reasons why participation of children in
decisions about which they are directly interested matters. We then assess the
extent to which commitment to participation is actually taken seriously in child
protection and out-of-home care, paying particular attention to the state of
Victoria in Australia. We then ask what factors appear to be blocking effective
commitment to ‘participation’ before suggesting how a commitment to the practice of their inclusion might be operationalised within these practice domains.
We begin by establishing the grounds for claiming the participation of children matters.
Why participation matters
First, we can say that the participation of children makes for better policy and practice. As much as ‘professionals’ and ‘carers’ claim to know the child and conditions
in which they live, the experience of children and what they want cannot be known
without asking them directly. While this may sound ‘obvious’ it does need to be said
because children are generally assumed to lack the cognitive capacity, knowledge
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and maturity needed properly to assess what is happening or to identify what is in
their best interest. Equally it is assumed that adults, particularly professionally
trained adults who are presumed to be more experienced, rational and mature,
know better what the child wants or needs remains a dominant view.
Bourdieu has described the practice of speaking on behalf of others as a
form of symbolic violence or ‘usurpatory ventriloquism’ (1992). He argues that
professionals produce knowledge by implying that as spokespersons, they are
simply a symbolic substitute for the person being talked about. Bourdieu’s
observations provide a reminder that such action entails imposing adult and/
or expert meanings and views on to the meanings and experiences of the children being spoken for. One consequence of this is that the intervention of
practitioners can inadvertently compound and reinforce the harm and oppression already experienced by children by further infringing their ability to tell
their own stories or to describe their own experience.
Children generally have clear understandings of what is happening in their
lives, what is in their interest and what they want. They often see and experience events that adults and especially the professional adults in their lives
know nothing of and have never experienced themselves. As Helm observes:
The evidence base should include children’s own explanations and interpretations; however, rationalist adult models persist and children continue to be viewed as passive recipients of services rather than social
actors in their own right … Children’s own perspectives are therefore
missing in practice analysis … and in the research literature (2011, p.903).
Hearing from children about the conditions in which they live matters because
without establishing how children see the issues, and getting clarity on what they
want and need, it is not possible to get an accurate account of the problems to
which the policy or practice address. As Winkworth and McArthur explain: ‘listening to children improves the accuracy and relevancy of decision-making about
individual children, therefore increasing the likelihood that they will be protected
(2006, p.17). The only way such information can be accessed is by providing children with opportunities to speak, by listening and by giving effect to what is said.
Secondly, listening to children gives practical effect to the fiduciary duty
which carers and the state are required to demonstrate in their relationships
with children and young people. A fiduciary relationship exists when a child is
reported to child protection and also when a child is placed in the care of the
state. The fiduciary relationship between a child and a professional or an official of the state requires that person to act on behalf of and in the interest of the
weaker party. There is a long history of failed child protection policies and
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practices, and an equally long history of systemic abuse at the hands of carers
responsible for the well-being of children in the care of the state. Rather than
conferring benefits on the child, they used the power and the public trust conferred on them as adult experts to harm children in their care. As mounting
evidence verifies, we saw an inversion of the fiduciary relationship as more the
powerful parties in fiduciary relationships took advantage of the inequitable
power relations in ways that caused harm to the child.
One way to help prevent child abuse and breaches of the fiduciary relationship is to recognise the capacity of a child to describe their experiences, to say
what they do and do not want, and what they see as being in their interest
as distinct from the interest of the adults around them. We suggest that
when certain groups or ‘kinds’ of people, in this case children, are constituted
as weak and as intellectually simple, that discursive practice actually works
to deny them their voice and status as reliable ‘witnesses’ and in doing so
makes them voiceless, assisting to establish conditions that can allow for further abuse and neglect. In short, representing the child as cognitively and morally inferior to adults can permit, and in some instances help facilitated the
mistreatment.
Thirdly, listening to children enhances their wellbeing. For Munro (2001),
the inclusion of children in decisions about matters in which they have a direct
interest ‘is not just an ethical requirement, but equally, a developmental task’
(p.13). Bostock agrees:
It also enables children and young people to believe that they have the
ability to create change and have control over elements of their lives.
Young people’s belief in their capabilities to exert control over events is a
protective factor in the face of adversity and is linked to the development
of resilience.
Bostock 2004
Better relationships are formed when children and young people believe
that their opinions are respected and research has found that placements
are more likely to be stable if children and young people are in agreement
with the plan.
Sinclair 2005
Likewise Victorian researchers Mudaly and Goddard (2006) maintain that:
…allowing children the opportunities to practice making important life
decisions … promotes their growth and development, and they can move
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into adolescence with confidence, assertiveness and capacities to contribute to democratic dialogue within home, school, community and
country (p.154).
There is also the obvious – that children want to be listened to. In his
2010 inquiry into the Victorian Child Protection system, the Victorian
Ombudsman reported that children want a say in determinations that
affect them:
…for children on protection orders in residential care the main request
was to have greater contact with their caseworker and be more involved
or informed about decisions being made about their care.
Brouwer 2010, p.123
Finally, the rules used to regulate entry into or exclusion from participatory
processes in a community provides a crucial indicator of the ethical values of
that community as well as the degree to which members can legitimately lay
claim to be open and democratic. As Davidson argued, the rules or norms
to determine who is excluded from exercising civic and political rights – like
having a say – creates and exacerbates inequalities. Those rules consign some
people to the category of ‘disempowered Other’, ‘to those who must obey rules
they do not make. To act in this way is to make a fundamental ethical decision’
(Davidson 1994, pp.111-112).
Having established why the participation of children in decisions about
which they have a direct interest matters, we turn to an assessment of
current practices in Victoria’s child protection system.
How well is the participation of children enabled in Victoria’s child protection system?
As has long been observed, documenting an absence is not always easy.
Indeed the absence of evidence is not always confirmation of an absence.
However, as we suggest below, there is credible evidence that the commitment
to the participation of children in child protection is more honoured in the
breach than in the observance.
First, while there is a clear and widespread consensus that participation by
children in deliberative processes in child protection systems is good practice,
and despite the fact that such a commitment is enshrined in national and
international legislation, many researchers have argued the reality is quite
different (Brouwer, 2010; Mudaly and Goddard, 2006). In practice children
are ‘silenced’ and are rarely given a voice (Mudaly and Goddard, 2006; Helm,
2011).
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As Holland (2004) in relation to the English system argues:
…in spite of a tendency for social work rhetoric to claim that children are
at the centre of the work, there remains a tendency for children to be
represented as objects rather than subjects and for only partial aspects of
their lives to be reported”.
Holland, 2004, p.71
This omission is also evident in Australia. For example, in 2011 the ‘create
Foundation’, an Australian Peak body representing children and young people
in and out of home care conducted a study entitled ‘Transitioning from Care in
Australia’ found that young people who are transitioning from state care do
not have a voice. The report noted:
…all jurisdictions officially espouse the principle that the young person
about to transition from care has the right, and is expected to be involved
in the planning process” (p.vi)
Yet less than half of all 17 year olds in the government out of home care
systems had a Leaving Care Plan (p.14). Further, only half of those with a
Leaving Care Plan had a copy of the document (p.25). All this “raises questions about the degree of involvement of young people in the planning
process” (p.31).
Actually having a copy of your lc plan [Leaving Care Plan] in your possession is the ultimate indicator of involvement in the process for a young
person. It was hoped that a reasonable number of the 17 year-olds would
meet this criterion; unfortunately, only 24 of the 195 in that age group in
this sample could make this claim.
create, 2011, p.48
Similarly, the finding from Bessell’s (2011) research into the experience of children’s participation in out-of-home care in Australia was that they were rarely
consulted. When they were consulted, they did not feel that their views were
valued or acted upon.
…all – to varying degrees – described feeling intensely powerless, voiceless and afraid (2011, p.498).
This message was repeated in 2012 when a further Victorian State Government
Inquiry into child protection and related services was set up to investigate
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‘systemic problems’ and to recommend changes to improve the protection and
care of children at risk or who have experienced abuse or neglect (Cummins,
Scott and Scales, 2012, p.21):
Some of the feedback from children and young people concerned issues
such as their need to be listened to and to be involved in their case planning. Many felt that, as young people, they were not consulted when decisions were made about their care and they did not have a say in what was
happening to them. They also raised the importance of a good case worker
who made time to get to know them and connect with them (2012, p.96).
Despite these findings commissioned by this Inquiry we note that of the 90
recommendations, none were made about the value of listening to and deliberating with children in decision making about them (refer Vulnerable
Children’s Inquiry, Cummins, Scott and Scales, 2012).
In fact in the state of Victoria any number of official reports have confirmed
that meaningful participation by children and young people is not a common
practice. As the 2010 Review of Child Deaths concluded:
…there is not enough direct contact by Child Protection with families.
Significantly, there is often even less contact with the child or children
who are the subject of the reported concerns. The committee has previously noted the relative marginalization of children in the assessment
process compared to parents when there is little direct contact with them
or observation of them.
Victorian Child Death Review Committee, 2010, pp.47–48
The fact that a ‘recurring theme of abuse inquiries has been the failure to listen
to children’ (Winkworth and McArthur 2006, p.17) is a poignant testimony to a
willful blindness and failure to learn from previous mistakes. Victorian
researchers Mudaly and Goddard (2006) further argue that ‘the voice and the
experience of the child who has been abused are the most silenced of all’ (p.12).
If listening to and deliberating with children makes for good practice and is
generally why is it so rarely practised?
Barriers to good practice
While the constraints of space limit our capacity to provide a comprehensive
answer this question requires, in what follows we begin this task by identifying
key reasons why this is the case.
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1 Parents may not give permission to talk to their children
A common practical barrier is that parents refuse to give protection workers
permission to talk to with their children. There can be a number of reasons
for this.
In some instances the parent is the perpetrator of abuse, and has an interest
in ensuring that their child remains silent. For these parents, much is at stake
which includes a desire to continue the abusive behaviour, feelings of shame
and not wanting to be ‘found out’, wanting to protect the existing family
arrangement, and avoiding criminal sanctions. Some, or even all, of these considerations can motivate a guardian or parent to be uncooperative, hostile, or
even violent towards child protection workers and other professionals in order
to prevent practitioners from having access to the children and conducting an
investigation (Stanley and Goddard, 2002).
Brandon and colleagues (2008):
in their review of serious case reviews, suggested that a lack of professional focus on the child may be linked to patterns of parental cooperation. They cited examples where parents made it difficult for children to
be seen alone, deflected attention away from allegations of maltreatment,
and how the parents’ needs sometimes dominated attention to the extent
of overshadowing the needs of the child.
cited in Selwyn, Farmer and Turney, 2011, p.108
Studies into the issue of parental substance misuse also reveal that parents are
often reluctant to allow their children to talk to workers for fear that child protection will become involved and their children will be removed (Barnard,
2007; Forrester and Harwin, 2011; Moore, Noble Carr and McArthur, 2010).
Barnard (2007) in her research in Scotland found that ‘interviewing children
was particularly challenging as stigma and its associated secrecy made it difficult to contact and interview children’ (p.22). In their Australian study, in interviewing young people whose parents’ abuse alcohol or other drugs, Moore,
Noble Carr and McArthur (2010) also found that:
Due to the stigma attached to alcohol or other drug misuse, many families were reluctant to have children speak about these issues in the family
or to ask for assistance … in some cases, young people talked about parents threatening dire consequences … young people shared that reporting their concerns to any adult outside of the family, particularly statutory
organizations, was a confronting and potentially hazardous act and one
that took great courage and determination (p.24).
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The issue of parental hostility and violence should also not be underestimated.
As Australian researchers Stanley and Goddard (2002) found, people who are
violent to their children are often violent to others including child protection
workers and this can prevent workers from having contact with children. In
their study Stanley and Goddard (2002) found that:
Within a period of only six months, 9 of the 50 (child protection) workers
interviewed had been subjected to physical assaults, and four workers to
assault by a person wielding an object. … Thus, 35 of the 50 workers were
victims of at least one major trauma, in the form of assault, attempted or
threatened assault, a death threat, or another form of major intimidation
(p.151).
Secondly, some parents may not allow child protection workers access to their
children because they do not know the workers personally and do not have
trust in them. Is this really so unreasonable? Would we, the authors, as good
parents, just ‘pop out into the back yard’ to allow strangers to talk to our child
for say 20 – 30 minutes without any monitoring of the conversation, no way of
knowing whether the child protection workers are putting ‘words into our
child’s mouth’ or causing him distress? In other words, is it really reasonable
to expect parents to allow statutory workers who are unknown to them, who
are often inexperienced (Goddard and Hunt, 2011), and subject to negative
media commentary (Lonne, Parton, Thomson and Harries, 2009) to have private conversations with their children without a trusted independent person
present?
Despite these very real and practical difficulties there is very little reference
to these barriers, within research, or within policy and practice guidance. For
example the Victorian Department of Human Services specialist practice
resource entitled ‘Families with Multiple and Complex Needs’ (Victorian
Government, 2012) provides ‘best practice’ advice about work with families
where there are multiple problems such as parental substance misuse, parental disability and family violence. Whilst the guide states that ‘it is necessary to
see and talk with children’ (p.32), to engage children to explain their ‘view of
family circumstances and family relationships’ (p.32), that there should be
focus on children’s experiences and what they know and understand about
their family situation (p. 39), and that the point of view of the children should
inform the risk assessment (p.36) – there is no acknowledgement of the barriers. Missing from this 80-page practice advice document is any acknowledgement of the practical difficulties related to gaining access to children and how
those barriers might be overcome.
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And whilst there are practical difficulties of the kind just mentioned, these
are not the only obstacles. Evidence presented by the create Foundation tells
us that children in out-of-home care are also not being listened to – and this,
for the most part, is not because there are difficulties in gaining access to these
children. Most of these children and young people are in kinship care, foster
care or in residential care, they have been placed there by the court, and their
parents have much more limited power to prevent or persuade them from
having contact with or talking to child protection workers or any other caring
professional. In these instances there are other barriers that must be identified
some of which we now turn to.
2 The system is not conducive to listening to children
One reason why children in child protection and more specifically in
out-of-home care do not have a voice is because the organisational cultures
that characterise these are not conducive to listening to children and taking
account of their views. We point to a general consensus that they are managerialist, overly bureaucratic and preoccupied with meeting ‘targets’ (Harris, 2011;
Forrester and Harwin, 2011; Goddard and Hunt, 2011; Munro, 2005; Tilbury,
2004). One problem this obsession with targets creates is the way it ‘encourages’ practitioners to concentrate on specific components of their job that are
quantifiable while tasks that are not measured receive less attention (Munro,
2005). This is particularly so in a context where efficiency is a ‘performance
measure’ or a Key Performance Indicator (kpi) which influences funding,
bonuses and individual career advancement.
Thus quantifiable aspects of the job like the time taken to commence and
complete investigations are of greater import than other matters that are less
quantifiable – such as building relationships and talking with children. As
Tilbury (2004) notes: ‘not counting an activity or process makes it invisible in
performance assessment,’ even though it might be important to achieving
good outcomes’ (p.234). Findings of create (2011) also confirm this: several
young people in out of home care reported they had a ‘leaving care plan’ that
was ‘given’ to them, but that they had no involvement in its development. This
resulted in authors of the report suggesting that ‘caseworkers are responding
mainly to system requirements rather than the needs of young people’ (p.53).
A second obstacle to listening to children is the steady diminution of professional discretion that child protection workers can exercise. Reliance on tick
the box assessment matrixes, standardised information recording and processing procedures plus the contracting out of specialists services (e.g. risk assessments) has increased substantially in recent years (Harris, 2011; Forrester and
Harwin, 2011). Forrester and Harwin agree that such ‘tools’ are not simply an
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annoying additional task practitioners have to complete when doing assessments, ‘they are a fundamental failure to understand the nature of social work
assessments’ (2011, p.134). For Harris, ‘child protection processes are highly
bureaucratic and formalistic .. [and this has] a negative impact on the ability of
workers to engage in a flexible, and perhaps meaningful way with many families’ (2011, p.1,385; see also Munro 2010, p.18, and Lonne, Parton, Thomson &
Harries, 2009). Lonne, Parton, Thomson and Harries (2009) agree, child protection systems are obsessed with the language of ‘risk’, and with developing and
refining limited and technocratic risk assessment tools. This has seen a shift
away from activities deemed high risk and time consuming that do not produce immediate tangible outcomes like spending time with children and families and building relationships with them (Lonne et al, 2009).
This can be explained, in part, by the erroneous idea that complex social
problems can be understood and remedied by drawing on a predictiveexplanatory style of research knowledge to engage adopting a technicalrational approach to defining and solving problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973).
The majority of problems child protection workers and policy makers attempt
to address are complex social problems. Rittel and Webber call these ‘wicked
problem’,3 not because they are evil or bad, but because they are social and by
their very nature, difficult to define, ambiguous, and often hard (if not impossible) to achieve agreement on. They are also difficult to solve because they
address multifaceted social issues that are often contradictory and dynamic
(1973).
‘Wicked problems’ are very different to ‘tame problems’ which can be
understood and treated by applying a natural science or ‘rational, systemsengineering approach’ exemplified in the kinds of assessment tools currently
used in Child Protection and other areas of Human Services. Unlike ‘wicked
problems’, ‘tame problems’ can be engaged as problems to which there
are clear ‘true’ or ‘false’ answers. They can be defined in a precise manner
(e.g. contaminated milk caused by measurable high levels of bacteria in
milk). Tame problems are also relatively stable and can be solved conclusively
(e.g., by using pasteurisation). For these non-social problems, rational systems
framings and technical solution like numerical risk assessment tools can
be applied.
The essential difficulty with the technical rational approach is that while it
works well for ‘tame problems’ they are ill-suited for understanding and remedying the kinds of ‘wicked’ social problems found in child protection. Wicked
3 E.g. child abuse, social inequality, poverty, unemployment, famine, crime, illicit substance
abuse.
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problems can only be defined in relatively clear ways as there are competing
definitions or characterisations of the problems. Wicked problems can be
addressed by a range of responses which are relatively better or worse than
each other. Applying technical fixes to wicked problems can have unintended
consequences. The modern use of ‘assessment tools’ and ‘instruments’ in child
protection which claim to provide ‘objectivity’ and ‘efficiency’ also have the
effect of de-professionalising practitioners by removing their capacity to make
judgments and by reducing key aspects of their job to a perfunctory robotic
role of identifying weighted ‘risk indicators’ and completing check lists, that
claim to produce accurate and unbiased ‘measurement’ of the problem.
Practices informed by scientistic techniques suit those who like – albeit a
false – sense of certainty and who have an ‘interest’ in management and control. Practices reliant on such techniques and procedures are problematic
because the knowledge inherent in them is informed by a technical-rational
worldview and sees the practitioner as instrumental whose primary role is to
respond by choosing from a specified set options, when the best practice
requires professional judgment requiring a capacity to interpret different and
dynamic social setting, cultural signals, and access to a repertoire of knowledge and capacities developed through experience in the field (Swartz and
Sharpe, 2012).
It is claimed this provides efficient, fast, scientific and ‘objective’ assessment
of problems, for example that risk assessments for sex offenders and the like
accurately predict the danger that an alleged or convicted child sex offender
poses to his children. Yet such risk assessment tools are not reliable and can be
terribly wrong. Indeed, a parent who poses no risk to his child may be inaccurately labelled as ‘high risk’, removed from the home with the child losing ties
with and the support of their parent. Alternatively, a parent who is sexually
abusing his child can be mistakenly labelled as ‘low risk’ and remain in the
home unchecked. Importantly, these risk assessments can undermine a more
‘holistic assessments’ that are based on visits to the home, attempting to build
relationships and trust with children and families, and gathering new information as it becomes available (Broadley, 2012, p.42).
Practices informed by this new ‘science’ contribute, along with managerialism, to workplaces dominated by requirements to act according to the prescribed rules and procedures. And while rules and regulations are critical for
the functioning of any organisation, equally important is the capacity of workers to be able to exercise professional judgment, to know when and how rules
may need to be followed, when they need to bend, changes or indeed broken.
An overly rule-compliant work culture, combined with work practices that
erode professional discretion, undermine the practitioner’s capacity to draw
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on the knowledge gained though relationships with the children and families,
their skill base and field experience.
A third obstacle to the practice of listening to children are the recurring ‘scandals’ that make headline news, typically triggered by events like the horrific
death of a child or revelations of serious neglect in state care. In characteristic
moral panic fashion, these lead to the ‘moral barricades being manned’ by
‘accredited experts, politicians, bishops and right thinking people’ who
announce their diagnoses and solutions while calling for immediate action.
Ways of responding are resorted to, the problem then ‘disappears’, submerges
only to reappear soon after to repeat the episode once more (Cohen, 1980).
Apart from calls for more funding, one routine response is an ‘an insistence’
for better processes, more accurate assessment and ‘objective’ decisionmaking, something that compounds the problem just mentioned, namely, of
diminishing space in the workplace for professional practical judgment. As
Munro (2005) observed, ‘the cumulative results of thirty years of child abuse
inquiries have created the traditional solutions’. They include ‘increasingly
detailed procedures and guidelines, strengthened managerial control to ensure
compliance, and steady erosion of the scope for individual professional judgement through use of standardised protocols, assessment frameworks and
decision making aids’ (2005, p.5). This presents a further obstacle because
a by-product of such responses is that practitioners are required to devote
more time to ensuring compliance with the new expectations, leaving
less time for talking with children and families (Lonne et al, 2009).
3 ‘Listening well’ to children and the issue of ‘skill’ acquisition
Listening well and responding appropriately to what children say in situations
where child protection services have been called in rests on capacities like an
‘intuitive grasp’ of the context based on a deep understanding of what is happening, a clear vision of what action is required, and an ability to use analytic
approaches in new situations (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1980). In short, it is a complex, time consuming and emotionally challenging task and if workers are to
acquire the capacity to perform this work they need to become expert, to exercise practical wisdom and be innovative. This requires formal training and
practice (Flyvberg, 1991, pp.93-113; Selwyn, Farmer and Turney, 2011). As Mudaly
and Goddard (2006) explain:
…understanding and responding to the voices of children who have been
abused is no simple matter. It can be a challenge even for the astute
worker who is committed to empowering children and promoting their
rights to be heard (p.150).
724 Bessant and Broadley
International journal of children’s rights 22 (2014) 710-729
Given the high staff turnover in child protection and the demanding nature of
the work, it is not surprising that many child protection workers are inexperienced especially when it comes to developing relationships and trust with children and young people. As the Victorian Ombudsman found, ‘low retention
rates’ in Child protection created a ‘staff group lacking in experience’ (cited in
Goddard and Hunt, 2011). Most staff are recently qualified novices with little or
no practical experience, and many report feeling ‘out of their depth’ when talking to and listening to children and that they lack the skills and knowledge
needed to do the job (Goddard and Hunt 2011, Mudaly and Goddard, 2006).
We note also how children reported to Child Protection come from situations characterised by prolonged conflict and trauma and many struggle adequately to describe their experiences (Mudaly and Goddard, 2006). In this
context, the task of knowing how to build rapport that encourages children to
speak and to do so in ways that do not cause further harm requires far more
than what beginner or even advanced beginners can typically achieve. It
requires more than competence in following rules and assessing how they
apply. It requires a well-developed intuition that guides practical judgment
and allows the worker to develop rules and plans. What we are referring to is a
serious obstacle to our obligations like those set out in the Victorian Children
Youth And Families Act 2005 and give the ‘child’s views and wishes …such
weight as is appropriate in the circumstances’ (p.22).
Given the importance of including children’s voices in decisions made
about them and the very limited workforce capacity to achieve this, we might
reasonably expect to see official guidelines designed to assist the novice. Yet if
the state of Victoria is anything to go by, no such guidelines exist. For example,
in Victoria there is no formal guidance for child protection practitioners in
how to address the challenge of gaining access to children, and how to determine what is the appropriate amount of ‘weight’ to give to children’s voices.
This is perhaps not so unusual. Indeed Holland (2004) in her English study
noted that:
…children’s views are still routinely absent in decision-making that concerns them directly… [and]… that there was an ambivalent attitude from
the social workers conducting comprehensive assessment towards the
worth of children’s opinions in contributing towards decision making ..
social workers appeared to find it very difficult to know what weight to
put on children’s opinions (p73).
Clearly, it is important for workers to have appropriate training and guidelines
so that they can have some framework, some ideas, or principles to refer to
Saying And Doing 725
International journal of children’s rights 22 (2014) 710-729
when making decisions about what weight to put on children’s opinions. These
skills, knowledge and dispositions can be formally learned. Yet while there are
specific techniques to learn this which can be taught on the job or in formal
educational settings, we can find no evidence of child protection workers
receiving such training.
Practical wisdom can mean the difference between folding under the immediacy of a difficult situation by identifying too strongly with the events and
people involved to the point where feelings override the practitioner’s capacity
to see what is happening and being able to have some distance, but still connect, listen, understand and respond appropriately. Talking with children and
giving effect to what they say also involves considering what weight should be
placed on what the child wants and says. What, for example, if a child aged ten
says that he wants to return to a physically abusive parent? What if a 13-year
old wants to be in a sexual relationship with a 25-year old? How do we understand the wishes of a two-year old who cannot yet articulate what they want
using language? What if a 15-year old wants to stay overnight at a friend’s house
and the friend’s parents are drug users? Should the practitioner advocate
for a child’s right to express these views and make these choices? Should the
practitioner discourage the child from pursuing such options, but in the end
allow them to make their own choice? Or should the practitioner use force
or coercion, and take control of the situation, forcing the child to do what
they determine is in their ‘best interests’ regardless of what the child wants
or thinks?
What is required for this work is practical judgment, a capacity to know
what is going on, to think and feel in a particular situation. This is critical if
practitioners are to know how to communicate with the child. It is something
that is built up through experience (Damasio 2006, xix). With the high ‘churn
factor’ majority of novice child protection this expertise critical for working
with children is missing.
Summary: what works
Identifying good practice and what works is a task that deserves a separate
article, a topic we intend to address in a subsequent paper. However, given the
arguments and findings presented above, it seems important to at least indicate, however briefly, what some key features of a child protection system that
is inclusive of child participation might look like.
As we indicated above, domestic and international legal obligations exist
in parallel with policy rhetoric about the value of children’s participation in
726 Bessant and Broadley
International journal of children’s rights 22 (2014) 710-729
decisions about their well-being. However, in practice those commitments
are systematically disregarded. A range of options do exist for ensuring that
disparity between what is said – the ‘espoused theory’ and what is done – the
‘theory-in-use’ – is diminished. They include enacting uncroc legislation into
domestic law, greater accountability on the part of state for breaches of legislation and its own policy.
Acknowledging how what is done – practice – reflects the value attributed
to children and their views, we argue for a larger paradigm or attitudinal shift
in the ways children and their views are valued.
How this set of issues is identified as a problem and then how to work
towards changing attitudes is a major educative task that would need to involve
public awareness campaigns as well as properly developed pre-service and inservice education for practitioners and policy makers. Part of such an education campaign would entail the clear expression of why the participation of
children matters and how it is central to good practice, the well being of the
child and community. Recognising the importance of professional judgment
and creating workplaces that value and actively promote professional discretion and the development of practitioners who may begin as novices are
supported to become experts with the capacity for practical wisdom and innovation. This needs to be complemented by clear and relevant official guidelines and protocols that acknowledge and address some of the practical
difficulties such as gaining access to children and what it means to give appropriate ‘weight’ to what children say. It also requires an adequately resourced
system. All this presupposes a child protection system that retains staff rather
continues to be characterised by high turnover, something that rests on perceptions of it offering attractive career options with opportunity for career
advancement, appropriate remuneration and decent working conditions.
A range of institutional and administrative initiatives are also needed
including the implementation of child-friendly complaints mechanisms
designed to protect and actively promote the rights of the child. Structuring a
participatory approach into daily routine processes would also assist. Mudaly
and Goddard (2006) agree that creating more participatory structures and processes is an important aspect of promoting children’s voices. This would
include the requirement that all assessments are informed by evidence from
the child as well as knowledge of their wishes.
Overall a greater degree of transparency and accountability, and greater
external scrutiny is required. Child protection programmes and out-of-home
care systems are set up to protect and provide for our most vulnerable children, and as such is problematic that these systems be characterised by secrecy
(Goddard and Tucci, 2008). Greater transparency and accountability is a most
Saying And Doing 727
International journal of children’s rights 22 (2014) 710-729
important first step toward ending the ‘silencing’ of children (Stanley and
Goddard, 2002; Mudaly and Goddard, 2006).
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