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Engaging fathers: promoting gender equality
No full text[About the book]
Considers ways in which raising questions about gender can help researchers and practitioners better understand family relationships and issues in children's development
•Draws on current developments in thinking about gender relations
•Offers an overview of sociological, psychological and developmental perspectives on family relationships, child welfare outcomes and the practice/policy realities of professional interventions with families
•Chapters address range of service settings; including family support, child health, education, child protection, domestic violence, ‘looked after’ children and youth justic
Reflections on the possibilities and challenges offered by a social model of protecting children
No full textThis chapter explores the thinking behind the social model of protecting children and its key themes. It interrogates the challenges that this model poses to the current dominant individually focused professionally led child protection project drawing on lessons from the authors' work in the UK. It draws on research and knowledge transfer projects conducted by the authors on poverty-aware practice and domestic abuse to explore key issues in relation to implementation. It asks whether reform is possible within the current system and explores what we can learn from the discussions on abolition evident in countries such as the US. Finally, the themes attached to sense and sensibility are noted as aligning directly with our concerns to bring robust research evidence on structural inequalities, derived from a variety of means including co-production, into active dialogue with everyday professional practices.</p
The training of trainers as a way to share sense and sensibility in the P.I.P.P.I. programme
No full textThis chapter explores and discusses the ideas, methods and practices associated with training of trainers' (ToT) initiatives, emphasizing their pivotal role in fostering a 'sense and sensibility' among social professionals working with families, children, and their communities.
In particular, it highlights the experience of the Italian Programme of Intervention to Prevent Institutionalisation (P.I.P.P.I.) (Milani, 2022) and how the role of local trainers has been intentionally developed and supported to meet the challenge of implementing PIPPI. This has brought together essential theoretical and methodological aspects with the specific factors characterising the territory, including the organisation of services, service providers and the expertise of professionals.
In P.I.P.P.I. (see also Chapter 4 in this book), the Participative and Transformative Evaluation (PTE, see also Chapter 6 in this book; Serbati and Milani, 2013) is assumed to encompass not only the work regarding families' situation but also that of the teams of professionals and the services working with those families. The 'reference framework for a participatory approach in child protection' (Lacharité et al, 2022) serves as a bridge, linking together the different subjects and context of the work with vulnerable families.
Following the initial training, the responsibility shifts to the local authorities to create the conducive conditions and organise initiative to implement the programme. Two key roles are central to this process.
The first one is the coach (manager, an head of an operational unit or a professional) who is in charge of performing a coaching function for multidisciplinary teams working with families and accompanying the teams throughout the implementation of the programme. Each area' identifies two professionals to coach their colleagues. The coaches receive initial training and ongoing professional development through recurring tutoring sessions, which involve support, collaborative data analysis (with researchers and coaches), sharing and comparing practices, fostering reflexivity and innovative ideas, and facilitating dialogue among colleagues and researchers.
In addition to coaches, P.I.P.P.I. requires each area to identify some child care professionals who take on the role of trainers to support dissemination and appropriation of the programme, ultimately enabling a step-by-step process toward greater autonomy in its implementation.
P.I.P.P.I. trainers are responsible for organising and facilitating training activities taking into account the assessment of local training needs and the information emerging from the evaluation of the work with families. They are not meant to, or required to, be professional trainers but are instead local professionals who are chosen for their methodological and technical expertise in working with children and vulnerable families, as well as their relational skills (such as communication and management of team work and facilitation of groups). Once identified, they are provided with a specific training programme according to P.I.P.P.I.'s framework.
This chapter, by presenting the theorical framework behind and the structure of the 'train the trainers' initiatives developed in P.L.P.P.I., highlights how trainers are key to promoting the sense of the programme and fostering the relational sensibility underpinning it. Furthermore, the chapter explores and reflects on the key challenges encountered during the process of fully implementing the programme
Writing fathers in but mothers out!!!
No full textSince the late 1990s a series of government departments have promoted a policy and practice agenda urging practitioners in a range of settings such as school, health care and children’s centres to ‘engage’ fathers. The rationale for this project is that fostering father involvement with children will promote good outcomes particularly for those children who are most disadvantaged. The author suggests that this agenda is normatively undesirable and flawed practically. Gender equality appears to be neither an explicit nor implicit aim. Moreover, by constructing the father—child relationship as dyadic, mothers’ contributions to fathering and childcare are obscured. Drawing from a piece of qualitative research with fathers about their experiences of social care services, it would appear, however, that the fathers were preoccupied with mothers and their perceived power. Indeed, they had constructed a world of powerful unpredictable women who were supported by feminized services. Not only is writing mothers out problematic for gender equality purposes, it is also not feasible practically
Where to for feminist social work?
No full textI will locate the emergence of second wave feminist social work, exploring the context in which it developed, whilst making brief reference to its historical antecedents. I will then outline the main parameters of feminist social work as it developed in the seventies, eighties and nineties in the UK identifying its strengths and weaknesses. I will look at key themes within more general feminist writings which, in the opinion of the author, pose fundamental questions about feminist social work as it has developed. I conclude by arguing that whilst understandings of gender are essential in informing social work theory and practice, there are serious questions to be asked about the viability or desirability of feminist social work as it has been conceived hitherto
Child to parent violence - an exploration of non-violent resistance
No full textUntil relatively recently, there has been very limited research on the aggressive and violent behaviour of children and adolescents who abuse their parents at home. This form of family violence has been poorly understood in practice, policy and research.
Employing constructivist grounded theory and mixed methods research designs, this action research project explored child and family practitioners’ experiences and perceptions of intervention with child to parent violence in Ireland. Research participants were from a variety of agencies and disciplines in Dublin and the Mid-West areas. An integral part of the research involved the development of a training programme, adapting the Non Violent Resistance Programme (Omer 2004; Weinblatt & Omer 2008) for use in Ireland. It also explored the practitioners’ responses to the training programme and the underlying model for understanding and responding to child to parent violence.2018-04-2
Working Ethically in Child Protection
Full text linkRather than a single focus on assessing risk and diagnosing deficit, this book recognises that our child protection systems bear down disproportionately on those from disadvantaged and marginalised communities and argues that what is needed is real support and practical assistance for poor and vulnerable parents and children. It uses real-world case examples to illustrate the relevant ethical and practice principles, and ways in which students and practitioners can practise ethically when dealing with complex, multi-faceted issues
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