My father was no ordinary man

Another poem by Clare Shaw, poet in residence for the BASPCAN 2018 International Child Protection Congress

My father was no ordinary man

My father could fly. He needed no father –

he had mother, the hunger of four older brothers –

my father was one of an army of brothers

and he learnt all the ways of men.

My father was handsome and worshipped by women.

His loins were a river: they flowed with his children

and he was the fountain of truth we all drank from

and when he held forth we would not interrupt him.

My father named every flower in the garden,

each star in the night by the right constellation.

He knew all the birds by their song

and they sang it. My father could never be wrong.

His hands were a gun and they brought down the rabbit.

He fed us on flesh that was studded with bullets.

There was fire in his fist, there was gold in his pocket.

My father turned water to wine and he drank it –

he needed no prayer and no God

for he was the word and he rang like a hammer.

Oh, my father was victor; he rode on our shoulders,

he rode deep inside us. We carried my father

through hell and high water,

we proved ourselves worthy of love

and his love was a river in flood.

The sun made him happy.

The truth was soft mud in his hands, oh truly

he was the truth and he was the glory.

He filled all the rooms with his song and his story,

his whisper could silence a house

for my father bore pain that you could not imagine.

His forearms were scarred and his fingers were broken.

His lungs were a pit and his heart was a puncture.

Oh, my father was hard and my father was tender

and his hand was a mark

we will all wear forever.

September 21, 2017

All you need is love (plus a good evidence base, a healthy dose of scepticism, and patience and perseverance in working with families!)

All you need is love?

Our latest issue of Child Abuse Review, now available online, explores some of the dilemmas in working with violent fathers and their families. Positive affirmation and support is a central part of such work, but is it really all that is needed? Can violent men really change?

In our first paper for this issue Timothy Broady and colleagues report on an evaluation of a men’s domestic violence intervention programme, using a qualitative analysis of interviews with 21 participants (Broady et al., 2017). Perhaps the most striking finding of this research was the universal expression, by these fathers, of love for their children, and how that was ‘motivating them to stop using violence and to develop positive relationships with all family members’. Broady and his colleagues suggest that ‘the frustrations reported at not having contact with their children emerged as a particularly powerful experience that could be harnessed to encourage men to acknowledge the severity of their behaviour and to find alternative ways of relating to family members.’

It is not sufficient to put all the responsibility for keeping their children safe on mothers who themselves are victims of the violence and controlling behaviour perpetrated by their partners. If we are going to bring about any meaningful change in families affected by domestic violence, the perpetrators of that violence need to take responsibility for their attitudes and behaviours, and to take genuine steps towards changing not just the violent behaviours themselves, but also the deeper attitudes of power and control which underlie those behaviours.

Picking up on these findings, it seems imperative that intervention programmes seek to understand and work with what motivates violent perpetrators to change. If their love for their children can help motivate change, that must surely be a good thing. However, it is essential that practitioners, while showing compassion and a supportive attitude to their clients, are not naïve about the challenges involved. Change does not happen overnight, and the manipulative, controlling attitudes of many perpetrators of domestic violence mean that a degree of scepticism is important, along with patience and perseverance in working with these men.

As with so much of our safeguarding practice, we need to hold on to the hope that children’s lives can be better. We need to maintain high expectations of parents in their care of their children; provide them with the support that will enable them to meet those high expectations; and keep our focus on the child, so that we are prepared to challenge and act when those expectations are not met.

Balancing support and scrutiny

The difficulties in achieving a balance between support and scrutiny are brought into a different perspective in a paper by Louise Caffrey (2017), specifically in the context of volunteers working in supported child contact centres. Caffrey’s research is an excellent example of how systems methodology can help get beneath the surface of individual behaviours to understand the context, values, and organisational systems which may underlie those behaviours. Pertinently, she found that while the volunteers were aware that child safety and protection were everyone’s business, and were knowledgeable about their responsibilities to refer child protection concerns and how to do so, there were other emphases that could ‘stand in tension with their safeguarding commitments’. In particular, she found that workers emphasised a need to provide a welcoming service, to be non-judgemental, and to be neutral. Indeed, practices such as listening in on conversations, recording observations, or finding out about the background case histories, which were felt to jeopardise the aim of creating a welcoming environment, or that could be perceived as biased or judgemental, were actively avoided or viewed negatively by these workers.

‘You have to dance, not wrestle’

That was how one midwife described how she approached addressing child protection concerns with vulnerable pregnant women in a study from New South Wales by Louise Everitt, Caroline Homer and Jennifer Fenwick (Everitt et al., 2016). In a qualitative interview study, the authors identified four core themes that reflected some of the complexities of working with women and their unborn babies. Central to all of these was the dilemma caused by a partnership model of care, when potential child protection concerns are identified. The statutory power carried by community services could be seen as daunting by these midwives, and a potential threat to their relationship with their clients. Indeed, what comes across strongly in reading this report, is the emphasis these midwives place on maintaining a relationship with the mothers with whom they are working, and to do everything possible to support these mothers and enable them to take their babies home and care for them safely. One key aspect of this was the emphasis on being open and honest with these mothers, not going behind their backs, but providing them with support to try and change. Once again, this study highlights just how challenging such work can be, requiring perseverance, time and energy to achieve a good outcome.

Along with these studies of working with parents, other papers in this issue explore the impact of neglect and abuse on young people’s resilience and psychosocial adaptation, including a paper from Extremadura in Spain reporting on young people placed in residential care because of neglect (Moreno-Manso et al., 2017), and one from Jeff Moore, Christine Thornton and Mary Hughes (2017) reporting on a study with 22 Irish emigrant survivors of institutional abuse. In contrast, Duncan Helm (2017) reports on a thought-provoking ethnographic study of a social work team in Scotland. Helm identified high levels of case knowledge, along with exploration, curiosity and hypothesis generation, without the need to necessarily identify solutions. Practitioners were able to share knowledge and resources that supported critical thinking. However, He also identified an absence of challenging dialogue and dialectic debate. Helm’s findings emphasise the importance of both physical and emotional ‘secure space’ for practitioners, but highlights the need to promote ‘working team cultures which facilitate challenging yet supportive dialogue as an aid to sense-making’.

Love, challenge, patience and perseverance

Despite John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s assertion, in 1967, that ‘all you need is love’, the research reported in this issue of Child Abuse Review suggest that this is not the whole picture. ‘Love’, expressed in these papers as affection, empathy, compassion and support, for parents, children and young people, and colleagues, is a crucial component of safeguarding practice. Love of their children may indeed be a strong motivator for violent fathers, or vulnerable mothers, but expressions of love, by themselves, do not guarantee a child’s safety, and need to be accompanied by genuine and sustained changes in attitudes and behaviours that clearly promote the child’s needs. For practitioners, empathy and support towards the parents with whom they are working need to be balanced with professional curiosity and challenge, and attitudes of patience and perseverance in working with these families.

For those affected by abuse or neglect, compassion and understanding is clearly needed from those to whom they turn for support; that compassion and understanding needs to be grounded in empowering approaches of sharing control and helping the individual to build resilience.

Child Abuse Review Issue 26:5

All You Need is Love (Plus a Good Evidence Base, a Healthy Dose of Scepticism, and Patience and Perseverance in Working with Families!) (pages 323–327)

Peter Sidebotham

‘I Miss My Little One A Lot’: How Father Love Motivates Change in Men Who Have Used Violence (pages 328–338)

Timothy R. Broady, Rebecca Gray, Irene Gaffney and Pamela Lewis

The Importance of Perceived Organisational Goals: A Systems Thinking Approach to Understanding Child Safeguarding in the Context of Domestic Abuse (pages 339–350)

Louise Caffrey

Working with Vulnerable Pregnant Women Who Are At Risk of Having their Babies Removed by the Child Protection Agency in New South Wales, Australia (pages 351–363)

Louise Everitt, Caroline Homer and Jennifer Fenwick

Psychosocial Adaptation of Young Victims of Physical Neglect (pages 364–374)

Juan Manuel Moreno-Manso, Mª Elena García-Baamonde, Eloísa Guerrero-Barona, Macarena Blázquez-Alonso, José Manuel Pozueco-Romero and Mª José Godoy-Merin

On the Road to Resilience: The Help-Seeking Experiences of Irish Emigrant Survivors of Institutional Abuse (pages 375–387)

Jeff Moore, Christine Thornton and Mary Hughes

Can I Have A Word? Social Worker Interaction and Sense-Making (pages 388–398)

Duncan Helm

September 13, 2017

Thinking creatively about safeguarding children

Over the past few weeks I have been in a number of conversations which have highlighted the complexity of work around safeguarding children, the commitment of those professionals engaged in such work, and the huge impact of the work on children and families.

I have been very aware of the challenges practitioners face in balancing their supportive and protective roles, and also how both survivors of abuse and families who come into our protective systems can feel excluded and victimised by the very services set up to support them.

So I am really very excited by next year’s BASPCAN child protection congress taking place at the University of Warwick in April.

The theme of the congress, Thinking outside the box, captures our desire to think creatively about how we safeguard children.

For the first time ever, we will be bringing together practitioners, survivors of abuse, researchers, trainers and policy makers to learn from each other, reflect and consider how we can improve services to support families and protect children and young people.

We have an exciting line up of keynote speakers, and some really inspiring abstracts already being submitted. The call for abstracts ends soon, so if you have a good idea, some original research or innovative practice that you can present, or if you are able to draw on your own experience as a survivor of abuse or someone who has been involved with family support services, do get online now to submit an outline (abstract) of your presentation.

And do take a look at our all-new website (click here) where you will find lots of information and inspiration, including our latest poem of the month from our poet in residence, Clare Shaw, and some tasters from our artist in residence, Harry Venning.

September 5, 2017September 5, 2017

In praise of social workers

I was interviewed today by ITN news in the wake of the tragic death of 21 month old Ayeeshia Smith, and found myself getting really frustrated with yet another news reporter once more berating social services for not learning the lessons. ‘Why’, they ask, ‘after so many Serious Case Reviews, do social services keep failing our most vulnerable children?’

But the reality is that social services – and all the other agencies working to support children and families – have learned lessons. And children in this country live far more safely than they did a generation ago.

Every year in England, social services departments deal with over 600,000 referrals of children in need. Over 50,000 children are made the subject of a child protection plan. Nearly all of these are protected from further serious harm, and in the majority of cases, social services, health professionals and others work hard to ensure that these children can stay with their families.

In our recent triennial review of Serious Case Reviews[1] we found that around 26-30 children each year are killed by their parents – far fewer than in the 1980s and 1990s. The majority of these children died in spite of, not because of, all the good work that social care professionals are doing.

Child protection is not a simple job that you can just carry out by following a protocol or just spotting the signs and responding appropriately. Every day child protection professionals are dealing with complex, challenging issues, juggling and appraising the information given to them, and trying their best to find a positive way forward to protect the children, while seeking to support and work with their parents.

So yes, when an innocent child like Ayeeshia Smith is cruelly murdered by her mother, we are right to feel outraged. We are right to ask that lessons be learned – and, as with the current case – there always will be lessons to be learned. But let’s not take it out on the social workers, health visitors, police officers and other professionals without whom many more children would be harmed and many more families would be torn apart by the stresses, grief and turmoil of our complex, messy lives.

[1] Sidebotham P., Brandon M., Bailey S., Belderson P., Dodsworth J., Garstang J., Harrison E., Retzer A., Sorensen P. (2016) Pathways to harm, pathways to protection: a triennial analysis of Serious Case Reviews 2011-2014. DfE RR545. London: Department for Education. ISBN: 978-1-78105-601-1. Available at www.seriouscasereviews.rip.org.uk

August 25, 2017August 25, 2017

The voices young people hear

Hearing voices that other people don’t hear is just one possible response to traumatic or adverse life experiences, but it is one that can leave supporters feeling out of their depth. Once seen as the epitome of madness, it is now understood that voices are a meaningful experience that can often reflect the struggles which provoked or shaped them.

Listening to, and learning from, the voices young people hear

Rai Waddingham, from Hearing Voices Network, is the latest in an exciting line-up of keynote speakers for the BASPCAN 2018 child protection congress.

In her talk, Rai will explore the experience of hearing voices and their relationship to traumatic life experiences. She will cover some of the different kinds of voices heard by young people who have experienced trauma and/or child protection processes – including: taboo and violent voices; voices that provide comfort and security; voices that echo feelings of fear, loss or guilt. Importantly, she will suggest some of the things adults can do to help young people feel safer and more empowered within these experiences. Rai will draw on her own personal experience as a survivor of trauma and voice-hearer, as well as her professional experience of supporting young people through the Voice Collective young person’s hearing voices project.

Rai Waddingham

Rai Waddingham is an experienced international trainer who specialises in innovative ways of supporting people who struggle with extreme states (including ‘psychosis’, ‘dissociation’ and complex post-traumatic reactions). Rai has particular expertise in working with children, young people and people in prison who hear voices. In 2010, Rai launched a project developing a network of Hearing Voices peer support groups in London’s prisons, building on her work developing groups for adults and young people in the community. She now works as an honorary Open Dialogue practitioner in Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust’s Open Dialogue Service.

Rai is a trustee of the English Hearing Voices Network, Intervoice and Vice Chair of ISPS UK (International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis). She is also a member of ISPS’s International Executive Committee. Rai has personal experience of hearing voices, psychosis and dissociation. She uses her own experiences and the principles of the Hearing Voices Movement to inform her work.

To find out about our other inspiring keynote speakers, take a look at our congress webpage:

Keynote Speakers

August 19, 2017

You are teaching your daughter to swim

in open waters

though you don’t know the depth

of the lake at its centre; who might have died there,

whether the pike will scare her or bite her,

if the current will pull her down.

At the level of water, the mountains are higher.

The cold is a world she will walk to and enter

where deep mud is softer than skin.

Let the pebbles swim under her feet!

All the darkness beneath her

is answered by birds

and the trees will be tall and kind.

The sun will light up the water above her.

When there’s no ground left to stand on,

then she’ll fly.

Though the cold makes her teeth ache

she can take it. The rain cannot soak her,

the swan will not harm her. No dead man

will reach out his hand. You will watch her

leaving the shore behind

and the current will flow

the right way. That day,

the water will hold her

and take her far from you.

Now let her go from you. Let go.

A poem by Clare Shaw,

Poet in Residence for the

BASPCAN 2018 International Child Protection Congress

To read more of Clare’s poems and to find out more about the Congress see our website:

BASPCAN Congress 2018

and the water holds you

and carries you

it stops you from going down

and occasional sun

Y Living things scare you –

their dark little nudges

you imagine them,

snake-like and toothy and eyeless.

there’s nothing makes sense

but your arms

the rhythm of you moving forwards

beat and stroke

and sun on the surface

ou are leaving the shore behind.

August 18, 2017

SIDS rates in England and Wales reach a new record low

Data released this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that rates of unexplained infant deaths[1] in England and Wales have fallen to a new record low. There were 191 unexplained infant deaths in 2015 (0.27 per 1000 live births), compared to 217 in 2014, 252 in 2013, and over 300 in 2004 and 2005.

This continues a really encouraging trend that builds on the early successes of the Back to Sleep campaigns of the 1990s. Part of the success could be due to continued declines in maternal smoking (down to 11.4% in 2014/15), and also to the work of the Lullaby Trust and other organisations in promoting safer sleeping messages.

“The further reduction in SIDS rates for 2015 is extremely positive and demonstrates the effectiveness of following safer sleep advice and the importance of making sure that advice reaches all parents and carers. The Lullaby Trust has been campaigning over the past 25 years to ensure that this happens. Although SIDS rates have decreased significantly over the past decade, 191 babies still died in 2015 and the risk has not gone away. We need to ensure that parents continue to recognise the vital importance of following safer sleep advice. Only by making all families aware of the steps they can take to help protect their babies, can we save more lives and drive the number down.”

Francine Bates, Chief Executive, Lullaby Trust

The safest place for your baby to sleep is on their back in a cot in the same room as you

You can find the safer sleep advice on the Lullaby Trust website:

Lullaby Trust Safer Sleep Advice

[1] The ONS data include those deaths coded as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (R95) and unascertained (R99)

August 10, 2017

Safeguarding children across the globe

Child maltreatment is a reality that affects children throughout the world – in all cultures and across all continents. How different countries respond to this varies. From countries adopting a strong and often punitive protection focus, to more supportive models of working in partnership with parents, through to areas where corruption, indifference or a lack of infrastructure can compromise efforts to safeguard children, the complexities of responding to this need are huge.

‘the type of model adopted within a country can have a significant impact upon the response subsequently made to children with safeguarding needs’

Our latest special issue of Child Abuse Review presents a series of papers which demonstrate how different models of child protection have been developed and implemented in different countries and consider the implications for the treatment and protection of children. It provides examples of cross-national learning and examines the policymaking context behind child protection models and where such learning has not always had positive outcomes for children. Accounts of child protection practice within Africa, Taiwan, Finland, Norway, the UK, the USA, Suriname, Sweden and China are presented.

In an accompanying editorial, our guest editors, Louise Brown, Jie Lei and Marianne Strydom explore some of these issues and highlight the research presented in this issue. They argue the case for areas that are developing child protection systems to draw on learning from elsewhere, but to temper this with more locally-based practical responses developed in partnership with local communities.

How effectively we are able to safeguard and protect children depends not only on the systems and structures we have in place to respond to child abuse and neglect, but also on the underlying cultural values affecting how we perceive children and families. Two papers in this special issue – from Suriname and from Finland and Sweden – present very different cultural contexts and make for interesting reflection.

‘This special issue brings to our attention issues relating to the different models of child protection that have been adopted by different countries and the complexity in the process of adapting models to fit different cultural contexts. It questions the usefulness and validity of attempts to impose international standards, and how different models can result in different responses to children’

You can access the editorial for free, along with the full table of contents, earlier issues and early view papers on the Child Abuse Review website: