Book Reviews

Book Reviews Editor: Karen Broadhurst

Children’s Agency, Children’s Welfare:A Dialogical Approach to ChildDevelopment, Policy and Practice

Carolus Van NijnattenThe Policy Press, Bristol, 2010, 157 pp. No price shown.

ISBN 978 1 84742 489 1

This book provides a constructivist and dialogicalview of child welfare, which takes a critical and prob-lematizing approach to children’s and parents’ lives,relationships and difficulties, and the professionalresponse to these. Ways in which children mightbecome agentic are explored through social, psycho-logical and child development perspectives primarily,with the role child welfare professionals might playwhen parental agency is insufficient or inadequate,critiqued and re-envisioned. Psychoanalytical, rela-tional and narrative discourses dominate, but theimportance of structural and societal factors (e.g.poverty, marginalization and oppression) are notignored. No false dichotomies are set up. Instead howchildren and their families narratively understand andinteract with their situations to regain their autonomybecomes the focus.

This is an eminently readable text that manages topresent and discuss complex concepts in a criticalmanner while remaining accessible and practicefocused. The author’s interest in narrative clearly liesbehind his own storytelling capacity as he unfolds histheorizations told in relation to the life and experi-ences of ‘Jennifer’, a fictional 16 year old who has ahistory of neglect and abuse and who has spent timein residential care and foster homes. Jennifer experi-ences little agency in respect of her own life andchoices. As readers, we are encouraged to thinkabout how such a state of affairs comes about as wellas how we, as child welfare professionals, mightrethink our conceptualization of service users andthe role of practice.

Bureaucratized and administrative structures pre-dominate in child welfare services across a number ofEuropean countries, including the Netherlands, where

the author resides, and England, my own context.Thereductionist, standardized and depersonalized profes-sional responses, which is often the result (Broadhurstet al. 2010), are strongly critiqued in this text, with acoherent and compelling argument made for the reha-bilitation of dialogic exchange within the helping rela-tionship. The goal of professional intervention isre-conceptualized as enabling children and families tomake sense of their lives, experiences and difficulties ina way that is meaningful. Families are approached aspartners in dialogue rather than as objects for diagno-sis. Assessments are re-presented as a co-constructednew story, narrated in a manner that makes sense tochildren, parents, professionals and agencies, andwhich paves the way for creative approaches to devel-opment and change. Ultimately, the author suggests, areflective space for a practice that embraces ambiguityand uncertainty could result. And in the light ofMunro’s recent recommendations (Munro 2011), fewpleas could be more timely or apposite.

Michelle LefevreSenior Lecturer in Social WorkUniversity of Sussex

REFERENCES

Broadhurst, K., Wastell, D., White, S., Hall, C., Peckover, S.,

Thompson, K. et al. (2010) Performing ‘initial assessment’:

identifying the latent conditions for error at the front-door of

local authority children’s services. British Journal of Social

Work, 40 (2), 352–370.

Munro, E. (2011) The Munro Review of child protection: final

report. Available at: http://www.education.gov.uk/munroreview

(accessed 25 July 2011).

Post-Qualifying Child Care Social Work:Developing Reflective Practice

Gillian Ruch (ed.)

Sage, London, 2009, 169 pp. £22.99. ISBN 978 1 41292 826 7

(paperback)

This book was an early addition to the textbooks thatflooded out of publishing houses as post-qualifying

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378 Child and Family Social Work 2012, 17, pp 378–383 © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

(PQ) courses began to be established and the demandfor core texts grew. As such, it was welcomed to manyreading lists including my own as a PQ course pro-vider, and now is an opportune time to review itsvalue in the light of the Social Work Reform Board’songoing revision of social work education and theshifted emphasis onto continuing professional devel-opment.

In the first part, the editor has managed to pulltogether a focused collection of chapters that hasa unifying ethos of child care social work practice,which enables the agenda for the PQ curriculum tobe usefully explored in Part 2 and to suggest futuredirections for Part 3. This core ethos that values thesocial workers ‘. . . sustained, inclusive and honestrelationships . . .’ with service users is apparentthroughout the book, and the post–Munro world hasdone nothing but re-emphasize the importance ofrelationship-based practice. The overall stated inten-tion of the book to enable practitioners to developtheir ‘. . . reflective responses to practice . . .’ istherefore well grounded and maintains a relevanceembodied by Chapter 3’s focus on reflective practiceand reflective spaces. While Gillian Ruch herselfhas quite a strong affiliation with psychodynamicapproaches to reflection, this chapter offers a reallygood introduction to the broad church of reflectiveand critically reflective practice that practitionerswho have been out of education for some time maynot find familiar. Hopefully, the new world of socialwork practice will fully embrace these increasinglyimportant ideas that can support practitioners instressful, challenging and complex engagements withfamilies. Ruch also offers a useful reminder aboutother core elements in her discussion of observa-tional practices with children and families.

Unfortunately, a number of chapters are too closelylocated in the now fading PQ framework that theGeneral Social Care Council rigidly endorsed and willneed substantial rewriting for the continuing profes-sional development provision that is taking over. KishBhatti-Sinclair’s introduction to practice educationhas some merit in itself but will need to be refreshed asthe practice educator framework settles into existenceand that opportunity would allow the material onadult learning to be developed and expanded so thatpractitioners can fully take on their role as enablinglearning in others. This is key to practice not just insupporting a social work placement but also in devel-oping a learning culture in practice that supportscontinuing development in professionals and also rec-ognizes that affecting change in family members also

relies upon an understanding of how adults learn.Clare (2007) has argued that ‘social workers need tobe expert learners, able to respond to the immediacyof situations with which they deal; and central require-ments for safe practice are a capacity for reflectivepractice and critical thinking’.

The second half of the book also has a very strongfocus on the child, which includes some interestingdiscussion about risk and introduces some approachesto child development. While ‘keeping the child inmind’ remains an important message, it would beuseful to see this section of the book expanded toinclude approaches to seeing the family as a legitimatesite of intervention, which would steer practice awayfrom the individualism currently prevailing thatreduces childhood to sets of outcomes. Ruch’s discus-sion that recognizes that children are situated in socialwork networks aids thinking about the realities ofworking in partnership with families, which is pickedup by Chris Warren-Adamson’s chapter on the com-plexity of collaborative working, both of which stillhave currency.

My favourite chapter in this book has always beenTeri Rogers’ critical discussion about the difficulties inbalancing innovatory and regulatory practice, whichmanaged to effectively discuss the challenges in tryingto be an effective practitioner in the face of thetechnical-rationalist monster that was and is the per-formance management agenda. Hopefully the myththat this leads to effective practice has been roundlyexploded (Shaw et al. 2009; White et al. 2010) andthat this chapter stands as an interesting historicalepitaph on the tombstone of the Integrated Children’sSystem. However, I rather suspect that a revision ofthis discussion in the light of whatever policy revisionsarise from the Munro Review (2011) might well beappropriate and will keep subsequent versions of thisbook relevant and future proofed.

Joe SmeetonSocial Work Lecturer and PQ Course LeaderDepartment of Social Work and PsychologyUniversity of East Anglia

REFERENCES

Clare, B. (2007) Promoting deep learning: a teaching, learning

and assessment endeavour. SocialWork Education, 26 (5), 433–

446.

Munro, E. (2011) The Munro Review of Child Protection: Final

Report – A Child-Centred System. DfE, London.

Shaw, I., Bell, M., Sinclair, I., Sloper, P., Mitchell, W., Dyson, P.

et al. (2009) An exemplary scheme? An evaluation of the

Book Reviews Karen Broadhurst

379 Child and Family Social Work 2012, 17, pp 378–383 © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

integrated children’s system. British Journal of Social Work, 39(4), 613–626.

White, S., Wastell, D., Broadhurst, K. & Hall, C. (2010) When

policy o’erleaps itself: the tragic tale of the Integrated Chil-

dren’s System. Critical Social Policy, 30, 405–429.

Parental Rights and Responsibilities:Analysing Social Policy andLived Experiences

Harriet ChurchillThe Policy Press, Bristol, 2011, 256 pp. £26.99. ISBN 978 1

84742 090 9

Churchill’s book provides a timely critical overview ofrecent developments in UK family policy and drawsout the implications for families of the changing politi-cal landscape of parental rights and responsibilities.The book is in four parts, and the first part of the bookis a valuable examination of the wider social andpolitical context in which parenting policies are devel-oped. This section provides a useful insight into howrights and responsibilities of parents have developedover time. The UK experience is put into a compara-tive context, and the pervasive shift towards ‘socialinvestment’ strategies is highlighted. Churchill arguesthat while there is the possible emergence of a Euro-pean model of family welfare policies following a trendtowards the reformulation of parent’s rights andresponsibilities across Europe, it is evident that thereare still considerable differences in approaches tofamily welfare across welfare regimes.The second partof the book deals with UK family policy and focuses inparticular on family policy developments during theLabour government’s terms of office from 1997–2010. This was a key time in the development of UKfamily policy, and the Labour’s focus on child povertyresulted in an increasing focus on parental responsi-bilities for children’s well-being. Churchill highlightsthe benefits for parents of increased targeting of ser-vices and enhanced financial support for families. Butshe also identifies the failure of the Labour to effec-tively develop a ‘needs led’ system of support forparents, which addressed issues of socio-economicdisadvantaged and gender inequalities both in and outof employment.

Much of the Labour’s family policy had strong‘social investment’ underpinnings, which informed awide range of provision including childcare, Sure Startand the Every Child Matters agenda. Churchill arguespersuasively that this focus on children and social

investment policies led to a change in parental rightsand responsibilities, which towards the end of Labourperiod resulted in an increasing focus on ‘risk’ inchildhood coupled with the rise/return of behaviouralexplanations for social exclusion. The implications of‘social investment’ policies is evident where the well-being of children especially their value to the state andsociety as future adults and workers appears almosttoo important to leave to parents, hence the state mustintervene to ensure good outcomes.

The third section of the book analyses findings froma range of research studies that explore parenting andparenting practices from the perspectives of parents.The inclusion of this section brings a welcome oppor-tunity to hear how parents understand and negotiatetheir complex parenting roles. Churchill picks out thetensions inherent in managing work and family lifeand the demanding and often conflicting expectationsof contemporary parenthood. The final section of thebook concludes with a valuable discussion of five keyareas of family policy: welfare to work measures,financial support for families, childcare, familyfriendly employment and family and parentingsupport.

Throughout the book, Churchill flags up the ten-sions inherent in family and parenting policies thatintervene directly in family life, showing how linkingparental rights to parental responsibilities can fail toaddress key gender and socio-economic inequalitieswithin and between families. The Labour period wascharacterized by an extension of family rights particu-larly in relation to childcare and some elements offinancial support for low-income families. However,much of the Labour’s support for parents rested onlabour market status and the ability to pay for servicessuch as childcare. Parenting support remains highlystigmatized and focused on ‘parental failure’, and thisperiod saw the development of a growing range ofpunitive measures to enforce parental compliance inrelation to parenting interventions.

One of the many values of this book is that itreminds the reader that the current Coalition govern-ment’s interest in family interventions coupled withan increased conflation of family disadvantage withfamily ‘dysfunction’ had in many respects begunduring the Labour government’s period in office.Churchill ends with a plea for a statement of parentalrights and responsibilities and the development ofpolicy approaches that seek to balance the rights ofparents with the rights of children. Central to thatproposition is the need for family support that recog-nizes family diversity and the wide range of family

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Book Reviews Karen Broadhurst

380 Child and Family Social Work 2012, 17, pp 378–383 © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd