How Do They Maintain a Focus on the Child? Helen Richardson Foster Department of Sociological Studies The University of Sheffield

1. Child Protection Conferences in
Cases of Neglect: How do They
Maintain a Focus on the Child?
Helen Richardson Foster
Department of Sociological Studies,
The University of Sheffield

2. Background to the Study

3. Background to the research
…professionals can find it very difficult to take
the time to assess the family environment
through the eyes of a child or young person.
(Lord Laming, 2009)
ESRC CASE Studentship

4. The Child Protection Conference
• Key part of decision making in cases of child abuse
or neglect in the UK
• Multi-disciplinary meeting
• Initial & reviews
• Reports

5. Research questions
• What is a child-focused approach to child
protection?
• How child-focused are child protection
conferences in cases of child neglect?
• What factors affect child-focused information
sharing and decision making in child protection
conferences in cases of neglect?

6. 3: Focus groups
14:
3 ICPCs, 11 reviews
In 1 LSCB area
6: 35 participants, 3
groups in each area
26: 9 chairs, 13 minute
takers, 2 managers, 2
supervisors
In 2 LSCB areas In 2 LSCB areas
Audio recording and
documentary analysis.
Conferences with
neglect as main
concern/category
2: Interviews with
conference staff
Conference chairs,
managers, minute
takers and their
supervisors.
Staff from all
agencies who
attend
conferences
1: Conference data
Methods and sample

7. Conference characteristics
Family size: 6 ‘baby only’ conferences
5 large families of 4+ children
3 families of 3 children
Family attendance: 12 mothers, 5 fathers, 3 teenagers
Practitioners: 2 – 13 attended, mean =10

8. Discussion of the Child’s
Daily Lived Experience

9. • Baby only conferences
• Historical concerns
I’ve got no concerns over the care that’s being provided to {Child 1}
at the moment. Routines are all in place he’s feeding well.
(Social Worker, Conference Two)
• Resistant/difficult to engage parents
…when I’ve visited her I’ve not picked up that there’s been any smell
of alcohol or she’s not appeared intoxicated or anything but I’m only
seeing her for a fraction of the time and what she’s doing outside of
that time is quite difficult to really get a true picture.
(Social Worker, Conference Three)
Least discussion of the child’s daily lived
experience

10. Most discussion of the Child’s Daily Lived
Experience (1)
• Education staff:
…there are points where {Child 2} has come into school and he’s not
taken his tablet for whatever reason and there was the issue where the
tablets had run out, and I’d rang up and spoke to {father} and said that
that really needed, they needed a back-up plan, we need {child 2} to
have his medication in the morning because that can then impact in
school (Teacher, Conference Four)
• Intensive work with the family

11. Most discussion of the child’s daily lived
experience (2)
• Parents attending the conference
…the food’s there for the children to eat, they have their dinner and
to me if they want, they can have something in between, I’m not
going to stop them I mean apparently in the report they complain of
being hungry and that. Well they’re allowed to help themselves if
they want, but I’m not being funny, it’s not like the cupboards are
full of biscuits or sweets. (Mother, Conference Nine)

12. Most discussion of the child’s daily lived
experience (3)
• Older children
• Concerns about anti-social behaviour
• Concerns about safety:
So he spends most of the time with you then by the sound of things,
if he’s there in the morning, takes them to school collects them from
school afterwards , brings them back and he visits three or four
times to see {Child 1} in addition to that, or you go out together .
(Chair, Conference 11)

13. Large Families

14. Time spent on agenda items
Increased time on developmental needs
40 - 60% (1hr of long meetings)
Decreased time on parenting capacity
27% average for 1 child meetings,
12% multiple child

15. Increased number of practitioners
• Increased anxiety
• if you’ve got a lot of children, you’re going to have a lot of agencies,
you know the more children you get, the bigger the meeting is, it seems
that more the anxiety levels sort of feed off one another and erm
people seem to be raising things and being more concerned (Chair 6)
• Lack of focus
Erm you see it is difficult to keep the focus because people who aren’t
involved in the particular child, you can almost see them
thinking “when’s my turn to go?” or “what’s this to do with me?”,
(Chair 5)

16. Fatigue
I think it’s inevitable that it’s harder to concentrate, harder to be as
thorough, but some do I think. But sometimes you come away from a
conference and you kind of can’t separate the children in your head.
(Minute Taker 7, interview)
… it’s more than enough for me and I do it as a full time job, so I imagine
that parents will struggle for more than two hours. And actually to ask to
take the information in. So I just ask that people are mindful of their
contributions and to keep them to a minimum. I’m not asking people not to
say things, I’m asking people to keep their comments as tight as possible
(Chair – in Conference 14)

17. Focus on older children with
difficulties
Then by the time we get down to the younger ones, people think ‘oh no
there’s nothing to -, no concerns’ all the rest of it. I am mindful that
that is the case so what I do is that if there are certain points that I
need to ask, particularly about the younger ones then I will start with
the younger ones first. (Chair 2)

18. Plans for children in large families
• Reduced time for planning in conference
• Paperwork errors
• Lack of individual plans
“all children to attend school….”

19. Implications for practice

20. Thank you
Any questions?
H.Richardson-foster@sheffield.ac.uk
–