MRC Webinar - ‘I Know How It Sounds On Paper’: Risk Talk, Written Reports and Managing Emotionally Charged Child Protection Home Visits
This webinar is managed by our partner, MRC.
Description
An often taken-for-granted but integral aspect of direct practice with families is the use of written reports in child protection assessment home visits. Initial visits to families are a uniquely challenging social situation: information is uncertain, families may be reluctant to work with social workers, and time is limited. While social workers carry much of the frontline authority to define risk to children, too little is known about how they go about the business of discussing risk to children with families. For families, these documents carry an emotional depth-charge as intimate and potentially shaming details of their lives are inscribed in them by and for others.
This webinar will:
• focus on the use of written reports in child protection assessment home visits.
• examine the choices and constraints experienced by social workers when using documents with families.
• think through the complexity of skills required by social workers in terms of relationship building and use of institutional records.
• examine how social workers respond to parental testimony about themselves and their children through the lens of epistemic authority (Heritage and Raymond, 2005) and epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) to understand what might help to reduce emotional reactivity.
• examine how to treat family perspectives with respect by utilising family knowledge to find solutions that affect change for their children.