Child protection as support
Date
1994
Authors
Wallace, Sheila
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Abstract
This study explores the practice of child protection as it is accomplished in a particular Family and Children's Service office in Victoria, using institutional ethnography as the research method. Generally, both investigative and supportive services can be offered to families where there is a concern about childrens' well-being. In this office the claim is made that support service is the preferable way of working with families in most instances. In the current work setting of the Ministry of Social Services workers in this office find support practice very necessary but also very difficult. The research problematic explores this difficulty.
This study explores what workers actually do to be supportive to families in protecting children and how the difficulties in providing support arise as a feature of the work. Participant observation and other ethnographic methods provide the qualitative data for the study. Data about workers' experience was considered the entry point of the analysis, providing a window to the social organization of the practice of child protection within the institutional structure of the Ministry. Specific incidences of the difficulties of supportive child protection practice within this investigative environment are described and their origin traced through the social relations of the Ministry to locations outside the day to day experience of the workers to the extra-local sites where these experiences are determined.
I argue that workers do practice a supportive form of child protection which relies on a distinctive set of work practices. While attempting to carry out child protection with a supportive orientation within the existing Ministry organization, however, workers experience definite limitations in what they can do to be supportive. These limitations can undermine their support efforts and create frustration and stressful conditions for all workers. My analysis offers some insights into how the current environment in which the team practices establishes investigation as the central way or expected way of doing child protection work. It appears that investigative work is privileged by the practices and organizational structures put in place by the official policy and legislation governing child protection work. To the extent that the policy and coordinating practices are general across Ministry offices, my conclusions about investigation versus support in this child protection office can also be claimed to be generalizable.
I conclude that for supportive child protection practice to occur, there are several important preconditions: a supportive team environment in which team members share a common vision and philosophy about the work, an awareness of power relations in the work, and a skilled, experienced and credible supervisor. These conclusions speak to the need for policy development processes within the Ministry which embrace the knowledge and experience of frontline child protection workers.