We now turn to evidence on decision-making processes from the interviews carried out for the practice study.
Many of the social work practitioners we interviewed, like the professionals who took part in the study believed that age was a factor in making decisions about referrals. Social work practitioners similarly linked age to vulnerability and/or resilience factors. Some believed that the older the child the less vulnerable and more ‘resilient’ they were and many drew a further distinction between young people aged 11 to 14 and those aged 15 and over. A number of social work practitioners thought that young people were able to disclose abuse more easily than younger children and that they were less vulnerable because they were able to leave an abusive situation of their own accord.
Interviewer: Do you think the age of a child influences your decision about risk of significant harm?
SWP: Yeah.
Interviewer: In what way?
SWP: Younger children are more susceptible and can’t voice. The younger children can’t voice what’s happening, so I’m more concerned with a baby versus a 16 year old…I’m not more concerned, but you
If I get two calls in: a 16-year-old who’s said dad’s thumped him or a 4 year old who has said dad thumped him, then the 4 year old will get the social worker before the 16-year-old.
Social work practitioner
If we use the analogy of the 16-year-old witnessing D.V, you know, just say an isolated incident, first time in, you know, we will, we will send a letter of support for that. Whereas if it’s the first time in and talking about physical D.V. here, first time in with a child under a year or a child under 2 or 3 years we will pop out and have a look at that.
Social work practitioner
Other social work practitioners recognised that young people may be as vulnerable as children and some believed that resilience factors should be considered in relation to individual cases rather than the age of the child:
there’s the sort of view that teenagers can, particularly post sixteen kids, can vote with their feet and go, and they’re are also able to tell people what’s going on and I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
Social work practitioner
We make attempts to see the family if they’ve got a referral for an under 5, we go out and see that family within 24 hours, I would certainly try to see the family within 24 hours. Now, it is quite interesting because the research tells us that most our serious case reviews are not the under 5’s but the 11- to 17-year-olds.
Social work practitioner
Quite often, social work practitioners stated that age didn’t necessarily affect the actions taken by social care services, but was more likely to affect the urgency of a response.
Interviewer: So when you receive the referral of a child or a young person and there are child protection concerns what influences your decision about whether to act upon it?
SWP: It’s the team manger but obviously it depends what the information is and the referral, the age of the children.
Interviewer: So the age of the children would affect your decision about whether to act upon it?
SWP: I don’t think it’s so much as to act upon but how quickly you’re going to act on the information.
Social work practitioner
The ability of social work practitioners to respond to cases was also often underpinned by resource issues within children’s social care services. Social work practitioners across the four local authorities described limited
resources, a lack of social work staff, and poor social work retention rates alongside a large volume of referrals and time consuming system processes. This often meant that they were unable to respond as they might have liked and led to priorities having to be set in terms of response. As safeguarding
issues concerning young people were often seen as less of a priority in comparison to the younger age group, priorities were often set in relation to the age of the child.
Interviewer: Ok, what do you see as the biggest challenges you face in terms of providing protective services for older children?
SWP: Prioritising them. That’s got to be it. You know, we are an
understaffed team with, you know, worked to the hilt, staff here don’t just don’t have a second in the day at all to take a breather and we can’t, we can’t rush out to a 16-year-old who’s perhaps sofa-surfing and perhaps experimenting with drugs and getting into crime, you know that’s a big worry, but we can’t prioritise that when we’re working with 0 to 5 year olds in, you know, some pretty dire situations.
Social work practitioner
We are always resource driven, you know and if, if we had the resources to respond in accordance with every individual child’s needs, which I’m confident of the best part that we do, but certainly your age, your age group is a factor.
Social work practitioner
These issues often had an effect on the service received by the young people we interviewed. One young person, Anna, observed:
I think [social work needs] more staff, less work … I mean cos [my social worker’s] got like 60 cases on her own…And I think it’s just too much work. And when you’re trying to juggle all of that it’s ridiculous, because not every child that you’re supposed to have responsibility for is getting your full attention. Because you just don’t …no offence to [my social worker] but you just don’t have the time to do it at the end of the day.
Anna, aged 17
Many social work practitioners interviewed for the study recognised the importance of building trust in their relationships with young people:
it’s all about rapport I think with the child, and … having them trust you to really follow through on what you’re saying to them. I think trust is … trust and rapport are very important in any age group of social work that you’re doing…One of the basic tenets of social work is the use of self
I think it is about developing the relationship with that child as well and a lot of our work has to be done rather quickly
Social Work Practitioner –duty and assessment team
In addition to resource issues within children’s social care services, some social work practitioners pointed out that there was a lack of resources to meet the needs of young people more generally. Areas highlighted were a lack of preventative services and issues with providing accommodation for young people.
Interviewer: And what do you see is the biggest challenges that you face in terms of providing protective services for young people? SWP: I suppose the biggest challenge is actually finding services that prevent them needing the more extreme services. You know because these are the ones that are more likely to be rejected by their families and need to be accommodated. You have very limited resources.
Social Work Practitioner
Interviewer: What do you think about the services that are available for [11- to 17-year-olds] in the X area?
SWP: I don’t think there’s enough.
Interviewer: Okay, what do you think is missing?
SWP: I don’t know that there’s anything really missing, I just don’t think there’s enough … that all children can access it.
Interviewer: What kind of things would you like to see extended? SWP: I think mentoring programmes are a good thing. You know we have a project, the X project - projects like that work with families and provide support to the children. And like a mentoring type of
programme. Cos I know you know even what we provide in there, there’s not enough, there’s not enough … there’s waiting lists and that, you know. It’s just difficult, there’s not enough.
Social Work Practitioner