Search results

There are often calls for more focus on outcomes in Children’s Social Care yet there is little consensus on what these outcomes should be. Key challenges include who should decide what outcomes should be measured and the sheer range of issues that social workers deal with. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective account of approaches to measuring outcomes that the author has used in recent studies in order to illustrate the complexity involved in understanding what the purpose of Children’s Social Care is and therefore how outcomes might be measured.

A review of and reflection on lessons from recent research studies carried out by the author and colleagues.

The results are used to illustrate and support an argument that Children’s Social Care performs multiple functions and that this has implications for thinking about outcomes. Helping children and parents is one element of the work, but assessing risk across large numbers of referrals and identifying those that require involvement is equally important. Furthermore, the social work role requires complex considerations around liberty and the rights of parents and children. One consequence of this is that the quality of the service provided is important in its own right.

It is suggested that the evaluation of Children’s Social Care involves four types of outcomes: measures of the quality of the service provided; assessment of whether the “right” families are being worked with; client-defined measures of change; and the development of appropriate standardised instruments. Examples of approaches in each area are discussed.

The theoretical considerations suggest that we need to have a multi-dimensional approach to evaluating, inspecting and leading Children’s Social Care services. In particular, the importance of the quality of delivery and appropriate targeting of the service are emphasised, as well as considering various approaches to measuring outcomes.

The paper proposes a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures of process, assessment and outcomes for evaluating outcomes in Children’s Social Care.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how innovation in children’s services is adopted and developed by staff within new multi-disciplinary children’s safeguarding teams. It draws on diffusion of innovations (DOI) theory to help us better understand the mechanisms by which the successful implementation of multi-disciplinary working can be best achieved.

It is based on interviews with 61 frontline safeguarding staff, including social workers, substance misuse workers, mental health workers and domestic abuse workers. Thematic analysis identified the enablers and barriers to implementation.

DOI defines five innovation attributes as essential for rapid diffusion: relative advantage over current practice; compatibility with existing values and practices; complexity or simplicity of implementation; trialability or piloting of new ideas; and observability or seeing results swiftly. Staff identified multi-disciplinary team working and group supervision as advantageous, in line with social work values and improved their service to children and families. Motivational interviewing and new ways of case recordings were less readily accepted because of the complexity of practicing confidently and concerns about the risks of moving away from exhaustive case recording which workers felt provided professional accountability.

DOI is a useful reflective tool for senior managers to plan and review change programmes, and to identify any emerging barriers to successful implementation.

The paper provides insights into what children’s services staff value about multi-disciplinary working and why some aspects of innovation are adopted more readily than others, depending on the perception of diffusion attributes.

Secure children’s homes (SCHs) restrict the liberty of young people considered to be a danger to themselves or others. However, not all young people referred to SCHs find a placement, and little is known about the outcomes of the young person after an SCH or alternative placement. The purpose of this paper is to understand which characteristics most likely predict allocation to an SCH placement, and to explore the outcomes of the young people in the year after referral.

A retrospective electronic cohort study was conducted using linked social care data sets in England. The study population was all young people from England referred to SCHs for welfare reasons between 1st October 2016 to 31st March 2018 (n = 527). Logistic regression tested for differences in characteristics of SCH placement allocation and outcomes in the year after referral.

In total, 60% of young people referred to an SCH were allocated a place. Factors predicting successful or unsuccessful SCH allocation were previous placement in an SCH (OR = 2.12, p = 0.01); being female (OR = 2.26, p = 0.001); older age (OR = 0.75, p = 0.001); and a history of challenging behaviour (OR = 0.34, p = 0.01). In the year after referral, there were little differences in outcomes between young people placed in a SCH versus alternative accommodation.

The study raised concerns about the capacity of current services to recognise and meet the needs of this complex and vulnerable group of young people and highlights the necessity to explore and evaluate alternatives to SCHs.

Children's social services in England and Wales deal with a wide range of referrals of children who are or may be ‘in need’. Finding ways of describing the issues that present in such referrals is important if we wish to understand the nature of the work of children's services and explore different interventions and outcomes. Yet there have been few attempts to describe the full range of needs presenting to social services, and no studies of the reliability or validity of attempts to define the types of need. In this article the legal definitions of need, a typology developed by Sinclair et al, a related one used by the Department of Health and one developed within the current study were compared for reliability and construct validity. There were two main findings. First, it was found that while the presence of needs could generally be agreed on in all the schemes, ascriptions of a ‘main’ need were not made reliably. This is important because a ‘main’ need has been used in both research and statistical returns to government. Second, while existing schemes appeared well suited to describing allocated cases, they were less able to describe the range of needs presenting in all referrals to social services.

The paper's purpose is to participate in a debate about the role of randomised controlled trials in evaluation of preventive interventions for children.

The paper is a response to critiques on Stewart‐Brown et al. published in the Journal of Children's Services, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 228–35.

Randomised controlled trials are likely to be at their best in the evaluation of interventions that do not require the active engagement and personal development of participants. The latter may depend on a series of interventions and events that potentiate each other over time. Randomised controlled trials are likely to be least valuable in evaluating universal level interventions that aim to change population norms. Because of the challenges involved in conducting RCTs in this setting they cannot be relied upon to give accurate estimates of programme effect and therefore do not deserve the privileged position that has been accorded them in the hierarchy of evidence.

This paper develops the argument that the privileged position of RCTs in the evidence hierarchy of preventive services for children is undeserved.

This paper's aim is to explore the uses and limitations of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) for evaluating complex interventions, with a particular focus on sample recruitment and retention issues.

This is an invited critique of a previous paper.

RCTs have many limitations. It is particularly important to consider issues relating to the sample they recruit and retain. Nonetheless, they remain a uniquely powerful way to exclude other potential explanations for outcomes and therefore provide robust evidence for the effectiveness of specific interventions.

It is hoped that vigorous debate may contribute to a deepened understanding of the nature, limitations and potential contribution of RCTs to understanding the impact of different ways of helping people.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aspects of social work for children, primarily in England.

It is based on reflections on research undertaken by the author prior to 1995 and after 2015.

The paper explores the interaction between people – effective leaders and practitioners – and systems.

It is an opinion piece, and does not present findings from a single study.

It urges systems that do not restrict the capability of practitioners.

The value of social work services at times of significant social disadvantage demands strong public policy attention.

The study draws on several research and case studies in over 20 English local authorities