Child protection policy: guided by the head or the heart?

“There is no evidence that child protection systems get to the right children, or that they are having any effect on the incidence of maltreatment. The process is a harbinger of scandal. It leaves a lot of families deeply dissatisfied. The process is also causing a lot of misery for policy makers and practitioners.”

Ineffective, unresponsive, frustrated and frustrating - the picture painted of the UK child protection system by Michael Little, director of the Social Research Unit, and colleagues is a dismal one. In a forthcoming chapter, reviewing child protection arrangements, the authors argue that, despite the good work that has undoubtedly been done to protect children from extreme violence and sexual and emotional abuse, a radically different approach to child protection policy is needed to bring the right help to the right children.

This different approach, they say, is more rational and more evidence-based: the creation of “policy that comes from the head.”

So far, most policy that governs child protection has reflected the “heart” of a nation – its moral concerns and its power politics. The product of this history is a dysfunctional system in which practitioners and agencies work under unclear objectives. The majority of practitioners’ time is spent attempting, often unsuccessfully, to identify maltreatment; but too often, the system offers little in the way of support when maltreatment is found.

The result is deep dissatisfaction not only among families caught up in the system, but also among the practitioners operating within it and the policy makers presiding over it, argue Little and colleagues.

Drawing on the distinction between policy drivers that come from the “heart” or the “head,” the authors detail how an extra dose of rational thinking and scientific evidence may result in a better system for all. The first step is to agree the objectives of the system – to build some common purpose among policy makers, practitioners, scientists, consumers, and the public. The second is to use robust research and evidence both to set and to achieve these objectives.

Of course, pointing out the flaws of the system is easier than fixing them. The authors concede, “it is easy to criticise the status quo; what is much harder to outline is what should be put in its place.” But the authors do argue for two primary goals.

The first goal is that child protection should aim to prevent and reduce maltreatment of children – and it should aim to address all forms of child maltreatment and not focus solely, as it currently does, on severe maltreatment. That is, child protection agencies need to take a public health approach, Little and colleagues say, which would cast the net wider.

For instance, research suggests that minor physical violence and psychological aggression from parents actually affects the majority of children in the UK – around 60 percent. Although many parents no doubt think of their behavior as normal and appropriate, this mild maltreatment dramatically erodes children’s well-being. A public health approach would promote solutions to conflict for all families, bringing big benefits for many more children in health, happiness, better behavior, and fewer later mental health problems.

The second goal is that child protection systems should try to minimize the impact of maltreatment once it has occurred, both to prevent reoccurrence of maltreatment and to diminish its impacts on children’s mental health. The application of Triple P parenting programs in the state of South Carolina, for example, shows that evidence-based programs implemented in a public health approach really can work.

The history of a “heart”-based approach to child protection
But why is child protection in the UK in such a poor state in the first place? Why is the “head” not strongly involved in driving the system? To answer these questions, the authors turn to the history of the creation and development of the system over the last 50 years.

Modern child protection policy has its roots in 1960s feminism, when activists began to push the problem of domestic violence into public view. At the same time, doctors began to acknowledge that not all the “accidental” injuries to the children who appeared in their emergency rooms and offices were really accidents. Together, “feminists and doctors shook the moral structures” of developed societies, Little and colleagues claim, giving the state a “heart-driven” moral obligation to intervene in family life.

In the decades that followed, successive scandals have moved policy makers to respond to the public’s emotional outcries, with mixed results. When the outrage is over the system’s failure to act to protect a child, the pendulum swings toward a greater push to intervene. When, less often, the outrage is over the system’s overreach, such as the unnecessary removal of children from their parents, then the pendulum swings the other way. Either way, these forces represent the “heart” of policy. The role of the “head” – evidence and scientific knowledge – has been patchy at best.

The chapter, entitled “Social Policy and Child Protection: using the Heart and the Head” appears in the forthcoming book Social Work with Children and Families, edited by Martin Davies. The volume aims to portray the elements of policy, law, theory, research and practice that are responsible for the dynamic and evolutionary nature of modern social work.

Reference:
Little, M., Jodrell, D. & Karakurt, S. (In press). Social Policy and Child Protection: Using the Heart and the Head. In Martin Davies (Ed.), Social Work With Children and Families: Policy, Law, Theory, Research, Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.