Protection, partnership and the promotion of welfare : The experience of professional intervention in child sexual abuse referrals

Sharland, Elaine Ruth (1999) Protection, partnership and the promotion of welfare : The experience of professional intervention in child sexual abuse referrals. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

This thesis incorporates and reflects critically upon a piece of collaborative empirical research undertaken in Oxford in the early 1990s, and published in 1996. That study was commissioned as part of a Department of Health Child Protection Research Programme, which was to become highly influential in guiding subsequent policy and practice developments.

The thesis reflects upon the origins and design of the Oxford research, and reports upon its findings. That study combined both survey and in-depth interview methods to explore the processes, experiences and outcomes of early professional intervention in referrals for child sexual abuse. The thesis develops two central themes that emerged from the findings of the study, and were strongly echoed in the broader research programme. The first concerns the tensions that exist between child protection and the broader promotion of children's welfare, with the latter often compromised. The second concerns the question of partnership, and its condition of possibility or limitation in child protection.

Highlighting these themes, the thesis presents a two-fold reflection upon the Oxford research. Firstly, it sets our findings in the context of concurrent and subsequent research, and of resultant policy and practice developments towards 'refocusing' children's services. Secondly, and more critically, the thesis re-examines some of our original precepts, and reconsiders our findings, in the context of recent and continuing debate in academic social work. In particular, the work draws upon social constructionist and postmodernist theories to look critically at the constructs of 'risk', 'need', 'partnership' and 'justice' deployed in child protection and child care social work. It concludes that the dilemmas currently facing social work in this area must be addressed not only at the levels of policy, procedure and resources, but of epistemology and construction. It proposes that through more reflective and reflexive practices, the objectives of protecting children, promoting their welfare, enhancing partnership and achieving greater justice for children in child protection may be better reached.

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