Abstract
Professor Eileen Munro has recently received her response from the UK government on her proposals for the reform of child protection social work in the UK. Policies will be considered, procedures will be tweaked, and social work may be more likely to achieve more widely accepted professional status. Indeed, there are some indications that social workers could, sensibly, be rerouted from their desks and into the living rooms of children to elicit their views and experiences rather than weighing up, and writing up, assessment schedules designed by academics and civil servants. However, anecdotal and practice evidence amongst those of us in frontline social work points to a workforce jittery with anticipation of using the direct work tools being mentioned in ad hoc training sessions. Moreover, we remain mindful that any beneficial changes to our work are likely to be in the context of so-called ‘austerity’ measures which will adversely impact on practitioners and hard-pressed families.
Shemmings and Shemmings cut to the crux of the child protection system. They maintain that children who experience neglect and abuse from their primary carers are highly likely to display signs of ‘disorganized attachment’ (DA). Social workers aiming, therefore, to correctly identify those children subject to abuse would be best advised to understand DA, how it can be recognized, how it can be caused, and how it can potentially be minimized. In the book’s first section, the authors trace the trajectory of attachment theory and describe the research methods used to formulate the idea of DA (perhaps hoping to whet the reader’s appetite for further studies with their pointers to gaps in the findings). Without an exhaustive theoretical build-up, indicators and causation of DA are identified and it is revealed that certain parental characteristics – low ‘mentalization’ and ‘reflective functioning’, both linked to disengaged parents – can lead to the insensitive and frightening behaviour that deems a child likely to be maltreated.
This conceptualization leads the authors to their underlying point, posited by Munro and arguably proven by an ongoing stream of serious case reviews: the techniques currently used in social work are not good enough. Shemmings and Shemmings cite three inadequate assessment approaches which focus on speaking to and eliciting the views of the carers rather than the children and, significantly, ignoring how the child is treated by the carer. Of course, if speaking to and playing with children in a directed way is nerve-wracking for a social worker, then demanding a carer to demonstrate their methods of parenting and – as the authors prescribe – ultimately video recording this interaction is positively horrifying. However, the Shemmingses hold the reader’s hand. They describe short play-based, DA focused assessments for use with children, spelling out the signs to watch for and the words and phrases to use. They also pre-empt the practitioners’ experience of hostility from the carer, and have included some verbal ‘tricks’ to diminish aggression. Vitally, the final section sets out an intervention programme for seven home visits which the reader can follow and digest. Nevertheless, the writers have a repeated proviso that further, more specialist, training is necessary before the practitioner can run with the methods. Perhaps frustratingly, this can read like a teasing plug for an elite London-based institution.
I wondered while reading whether Shemmings and Shemmings are attempting to subliminally raise the confidence of social workers. Throughout the text, the authors weave the emergent research into abused children’s neuropsychology, describing the physiological impact of the stress of abuse and neglect on the infant brain. They describe how interrupted cognitive development can result in children and young adults who are unable to reflect on and reason their impulsive reactions away. They illuminate the work of Bowlby and other attachment theorists with human interest anecdotes to better articulate their perspectives. The authors also translate attachment to contemporary adult life in a droll, if rather superficial way. For example, by suggesting commuters’ commonplace mobile phone call to their loved ones, whilst sipping a hot latté, is in fact their activated attachment system: sucking a milky drink whilst seeking reassurance that they are loved from an attachment figure!
Presently, the social work role is dribbling through the cracks of professionalism, whereby practitioners are not considered experts in any field – advised, in fact, not to mention attachment in court for fear of the notion being dismantled by legal teams.
If the vision of practice featured in Understanding Disorganized Attachment is realized, social workers will have a research-based framework with which to assess and to assist parents and children most at risk of maltreatment. In turn, this knowledge could help raise social workers’ confidence in their abilities, sense of efficacy in interventions and purpose in visits.