Relationship and Rights Based Family Support UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre

Outline

• A working hypotheses and some challenges • Some suggested perspectives/approaches for

answers • A reflection on Meitheal – A National Practice

Model for all agencies working with children, young people and families

Relationship

• The way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected.

• The way in which two or more people or groups regard and behave towards each other.

Thinking about Relationships - Between

• Practitioners and service users• Parents and children • Practitioners and supervisors • Practitioners in different teams• Practitioners in different organisations• Managers in different organisations• Different organisations • Between sectors• Between service users, providers, funders, policy makers,

regulators, researchers, those adopting different theoretical approaches..

Hypothesis

It takes a complex but coherent and cohesive system of protection and support to ensure that children and young people’s rights to be safe, and to maximise their potential, are realised*?

*Needs are met, outcomes achieved…

Alternative Hypotheses

• It’s simple to manage risk remotely and attribute blame when necessary.

• If I as a practitioner/manager can cover my statutory duties then that will suffice.

• It’s easier to get service users to adapt to a complex and monolith system than trying to change the system.

• Change and collaboration are hard work and time consuming and may cause one to loose focus.

• The sooner I can finish dealing with these people the better

Some challenges • Expecting something that has grown in an ad hoc, arbitrary

fashion to behave like a coherent and cohesive system. • Training people separately and then asking them to work

together without any great effort to facilitate this. • Binary thinking leading to service/profession driven

dichotomies. • Not routinely asking service users about their experiences. • Lack of joined up thinking at government level –

coterminousity???• Gathering, managing and integrating data.• Risk aversion.

A system that bedevils rather than enables relationship based practice?

Some Answers • Thinking about rights – adopting a rights based

approach to child protection and family support.

• Thinking about systems - adopting a systems approach to working with children, young people and their families.

• Thinking about the lifecourse – adopting a lifecourse perspective to working with children, young people and their families.

Some Characteristics • Related and potentially complementary • Transdisciplinary • Potentially integral and integrating • Can be commonly understood across different audiences • Accessible and inclusive • Helpful for organising information• Applied, especially to service improvement • Helpful in responding to complex problems • Helpful in reflecting on relationships, may facilitate

relationship based practice

Rights Based Family Support

What does this really mean?How is it different from other approaches?

Human rights standards are given expression inInternational (human rights treaties) and National law (such as Constitution and legislation)

A human rights based approach is the application ofhuman rights standards to research, policy and practice.

What is a Human Rights Based Approach

A Human Rights Based Approach to Child Protection and Family Support – Article 19 UNCRC

1. States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.

= the delivery of these measures may be understood as the “child protection system”

2. Such protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective procedures for the *establishment of social programmes to provide necessary support for the child and for those who have the care of the child, as well as for other forms of prevention and for identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment described heretofore, and, as appropriate, for judicial involvement.

* The provision of support as a measure of prevention of abuse and neglect is integral to the system

A Human Rights Based Approach to Child Protection and Family Support

• A child rights approach ’requires a paradigm shift away from child protection approaches in which children are perceived and treated as “objects” in need of assistance’

• Children’s views must be invited and given due weight as a mandatory step at every point in a child protection process

• Child protection must begin with proactive prevention – this involves supporting parents and caregivers to understand, embrace and implement good childrearing, based on knowledge of child rights, child development and techniques for positive discipline in order to support families' capacity to provide children with care in a safe environment;

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment 13 (2011)

Does it take a village to raise a child?

• Child invisible within family group, village/system uninvolved.

• Child as object of concern for the village/system, separate from family and families’ involvement curtailed.

or• Child as resilient agent of change and active

participant with rights within their family, community and society?

Critiques/problems with Human Rights

• Technical • Minimalistic • Individualistic• Dependent on the law, legal system • Weak enforcement • Misinterpreted, misunderstood

• Divorced from relationship based practice?

Bell, 2001 Findings • The findings emphasised the importance of the quality of

relationships with an adult in the child’s professional network. • Many of the children experienced warm, positive

relationships with social workers. • The sense of losing control and of lowered self esteem was

reinforced where a “procession of different professionals attended the house”.

• Many feared removal from home and this was exacerbated when this fear was not discussed with them.

• In relation to meetings and report writing most wanted to know what was being said about them needed assurance that their views were being represented

Conclusions • Where children lack the agency in promoting their own rights

they are best promoted through the development and maintenance of a relationship of trust offered by a key professional in their network.

• Relationships and processes that embody supportive and companionable interactions are more likely to offer opportunities for representation and participation than those which are dominant and submissive.

• It is valuable and feasible to ask children their views about difficult and sensitive issues.

• Children want to be seen alone, want to have the time and the opportunity to build a relationship, they want information that is accessible and appropriate and they want to be offered real choices - services, ways of participating, being represented.

Caution - Child Rescue Paradigm

• Model, in which children perceived to be at danger – risk oriented.

• Removed from the scene of danger, and are treated exclusively as individuals with little thought to the essentiality of their connections to family, community, culture, landscape or other aspects of their environment meaningful to them.

• Historically dating from late 18th and early 19th century Europe.

• This approach frequently carries a subtext of disparagement of children’s natural and social surroundings, which may be regarded as pernicious.

Bissell et al, http://www.iicrd.org/resources/research_reports/ICPRC1

Accountability Based on Blame

• Current drive for accountability could lead to a culture of blame.

• Driven by politics and media…• Risk obsessed, risk to organisation or risk to

child?• Mistakes hidden, frontline practitioners

blamed. • Poor outcomes but paper trail showing who’s

fault it is, usually near the front line…

Human Rights Based Accountability

• Based on transparency rather than blame. • Best interests of the child is primary

consideration in achieving accountability. • Children and parents participate in

accountability measures. • Positive focus on promoting safety that is risk

inclusive – culture that encourages practitioners to identify failings and seek support to resolve.

Rights and Relationship Relationship is the natural vehicle for the realisation of rights. Leading to interventions that are• Respectful → avoiding opposite • Transparent → accountability, outcomes, partnership • Strengths based → partnership • Participatory → partnership, outcomes • Ecological → capitalising on formal informal

networks • Integrated → framework and mandate for

collaboration • Evidence informed →avoiding a vacuum for ideology Bell, 2001; Landy et al (forthcoming)

A Systems Approach

• A system can be understood as a collection of components or parts that are connected to each other and organised around a common purpose or goal (Wulczyn et al, 2010)

Services that use a systems perspective,

• Aim to protect all children, to unite all actors behind a common set of goals, and to create a long-term response that is robust, properly coordinated, and adaptable to new problems.

• The need for issue-based expertise and responses will not go away but it should be placed within the context of the overall child protection system

(Wulczyn et al, 2010)

Whole Child Whole System Approach

• Provision of services in ways that recognise the extent of children’s own capacities, the multiple interlinked dimensions to their lives and the complex mix of informal and formal supports that they draw upon (Agenda for Children’s Services, 2007).

Consistent with Rights Based Approach

• This child rights approach is holistic and places emphasis on supporting the strengths and resources of the child him/herself and all social systems of which the child is a part: family, school, community, institutions, religious and cultural systems. (General Comment 13)

Lifecourse Persepctive

• A metatheoretical world view that supports a theoretical orientation towards considering development as a life long process

• A unique opportunity as a forum for transdisciplinary integrative efforts

Baltes, 1987 in Daniel and Bowes, 2011

Thinking about abuse and neglect

• Munro, 2010

Some benefits of Lifecourse perspective

• Relationship dynamics change over time • Important transitions can be facilitated • The limits of service delivery categories can be

exposed • Learning relevant to human services

improvement can be transferred more readily • Fits well with the human rights and systems

approach • Exposes structural factors

Ultimately relationships are key to

Build a complex but coherent and cohesive system of protection and support to ensure all children and young people’s rights to be safe,

and to maximise their potential, are realised.

Meitheal National Practice Model

What is Meitheal?

Meitheal is a National Practice Model to ensurethat the needs and strengths of children andtheir families are effectively identified,understood and responded to in a timely wayso that children and families get the help andsupport needed to improve children's’outcomes and to realise their rights.

Meitheal – A National Practice Model for all agencies working with children, young people and their families (2013, p.1)

Meitheal Principles

• Children First Guidance, 2011• Voluntary process • Involvement of at least one parent• Holistic & ecological • Strengths and needs• It privileges the voices of the parent/carer and child • Aligned with the wider Child and Family Agency Service

Delivery Framework• Outcomes focused

Questions....

• fergal.landy@nuigalway.ie

Questions....

• fergal.landy@nuigalway.ie