‽istis reclaims influences (weekending December 4th 2021)
This week ‽istis sought to facilitate an exercise and discussion with a social care professionals’ group:‘why do we do what we do in the way that we do it?’
At the same time, the newspapers, television and radio stations were no doubt preparing the headlines; presenting the terrible, terrible detail; bringing greater or lesser depth of analysis following the conviction of a father and his partner for manslaughter and murder respectively (1) of a particular little boy, perhaps not much seen at the end, now in full view, too late...
The exercise included encouragement to the practitioners to reflect on many potential influences on their work including:
• The wishes and feelings of a child, young person, adult service user
• The views of others: parents and carers, family, friends, neighbours
• The views of others: professionals and volunteers who might be part of a formal or informal ‘team around’ a child or young person or adult service user
• Personal ‘stuff’: experience, values, beliefs, presumptions, residual messages retained, prejudices, ‘positionality’ (2) etc., how I am at the moment, other preoccupations, priorities, demands, distractions, commitments, determination, assertion, etc, etc.
• Knowledge: relevant research and theory that potentially helps first to understand and make sense – and then to form a reasoned, reasonable, evidence-informed response
• Legislation, statutory guidance, regulations, policies, procedures and protocol: what must we do, what could we do, what should we do, and how...
• Custom and practice: the perhaps unquestioned ‘we do it like this because we do it like this, because we do it like this, because we do it like this; is there any other way…?')
• Systems, structures, processes and procedures: including those assisted by information technology and ‘data’ management
• Supervision, direction and guidance
What potential influences - on why you do what you do in the way that you do it - would be on your list?
‽istis can claim to know a bit about the world spotlit so starkly and brightly this week (having been very close at times, in other places and in relation to other children and young people)... a world where children can suffer and die so awfully through acts of commission and complicity at the hands of those very people with primary responsibility to love and care and nurture; but perhaps also not protected - maybe through acts of omission by practitioners, teams, services and organisations empowered, sanctioned, required to protect...
And ‽istis ponders personal lessons learned (a phrase so often used) and wonders whether the following might be helpful:
• to explain is perhaps not the same as to excuse (with echoes from last week’s blog still reverberating), but that we must surely strive to understand, recognising and not shying away from complexity and messiness and the sometime chaos of practice
• perhaps naming what we may be trying to sustain as 'unsustainable' can be necessary but difficult; we might do well to be clear when ‘enough is enough’ for a child but also in relation to organisational, systemic and structural matters: when there is just not enough - a deficit of resources (money, primary preventative services, the apparent impact of austerity etc.), of deficit of competence, of time, of support, of training, of guidance, of supervision, of direction, of leadership etc.
• many situations may seem to be alright until suddenly and catastrophically they are all too obviously not
• low probability events can nevertheless sometimes occur; that the holes in a many-layered ‘Swiss Cheese’ model of risk assessment may yet line up however improbable it seems; that there may be gaps in the tightest of safety nets woven with the most robust warped and wefted threads; that there yet may be an unblocked pathway from a potential child killer to a murdered child
• persistent high risk without incident may perhaps lower the guard and lead to baselines, tolerances and thresholds shifting
• we might do well to never forget that the worst can and does happen for far too many children and young people; to not assume that this is, or is not, the case for any individual child but to assess, see the child or young person, 'listen' to them (voice - signed, supported or augmented; behaviour) and all those who might know them; check out, corroborate, triangulate, be curious, challenge, evidence safety and strengths but evidence danger and hazards especially; have a policy and procedure, and for goodness' sake follow the procedure
• primary prevention (universal help and support for all), secondary prevention (early and focused help and support for some), clear and decisive reaction (when necessary for a small number) are perhaps three indivisible parts of an holistic and effective safeguarding strategy; removing or reducing public services in some policy or ideological ‘Jenga’ game may lead to collapse
• understandably necessary ‘systems’ and IT processes can perhaps potentially turn children, young people and their circumstances into units of data – depersonalised, coursing round a complex system, coming up against algorithms and the occasional human/professional view at gateway decision moments (move on, stay here, move out of the system) – yet individuals are fallible and algorithms and systems are perhaps only as good as their design
• overwork, sickness, staff vacancies, lack of support or value may exacerbate
• any analysis of ‘what went wrong’ or ‘missed opportunities’ might understandably focus on individuals (training, confidence, competence, health and well-being, support) but also must surely focus on teams and organisations and their systems (intra-organisational matters), and also focus on the interaction between all multi-professional/discipline parties, their organisations and systems (inter-organisational matters) and also focus on resources and funding, quality assurance and governance and also set all this in a social and political and economic context, considering that if we wish to say that it takes a whole village to raise a child (3) then it is difficult to deny that it may also take a whole village to let a child down.
So, why do we do what we do in the way that we do it...? Many, many potential influences. Recognising, naming, pondering and wondering about them individually and dynamically together may perhaps just help us to understand better, which may possibly then just help us to be and do better, not least for those who depend, rely on and desperately need us to do what we do in the way that we do it - better...
© Pistis
NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog
entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders
1) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/03/arthur-labinjo-hughes-timeline-of-events-that-ended-in-his & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/arthur-labinjo-hughes-video-emma-tustin-b1969786.html for example
2) ‘Positionality’ – the way someone is/sees/interprets things, perhaps linked to ‘position’, experience, situation etc. – class, status, age, identity/identities etc, etc.
3) https://www.england.nhs.uk/blog/it-takes-a-village-to-raise-a-child/
