‘The lion's den’: Social workers' understandings of risk to infants

Recent research has highlighted the increasing trends in newborn and very young children entering child welfare processes and care proceedings in a number of countries. Furthermore, differential responses to risk within young families across different geographical locations and communities in the same child protection system have been found. Safe care arrangements for newborn babies may include placement with kinship carers, or with foster carers not previously known to the family. The distinctive needs of the increasing population of infants in the care system are only beginning to be fully recognised. The short and long term impact of contested infant removals on birth mothers has been powerfully highlighted, although the impact on fathers remains under-reported. There has been limited research evidence available on how decisions about the care arrangements for newborn babies are reached. In this paper, the author draws on data from an ethnographic study of pre-birth child protection in order to explore how social workers understand and frame risk to infants when assessing families during pregnancy. Data from interviews with practitioners reveal the extent to which their conceptualisations of and anxiety about risks to unborn babies, shape plans for the future care of infants

Looking after children in the UK – convergence or divergence?

Comparative child welfare administrative data from each of the four jurisdictions of the UK (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales) was analysed over a ten-year period to examine rates and patterns of public care. Scotland followed by Wales has the highest rates of children in out-of-home care followed by England and NI with similar lower proportions. Despite strong links between deprivation and higher chances of becoming looked after this national variation appears more a reflection of differing legal and operational practice than higher levels of need for public care. Notwithstanding differing devolution settlements, a convergence in the direction of policy across the UK towards early intervention, extensive use of kinship care and adoption as an exit route from public care is apparent. This convergence is most apparent in the increased entry of very young children to public care in Scotland, NI and Wales. The lack of any systematic collection of data by governments on the social and economic conditions of children reflects a missed opportunity to examine separately their influence on rates of children in public care