Health visiting and safeguarding children: a perfect storm?

Health visitors play an important role in safeguarding and protecting children. In this paper we review current research evidence and professional literature about this aspect of health visiting and highlight some of the practice challenges in undertaking this work. Three critical issues are discussed. The invisibility and unquestioned nature of much health visiting safeguarding work; that health visitors with their clinical expertise and accepted home visiting role are well placed to undertake this type of work; and the challenges of ensuring effective safeguarding within the context of economic austerity. The paper highlights the important contribution of contemporary health visiting to safeguarding children and child protection. It is important that this role is made explicit to those commissioning health visiting services for children in the early years

Regulation and resistance : an analysis of the practices of health visitors and women experiencing domestic violence

The titular themes of "regulation" and "resistance" provide a conceptual and theoretical framework for this research, which examines health visiting work in relation to women experiencing domestic violence. These themes, which are threaded throughout the study, arise from the feminist poststructuralist analysis underpinning this research. This draws attention towards the issues of power and knowledge, which are key sites for this analysis of the practices of health visitors and women experiencing domestic violence. Understanding health visiting in terms of the social regulation of mothers enables the analysis to focus upon the ambiguities and contradictions that arise from the double bind of welfare and surveillance inherent within health visiting work with women. These tensions are particularly visible in the context of domestic violence, where different understandings about male violence and abuse against women are associated with different practices. In particular, the feminist discourses about domestic violence that underpin this research and which are represented as "resistance", have made little impact upon the professional health visiting knowledge-base. The study draws upon qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 24 health visitors, and 16 women with young children who have experienced domestic violence. It examines the practices through which health visitors "get to know" about women's experiences of domestic violence, and the extent that they were able to offer support or protection. The women who participated in this research all faced a number of difficulties in seeking help about domestic violence. These included dilemmas about disclosing their experiences to health visitors, as well as inadequate responses once they had broken their silence. The findings suggest that an urgent response, at the policy and practice level, is required to enable health visitors to improve their practices with women experiencing domestic violence

Teaching research to undergraduate community nursing students: reflections upon curriculum design

Despite the widespread inclusion of research education within nursing courses, there remain a number of tensions about the purpose, content, and philosophy underpinning such programmes. Of particular concern is the importance of establishing appropriate teaching and learning strategies in order to ensure that research education is enjoyable and effective. These issues are explored within this paper, and provide the background context for this discussion on the redesigning of a research module within an undergraduate programme for post-registration community nursing students. The paper highlights the rationale for undertaking this change, and discusses the educational frameworks, which were used in order to develop the programme. An initial evaluation suggests the redesigned curriculum is a positive development that has enhanced both the teaching and learning of research

Risk, Instrumentalism and the Humane Project in Social Work: Identifying the Informal Logics of Risk Management in Children's Statutory Services

This paper addresses growing professional discontents with the increasing formalisation of social work practice exerted through systems of risk management and audit. Drawing on an ESRC-funded study of social work practices in children's statutory services, this paper provides a critique of instrumental approaches to risk management in social work. Through the discussion of three illustrative case examples, we argue that risk management is an inherently complex, contingent and negotiated activity. Social work practitioners are obliged to comply with risk reduction technologies, but informal processes continue to play a critical role in shaping decisions and actions in this relationship-based profession. From practitioner accounts, we identify key elements of the informal logics of risk management. We conclude that the bureaucratic–instrumental bias manifest in the modernisation of children's services, in privileging metrics and administrative power leaves the informal and relational aspects of practice under-emphasised and under-theorised. Suggestions are made about how practice might be advanced in the complex world of child welfare and protection