Supporting Families to Protect Children in a Post modern world

Margaret McKenzieSchool of Social Services Otago Polytechnic

Dunedin New Zealandmargaret.mckenzie@op.ac.nz

Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social DevelopmentAction and Impact

8-12 July 2012 Stockholm Sweden

Otago Polytechnic

Dunedin, New Zealand

• New Zealand foregrounding of Family Based Child Protection-the FGC etc

• Why Now?

• Range of reseach studies over period time enquiring into experiences and conditions of family decision making in child welfare in New Zealand

-Family Group Conferencing, Strengthening Families, Supervised Contact

• Despite shifts in theorising and policy and practice, How best to do child protection remains core dilemma for policy makers and

practioners alike?

Context

Complexity of Supporting Families in Child Protection

Two Dominant Parallel but Competing Discourses inform Complexity

Changing /Changed Family Pattern & Structure (Postmodern Families)- Flexibility and plurality of family pattern (who and where availability)- De-institutionalisation of traditional family (women, gender roles,

work, global mobility etc)

Changing/Changed Family and Child Protection Policy notions- Paramountcy of family-kinship and psychological connection- Family Responsibility, Family Inclusivity for Family Support and

Family Care- Local , situated care

Postmodern Family Patterns • Closed/traditional family system dissolving• Alternative and open structures• Plural cohabitations• Changed gender role and responsibility (work, family life)• Transnational mobility Can lead to• Individualisation of family• Positioning of open, plural ,multiple access to richer, deeper

support and care OR• Diminished /limited availability of/to support ,care networks• Isolated, unsupported, disconnected families• Fragmented , stretched thin• Family Capital limited

Postmodern Family Policy and Support• Fiscal Limits - austerity drivers• Individual/Personalised Responsibility Ideology- Widespread acceptance of pre-eminence of kinship /attachment models

based on traditional family patterns - Acknowledges limits of professional expertise and dominance can lead to• Detached State -Diminished/conservative provision of

support/care/service• Rhetoric of partnership• Requirement for individual (family) network responsibility regardless of

availability• Expectation of open, plural , multiple access to support and care for

families regardless of situation • Family Capital assumed

Critical Practice questions

• These parallel competing discourses, contribute to underpinning tensions of the child welfare debate about how best to protect – family/state/?

• Paradoxical situation for those of us working with difficult family situations

• While promoting post modern families changing forms and patterns can mediate many of the concerns we have had about traditional families-(dominance of patriarchal, adult centered forms etc), it can also serve to obscure /complicate tensions in newer child welfare practices of inclusion and family centeredness

• Can we simply move to a family inclusive and responsibility model when we know that the traditional family structural arrangements which underpin these ideas may not be available in many current family situations?

Critical Practice questions • When add into the mix changing state provision where

cynically it seems that promoting family responsibility and reduction of professional involvement may be as much about fiscal imperatives allowing abrogation of state provision as about sound theory

• Possibility is that the one can negate the other and that we become uncertain perhaps even frozen in our practices

• I suggest we need to be able to see beyond, not get caught in the binary approaches of dominant discourses –instead balance a mix of Potentials and Requirements

Family Inclusion

Family Responsibility

State Provision Professional Involvement

Postmodern Family Pattern and Structure

Reduced Potential

Increased requirement

Traditional Family Pattern and Structure

Increased Potential Reduced requirement

Supporting Families to Protect Children- a Potentials and Requirements Matrix

Surrounded by Influences

• Welfare Regimes• Western World Values• Child Care and Child Protection Ideology • Sociology Childhood /Rights of Child

Influences• Social Work Theories and Practices