3. • In the 1960s social work with children became
identified with anti-residential care ideas but,
after the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act,
the number of children in care ballooned as the
social workers in the newly formed Social
Services Departments were unable to match
rhetoric with reality. When the Department of
Health and Security (1981) examined the effect
of the 1969 Act, it found that it had made no
difference to the percentage of young offenders
in residential care.
4. • Among the reactions to the perceived
failures of social work in the 1970s was
the shift towards short term solutions to
social problems such as task-centred
casework (Reid and Epstein, 1972). The
`problem’ with problem-oriented
approaches, as the former civil servant,
Sir Geoffrey Vickers, (1981) observed, is
that everything has to be reformulated in
terms of a problem.
5. • Of course, there are many situations
where problem-solving approaches can
give appropriate and immediate relief,
which is why many social workers and
their clients do feel positive about the work
they do. But preventive work is about
preventing the problems arising in the first
place, not about assessing and dealing
with them when they arise.
6. • Yet we have known for over thirty years
that most problems in adolescence arise
from situations in the primary school years
(Rutter, 1978). Waiting until children
become adolescents to deal with these
problems is bound to fail; the only way of
preventing them is to deal with the
conditions which create them in the
primary school years.
7. • References
• Berridge, D (1985) Children’s homes Oxford: Blackwell
• Cliffe, D and Berridge, D (1992) Closing children’s homes: an end to residential
childcare? London: National Children’s Bureau
• Crowther, M A (1981) The workhouse system 1834-1929: the history of an English
social institution London: Batsford
• Department for Education and Skills (2006) Care matters: transforming the lives of
children and young people in care Cm 6932 London: The Stationery Office
• Department of Health and Social Security (1981) Offending by young people: a
survey of recent trends London: Department of Health and Social Security
• Reid, W J and Epstein. L (1972) Task-centered casework London: Columbia
University Press
• Rutter, M (1978) Early sources of security and competence In J S Bruner and A
Garton (Eds.) Human Growth and Development Chapter 2, pp. 33-61 Oxford:
Clarendon Press Wolfson College Lectures 1976
• Utting, Sir W B (1997) People like us: the report of the review of safeguards for
children living away from home London: Stationery Office
• Vickers, Sir G C (1981) The poverty of problem solving Journal of Applied Systems
Analysis 8
8. Supporting families is at the heart of the
Children Acts 1989 and 2004, and is a key
aspect of the Every Child Matters
Change for Children agenda. However,
research and inspections have consistently
shown that children and parents are often
unable to access support services until
their difficulties reach crisis point.
9. • High quality early education and day care
services enhance children’s
development, especially those from disadvantaged
backgrounds.
• Parenting programmes, especially those that are
group-based and help parents to develop effective
praise and reinforcement techniques, help to
improve children’s behaviour.
10. • Befriending and support provided by trained home visitors
can improve mothers’ well-being and have positive effects
on mother-child interaction.
• There is much anecdotal evidence for the effectiveness of
family centres but little hard evidence of their ability to
improve outcomes for families.
However, they are popular with parents and appear able to
deliver support services in a non-stigmatising way. They
can also have an important signposting function, directing
families to other sources of support.
11. • Family support services are unevenly distributed
across the UK. They are also less used by
certain groups, such as minority ethnic families
and fathers. Other families may be particularly
hard to engage in family support work, including
asylum seekers, travelling families and parents
who have mental health problems or misuse
drugs.
12. • The evidence on effective strategies for
involving ‘hard-to-reach’ groups suggests, not
surprisingly, that family support services work
best when the child, young person andparents
want to be involved and want the intervention to
work, highlighting the importance of reaching out
to families and taking time to understandtheir
perspective on their needs.
