See the Practitioner, See the Child: The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families Ten Years On

This paper draws on a small-scale study that explored, through focus group discussions, the experiences of sixty-two front line staff in England who use the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families. Focusing primarily on the views of the social workers and their managers and setting these in the context of other studies and reports, the barriers to ‘seeing’ the child as part of the assessment are explored. These barriers include: lack of use of guidance and support materials, which has reduced the Framework to ‘the Triangle’; a concern with risk management that separates risk of harm from need; an organisational context that is driven by New Public Management systems and targets resulting in an overemphasis on timescales and form completion by both practitioners and supervisors; marginalising particular groups of children; failing to ‘see’ the child in a meaningful way and struggling to establish meaningful relationships with families. Conclusions are drawn that at a time at which there is considerable government attention on reforming social work, it is as important to understand the lived experience of practitioners as it is the child's, and that system change alone will not improve their professional lives.