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Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Social Work in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zululand, 2009. / This study is about the research that the writer conducted based on how service providers could be helped to render effective services with special reference to street children. It is believed that this study will be considered as a field based social development practice concerned with child protection and improvement of antisocial behaviour. This research was conducted in order to firstly, establish the existence of reunification programmes in the shelters that secure street children after having been picked up from the streets. Secondly, it intended to investigate in the event the programmes were available, who were actually involved during their evaluation, for example, service providers, government officials, families of street children and street children themselves. The study also intended to examine the effectiveness of those programmes. If they were available what remedy can be employed in order to improve the relationship between the reunified vulnerable street children and their families. During data collection in June 2006 concerning this study it emanated that six (6) 89% service providers did not have reunification programmes. Only one (1) 11% Government Place of Safety uses the monitoring forms to assess the progress of the street children during institutionallsationperiod. Even the said forms do not reach the objective of rehabilitating the children because children abscond before the end of the monitoring exercise. And without the direction file of the child's home, it is hard to track down the child and get response from the family about the progress of the child. In terms of Sec 69(i) of Social Welfare White Paper 1997 the State had planned to develop programmes concerning provision of safe environment and taking care of homeless young adults and those surviving on the streets. But these goals have not yet been achieved. The service providers even confessed that they lacked skills on how to deal with problematic children other than providing safety and security until the child decides to reunify with his or her family. The study was conducted in Durban, Empangeni, Richards Bay, Eshowe, Nqutu, Nkandla and Newcastle in the KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. (Due to research confidentiality ethical reasons, the real names of institutions visited will not be revealed). Lastly, the researcher prepared standardised Reunification Program Manuals (hereinafter called Behaviour Modification Treatment Model Manual) and Participation Action Research Manuals and issued them to the service providers for future use.

The first version that was uploaded to Macsphere was the incorrect version. I was advised to re-upload the correct version. / This research project interviewed child protection workers to understand how they used strengths-based theory and the Signs of Safety model in practice to facilitate engagement and build rapport with families. In addition, child protection workers were asked for their definitions of engagement and rapport building, since these concepts have multiple definitions in child welfare. In semi-structured individual interviews, child protection workers provided their perspectives regarding what fostered or hindered their efforts to engage with families. A structural and critical lens was applied to the analysis of the data, to reveal what organizational and relational factors positively or negatively influenced engagement. This study found that all workers identified strengths-based theory and the Signs of Safety model as producing positive outcomes. The workers‟ descriptions of strengths-based practice included positive aspects such as being forthright about their role and their mandate, and working from the family‟s strengths instead of focusing solely on risk. Workers‟ responses regarding the Signs of Safety model varied. Two workers were from an agency (CAS-A) that promoted and used Signs of Safety with families, and two workers were from an agency (CAS-B) that had just began to use the model in settings with colleagues. Workers‟ descriptions of the model were positive and highlighted the collaborative aspects of the model, its inclusion of the family in planning, and affording the workers with a balanced assessment that contained elements of safety and risk. In contrast, this study found that despite the strengths-based focus of these approaches, they had limitations. Workers described factors within and external to the worker/client relationship that influenced whether or not workers would use either approach. All workers discussed instances when engagement with a family was not successful, and consistently MSW Thesis – L.A. Mabo McMaster School of Social Work iv described client resistance as a barrier to the process. However, this study found that client resistance was connected to power dynamics present in the worker/client relationship, and the dual role workers had to assume to do their job and satisfy their agency mandate. The workers interviewed for this study described reverting to their role of investigator, when the family was resistant. This study found that a worker‟s authority was implied, and related to a family‟s feelings of powerlessness and fear. All workers provided examples of both types of resistance. As a result, this study concluded that strengths-based approaches could not address the issue of power, and were effective only with the family‟s cooperation. Workers described wanting to apply strengths-based approaches but felt overwhelmed by organizational factors such as time constraints due to caseloads, and excessive administrative burden. This study found that these factors were influenced by Provincial policy, which emphasizes productivity and cost efficiency over family engagement. Workers identified lack of agency support to apply strengths-based approaches as a barrier, with the exception being CAS-A, that promoted the Signs of Safety model and permitted its workers to be interviewed for this study. The findings of this study have direct implications for practice and future research. To address the issues identified by this research, practice and policy may need to be modified to promote strengths-based practices to offer services that will meet the needs and safety of the child and family. Further research is recommended, with a larger sample from an agency that uses strengths-based practice and the Signs of Safety model, to determine whether positive outcomes can be linked with these approaches. It is also recommended that research include the perspectives of child protection workers and families. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This paper focuses on the use of mediation within Ontario’s child protection system. Applying the process pluralism framework advocated by Carrie Menkel-Meadow, the systemic resistance to child protection mediation [CPM] in Ontario is explained. To address this resistance, a particular approach of structuring conflict resolution is evaluated through the lens of process pluralism. It is concluded that increasing the use of CPM at the dispositional stage of a child protection proceeding will improve results for children and their families.

This paper focuses on the use of mediation within Ontario’s child protection system. Applying the process pluralism framework advocated by Carrie Menkel-Meadow, the systemic resistance to child protection mediation [CPM] in Ontario is explained. To address this resistance, a particular approach of structuring conflict resolution is evaluated through the lens of process pluralism. It is concluded that increasing the use of CPM at the dispositional stage of a child protection proceeding will improve results for children and their families.

The concepts of risk and safety are central to social work practice with survivors of violence against women, especially within the child protection system. Recent studies have highlighted how discrepancies between client and worker perceptions may create problematic conditions for developing effective intervention strategies (Dumbrill, 2006; Jenney, Alaggia, Mazzuca, & Redmond, 2005). In addition, tensions exist between movement toward improving worker-client interactions through collaboration and the use of standardized risk and safety assessments as a means of improving practice. The purpose of this research study was to explore how women’s narratives of domestic violence (DV), expressed within the context of child protection services (CPS), become translated into CPS workers’ assessments of risk and need for safety planning. Using Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM), this qualitative study used focus group and interview data to explore how both workers and clients’ experiences of the process of risk assessment and safety planning influenced the course of the intervention. What emerged is that workers and clients held similar representations about the social construction/collective representation of woman abuse and the work of CPS. For both worker and client participants the concept of ‘doing the right thing’ presented itself as an over-arching theme. This theme implies that there is a perceived ‘right way’ of addressing DV cases within CPS work and enhances understanding about the ways in which social workers and clients interact. These findings illustrate how narrative structures shape interactions that take place within the context of care and prevention, manifesting themselves in complex ways that can lead to misunderstanding the impact on children, the (un) conscious subjugation of women victims, and the absence of dialogue about the role of men in addressing DV at a system level.

The concepts of risk and safety are central to social work practice with survivors of violence against women, especially within the child protection system. Recent studies have highlighted how discrepancies between client and worker perceptions may create problematic conditions for developing effective intervention strategies (Dumbrill, 2006; Jenney, Alaggia, Mazzuca, & Redmond, 2005). In addition, tensions exist between movement toward improving worker-client interactions through collaboration and the use of standardized risk and safety assessments as a means of improving practice. The purpose of this research study was to explore how women’s narratives of domestic violence (DV), expressed within the context of child protection services (CPS), become translated into CPS workers’ assessments of risk and need for safety planning. Using Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM), this qualitative study used focus group and interview data to explore how both workers and clients’ experiences of the process of risk assessment and safety planning influenced the course of the intervention. What emerged is that workers and clients held similar representations about the social construction/collective representation of woman abuse and the work of CPS. For both worker and client participants the concept of ‘doing the right thing’ presented itself as an over-arching theme. This theme implies that there is a perceived ‘right way’ of addressing DV cases within CPS work and enhances understanding about the ways in which social workers and clients interact. These findings illustrate how narrative structures shape interactions that take place within the context of care and prevention, manifesting themselves in complex ways that can lead to misunderstanding the impact on children, the (un) conscious subjugation of women victims, and the absence of dialogue about the role of men in addressing DV at a system level.

As a result of working in high-risk situations, child protection workers are often confronted by such traumatic incidents as the physical and sexual abuse of children, serious neglect situations, and personal threats. The perception of how workers deal with their emotional challenges has not received a great deal of attention in the literature. To date, a phenomenological study focusing on the descriptive experiences of child protection workers struggling with secondary traumatic stress has not been published. This study attempts to rectify this, by examining from a phenomenological perspective how secondary traumatic stress (STS) experienced by child protection workers impacts their practice and personal lives. This study found that child protection workers engaged in direct practice will be exposed directly and indirectly to traumatic events through their work with children and families and the risks of experiencing symptoms of STS are almost a certainty for a child protection worker. Participants described the day-to-day pressures of managing a caseload and dealing with traumatic events or traumatized people. From their responses, three major categories emerged: Professional Issues relating to case practice and effectiveness; the Personal Impacts of child protection work on the way workers function, both on the job and in their private lives; and Behavioral or Physical Changes experienced by child protection workers. It is these categories that best illustrate the dramatic way secondary trauma affects child protection workers as a whole. / Graduate

This thesis explores the everyday practices, relationships and interactions in a Probation Unit of the Department of Probation and Child Care Services in the Central Province in Sri Lanka. Using multi-sited ethnography and the ethnographer’s own experiences in this sector it examines how frontline workers at the Probation Unit engage and draw upon international and national development discourse, ideas and theories of children and childhood to engage with colleagues and clients. This thesis takes as its analytical starting point that state agencies are sites where global development discourse meets local practices. Simultaneously, they are sites where ideas and practices of nationalism, class, morality and professional identity are produced and reproduced. State sector employment is an important source of social mobility, gaining respectability and constructing a middle class identity. Thus, maintaining the ‘in-between’ position in relation to the upper and lower classes is an especially anxiety-ridden and challenging process for state bureaucrats. This shapes the particular characteristics of their nationalism, morality and professional identity and influences the way in which they translate policies and engage with institutional and bureaucratic procedures. This thesis examines this process in detail and illustrates its translocal nature. More explicitly it looks at the ways in which development discourse and practice is transformed by the forms of sociality that it engenders. The ethnography illustrates that this process allows for development policies and interventions to be co-opted in particular ways that articulate ideas and practices of nationalism, class, morality and professional identity. Through this cooption, the outcomes of development policies and interventions are transformed in unanticipated ways. The broader social and political process that transforms development policies and practices remains only partially visible to development projects and programmes. The complexity and in particular the historicity of social and political contexts remains outside development project logic and timelines. To understand the relationship between policy and practice or to evaluate development outcomes is meaningless if development is conceptualised as something that stands apart from society. What is most useful to understand, and indeed revealing, is how actors make meaning of development policies and programmes as part of everyday practices in historically situated social and political contexts. The thesis concludes that theorising, analysing or even critiquing development’s transformative potential is misleading as it fails to recognise that what is being transformed is development itself.