This thesis is a case study of how senior managers in one local authority interpreted and enacted national policy to improve collaborative working in children’s services through the Stockborough Challenge, a campaign of cultural change. The purpose is to research the Challenge to document what did and did not work, to make recommendations to improve collaboration in children’s services. The research was conducted during the author’s time as an ‘embedded’ researcher within the Stockborough Challenge. It involved a three-stage process: exploratory, research, and replication and verification. The research methods used were interviews and participant observations, complemented by an action research project and a design experiment project to test and develop the findings in relation to the practice of collaborative working. The research identifies two phases of the initiative, Challenge One and Two, which are presented as different approaches to improving collaboration in children’s services. Challenge One began when senior managers in Stockborough strategically engaged with New Labour’s collaborative re-organisation of children’s services through the Every Child Matters agenda. Challenge One adopted a more open and exploratory approach, seeking to understand more about collaboration and then develop appropriate models, structures and capacities to facilitate it. The initiative was disrupted by a range of factors and re-orientated in line with government policy for leadership and cultural change as part of the development of the Children’s Trust. Challenge Two identified targets as the principal barrier to collaboration and advised professionals to focus not on targets but on the ‘real’ needs of the children and young people with whom they worked. It was thought that ‘real’ or common and shared needs would enable professionals from different professions, organisations and sectors to collaborate. A significant focus of this research is why collaboration came to be approached in terms of leadership and cultural change, instead of the initial idea of figuring out collaboration and helping professionals with the practical tasks of working collaboratively. I explain this with reference to New Labour’s reforms of children’s services and the influence of the discourses of leadership and collaboration. The study concludes that an alternative approach to collaboration is required, one that contextualises collaboration and engages with the specificity of different forms of collaboration whilst also attending to the interrelationships with public sector reform. A ‘purposive’ definition of collaboration – collaboration as innovation in public service design and delivery – is presented along with recommendations for mangers to improve collaborative working in children’s services.

Yes / This chapter introduces four theoretical approaches to the challenge of multi-professional information sharing in public service delivery. Two of the four approaches are then described in more detail as lenses through which to explore what happens in the practice of integrated children’s services. The two approaches explored in detail are the systems approach and the approach that underpins much of this book: Etienne Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’. The focus of the chapter is on the professionals delivering the services and not primarily on the children, young people or their families who are in receipt of these services. This approach however is in no way antagonistic to the idea that it is the interests of the children and young people that must always come first when redesigning organizations, policies, procedures and guidance for practice in children’s services.

Conflict is an inherent part of human relationships and is ubiquitous within families. These disputes are not in themselves harmful to children. Rather, it is the strategies used to resolve conflict that have a bearing on children’s health and development, notably whether family members employ aggressive or violent tactics. The study examines evidence from a sample of 161 children, selected to be representative of children living in Dublin, Ireland. It explores children’s responses to different methods of conflict resolution in two family relationships and seeks to expand the understanding of how social problems, such as child maltreatment and domestic violence, occur within normative family processes. The study shows that the use of psychological and minor physical aggression to resolve conflict in the parental relationship and the parent-child relationship is typical. It occurs in 90 per cent of families over a twelve-month period. Severe physical force or violence between family members is less common. The study finds that while there is considerable variation in children’s responses to conflict resolution strategies, children who experience aggression in both the inter-parental and parent-child relationship are at elevated risk for behavioural and emotional problems. The frequency and severity of the aggression explains some of the variance in child well-being but not all. The study lends support to Bronfrenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory by demonstrating empirically how the individual, family, neighbourhood, and potentially societal, contexts moderate the transmission of poor conflict resolution strategies to children's health and development. The findings suggest that while the child's age and gender play a small role, family and neighbourhood contexts are strongly implicated in outcomes for children exposed to risky conflict resolution tactics in the home. In particular, parental mental health problems, low socio-economic status and poor peer relationships increase children’s vulnerability to the effects of aggressive conflict tactics. The relevance of the evidence for policy and practice are drawn out. A distinction can be drawn between responses to pathological behaviour by parents and normative, yet harmful, conflict resolution strategies. Public health approaches to promote reasoning within families as well as prevention and early intervention strategies that support all families, not just economically disadvantaged parents known to child protection and domestic violence agencies, are required. In addition, greater sensitivity to children's gender and stage of development and more attention to policies that reduce stress on families and violence within communities are advocated.

The selfhood of social professionals in children’s services is under-researched, and where the primary focus is on practice ‘outcomes’. Informed by a critical social policy frame this thesis focuses on the selfhood of social professionals in children’s services to ask how it might, or might not, be possible to think, and do, self differently. I bring into play a critical posthumanist (non-sovereign) becoming self alongside, and in relation to, the other ‘allowed’ or ‘prescribed’ selves of neo-liberalism, professional practice and (critical) social policy itself. Utilising theoretical resources, in particular from Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault, I characterise this as thinking with both ‘surveillance’ and ‘appearance’, and self as an explicitly political project. In a post-structural frame I pursue a post-methodological rhizomatic and cartographic methodology that aims to open up proliferations in thinking and knowledge rather than foreclose it to one clear answer, and where I also draw on a small number of interviews with experienced professionals and managers in children’s services. A rhizomatic figure of thought involves irreducible and multiple relations that are imbricated on the surface; it is a flattened picture where theory, data, researcher, participants and analysis are not separate, where all connections are part of an overall picture, and in movement. I argue that social professionals occupy a deeply striated landscape for being/knowing/practising, a particular ontological grid that tethers their selfhood to the pre-existing, and to intensifications in a neo-liberal project. Here, ‘rearranging the chairs’ becomes more of the same, where the sovereign humanist subject is “a normative frame and an institutionalised practice” (Braidotti, 2013, p.30). In thinking otherwise, beyond traditional critical theory, a posthuman lens draws attention to the ways in which we might be/live both inside and outside of the already existing and where we become with others, human and non-human in shifting assemblages. However, the self prescribed and prefigured in dominant discourses constitute the historical preconditions from which experiments in self, and other possibilities may emerge. Practices of de-familiarisation, a radical, non-linear relationality, and a hermeneutics of situation are suggested as strategies for thinking forward, for appearance, and a self beyond self.

Inter-agency working has been promoted as a way forward to improve public services, including children's services. However, the terminology is problematic because it often overlaps with other terminologies, such as partnership or collaboration. As a consequence, when describing working arrangements between people and organisations, a 'terminological quagmire' results (Leathard, 1994, p5), with 'definitional chaos' (Ling, 2000, p83). This definitional chaos is replicated in the on-going challenges found by research, on inter-agency working. While much literature has focussed on these challenges and solutions, little attention has been given to the processes that make up inter-agency working. My research explored inter-agency working processes at the frontline of children's services in Scotland. It examined formal mechanisms of working together, such as meetings and referral forms, which organised professionals' work and their relationships with one another. I used institutional ethnography to investigate inter-agency working processes. The research was conducted in one local authority in Scotland over a period of eight months and within the framework of Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC), which is the country's national policy approach for children. One component of GIRFEC is the Named Person. It is a provision that would provide every child in Scotland a professional (for most children the professional is going to be their health visitor or head teacher) to help safeguard their wellbeing by means of offering advice, support and referral to other services. This service will make teachers at promoted posts responsible for coordinating support for their pupils and will change mechanisms of inter-agency working. The tenets of institutional ethnography allowed me to observe and trace the ways in which professionals worked together. The research found that when professionals worked together, they shared information and that sharing of information was complicated by the burgeoning use of technology. The working processes involved revealed the power relations between people and between people and organisations: specifically, between teachers and the Children and Families team members of the council, as the latter was responsible for maintaining the formal inter-agency working mechanisms of GIRFEC. The thesis highlights that inter-agency meetings, as formalised ways of working together, can boost professionals' confidence as they wrestle with uncertainty about their actions as professionals and how best to address children and young people's needs. This thesis also shows how policy changes changed the ways in which professionals work together. The Named Person provision of GIRFEC has ignited public debates in Scotland. This thesis is contributing to the debates by providing evidence on how this new role has changed the relationships between the teachers and other professionals. This is pertinent as the Scottish Government is currently redesigning the Named Person policy.

xi, 106 p. : ill., map. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This study assesses the implementation of Oregon-based child welfare models in Ukraine in the context of the Family For Children (FCP) curriculum. Both trainees' and trainers' perspectives on these issues were surveyed. The assessment shows that the implementation of Oregon-based models needs some adjustment to local socio-economic conditions and current child welfare policies in Ukraine. Nine recommendations have emerged as a result of this study that relate to logistical, organizational, and communicational aspects of the training. None of the recommendations concern the conceptual content of the training, and overall all participants judged the curriculum and training to be very successful. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Kathie Carpenter, Chair; Dr. Daniel Close; Daniel Lauer

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 37-40).

The purpose of this study was to develop and test an instrument to measure client satisfaction among families who are clients of a child protective services agency. With the growing numbers of families coming into contact with CPS agencies, the burgeoning numbers of children in foster care, and the increasing attention to the effectiveness of services within this population, client feedback is one approach that has been largely ignored by CSP administrators. The basic problem this dissertation addressed is the issue of obtaining feedback from the involuntary client, such as the family in a child abuse case. Specifically, this dissertation addressed the following four research questions: 1. Can a client satisfaction instrument be developed for CPS clients largely through the input of the clients? 2. What are the domains of satisfaction that are applicable to CPS families? 3. How much involvement do the CPS families feel that they have in the planning and decision-making in their cases? What impact does this have on their overall level of satisfaction? 4. What are the relationships among the various domains of satisfaction and the overall level of satisfaction? Two rounds of interviews were held with families who had been clients of the CPS agency serving the State of Oregon, Children's Services Division. These interviews served as the major source of information for the identification of satisfaction domains and for the development of a closed-ended instrument to measure these domains. The responses to the interviews were content analyzed and four specific domains of client satisfaction were identified. These were: (a) Helpfulness, (b) Partnership, (c) Choice, and (d) Information Sharing. Items were also developed to comprise a "General Satisfaction" domain. A closed-ended instrument was constructed and pre-tested in two large Branch offices of the agency. This instrument included five items to address the interest of the agency in the issue of "convenience." It also included seven items to gather information concerning the opinions of clients on the agency mission and goals. Results of the pre-test were analyzed and the instrument revised. The final instrument was mailed to a population of 4,337 CPS families. Surveys were returned by 489, or 11%, of the families. Analyses, including correlational analysis, factor analysis, and internal consistency reliability analysis, provided empirical support for the domains identified through the client interviews Analysis provided very little support for the "convenience" domain. Satisfaction on the four scales measuring the four domains of satisfaction was positively correlated with measure of overall satisfaction. The overall theme which ran through the entire client survey instrument was that of empowerment. Three of the four domains of satisfaction which were identified were: Ca) "Partnership," (b) "Choice," and (c) "Information Sharing." The challenge is for CPS agencies to incorporate these issues into their practice.

The thesis describes the development of a questionnaire to evaluate the services provided by Clackamas County Children's Services Division, including the process of interviewing past clients, examining caseworker statistics sheets, and developing the evaluation instrument.

Sexual minority youth are coming out about their same-sex attractions earlier in recent years. Such youth and their families may experience a range of potential problems and concerns, suggesting that the child welfare system may need to do more to respond to the unique needs of this population. By employing a qualitative research design, this study, using face-to-face interviews with ten child welfare workers, examined child welfare agencies' ability to adequately render services to sexual minority youth and their families.