“Domestic abuse is our stand out reason for social work intervention,” says Louise Jones, principal child and family social worker, and head of Wandsworth Children’s Social Care Academy. It is probably the most significant issue that has to be addressed when a referral is made to children’s services. The authority, says Jones, has worked hard to “develop systemically our approach to tackling domestic abuse”.
This approach will be important in enabling Wandsworth to transition to the new family safeguarding model to be adopted next year. The model, which focuses on the trio of vulnerabilities central to child safeguarding (parental mental illness and parental substance misuse as well as domestic abuse), has two elements. One is a strengths-based approach, in which parents are helped to identify the positive elements in their parenting that they can build on. The other is multidisciplinary working: teams will be reorganised to include workers with specialisms in mental health, substance misuse and domestic abuse. Wandsworth’s current emphasis on partnership working and helping parents to work from their strengths will prove a solid foundation for moving to the new model.
This emphasis can be seen in two programmes for fathers that the authority’s social workers have been trained to deliver: Caring Dads, a 17-week group-based programme developed in Canada, and Preparing Men for Change, an eight-week programme of one-to-one work for those fathers for whom group work is difficult.
Leila Farah manages the Woking Close Family Assessment Centre, which works with families who have been referred to children’s services. In many cases, the children are in need of protection and the subject of protection plans. Farah describes Preparing Men for Change as a “strengths-based programme” that recognises the need to build on the positive elements in the parents’ relationship: “The training and programme manual is very much focused around building relationships, recognising that men who have the tendency to be abusive are themselves carrying a negativity or vulnerability from their own childhood.” Social workers support fathers to think about how their child’s life could be different from their own experience of being parented.
The Caring Dads programme has a similar focus on working with fathers to develop solutions. Nana Obeng, a social worker based at the centre, has spent most of his career helping fathers play a more effective role in their children’s lives. Tackling domestic abuse, he says, is about “looking at inherited patterns of behaviours”, supporting fathers to become more aware of them and “equipping them with strategies to contain their own emotions”. Many of the fathers he works with also have mental health or substance abuse problems, and he is able to refer them to specialists in those areas: “You put your whole support systems around the father, and in that way you can manage risk.”
Wandsworth also recognises the importance of helping social workers to understand when a pattern of domestic abuse may escalate. Mary Kelly, group work team manager, has undergone training in understanding the eight signs of domestic abuse, identified by academic Jane Monckton-Smith, that can lead to homicide. Very often, says Kelly, what appears to be benign behaviour (helping with shopping, taking children to school) can be an example of coercive control. Social workers need to be alert to those signs and to put clear safety plans in place.
Victims of domestic abuse also need support. Kelly has recently completed Lifelong Links training, which recognises that children who have been in the care system will have been in contact with at least 40 people (nurses, teachers, social workers), and that maintaining a connection with those people into adult life is essential. “It’s getting them to think about the people who they want to have contact with again – it’s about building up the network and building up their support.”
Wandsworth has also trained its social workers in interventions to help women recover from domestic abuse, such as the trauma-informed programme Halt (Hungry Angry Lonely Tired), and New Beginnings – an eight-week programme that helps victims of domestic abuse make sense of their experiences, build self-esteem and understand how domestic abuse affects children. After attending such programmes, says Jones, women “have made lifelong connections with other women, have gone from the point of feeling very alone and isolated to realising that actually there is a community of support out there”.
The authority is committed to providing social workers with opportunities to extend their knowledge and develop their practice. A fruitful teaching partnership with Kingston University, for example, has enabled Wandsworth’s social workers to take courses at the department of social work, and also to share their current practice and experience with students.
The current emphasis on intensive support “fits like a glove”, says Kelly, with the family safeguarding model to be introduced over the coming year. In the new model, full, tailored support will be offered to parents immediately, without a need for referrals. Social workers will have smaller caseloads and will work with families for longer. Training in motivational interviewing (MI) – an empathic way of listening to, and engaging with, a parent and their desire to change – will be delivered by specialist MI trainers and practitioners who work alongside Hertfordshire, the authority that pioneered the model.
As Farah says, family safeguarding represents a “better, coordinated way of tackling issues early to prevent situations escalating, and when they do become complex, then the right team is available to do what is needed”.
