ABSTRACT

Consider the following fictitious scenario. In a rundown inner-city district of Oxford, UK, senior social worker Suzy Taylor has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the McBeal family who have yet again been brought to the attention of the social work department for physically abusing their two children. Following extensive report-writing, case-file managing, risk-assessment profiling, care review and family conferences, meetings with other professionals at school, in the community, the police and the local hospital, a child protection case conference is held to make a decision on whether the two children should be received into care as ‘Looked After’. Suzy has worked with the family over several years and understands the local family and community situation very well. The chair of the child protection committee refers to latest SPICE (Social Professional Institute of Clinical Evidence) ‘best practice guidance’, reporting that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the McBeal family children should become ‘Looked After’ and received into care. All of Suzy’s professional experience, best judgement and understanding of the family situation suggest otherwise and that if she concurs with the evidence, the decision will cause real damage to the children. What does she do in the face of the evidence? In spite of the evidence-based directives and on the basis of her assessment, Suzy, using all her best skills of persuasion, makes a strong case for finding an alternative to receiving the children into care. Against the evidence, the chair of the Child Protection Committee is persuaded by Suzy’s argument and ‘practice wisdom’, agreeing to recommend that the family receive sessions of structured family therapy and that a respite care package also be established. Three months later, Graham McBeal, aged sixteen, attacks a boy at school, causing grievous bodily harm, leading to a criminal prosecution in the local magistrate’s court. Suzy Taylor is summoned to the court to provide an expert assessment. During the cross-examination, the prosecuting solicitor, referring to the SPICE ‘best practice guidelines’, asks Suzy why, given the evidence-based directive, Graham McBeal had not been taken into care. What does Suzy say? Has she failed to adequately represent the children’s interests? She might respond by saying that after the age of fourteen, young people are considered to be fully responsible for their own actions in the same way as an adult would. However, the prosecuting solicitor would not be satisfied with this response, claiming that if Graham McBeal had become a ‘Looked After’ child,

the probability of his committing the offence would have been greatly reduced. But would it? Promptly, but honestly, Graham interrupts the prosecuting solicitor saying that the offence was an act of revenge for a previous assault by the boy on his younger sister and that he had been planning the attack for some months. He goes on to say that even if he had been received into care, it would not have changed the outcome. Graham had not told either his family or the social worker about the premeditated revenge.