Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: Congruence with the Everyday Lives of Children and Parents 9781442666269

Table of contents :
Contents
Contributors
Introduction
1. Fathers and Child Welfare
2. Mothers and Child Welfare
3. Stand by Me, Engage Me: Reviewing Child Protection Experiences and Preferences of Mothers and of Fathers
4. Home Truths: What Mothers of Children in Placement Say about Their Lives
5. Invisible Lives: A Qualitative Study of 61 Parents Receiving Child Protective Services
6. “I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real”: A Study of Six Good Worker-Client Relationships in Child Welfare
7. Bridging or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison of Parent and Service Provider Perceptions
8. See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us: Families and Family & Child Services
9. Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Helping Relationships in Accessible and in Central Service Delivery Settings
10. When the Going Gets Tough: A Workplace Study of Four Southern Ontario Children’s Aid Societies
11. Child Protection Jobs in Accessible and Central Service Delivery Settings
Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: Questions and Suggestions
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

CREATING POSITIVE SYSTEMS OF CHILD AND FAMILY WELFARE Congruence with the Everyday Lives of Children and Parents Edited by Gary Cameron, Marshall Fine, Sarah Maiter, Karen Frensch, and Nancy Freymond

Despite various attempts at reform the North American approach to child protection is frequently subject to criticism in regard to ineffective communication, the limited range of services and supports available to families, escalating costs, and high stress and turnover among service providers. This volume addresses how these shortcomings can be overcome through organizational or system reform. Based on findings from research conducted over more than a decade, Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare is a collection of original essays that discuss the everyday realities of families and front-line service providers involved with the system. It combines a wealth of quantitative and qualitative research drawn from a variety of regions and family situations, all linked within a common investigatory framework. The contributors highlight principal areas of concern in current approaches to child and family welfare, as well as propose solutions to make the system more welcoming and helpful for both families and service providers. gary cameron is Lyle S. Hallman Chair of Child and Family Welfare­ and a professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. marshall fine is a professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. sarah maiter is an associate professor in the School of Social Work in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University. karen frensch is Research Project Manager with the Partnerships for Children and Families Project in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. nancy freymond is an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University.

This page intentionally left blank

Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare Congruence with the Everyday Lives of Children and Parents

Edited by Gary Cameron, Marshall Fine, Sarah Maiter, Karen Frensch, and Nancy Freymond

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2013 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4426-4666-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1455-0 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Creating positive systems of child and family welfare: congruence with the everyday lives of children and parents/edited by Gary Cameron, Marshall Fine, Sarah Maiter, Karen Frensch, and Nancy Freymond. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4666-7 (bound). – ISBN 978-1-4426-1455-0 (pbk.) 1. Child welfare – Canada  2. Child welfare – United States.  I. Cameron, Gary, editor of compilation HV745.A6C74 2013  362.70971  C2013-904357-8

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

Contributors  vii Introduction  3 gary cameron 1  Fathers and Child Welfare  21 gary cameron, nick coady, and sandy hoy 2  Mothers and Child Welfare  44 gary cameron and sandy hoy 3  Stand by Me, Engage Me: Reviewing Child Protection Experiences and Preferences of Mothers and of Fathers  67 marshall fine 4  Home Truths: What Mothers of Children in Placement Say about Their Lives  94 nancy freymond 5  Invisible Lives: A Qualitative Study of 61 Parents Receiving Child Protective Services  115 sarah maiter, shehenaz manji, and sally palmer 6  “I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real”: A Study of Six Good Worker-Client Relationships in Child Welfare  139 catherine de boer and nick coady

vi Contents

7 Bridging or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison of Parent and Service Provider Perceptions  168 karen frensch and gary cameron 8 See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us: Families and Family & Child Services  198 marshall fine and deena mandell 9 Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Helping Relationships in Accessible and in Central Service Delivery Settings  220 lirondel hazineh and gary cameron 10 When the Going Gets Tough: A Workplace Study of Four Southern Ontario Children’s Aid Societies  237 deena mandell, carol stalker, cheryl harvey, karen frensch, and peter ringrose 11  Child Protection Jobs in Accessible and Central Service Delivery Settings  262 gary cameron Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: Questions and Suggestions  283 gary cameron Bibliography  303 Index  327

Contributors

Gary Cameron, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Nick Coady, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Catherine de Boer, School of Social Work, Memorial University Marshall Fine, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Karen Frensch, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Nancy Freymond, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Cheryl Harvey, Faculty of Business, Wilfrid Laurier University Lirondel Hazineh, Kitchener Sandy Hoy, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Sarah Maiter, School of Social Work, York University Deena Mandell, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University Shehenaz Manji, London Sally Palmer, Professor Emeritus, Social Work, McMaster University Peter Ringrose, Kitchener Carol Stalker, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University

This page intentionally left blank

CREATING POSITIVE SYSTEMS OF CHILD AND FAMILY WELFARE Congruence with the Everyday Lives of Children and Parents

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction gary cameron

The North American approach to child protection remains the focus of persistent criticism. Whatever modifications have been made to this approach over recent decades, its core limitations remain evident – including parental fear and resistance, a limited range of services and supports available to families, escalating costs, and high service provider stress and turnover. Nonetheless, this child protection system’s basic orientation and how it is organized remain broadly accepted. For most, it’s simply how the work is done. Arguably the core elements of this child protection model (i.e., focus on children as individuals, investigation of families, holding parents accountable, reliance on legal authority to intervene in family life and out-of-home care of children) have remained remarkably stable for a very long time (Cameron, Freymond, Cornfield, & Palmer, 2007). Over recent decades, in many settings, this child protection system has experienced extraordinary growth. For example, in Ontario, Canada, since 1990, the child protection system has gone from being “a poor sister” to being the largest and best financed of social service systems. Among other things, there have been dramatic increases in investments into risk assessment technologies, computerized documentation and accountability procedures, and service delivery rules and regulations. Staff complements have more than doubled. Salaries and benefits have greatly improved. Buildings are bigger and better equipped. Yet the core limitations continue unabated. Few are satisfied with current arrangements; some question the sustainability of the current model. Yet there is little evidence of a desire or a capacity to reflect on fundamental shifts in orientation and organization. Inertia and self-interest are powerful obstacles to imagining different realities and to experimentation.

4  Gary Cameron

This volume presents the findings and discusses their implications from the Partnerships for Children and Families Project’s program of research between 2000 and 2010. An earlier book presented the background papers orienting the 2000–2010 program of research (Cameron, Coady, & Adams, 2007). A second book focused on comparisons of international systems of child and family welfare. These international comparisons were an integral part of our search for promising alternatives to the child protection model examined in this volume (Freymond & Cameron, 2006). The program of research presented in this volume provides an original foundation for interpretation and speculation. It incorporates a variety of research strategies carried out by different teams of researchers. Yet it unfolded within a common investigatory framework (or set of questions) that allowed comparisons to be made of the results and interpretations from the different studies. Indeed, an explicit intention of this program of research was to explore the convergence of findings and interpretations across different research strategies and investigative teams. A definite set of expectations and purposes shaped the design of this program of research. These are articulated before an overview of the general research design is presented. This chapter concludes with an overview of the volume and how the chapters relate to each other. Critique and Systems Engineering Part of our basic motivation was to seek a useful location somewhere between a critique of the existing child protection system and a focus on responding to everyday realities and obstacles. This reflected our frustration with what we saw as partial perspectives reflected both in the many critiques of this child protection model and in the professional and systems analysis literature explaining how to be a service provider and ways to improve operations in existing child protection systems. Without a doubt, the development of this program of research was heavily influenced by the persistent criticisms of this child protection model in the literature and clearly manifested in our earlier investigations. To quite different degrees, members of the research team were influenced by some of the more fundamental criticisms of child protection in North America (e.g., blaming of mothers, adding to the stress in the lives of poor and marginalized families, evidence of the disastrous consequences of child protection interventions for Indigenous populations,

Introduction 5

the inadequacy of explanations and solutions rooted in perceptions of individual and family deficiencies, offering minimal levels of useful assistance, and so on). We also voiced our frustration with the lack of constructive suggestions in much of the critical literature – which often devotes little space to how to proceed and keeps suggestions at a very general level (e.g., empowering communities, providing families with more resources, etc.). Even more aggravating was the refusal in most of these critiques to engage with the “messy” and more intractable challenges confronting all child and family welfare systems internationally (e.g., the great harm done to some children, the inevitability of using legal coercive authority in some circumstances, the need for state care of some children, etc.). This program of research was predicated on the conviction that an engagement with such “less convenient” challenges is central to progress in the struggle to elaborate more appreciated and helpful models of child and family welfare. From our perspective, this literature of critique, despite its attraction for scholars and students, has been marginal to the evolution of North American child protection systems. The literature and research with the most influence on the development of child protection systems in North American, while often acknowledging challenges facing these systems (such as high stress and turnover among front-line child protection service providers, the extraordinary difficulties facing children growing up as wards of the state, etc.), does not question the central purposes of existing child protection models (to protect children in danger of specific types of maltreatment, to hold parents accountable, to provide short-term and long-term out-of-home living arrangements for children in danger, etc.). Despite shifts in emphasis (recommending more kinship placement of children, cultural adaptations, flexible response models, etc.), this literature almost never challenges the central organization and operating procedures of these child protection systems (the centrality of formal investigation of families, the importance of legal authority, the existence of “stand-alone” child protection authorities, etc.). From our perspective, this “systems engineering” literature has two major unfortunate consequences. First, it reinforces our prejudices about the inevitability of this child protection model rather than highlighting that it represents a series of value and design choices from a larger palette of possibilities. Too often, it shuts down imagination and experiments. Particularly in North America, it feeds our unfortunate lack of interest in what we might

6  Gary Cameron

learn from other jurisdictions. It supports our inclination to export this model around the world – an especially problematic inclination for less economically developed as well as for non-Western jurisdictions (Save the Children Sweden, 2010; Wulczyn et al., 2010). Second, too often system engineering research and prescriptions have contributed directly to the elaboration of extraordinarily rigid and bureaucratic service delivery and accountability procedures. Computerized documentation and accountability procedures, coupled with everincreasing demands for more formal information, continue to be sold as solutions along with the promise of “systems thinking” (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare, May 2010, June 2010). Discussions about whether these technologies and formal procedures might be stifling our capacities to do what is needed by children and families and palatable to service providers have been relegated to the deepest shadows of policy discourse. Our ambition in this program of research was to gather data that might support grounded speculations about fundamental values, purposes, and procedures in North American child and family welfare. We hoped to uncover promising alternatives and modifications to dominant child protection paradigms and procedures. However, we also were interested in discovering feasible remedial initiatives in response to the everyday difficulties confronting front-line child protection service providers and the families with whom they engage. Of course, we make no claim to having successfully satisfied all of these ambitions. We also acknowledge the influence on this research program of others who wanted to balance remedial and foundational considerations of child and family welfare in their work (e.g., Hetherington, Cooper, Smith, & Wilford, 1997). Lives and Voices In our experience, in the formal child protection system, the identities and lives of involved parents and children are defined by people other than themselves. In addition, these definitions focus overwhelmingly on professionals’ perceptions of clients’ inadequacies and dysfunctions. In these professional discourses, the lives or identities of these children and parents have little relevance other than their roles as clients. The propriety of professional power to define and the relative absence of collaborative definitions of what is relevant in clients’ lives and what interventions make sense are seldom questioned within the formal

Introduction 7

system – though professionals’ power and judgment are often questioned by clients when it is safe for them to do so. As an illustration of this prioritizing of professional discretion and assessment, early in this program of research, we invited a group of parents who had been involved with child protective services and a separate group of child protection service providers to advise us about how to interview parents and the type of receptions to expect. The parents and service providers supplied quite different perceptions of what to expect. I was taken aback when a member of the research team suggested that, of course, it was the professional assessments that would prove to be more credible. For me, it was too far a stretch to accept that service providers would have more accurate and useful insights into the lives of other adults than these adults had themselves. Different insights were to be expected, but why should we expect professional insights to capture more credible or useful elements about these realities? My assumption was that both parents and service providers would provide worthwhile, yet perhaps different and hopefully complementary, insights into these realities. Motivated by these observations, we wanted the program of research to accomplish two things: (1) to provide ample opportunities for parents to describe and assess their own lives and their child protection service involvement experiences; and (2) to encourage parents to talk about their lives beyond the focused topics of interest to the formal child protection system. Of course, the qualitative methods used only imperfectly captured the richness and complexities of these realities. Inevitably, such portraits were limited by the scope and the artificiality of research interviews. In addition, they remain deeply coloured by the questions, analytic procedures, and interpretative frames favoured by the researchers. Notwithstanding these limitations, these emphases allowed a centring of this program of research in voices and experiences that are marginalized in most considerations of child and family welfare systems. Our expectation was that these focuses would allow a broader and more sympathetic consideration of the lives of parents involved with child protective services. We believed that having richer understandings of these lives and their interactions with existing child protection services would also generate useful insights into ways to reform these systems. This emphasis on local voices and experiences extended to our research with front-line child protection service providers. Whenever possible, besides gathering information about their jobs, we asked

8  Gary Cameron

service providers about their experiences of providing child protection services and their perceptions of the lives of the families that they served. This was intended to allow comparisons between parents’ and child protection service providers’ experiences and opinions. Making such comparisons reflected our interest in learning about the contributions of front-line helping relationships to service involvement experiences and outcomes in child and family welfare. Local Experiences To a substantial degree, this program of research focused on the frontline service involvement experiences of service providers and parents. It also examined the congruence between these service involvements and the everyday lives of the implicated parents and children. There were several rationales for this emphasis on front-line involvements. We believe that competencies and initiatives at the junctures between service providers and clients are pivotal to success and improvements in child and family welfare. When formal control and accountability mechanisms enrich local possibilities and competencies, they can be useful. However, as is too often the case, when formal and standard procedures supplant local relationships and initiatives, or when they reduce opportunities for investments in local competencies and innovations, they become, in our opinion, obstacles to positive service experiences and improved outcomes for children and parents. Policy intentions or general statements about how formal system modifications will work can be misleading. For example, in Ontario, recent modifications to computerized service documentation were intended to reduce the demands on front-line child protection service providers’ time. Yet fairly recent feedback from the field in this program of research suggests that accountability demands on front-line service providers’ time have increased under this reform. Similarly, Ontario’s Transformation Agenda was designed to allow more flexible responses to families and to increase the range of options available to help children and parents. Nonetheless, the findings presented in this volume show limited evidence of such shifts. Examination of local experiences is the best and perhaps the only credible way to find out what is actually happening with service providers and families as a result of formal system changes. Finally, if our theses are correct about the central importance of the interactions between service providers and families, as well as the need

Introduction 9

for congruence between available helping options and the everyday lives of children and parents, examinations of local experiences provide vital information about these realities. Equally important, they provide a starting point for insights into the nature and feasibility of useful innovations. Imaginings At its heart, this program of research was initiated to support imaginings about how to improve our system of child and family welfare. It was designed to inform speculations and discussions about the nature of the child protection model and how it might be improved or perhaps, in some ways, transformed. It grew out of our increasing disquiet with child protection services in Canada and a desire to articulate alternative possibilities. There were several roots to this disquiet. There was our realization that the lessons from promising programs for disadvantaged children and families have had little impact upon service delivery in child protection. For us, bringing the lessons learned from exemplary projects into the everyday ways of working in child and family welfare was a requirement for fostering substantial improvements in the lives of large numbers of disadvantaged children and families. We also believed that among the most underdeveloped areas of helping in child and family services was using the potential of informal and community helping and fostering helping partnerships. It has become a truism that effective programming for multiply disadvantaged populations should be holistic or comprehensive. We were convinced of the need to expand our concept of helping in such circumstances, crossing traditional bureaucratic and professional boundaries. Unavoidably, the basic undertaking is one of organization and delivery system change. However, there was no guidance for finding a proper balance between current system focuses and the diversification of helpers and ways of working required. The capacity of child protection systems to support experimentation and to sustain innovations in their core operations was unclear. This suggested to us the usefulness of seeking specific niches where innovation was both important and feasible. We understood that service participant and service provider perceptions of what was important and what was helpful did not necessarily correspond to each other. Opportunities for respectful dialogue between these service participants and providers were almost nonexistent. Yet we believed that information about these perspectives

10  Gary Cameron

and opportunities for cross-fertilization were vital if we were to gain insights into motivations for participation, the potential for collaboration, and the appropriateness of helping strategies. It was significant when, early in this program of research, giving voice to our frustration with the discouraging portraits of parent and service provider experiences that were emerging, we asked “Does anyone do this work differently?” and realized that no one on the research team nor any of our colleagues could answer this question. Clearly there was a need to expand our horizons. This question led directly to our investigations of family service, community caring, and child protection models of child and family welfare in various jurisdictions internationally (Freymond & Cameron, 2006). Related interests undergirded the research presented in this volume. How necessary is it to do this work differently? What types of helpful shifts in orientation and practices might be feasible? We were interested in the dialogue and innovation that could be opened up through this program of research. Broken Mirror Research Design For the first five years, we were fortunate to receive funding as a Community University Research Alliance from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This allowed us the latitude to be creative in how we carried out the research program. We developed an overall research design that focused on multiple levels within the child and family welfare system. Consequently, with our agency and community partners, we used varied strategies to explore topics such as daily living realities for families, service involvements, helping relationships, everyday work environments, service delivery guidelines and procedures, and alternatives to dominant service delivery models. Our interest was not only in what would be found within each area of investigation but also in the gestalt – what images and ideas might emerge by looking across these various areas of exploration. An external reviewer characterized this approach as taking a 360° look at a topic of interest. Our primary sources of data came through the cooperation of child protection agencies in southwestern Ontario. As indicated earlier, our priority was to create rich material to support discussion and speculation. We did not expect or strive to create an integrated or coherent portrait of child protection realities from this approach. The project involved a large number of faculty and graduate student researchers with varying exposures to and perspectives on

Introduction 11

child protection services. A core operating principle in this design was to protect the intellectual space needed for the various research teams to focus on their own explorations and interpretations. Consequently, while there were many discussions about the different investigations involving researchers and community partners, no effort was made to force a consensus about the most important findings or their implications. When similar findings or interpretations emerged across studies within this program of research, these were uncovered though independent processes. Besides the need to coordinate the efforts of a large group of researchers, two general assumptions about the nature of empirical research guided the creation of the overall design. First, we suspected that what investigations found would be influenced by the research procedures followed. For example, the portraits of parents’ involvements with child protective services should vary in significant ways if they were based on one-shot semi-structured qualitative interviews or on a series of open-ended life story interviews or on responses on quantitative indicators and measures. Similarly, we wondered how different images derived from data from clients, service providers, and files would be. Finally we thought that quite different interpretations of similar findings might emerge from investigators with divergent experiences, priorities, and theoretical/ideological orientations. One consequence of these expectations is that we deliberately built redundancy in to how the topics of primary interest were investigated in this program of research. The three areas that received the bulk of the attention – front-line child protection helping relationships, service delivery and involvement experiences, and front-line child protection employment – were each the focus of several research strategies carried out by different groups of researchers. Therefore, while each of the chapters in this volume is written to stand on its own as a resource, a more complex image of a topic of interest, such as child protection helping relationships, would come from looking at more of the chapters that touch on this subject. In our discussions, we thought of this as a broken mirror design. In this metaphor, each fragment of the broken mirror, depending on its size and shape and where it landed, would reflect something different from its surroundings. What was unique about the overall design for the original portion of the program of research was both the variety and, in some instances, the innovativeness of approaches to research incorporated: Individual interviews with parents, a series of life story

12  Gary Cameron

interviews with mothers and fathers, comparisons of how groups of service providers and mothers/fathers interpreted summaries of these life stories, co-authorship by parents and service providers of good helping relationship stories, interviews with available family members together, matching perspectives from service providers, parents, and files, individual and group interviews with service providers, and quantitative surveys of service providers. Specific information about the research approach used in particular portions of this program of research is included in the individual chapters in this volume. However, all of the research focuses and strategies used in the original program of research were conceived within this overall broken mirror design. We used the figure below to visualize the design. The different shades of the triangles indicate different research strategies carried out by different people. The different triangle positions around the circle suggest that these investigations were looking at different aspects of child and family welfare. The triangles meeting in the middle and separating further out suggests both common ground and difference among these studies. The grey areas between triangles suggest that there was much that was important that we did not look at. If the figure more accurately reflected reality, the grey areas would be a good deal larger than the shaded triangles. As seen in the various chapters in this volume, there were important areas of convergence in finding across many of these investigations – for example, about the nature and importance of good helping relationships in child welfare or the under-exploited motivations and capabilities of parents to act on behalf of their families. There were notable areas of divergence as well. Within data sets, investigators tended to gravitate towards topics germane to their experiences or interests. For example, not surprisingly, investigators with clinical backgrounds typically gave more weight to information about helping relationships than researchers with different orientations. There were also patterned differences in interpretations of findings across groups of researchers. Some prioritized good helping relationships and saw potential for improvements. Others stressed better management and supervision procedures as central. Others, like this author, thought that broader system characteristics deeply shaped front-line realities for service providers and clientele and argued for more fundamental shifts in how the work was done. Both these similarities and differences are reflected in this volume and informed discussions among researchers and with our community partners.

Introduction 13 Figure

10.

Several more focused research studies emerged from the original 2000–2005 broken mirror design. The first was an investigation of community caring, family service, and child protection systems of child and family welfare in purposively selected international settings presented in an earlier volume (Freymond & Cameron, 2006). Currently, this international focus has expanded to include an interest in understanding child and family welfare systems that would be congruent with nonWestern and less economically affluent settings. There were also a couple of follow-up investigations of front-line child protection employment realities building upon the initial program of research. Following on the mothers’ life story research, life story research about fathers involved with child protective services was undertaken. All of this research is discussed in this volume. In the beginning of the program of research, our community partners requested an investigation of what happens to youth and their families after youth leave residential mental health programs. In our jurisdiction, over half of the spaces in these residential programs were occupied by children in the care of Children’s Aid Societies. Our initial

14  Gary Cameron

exploratory research suggested serious ongoing community adaptation challenges for these youth. This led to a more ambitious research project documenting community adaptation outcomes and processes for this population that is now entering its third three-year cycle of funding. It has also resulted in an ongoing comprehensive synthesis review of the theory and evidence for programming to improve community adaptation outcomes for these youth. Our hope is that all of this ­research will support the development of demonstration programs to i­mprove community adaptation outcomes for youth graduating from these programs. The results of this line of research are presented in a separate volume. Also, in the beginning, several of our child welfare partners wanted an investigation of the impact of their efforts to provide front-line child protection services in more accessible school and community settings. Favourable impressions from the initial explorations resulted in the three-year Transforming Front-Line Child Protection Practice Project comparing the impacts of central and accessible child protection service delivery on service involvement, family outcomes, and front-line child protection jobs. These findings are discussed in two chapters in this volume. All of this program of research engaged with multiple community partners. Most of the partners were involved in many parts of this program of research and quite a few continue to be involved. The community partners for this research included Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, Chatham-Kent Children’s Services, Children’s Aid Society of Halton, Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, Community Mental Health Clinic (Guelph), Craigwood Youth Services, Family and Children’s Services of Kitchener-Waterloo, Family and Children’s Services of Guelph and Wellington County, kidsLINK, Lutherwood, Madame Vanier Children’s Services, Onward Willow Better Beginnings Better Futures (Guelph), Shelldale Centre: A Village of Support, and Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council. Readers wanting more detail about any of this work or access to its broad range of products are encouraged to visit our website: www. wlu.ca/pcfproject. Overview of the Volume Each chapter in this volume has been written as a stand-alone resource. However, as discussed in the broken mirror design overview, several research strategies have focused on the major topics of interest in this

Introduction 15

program of research. Therefore, there is value in reading chapters that touch upon the same topic but draw on different investigative approaches. The following brief chapter summaries are presented to assist readers to make informed choices about the chapters relevant to their interests.1 Finally, all of the chapters read together will provide a rich portrait of related topics in child and family welfare and hopefully invite useful reflection and discussion. Rather than summarize the material in earlier chapters, the concluding chapter presents reflections about general issues and implications for child and family welfare stemming from this program of research. Chapter 1: Fathers and Child Welfare provides an overview of the findings about everyday living and child welfare service involvements from 18 life stories collected from fathers involved with one Children’s Aid Society in southern Ontario. While available research about fathers involved with child protection authorities has focused on these fathers’ limitations, a few authors have pointed out that many maintained involvement with their children whether they lived together or not. Still, little sense of these men’s lives other than the existence of a limited set of problems exists. Fathers, typically believed to have little to say, indeed had much to say when interviewed for this project. Findings reveal that most fathers involved with child protection authorities care about their children, and many would be willing to engage with child protection service providers on their children’s behalf, yet many are excluded from services. The authors conclude with the recognition that service providers are constrained by formal child protection system expectations but that knowing more about fathers’ lives and their experiences with child welfare opens possibilities to approach fathers in more productive ways. Chapter 2: Mothers and Child Welfare argues that the official and popular media images of mothers involved with child welfare are unnecessarily harsh and colour our expectations and interventions. The authors wished to challenge the usefulness of what they see as a skewed perspective on child welfare parents and their family lives. The chapter is based on life story interviews with 16 randomly selected mothers whose child protection cases had recently been closed at two child

1 Thanks to Sarah Maiter for providing these chapter summaries.

16  Gary Cameron

protection agencies in southern Ontario. The discussion of the mothers’ stories in this chapter is organized around five broad themes that emerged from the life stories: (1) Lives of Lesser Privilege; (2) Lives as Children; (3) Partners and Relations with Children; (4) Involvement with Child Protection Services; (5) Heroines/Survivors. The authors argue for the creation a child and family welfare system that has a capacity to acknowledge and build on these mothers’ determination. They argue that besides assisting these women with “healing,” and enhancing their educational and career opportunities, these stories point to a need, in some instances, for a community to share the responsibility with parents for buffering children from dangers and enhancing children’s well-being. Chapter 3: Stand by Me, Engage Me: Reviewing Child Protection Experiences and Preferences of Mothers and of Fathers compares service providers’ and parents’ understandings of the life stories in the first two chapters. Separate groups of mothers, fathers, and service providers read a 15–18 page summary of each life story. In separate groups, they discussed their impressions of the life stories and their messages for child protection services. The chapter focuses on discussion group members’ perceptions of the child protection service experiences of fathers and mothers and on the requirements for developing improved helping relationships with mothers and fathers. The author concludes that child protection services should incorporate fathers more fully and judge mothers less harshly. This could help relieve women from the unfair burden of blame and responsibility for change in their family life. It could also reduce the isolation of fathers and enhance the positive impact that fathers can have on child development. Chapter 4: Home Truths: What Mothers of Children in Placement Say about Their Lives states that the work of protecting children is linked closely to evaluating mothering capacity. The author says that mothers almost always respond to the placement of their children with intense emotion, but their subjective experiences or perspectives are barely understood. In this chapter, she presents findings from a qualitative research study that explores the everyday reality of 31 mothers and their experiences with child placement. She suggests that we resist totalizing negative social descriptions of mothers with children in placement, as this reinforces and sustains their status as bad mothers and influences the child welfare services that are made available to them. She argues that

Introduction 17

if we appreciate the challenges in these women’s lives, then acknowledging the constraints of lesser privilege and creating strategies for partnering with them in ways that are congruent with their everyday realities are pivotal. She concludes that a shift away from our focus on mothering and motherhood might free us to see how others, such as fathers, extended family, community members, and systems of child welfare, could work together with these mothers in the raising of children. Chapter 5: Invisible Lives: A Qualitative Study of 61 Parents Receiving Child Protective Services starts from the perspective that service participants’ experiences can provide insights into respectful approaches to service delivery and are central to a critical, anti-oppressive, and social justice approach to social work practice. They report that parents coped with a range of problems that impinged on their families, including unsupportive relationships, frequent moves, poverty, abuse of the mother by her male partner, socially toxic environments, other forms of oppression, and job struggles. Some parents had themselves experienced difficult, disrupted, and insecure childhoods, including childhood abuse. Many parents were coping with children who presented special challenges. They struggled to obtain the help they felt that their children needed. Parents also demonstrated strengths and personal resources that helped them to care for their children within a harsh social and economic environment. The authors conclude that changes cannot be made just by asking front-line workers to work differently. They argue that greater overall help with families is needed to provide a balance to the heavy scrutiny endured by these families. Chapter 6: “  I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real”: A Study of Six Good WorkerClient Relationships in Child Welfare builds on the premise that the quality of a helping relationship is an important determinant of good results for clients. This study explored the development of good helping relationships in the child welfare system through employing a multiple interview strategy for each of the six service provider–parent dyads, totalling 30 (1½–2 hour) interviews in all. A unique aspect of the study’s methodology was focusing on helping relationships that service providers and clients agreed went well and engaging them with the researchers in “co-authoring” the story of this relationship. Good helping relationships are as essential to child welfare work as they are to counselling and psychotherapy and evidenced many of the same features.

18  Gary Cameron

They also incorporated features that may be particularly relevant to child welfare such as informal worker style, the mindful and judicious use of power, and the pushing of professional boundaries. This study shows that positive helping relationships can act as a salve in the raw, emotionally laden, and high-stakes child welfare arena. Chapter 7: Bridging or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison of Parent and Service Provider Perceptions examines whether, when child welfare service providers and parents engage with each other, they have similar impressions of what is important and what is helpful. The authors examined 15 matched triads of parent and service provider interviews and case file information. The researchers found that generally mothers and service providers brought different lenses to understanding family circumstances and child protection service involvements. Despite some similarities, there were clearly important images missing from each perspective. The authors suggest that bringing together these perspectives can contribute to improving the quality of relationships between parents and child protection service providers. For the authors, two changes were needed to unite the different views – more mutually acceptable negotiated service plans and more service provider time available to families. This chapter calls for improved relationships between service recipients and service providers and suggests ways to accomplish this. Chapter 8: See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us: Families and Family & Child Services begins from the premise that the family occupies a central position in the socialization, resilience, and well-being of children and all family members. The authors talked with families who had been involved with child protection services to see what their experiences had been like. The authors argue that the protection focus, while essential, meant that opportunities for families to achieve a secure and nurturing environment were not being augmented. The study found that parents often felt that they were being viewed, at least initially, as criminals in their interactions with service providers. The authors suggest that service providers be mindful of the ways in which they represent power and that they be sensitive in the ways that they use it. Research participants indicated that an honest and respectful initial approach sets the stage for future collaboration. The authors examine the constraints that child protection services impose on establishing productive helping relationships and how these might be lessened.

Introduction 19

Chapter 9: Parents’  Views of Child Welfare Helping Relationships in Accessible and in Central Service Delivery Settings compares parents’ perspectives of their relationships with child protection service providers at both central and accessible settings. Data were collected from service providers, parents, and files at 11 accessible and central service delivery settings at six different child welfare agencies in Ontario. Accessible models embedded front-line child protection service providers in neighbourhoods or schools. Central models located child protection service providers in agency premises that were not physically close to most of the families served. This study presents evidence that accessible service delivery sites have some substantial advantages over central service delivery sites in creating appreciated helping relationships. Equally important, appreciated helping relationships contribute a good deal to parents’ willingness to ask for help again should the need arise. They also make parents more likely to tell their friends to ask for help. More parents are satisfied with their service involvements and more find their involvements worthwhile. These findings were consistent across a Family Functioning and Service Satisfaction questionnaire completed by parents and qualitative interviews with a subset of these parents. The authors conclude that both service delivery intentions and physical settings contributed to the significant differences found between accessible and central service delivery sites in this study. Chapter 10: When the Going Gets Tough: A Workplace Study of Four Southern Ontario Children’s Aid Societies presents a study of employee burnout and turnover in child protection agencies. The original employee survey consisted of 254 questions designed to capture the experience of being an employee in a children’s aid society in a multidimensional way. In total, 13 focus groups were conducted across the four participating child welfare agencies. The research paid particular attention to the job attitudes and intentions of front-line child protection service providers. What emerged most clearly in the quantitative data was how unmanageable their jobs felt and the toll this took on them. The importance of collegial or team support and a good supervisor was strongly emphasized in both the quantitative and the qualitative data. For the authors, the most important finding was the relatively high level of job satisfaction and sense of personal accomplishment reported by direct service workers in spite of very high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. They speculated that, at least to some extent, this could be explained by social workers being strongly motivated to give

20  Gary Cameron

of themselves in order to help others. High image violation, high emotional exhaustion, low job satisfaction, low organizational commitment-affective (feelings of wanting to stay with the organization), and low organizational commitment-continuance (feelings of needing to stay and needing to avoid the costs of leaving) were all significant predictors of high scores on intention to leave the organization in this study. The finding that emotional exhaustion peaked for DSWs between 2.5 and 5 years prompted the authors to speculate that structural conditions may converge with accumulated stressful experiences at this point in one’s career. The findings indicated that important determinants of overall job satisfaction included a sense of personal accomplishment, satisfaction with the intellectual challenges adequate supports in terms of informational resources and competent supervisors. These opportunities and conditions in an agency made a difference for employees, perhaps helping to counter the heavy emotional burden that they also experienced. Chapter 11: Child Protection Jobs in Accessible and Central Service Delivery Settings compares the job experiences of front-line child protection service providers at central and at accessible settings. Data were collected from service providers, parents, and files at 11 accessible and central service delivery settings at six different child welfare agencies in Ontario. Accessible models embedded front-line child protection service providers in neighbourhoods or schools. Central models located child protection service providers in agency premises that were not physically close to most of the families served. There were significant differences in service providers’ perceptions of their relationships with families, partner organizations, and communities between the accessible and centralized service delivery sites. The authors conclude that both the service philosophy guiding our efforts and the physical settings for delivering child protective services matter a lot. But they also stress a need to greatly reduce the bureaucratic and accountability constraints on front-line child protection employees if the potential of accessible service delivery is to be realized and sustained.

1  Fathers and Child Welfare gary cameron, nick coady, and sandy hoy

Child Welfare Perspectives on Fathers Fathers are marginalized both in thinking about child welfare interventions and in considerations of what children need in their lives (Dominelli et al., 2011; Leslie et al., 2011; Strega et al., 2008). They are often relegated to the background when families are engaged by child welfare authorities. When they are considered, it is more often as sources of difficulty than as a potentially positive resource for children and families. This chapter provides an overview of the findings about everyday living and child welfare service involvements from 18 life stories collected from fathers involved with one Children’s Aid Society in Southern Ontario. This life story research was designed to provide broader and more nuanced portraits of these men than is common in the literature. Child welfare literature has traditionally focused on fathers as abuse perpetrators and on their absence from families (Clapton, 2009; Strega et al., 2008). However, more recently, there is greater acceptance that fathers can make positive contributions to children’s well-being, whether or not they live in the home (Coley, 1998; Eggebeen, 2002; Featherstone, 2003; Sonenstein, Malm, & Billing, 2002). A greater number of fathers are actively engaged in caring for their children than in previous decades (Eggebeen, 2002; Lupton & Barclay, 1997). Despite these shifts, fathers are still generally seen as less essential than mothers in raising children (Clapton, 2009; Lupton & Barclay, 1997). The multiple roles inherent in fathering are seldom acknowledged in the literature (Lamb, 2000; O’Donnell, 2001). In addition, relatively little attention has been paid to understanding the circumstances of poor fathers or

22  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

fathers from different cultural backgrounds (Devault, Lacharité, Ouellet, & Forget, 2003; Featherstone, 2003; Hudspeth, 2003). Our review for this study of six child welfare textbooks published between 1998 and 20031 found that fathers generally were not given specific attention. References to parents were common. Only one of the six texts reviewed had a focused discussion about fathers and it noted the invisibility of fathers in child welfare as well as the skewing of parental responsibility towards mothers (Shireman, 2003). Similarly, our review of four child welfare/family social work journals over the period 1999–20042 revealed a total of seven studies on the topic of fatherhood. Most of the available research about fathers involved with child protection authorities has focused on their limitations (Storhaug & Øien, 2012). They are described as having higher rates of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment than fathers in the general population. They are portrayed in terms of emotional challenges, substance abuse, difficulties in their partner relationships, school and work problems, and criminal or delinquent activities (Devault & Gratton, 2003; Keegan Eamon & Kopels, 2004; Eggebeen, 2002; Featherstone, 2003; Franck, 2001; Lazar, Sagi, & Fraser, 1991; McMahon & Giannini, 2003; O’Hagan, 1997; Scourfield, 2001). A few authors have pointed out that a considerable number of fathers involved with child protection authorities maintained involvement with their children whether they lived together or not (Gordon et al., 2011; Perloff & Buckner, 1996). However, overall, considerations of these fathers’ strengths and potential contributions to their children’s and families’ well-being were essentially absent from the reviewed child welfare literature. Child protection service providers typically engage with mothers irrespective of whether they stay at home or are employed (Franck, 2001; 1 These were: C. Beckett, Child protection: An introduction (London: Sage, 2003); C. Crosson-Tower, Understanding child abuse and neglect (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002); C. Crosson-Tower, Exploring child welfare: A practice perspective (Boston: Pearson, 2004); C. May-Chahal and S. Coleman, Safeguarding children and young people (London: Routledge, 2003); J. Rycus and C. Hughes, Field guide to child welfare, vols. 1–4 (Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America, 1998); and J. Shireman, Critical issues in child welfare (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 2 These included Child Welfare (January/February 2002 to January/February 2005); International Journal of Child and Family Welfare (March 2002 to March 2005); Children and Youth Services Review (January 1999 to June 2005), and Journal of Family Social Work (2001 to 2004).

Fathers and Child Welfare  23

Sonenstein, Malm, & Billing, 2002; Swift & Callahan, 2006). There is evidence that child protection service providers tend to avoid men emotionally and physically (Lazar, Sagi, & Fraser, 1991; O’Hagan, 1997). They may view male partners as transient and interchangeable (Marshall, English, & Stewart, 2001; Scourfield, 2001). Reinforcing men’s invisibility is the reality of mothers often offering their own interpretation of fathers’ roles in children’s lives. There is a perception that mothers act as gatekeepers, with their views frequently accepted and not verified by service providers (Sonenstein, Malm, & Billing, 2002). Fathers are frequently considered to be potential physical threats to their partners and children as well as to child protection service providers. This can contribute to a reluctance of predominantly female frontline service providers as well as foster parents to be actively involved with these men (Featherstone, 2003; Marshall, English, & Stewart, 2001; O’Hagan, 1997; Scourfield, 2001). This is particularly the case in situations of domestic violence, when men may be actively and automatically avoided (Featherstone, 2003; O’Hagan, 1997). There is some evidence that fathers who wish to be more involved frequently have to overcome obstacles and demonstrate their commitment to their children in ways that mothers often do not (Franck, 2001; National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice, 2001). Not surprisingly, there are several recommendations in the literature for more concerted efforts to engage fathers in families involved with child protective services through intervention models that are physically and psychologically more accessible to men (Connor, 2002; Franck, 2001; Peled, 2000). Research Methods The report is based on life story interviews with 18 fathers with recently closed child protection cases at a child protection agency in southern Ontario. Fathers were chosen randomly from a longer list of child protection cases identified from computer records as having a custodial or non-custodial father involved with child protection services. One constraint was including a comparable proportion of cases having a child placed in care to the host agency’s proportion. Also, a comparable proportion of cases involving domestic violence between partners to the host agency’s ratio was selected. Fathers were interviewed two or three times representing about four to six hours of conversation with each father. A very simple interview

24  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

strategy was used involving a preamble asking each father to imagine that a movie or book of his life was being made and to decide what was in the story. The story could begin in the present or past and should include what he thought would be most important if he wanted someone to understand his life. Interviewers also asked about a standard set of topics (e.g., childhood, family life, education, work, child welfare involvement) in later interviews if these were not discussed through the previous procedures. The tapes for each father’s interviews were transcribed. Each respondent received a copy of this transcript as well as the research team’s summary of the transcript. Three research team members read the complete transcript of the interviews with each father. They agreed on the predominant topics and story lines in each life story. The story lines and topics in each story were encapsulated in an approximately 13−15 page summary story using almost exclusively the respondent’s own words. To aid with the interpretation of these summary stories, and to gauge how fathers and service providers might agree or disagree, one group of six self-selected fathers involved in the study, and another group of nine self-selected child protection service providers, read all of the 18 story summaries. Each of these groups met separately for about three hours to share their reactions to the stories. The third chapter in this volume compares how these fathers and service providers understood these stories. An additional analytic strategy involved building a thematic coding schema from the original transcripts based on consensus among multiple readers from the research team. These transcripts were then coded using the NVivo qualitative data management software (Richards, 1999). The major patterns within each part of this coding framework then were identified and supported with illustrations from the transcripts. There are several strengths to this study. It focuses on fathers’ perceptions of their lives and not upon their status as child protection “clients.” This allows us to see aspects of these men’s lives that would be less accessible if our attention was concentrated on the child protection mandate. In addition, the four to six hours of conversation with each father provide fairly extensive information on his struggles, successes, fears, and hopes. It allows us to consider the specific circumstances of each of these fathers and supports speculations about how others in similar positions might be appropriately perceived and engaged. Nonetheless, these remain stories about only 18 fathers involved with one child protection agency in southern Ontario. As with most

Fathers and Child Welfare  25

qualitative investigations, the small sample, the open-ended methods of investigation, and the inherently subjective nature of the analytic and interpretive processes mean that we cannot assume that identical patterns would be identified with different groups of fathers or by another research team. Finally, these stories represent how these men chose to present themselves to particular interviewers. Under different circumstances, and with someone other than a researcher, modified versions of these representations of self would emerge. These stories are not presented as complete or definitive statements of what is taking place in these fathers’ lives. What these stories do communicate is how these men within the context of this research made sense of aspects of their lives important to them. They represent a different point of view. They enrich our understanding and hopefully our respect for the men sharing these stories. Everyday Living Fathers and Their Children The stories told by the fathers in this research are much more complex and nuanced than the common characterizations in the literature. Equally important, these stories show that many fathers were not only willing but able to engage constructively with their children. However, to take advantage of this potential, child protection service providers need to become more knowledgeable, less fearful, and more engaged with fathers. importance of being a father Almost all of the fathers interviewed at some point commented on what being a father meant to them. For most it was one of the defining occurrences of their lives. Such a sentiment was most obvious among fathers who were still active in caring for their children: Nigel: … because like my son, he was just like you know, my pride and joy right, and him and I had been like, like this since he was a baby, right? …

A bit less than a third of the fathers interviewed no longer had custody of their children. Some of these men acknowledged that this was

26  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

in the best interests of their children because they would not be able to properly care for them. In a couple of instances, the children had become permanent wards of the state. Yet even under these conditions, these fathers communicated the importance having children had for them, sometimes hoping that connections with their children could be established again when they were older: Collin: I really feel for Oscar [one of his sons]… I think he really wants to live with me … I have a low paying job … I can’t … take care of him … he’s getting tired of being a foster child …

A small number of men were less enthusiastic about becoming a dad. turning my life around About one-third of these fathers described how their concern for their children provided the motivation for making difficult yet necessary changes in how they were living: George: … look I’m not using drugs, I was peeing in a cup every week, I did that for like almost two years, ’til they [child welfare] finally said, “Man well you’ve gotten a lot of support from your church and the community and your family, and we just want you to keep on going … We just wish you the best, we’re closing the book on you.”

rescuing my children Three fathers told long stories of the challenges they faced “rescuing” their children from inappropriate and sometimes dangerous living conditions with their mothers. These stories illustrated the time and effort invested by these fathers over a long period to regain custody of their children. They described overcoming many obstacles along the way, including unsubstantiated accusations of physical or sexual violence, the prejudices of child welfare service providers, legal challenges, lack of financial resources, and setting up a suitable home for their children. For example: George: … at this stage where Faith [oldest daughter] was about nine months old, I had taken her, like and not given her back … Abigail [exwife] was just using so heavily … she brought the police to my house …

Fathers and Child Welfare  27 [child welfare had said] if you fear the child will be in jeopardy … don’t return her. And go to court, so I again took their advice and had her now the court went on for like nine months … [at a later date] maybe about a week after she [ex-wife] came back [to live with him], [ex-wife] went to [women’s shelter], said I threatened to cut her throat open … she fabricated this whole total lie about who I was and how I was hurting her … I had gotten the police to help me find her … and had the child [second daughter] returned back to me …[at a later date] where [Abigail’s] … hydro was cut off … she was behind in her rent, she got eviction notice, she said, “You won, come take the child.” I went and grabbed her and I’ve, I’ve had her [his youngest daughter] ever since.

pain of losing your child Many fathers whose children were out of their lives for a limited period of time talked vividly about how terrible this time was for them. These men were strongly motivated to re-establish connections with their children. Burt: I had a huge loss. I feel like I had a huge loss… I’d wake up, go to work, I couldn’t think … It was dark, the darkest time of my life … and I just felt powerless to do anything about it.

Some of the fathers who were not able to able to live with their children, including some who believed that they might be able to do so in the future, also voiced their distress over this loss. Dean: That was tough. ’Cause I hadn’t seen my daughter for probably four or five months … And she looked at me like, you know, is that daddy? … she had that strange distant look. Then I went, “Victoria” and she was like, “Daddy!” … it was hard when you leave, it’s only an hour.

investment in parenting Five of these fathers cared for their children as single parents. All clearly talked about their commitment to their children. They illustrated the demands of being a single parent made upon them. Despite these challenges, all also portrayed the personal benefits of caring for their children.

28  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy Nigel: I work eight-thirty to four-thirty, I’m home by five o’clock every day … I’m home with Christopher [his son] … cooking and … making lunches and doing laundry and stuff … I don’t get to go out a lot … it’s a small sacrifice really … still have responsibilities to my daughter … and Christopher is getting older, and you know, bikes and, and new shoes and haircuts and sporting events … it’s expensive … but I’ve got it under control …

Fathers with a partner also talked about their active investments in parenting their children: William: You got a son, you have two kids [separated by CAS because of inappropriate sexual behaviour] living apart from each other … It’s back and forth, somebody had to stay with Tiffany to make sure she did her homework and help her out … You know we’ve had to make sure Richard gets fed well; clothes and whatever. We have to go down there to check on his homework and stuff like that … whenever we could we took Richard to school.

doing things with kids When fathers talked about their engagements with their children, quite a few talked about sharing activities with them. These types of engagements were described as enjoyable for these dads as well as good for their children. Eric: … we go bowling as a family … I bowl for one league, and the kids are in their youth leagues … [Also we have] a family team, it’s six bowlers and that’s all brother and sisters and parents … [before kids went into care] I did everything with the kids, like, some bike riding, do swimming, do camping … I was with the kids … well actually, all the time … I did everything with them.

There were also indications in these stories that many fathers paid attention to how their children were doing physically, socially, and emotionally and tried to be supportive. Burt: About anywhere from ten to … six o’clock I go and pick up Thomas out of bed, and I just sit with him and wrap him in a blanket on the couch and sit and hold him, try to gently wake him up. I’ve always, since him and I have

Fathers and Child Welfare  29 been together, just the two of us, I just, I always try to wake him up gently. ’Cause it is awfully early in the morning, to get him to the babysitter …

a danger to my kids Most of these fathers talked about circumstances in their family homes that had been or were potentially harmful for their children. The majority were aware that their behaviours and the relationships within the home represented a danger for their kids. Often these risks involved conflict or violence with partners and sometimes problems with addictions or criminal/delinquent behaviour. In many of these instances, at the time of the interview, these men were living with their children. a difficult child Two fathers talked about having a child whose troublesome behaviours led to their placement in a residential children’s mental health facility. Parenting these children presented painful and long-term challenges for these men. The child welfare system also had little success caring for these children. At the time of the interview, there were no indications that relations between these children and their families were improving. Relations with Partners About half of these fathers described relatively stable long-term involvements with their female partners. In every instance, the couple lived with all or most of their children. Three of these longer-term partnerships involved a second partnership for the father or his partner, or both. verbal conflict About three-quarters of these fathers described serious conflicts in their relationships with their partners at some point prior to the interviews. In most instances, this involved intense ongoing verbal conflicts. Most of the men who talked about this type of conflict were not living with their partners at the time of the interviews, although most continued to be involved with their children. Four ended up as single dads. Zack: … she’d been sitting at the computer all day long … There’s nothing cooked for the kids … She sent all [the young children]… to the store and buy candy … We had a big fight … Police came … They didn’t … ask me to leave … just to calm down.

30  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

physical violence A bit less than a third of these fathers talked about hitting their partners. In every instance, this resulted in police and child welfare involvement and in the father not living with his kids, at least for a while. According to these men, the violence often resulted from escalating conflict over time. Problematic alcohol or drug use was a common ingredient. Children often witnessed the conflict and violence. Most of these fathers acknowledged that hitting their spouse was a serious act and not justified. In quite a few instances, the men described situations where both parties attacked each other physically. They also sometimes complained that the reports to the police were exaggerated and did not reflect what had taken place. However, most did not challenge the charges against them. Some said they took responsibility for the violence with the police and courts to protect their children from further disruptions in their lives. Fathers who returned to live with their partners and children felt that the child welfare agency kept them out of their homes longer than was necessary. On the other hand, some acknowledged that the child welfare intervention helped them break a downward spiral in their lives. Most believed that what was going on at home was bad for their children and needed to be stopped. For example, Rob said that he began to work more to pay the bills and spent less time with his wife and children. He began to work evening shifts and took on a second job. His relationships with his wife and his children suffered. Both Rob and his wife Sherry began to drink a great deal more as alcohol consumption became central in their lives. They started to argue more frequently and more violently, episodes that were witnessed by their children. Children’s Aid Society became involved after a violent conflict with his wife. Rob was charged with assault and had to leave his home for about a year. He described reading some devastating testimonials given by his children about life in his home. While Rob was out of the home, it was difficult for him and his wife to pay all of their bills and he was worried they would lose their home. Periodically, Rob was able to take care of his kids after being out of the home for a while but had to leave before Sherry came home from work to satisfy the Children’s Aid Society. Sometimes Rob and his wife got together secretly without telling the child protection service provider. Eventually, Rob and his wife gave up drinking and began living as a family with their children once again. Rob began to work fewer hours and re-established his involvement in fathering his children.

Fathers and Child Welfare  31

Another third of the fathers talked about being falsely accused of physical or sexual abuse by their partners. In some instances, these fathers felt that they had to overcome a propensity on the part of police and child welfare service providers to believe these accusations. In all of these instances, the accusations of violence were not substantiated and the fathers ended up with custody of all or most of their children. Burt: … She [child protection service provider] … just kinda kept quiet and never told me what happened, she told me to deliver Arthur [his first son] back to his mother. And she said she was starting an investigation. And she just wouldn’t answer any of my questions … But all the time, she just kept a, like a cold distance towards me and wouldn’t talk to me … I said “Well when I lived with her a few, like when she got pregnant …” and she said, “Wait a minute, you lived with her?” And I said, “Yeah” … she says, “I thought Arthur was the product of a rape.” So this service provider took [first wife’s] word right off the … which wasn’t true.

Growing Up Most of these fathers did not talk a great deal about their childhoods. Descriptions of growing up were often general and factual rather than emotional. In only a few instances did fathers talk extensively and ­personally about how things were for them growing up. There was a good deal of variation in how these men described their childhoods. The majority of them talked mainly in positive terms about their childhoods: Carlos: … And went to school and everything. You know, pretty normal. And when I was about five or so we moved to [a suburb of the city]… So a lot of my summer I was, you know, doing things for my dad while he was at work. So most of my friends would maybe have more free time than I did at that time.

Another group of fathers, even though they described events in their childhoods that must have been difficult for them, still talked about their childhoods in mostly positive terms: Caleb: My parents separated when I was three, uh divorced with I was seven. Um they separated ’cause my mom was abusive … I’ve never really had much of a family … [my dad] made sure we went out and did stuff …

32  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy Was a promise that … he was gonna take care of me … we … still have a very good relationship.

About one-third of these fathers described events in their childhoods that were very hard for them and sometimes quite horrendous. Not surprisingly, these men tended to talk more extensively and more emotionally about how these times were for them. All of the dads interviewed who were no longer actively parenting their children were in this group. However, as a counterbalance, it is important to acknowledge that three of the fathers in this group were custodial parents. Also, most of the fathers confronting the greatest financial difficulties or problems holding jobs were in this group. These fathers also talked more about personal mental health problems. Once again, there were exceptions to these patterns. Dean: I used to hide in … a round, forty-five gallon drum in the closet, put clothes over my head. And we’d jump out the windows, and run when dad come home drunk. And that gave me a lot of anger … [when] I was young … I woke up I could hear all my brothers and sisters … “Dad tried to shoot mom” … he’d come home drunk, she’d open up the window, throw the shoes out, throw us out the window and we’d just run, you know. ’Cause it was his house, he’s gonna burn it down, you know.

Work, Education, and Money A unique aspect of these interviews with fathers was the amount of time that many spent talking about their jobs. For most of these men, jobs or the lack of employment was important to their stories. Work meant more than providing financially for their families. It was a big part of how they spent their time and important for their identities. There was lots of variation in the employment histories of these men. About one-third had been in the same job for many years or had only a few job changes in their careers. About another third were employed but described many changes in employment over time. One father was new to employment, motivated by his desire to set up a home for his daughter. A bit less than a third were not employed at the time of the interview. Most of these men had been out of work for some time. None of these men were university graduates and only one had completed a college degree. Three had some college courses but did not

Fathers and Child Welfare  33

finish. Six had completed high school. Two of these fathers had finished a vocational program in high school. Five fathers had left before finishing high school. Only two fathers said that meeting everyday financial responsibilities was not a challenge. Six dads were working but said that money was tight and they had to be frugal. Half of these fathers described serious problems with income adequacy that restricted what they could do. Not surprisingly, all of those who were not working fell into this grouping. A third of these men described stable long-term employment. William: … the factory where I worked in [my home town] for twentyfour years, it closed about three or four years ago … you’ll see somebody you have worked with for twenty-four years now, it’s like a reunion every time … it’s just like being part of a family … I do housekeeping [at a hospital]; it’s a change from the factory … I can move around the hospital and do things differently, do work on other floors … At my job at the hospital I talk to people and make their day and they make my day too ’cause we’re all in that place together and have to work together. Burt: I’m proud of what I do. … I’ve … a reputation … that I’m employable … I’ve worked for that in the last seventeen years, basically that I’ve been doing construction … at the end of the job … I do look at it, I admire it, ’cause I think I’ve done this one better than the last one …

Another third of these men described holding a variety of jobs over the years. Overall, employment was more tenuous for these fathers and financial obligations were harder to meet. Caleb: I’d never made much money anyway … it was like the first week or so after Christmas, we had like no money to buy groceries … delivery is what I do but I do packing when I’m there too … But I have another parttime job … During the winter … I go out to the east coast for a – well it’s a three-day trip … I love driving … travelling aspect and, you know, bunking out by myself and getting some time away from – from people and family, but there’s a certain boredom and quietness about it too. That makes me enjoy getting home too.

A bit less than a third of these fathers were unemployed at the time of the interview. In every instance, it appeared that their unemployment was likely to continue for some time. Not surprisingly, the

34  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

challenges of finding access to sufficient money for everyday living were most prevalent for these fathers. Zack: I didn’t have a lot of money to be honest … I didn’t go to high school a lot … Started working when I was 14 on a farm. And, uh, I think I told you that I had the perfect boss. He was an alcoholic … [Now are you on social assistance?] Uh partial assistance … [So you assemble these restraints 6 hours a day at home?] Yep … I worked on farms most of my life … Uh, probably because of my alcoholic tendencies. I liked to be able to be free to drink. And, uh, working on the farm I was free to drink so I stayed there for as long as I could.

Personal Challenges and Supports Three fathers talked explicitly about having to manage serious ongoing mental health problems. Two had to cope with chronic disabling physical health problems. Four fathers talked about their involvements with criminal or delinquent activities earlier in their lives. About half of these men described having to confront serious problems with alcohol or drug abuse at some point in their lives. Most common were their own struggles with addiction, sometimes coupled with their partner’s similar struggles. In other instances, the men had to confront difficulties in their childhoods or adult lives caused by other family members’ excessive use of alcohol of drugs. Substance abuse was often linked with criminal activity or conflict and violence in the homes. Substance abuse was the reason for child welfare becoming involved with some fathers and their families. For a number of custodial fathers, ending their substance abuse was integral to turning their lives around. Both child welfare expectations and the needs of their children were important motivators in making these changes. Carlos: I started picking up for the girls at work [in an erotic massage parlour where live-in girlfriend Chantal had begun to work], the owner and the girls, and they’d be like … I want a half, I want a half, I want a half, so everyone’s giving me forty dollars, and I did the math in my head, well now I can get a bigger amount [of drugs] for a cheaper … Um, I started falling, started falling behind again … being under house arrest for so long and following through with it, it helped, because I’m not around those kind of people … I was kind of glad that everything fell into the way it did … it helped, you know.

Fathers and Child Welfare  35

Outside of relationships in their homes and at work, most of these men talked sparingly if at all about friendships or regular social involvements. Only a few fathers talked about friends with whom they could discuss their concerns. More but not most described access to extended family members for encouragement and social engagements. A small number described other avenues for their creativity. Nigel: I have friends here. Actually of couple buddies of mine, we, we’re like amateur filmmakers, we made a, like we were working on couple of film projects we, just for, for our own benefit, it’s not like, it’s just for fun basically, and the kids are in it and stuff like that, sort of thing, so. We, that’s, that’s one of my hobbies, and I also play soccer on a, on a men’s team. Every other Sunday. And it works out, ’cause I get my kids every other week, and I’ve got soccer every other week

About a third of these fathers talked about the importance of religious or spiritual faith and participation in a faith community in their lives. For many this was not only seen as a source of personal solace and support but also important to the identity and continuity of their families. Zack: So I have a, a recovery group that meets once a week, at [church]. I hang out with a bunch of sober people. That’s my AA … Christian-based recovery group and it’s, it’s just, it’s first rate, I, I just love it … I love the Church. I love the people. You know … I love the Lord so … You know it’s nice to be, uh, to be known and to be liked. You know … kinda like a family that I never had …

Perceptions of Child Welfare Services All of these fathers talked about their engagements with child welfare service providers. Not surprisingly, there was a good deal of variation in these fathers’ perceptions of their service involvements, and most described a mixture of things that they appreciated and things that were frustrating. Overall, fathers talked a good deal less about their child welfare involvements in their life stories than the mothers did in their life stories. Perhaps connected is that, in general, these men did not convey the same emotional intensity (e.g., fear, anger) about their child welfare experiences as the women did. This may be a function of this particular sample of fathers. However, it is also consistent with the observation that dads are seldom the primary focus of child welfare interventions.

36  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

Of the 18 fathers interviewed, seven were quite negative about t­ heir involvement with the CAS, six were fairly positive, and five provided a mix of positive and negative comments about their child welfare service experiences. Notwithstanding this assessment of a relatively equal mix of fathers with positive and negative experiences with child welfare, and all men having both good and bad things to say about their service involvement, overall, there were more negative than ­positive comments about their child welfare involvements in these interviews. What Fathers Appreciated understanding and supportive service providers One of the most appreciated aspects of child welfare service involvement was having a positive engagement with a service provider. Fathers commented positively on service provider traits such as being straightforward, honest, nice, understanding, nonjudgmental, reliable, supportive, decent, flexible, a good listener, courteous, fair, and friendly. Zack: I can get involved with them anytime I want … if I call him … we’ll get together for coffee and … you know, if I have issues that I need to talk about, he’s there … Children’s Aid was very supportive …

Even some of the men who had very negative experiences with child welfare found some service providers whom they liked, and they often contrasted these service providers with the ones they disliked. For example, Dean, who found his service providers to be hard to reach and unsupportive, found a child welfare visitation supervisor to be welcoming and supportive. Phenomenal lady, really nice … she’s just an awesome lady. She makes my visits nice, makes you feel welcome, which helps. The way she talks, she’s friendly … She is there helping fathers and mothers, whoever, she believes in getting the family back together … She is like heaven, this lady is amazing.

useful assistance Quite a few fathers appreciated specific services and supports that they received from child welfare service providers. For example, Zack talked about how his service provider’s counselling had helped both his

Fathers and Child Welfare  37

daughter and himself. He also was thankful for the Wraparound team, which included his child welfare service provider. [They] did my income taxes ’cause I hadn’t done ’em in three years … and they got all of that cleaned up for me … [and] they’ve set me up with a social agency to help me with the, uh, you know, the food and stuff when I needed the help … And, you know, they worked with me, like [they said] “If you need anything, you just call and we’ll come and we’ll help.”

Nigel talked of how child welfare helped him obtain legal representation to defend himself against accusations his ex-wife had made about him and also arranged for a court assessment of the family situation, which ultimately led to his gaining custody of his son and joint custody of his daughter. A few men whose children had been placed in foster care talked positively about their children’s experiences with foster parents. For example, Eric, despite being very angry at the child welfare agency removing his children for a year, noted: I met the foster parents a couple of times … They seemed to be OK, cause he’s, they’re both teachers I think … The foster parents, you know, they were good for the kids.

Peter was thankful that a good foster home was found for his children for the five-month period that his estranged wife was unable to look after them and he was recovering from a stroke. Collin talked about the benefits for his 16-year-old son of being in a foster home on a voluntary agreement and remaining involved with the child welfare agency even as he moved towards independent living: “There’s a lot of benefits to … him being involved with Children’s Aid.” connecting to useful resources Some fathers talked about how the child welfare agency connected them with programs or resources that they found helpful. For example: Raymond: So I wanted to go to the [counselling] sessions with her [his daughter], so that we could actually talk … Sarah would tell me how she felt about things … It was really good … I also went for a raising teenagers course … those eight [parenting] courses were the best thing that I ever

38  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy took in my life … Just the relationship between my kids and myself, after that course, it’s just totally different.

Rob was resentful of CAS involvement but acknowledged the helpfulness of the counselling to which both he and his wife were referred. His individual counselling was described as particularly helpful. The counselling that I went through … for eight weeks … was a huge help … he put it in perspective … of what I’d done wrong … So he treated me, you know, he didn’t judge me, he just told me where I was, where I was going, and this is the reality of it … you’re gonna have to deal with it … And that was a huge help.

Rob added: My wife was going for all kinds of counselling too … and it really started to help. providing a wake-up call Quite a few fathers commented that child welfare coming into their lives obliged them to reconsider how they were living and to make useful changes. For example, Zack said that when his children were apprehended it prompted him to take stock of his life. As horrible as this whole situation has been for me, losing my kids for those months, it had to happen … it had to happen. And now it’s like I have a second chance. Like, I could have lost everything.

Caleb described how child welfare involvement turned his family’s life “upside-down” and caused him and his wife to take a hard look at their relationship. I think it [CAS intervention] made [partner] and I work harder … there became a big push to really sort that out, fix it … I guess a lot of renewed vigour over fixing things … becoming better parents … it makes us kinda stronger I think sometimes.

What Fathers Did Not Appreciate unhelpful and uncaring service providers Several fathers described their child welfare service providers as being uncaring. Rob said that his service provider was not a very compassionate person towards the family. Burt complained that, even though he had

Fathers and Child Welfare  39

been cleared of the allegations that his ex-wife had made against him, and had gained custody of his three-year-old son, his child welfare service provider had never been encouraging. It’s always been abrasive. Never, I’ve never received an apology [about believing ex-wife’s false allegations against him] … Never heard anything in the way of positive feedback. Never heard that “you’re doing a good job.” Never heard that “[son’s] doing all right, or [son’s] happy” … It seems like she’s waiting for me to fail.

Paul made a similar observation: I always, always, always felt guilty before proven innocent … they are judging – they, they don’t know what’s going on.

Some men claimed that their child welfare service providers were manipulative and even lied to them. Rob felt that his service provider lied and baited him. … And he … lied continuously to me about realistically when I’d be back home … And I know why he did it … because he wanted me to lose it on the phone … I’m sure that’s what he was trying to do, to provoke me … and there was just no way I was going to fall for that. He did it to my wife and he did it to me and … it was insulting.

Dean also thought that his service provider deliberately withheld information from him about the expectations for his drug testing. Several fathers complained about difficulties contacting their child welfare service provider. For example, Rob said: He wouldn’t return phone calls … a week would go by without him returning our call, two weeks … it wasn’t until the last four-month supervisory order where he actually came out and talked to me … And he never really talked to the children … he wasn’t very professional, wasn’t very organized.

Dean was very upset around Christmas time when he was trying to arrange permission for his mother to see her granddaughter and, while he was denied access to his daughter, the service provider did not keep him informed of how she was doing.

40  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

prejudice against fathers Some fathers felt that they were the objects of active discrimination because of their gender. For example, Eric believed: It was all females against, attacking a guy … it felt like I was … being ganged on … they were always right, regardless of what you said.

A few men speculated that CAS service providers and police had a onesided view of domestic violence. Dean thought: Some men maybe just do come in and pound on their women and beat them … but in my case, and … I know there’s several other cases that I’ve talked to other men, and the women hit them and abuse them also, and yelled and screamed … I think they should have … the women, also go through an anger management course. Because it does take two to fight most of the time …

Raymond said: They [police] weren’t going to charge [ex-wife for hitting his teen daughter] … [they said] it was self-defence. So I said, “Did you see any bruises on [ex-wife]?”… Meanwhile, my daughter’s got black eyes, she’s got a cracked lip, her cheek is swollen, and if it had been me that had done that … I would have spent the night in jail.

experiencing the child welfare system as unresponsive and rigid Rob complained about how long it took for him to get access visits with his children after he was charged with assault against his wife, although no concerns were identified about his interactions with his kids. Dean felt that he was caught in a double-bind. Although his service provider was not considered helpful and did not keep in touch with him, he felt that he could not complain: I’ve been told by other people to ask to change [service providers], “talk to her supervisor and get a new one [service provider].” But then I’m thinking, then I’m just a troublemaker, so I get worried.

Peter, who was separated from his wife and in the hospital recovering from a stroke when his wife placed the children in foster care, was upset that the CAS made no effort to facilitate his children visiting

Fathers and Child Welfare  41

with him in the hospital over a three-month period. Eric, whose young teenage son and daughter were placed in foster care for about a year before being allowed to return home, said “we didn’t see them for three months.” do what you’re told Quite a few fathers described having to “jump through hoops” to satisfy the child welfare agency. They felt that they had no choice but to comply, whether or not the interventions made sense to them. Eric stated: … they [the CAS] had a checklist to go by … and we were their puppets, on a string … They tell us to jump and we have to … They were always right, regardless of what you said.

Tarek felt the same way: You have to go to these programs to satisfy them … But there’s no difference … the way I’m treating my kids, it’s the same.

Raymond thought it odd that he had to attend a parenting course that he found useful even though it was his estranged wife who had been abusive to the children and they were no longer living together. Dean felt obliged to follow through with every referral to a program that his service provider recommended, even though it seemed like “overkill” to him. financial impacts Several fathers highlighted the financial costs that becoming involved with child welfare had for their families. Eric said that he: Lost hours from work, and lost, you know, well, waste of money for the lawyers … and counselling … it took me six, eight months to pay that … it made me broke.

Rob said that it was fortunate that his wife’s employment insurance covered the cost of some of their required counselling costs (anger management, marital, and alcohol counselling): And they [CAS] don’t care. They basically told us that from the start; we don’t care about your financial position.

42  Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Sandy Hoy

Concluding Remarks Two general observations are relevant from the focus group of service providers who volunteered to read and discuss summaries of the life stories of these 18 fathers.3 First, there was much agreement among these service providers that they did not often engage with fathers in their everyday work. Second, sometimes service providers seemed to have pre-existing service templates or filters colouring their interpretations of parts of these stories: And I think we all tend to think that dads will be more resistant. Or more hostile of the fact that CAS is involved with them … because of our beliefs of our gender roles and so on …

Yet there is much to be gained through connections with dads. This engagement process might begin by reinforcing in child protection service cultures that “fathers matter to children.” A natural corollary would be creating a strong expectation that front-line service providers will talk with fathers about family circumstances whenever this can be done. This would involve more service providers becoming comfortable talking with men. Ideally, there would be greater openness to fathers’ perspectives on their families and what should be done. There are suggestions from this research that the process of engaging fathers will not be identical to engaging with mothers. A substantial obstacle to engaging men is that so little is known about their lives and how they experience child welfare services. A core message from the life stories of both fathers and mothers in this program of research is that the more we understand about the everyday realities of their lives, and how they make sense of their experiences, the less credible the common stereotypes about men and women involved with child welfare services become. If such simplifications are allowed to substantially colour service delivery priorities and practices, they can easily do more harm than good. It is essential that service participants have opportunities to describe and to negotiate their identities. We appreciate Mary Jo Leddy’s

3 A more extensive discussion and a different perspective on the parent and service provider focus group discussions of the fathers’ and mothers’ life stories presented in this volume is found in chapter 3.

Fathers and Child Welfare  43

observation (2011) about the harm done when “strangers” (people we see and/or prefer to see as different from ourselves) are defined by “categories of concern or contempt” (p. 29). We agree with her observation that these strangers are typically both more resourceful and less dangerous than sympathizers and critics presume. This does not mean that others cannot have valuable insights into our lives. The implications are that understanding is likely to be better if based upon conversation, and actions more congruent when mutually acceptable and sensible agreements are negotiated. Of course, sometimes, in the interest of keeping children safe, decisions have to be made quickly and conditions imposed upon caregivers. Nonetheless, the possibilities and advantages of dialogue between service providers and family members are much greater than currently recognized. Engaging fathers is not as simple as expecting service providers to do their jobs differently. Service providers’ service orientations and the service possibilities open to them are shaped substantially by the system that employs them. Undoubtedly, knowing more about fathers’ lives and their experiences with child welfare will enable some frontline service providers to be more productive in their approaches to fathers and families. Also, individual child welfare agencies have some capacity to create innovative program approaches. However, consistent with a central message of this book, meeting the challenges of engaging fathers is linked to the broader issue of creating a child and family welfare system that can be more focused on consensual engagements with families and on providing useful assistance to children, parents, and families.

2  Mothers and Child Welfare gary cameron and sandy hoy

Reasons for Listening to Mothers’ Stories As scholars and service providers, it is easy to behave as if we have an accurate, and perhaps even superior, understanding of the people who use child welfare services. In official conversations, where important decisions affecting these people’s lives are made, it is our voices, and our determinations about what aspects of others’ lives are relevant, that are privileged. Our education and our professional interests combine to make us publicly confident in our judgments and unquestioning about our right to decide. Our benevolence is taken for granted. Of specific concern is that the images of families in these portraits are harsh and colour our expectations and interventions (Brown, 2006; Marcenko, Lyons, & Courtney, 2011; Sykes, 2011). In her analysis of the literature, Nancy Freymond (2003) concluded that mothers involved with child welfare are portrayed “as having difficulties of such magnitude that the likelihood of any substantial change is remote” (pp. 19–20). There had been comparatively little written about the strengths and accomplishments of these women. She makes a corollary argument that is fundamental to the purposes of the research presented in this chapter: The ways that mothers … understand their world, and their behaviour in it, do not fit neatly into the contexts of child welfare … When child welfare expectations contradict what is “common sense” in the world of biological mothers, the expectations are met with frustrations and resistance. (p. 1)

Mulcahy’s (2010) qualitative investigation found that mothers made overt efforts to counter what they saw as the negative impacts of child

Mothers and Child Welfare 45

welfare involvement. Sykes (2011) talked about the strategies mothers used to resist the stigma of being labelled a “neglectful” mother, strategies that often put them at odds with child protection service providers. The challenge of understanding the lives of parents and children involved with child welfare is exacerbated by the extreme portraits presented as the norm in the popular media. Few groups evoke less sympathy than the people who the broader public imagine these parents to be. The image presented of these parents is that they are bad, even criminal, parents who care little for their own children and who are doing serious, often intentional, harm to them. We learn that our priority must be to protect children from serious harm in their own homes and that, in many instances, firm authority and coercive power is required. Significant in recent discussions of reforming Canada’s child welfare system is the total absence of the voices of parents and children (Child Welfare Secretariat, 2005, 2006). Do we not believe that their insights into their own lives and what has happened to them during their child welfare involvements might be useful? Perhaps child welfare’s historical and continuing project of the oversight of “immoral” and “dangerous” parents and the “rescue and reform” of children makes the inclusion of such voices incongruous (Cameron, Freymond, Cornfield, & Palmer, 2007). One of our motivations for this study was to challenge the usefulness of what we see as a skewed perspective on child welfare parents and their family lives. This intention is compatible with the insight by Mary Jo Leddy (2011) based on her cohabitation with “newcomers” at Romero House, a temporary shelter in Toronto: This is a lesson I learned not only from my neighbors at Romero House but from one of my students … [who] had been horribly abused as a child … We cannot define ourselves or others as categories of concern. We are human beings, persons who have difficulties, but this is not the whole truth about our lives … I have learned this from my neighbors whom others often refer to as “refugees” … They are far more resilient than those who are “concerned” about them think and far less dangerous than those who categorize them with contempt. (p. 30)

Certainly, one of our main motivations was to hear about the lives of these women beyond their identities and experiences as clients of child protection services. We anticipated that knowing more about how they

46  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

understood their lives would open opportunities both for improved understanding and for creating helping strategies that made sense to them. The report is based on life story interviews with 16 randomly selected mothers whose child protection cases had recently been closed at two child protection agencies in southern Ontario. We included in this sample a proportion of mothers who had experienced having a child placed in care similar to the proportion in the host agencies. In addition, two groups of mothers who were clients of child welfare agencies and two groups of front-line child protection service providers volunteered to read and discuss 16 summaries of these mothers’ life story interviews. There are several strengths to this study. It focused on the lives of these mothers and not upon their status as child protection clients. How much mothers chose to focus on their child welfare involvements as part of their story was left up to them. This approach allowed us to see aspects of these women’s lives that would have been less visible if our attention had concentrated on the child protection mandate. In addition, the five to six hours of conversation over three interviews with each woman provided fairly extensive information on her struggles, successes, fears, and hopes. While clearly these stories describe experiences typical of many women involved with child protection agencies, and they can be very helpful in generating insights into such circumstances, these remain stories of only 16 women involved with child protection agencies in one part of southern Ontario. We should not presume that a similar mix of stories would be told by other women, even those living in the same communities. In addition, this study contains very limited information on the experiences of women from “minority” cultures. Finally, these stories are constructions. They represent how these women chose to present themselves to particular interviewers under somewhat artificial conditions. The stories are not presented as the “truth” of how particular occurrences transpired. What these stories do communicate is how these women under the circumstances of this research made sense of important aspects of their lives. Lives of Lesser Privilege Privilege in this analysis referred to access to rewarding educational and employment opportunities and to the sufficiency of financial

Mothers and Child Welfare 47

resources to provide access to daily living resources. Lesser was defined in comparison to the educational, employment, and financial circumstances of members of the research team and many of the child protection service providers in contact with these women. Both concepts refer to living conditions for these women during childhood as well as adult life. It is impossible to read these stories without confronting the ongoing pressures of living with lesser privilege and the extraordinary efforts required to survive and overcome such obstacles. Amber1 During Amber’s childhood, her father went to jail for several years for drug trafficking. After her parents’ separation, Amber, a First Nations woman, “bounced around” a lot between family members and foster homes. When she was 14, she was living on the street and sleeping on park benches. She would sneak into bars and drink and use drugs. Amber recalls that she was close to the sex trade but she couldn’t bring herself to get into prostitution. At age 16, Amber was living at home with her mother again but was forced to leave because of the sexual advances of her mom’s partner. She moved to Alberta to live with her stepfather. After leaving an abusive relationship, Amber recalled being scared to be alone without her children, who were in the care of a child welfare agency, and without a male partner. However, looking back, she saw this time as an opportunity to “straighten out and review” her situation. She recalled that she didn’t have much time for dating because she was working so much: All I did was work, work, work. I didn’t have time and I didn’t want to date … I went out with a few guys and they’re like oh, she’s good and she’s got money, she’ll help me out and you know. I wasn’t into that. Like I dated one guy and I was stuck in a situation so I ended up living over at his apartment for a while and it just went to pot because he didn’t pay his bills, he knew I would pay them because it would drive me nuts, you know, why have your power cut off and the cable. I said no way, you know, like get it together. I’m not going to be paying for you all the time, I’ve got no money.

1 All names are fictitious.

48  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

When her daughter Erin returned home, Amber went to social services to ask for help with her finances, but they told her that she was making too much money for them to assist her. Amber’s income was under $10,000 a year. Amber described her recent decision to leave her job at a bar and work for a “temp” agency: Well, Adam [current partner] kind of helped me make that decision. He’s tolerated me working in the bar for the past year that I’ve known him. And of course you’ve got to put up with all the crap that goes on in a bar too you know … I’m so scared. I’m so used to the past 10 years of being on my own where I’ve always had money in my pocket … and it was my money … The way we’re going to work it right now is he wants me to stick with the [temp agency] you know, work he said go to work three days a week. You know, you got pay every day and you [need] gas, cigarettes, whatever we need for the house, whatever bills that he can pay for me and he’ll pay the rest.

Annette Growing up, Annette was the target of her father’s abuse. Annette said that she did very well in school, but the stress from her home life eventually caught up with her academics. In grade 8 her grades plummeted. Despite the difficulties, she worked hard to finish high school, because she planned to leave home when she received her diploma. Annette recalled her graduation from high school: … that was one of the happiest days of life, to get that diploma in my hands. I carried that everywhere. I didn’t care how wrinkly it got, but that was my ticket to freedom. And I graduated in June and I hitchhiked up here in October. And that was an experience in itself. The best thing I ever done. Because my mom says, you get on that highway, and you don’t look back. You look back, you’re going to come back. And I didn’t look back once, only to see if there was more traffic coming, but that’s about it. And I’ve been a survivor since.

After graduating from high school, Annette hitchhiked from her Maritime home province to Ontario. Along the way, a friendly truck driver gave her 50 dollars. Once she reached her destination, she used this money to stay in a hotel and immediately went job hunting. On her

Mothers and Child Welfare 49

second day in the city she found a job doing piece work for $5.69 an hour. Within two weeks, she said that she was making $22.00 an hour. Annette bought herself a car and sent money home to her family. After three years in that job, she began getting nosebleeds and losing weight from the chemical fumes and lack of ventilation in the factory. Her doctor instructed her to leave the job in the factory. After working in a series of the other factory jobs, Annette became pregnant, and she chose to stay home and raise her son. With the encouragement of a social service worker, she enrolled in Focus for Change, a government program that helped single moms upgrade their educational and employment skills. She said that she was forced to put off attending college when she hurt her back in a car accident. She began looking for work again, but then she became pregnant with her second son. At the time of the interview, Annette managed to survive on social assistance through budgeting that she said took a lot of time and effort: I don’t have much, so I try to spread it out. I’m an excellent budgeter. If I have to walk two miles to get something on sale I will. And then I’ll go and get the rest at another place that’s on sale. A lot of people don’t agree with my pulling a wagon and pushing a stroller with a knapsack on my back, but that’s pride. Knowing that I saved 25 dollars to go out and buy him a new pair of shoes or a new jacket, and then I compare to the other people that I’ve talked to and they’re like, no, they gotta go out and buy the most expensive, like name brand foods, and they end up halfway through the month with no money.

A social worker after reading the stories of these 16 mothers commented: I was struck by the lack of resources these women had … the cycle of poverty and the impact of coming from a chaotic family of origin. I couldn’t help thinking about how much I have benefited from my parents’ financial situation growing up. My dad is also a truck driver, like many women in this sample, but both my parents came from relatively stable families. They have supported me financially [when I was a student] in some way for a long time. These women’s stories made me think how easily life could be different and how income inequality … impacts on these women and children.

All of these women at some point had been single mothers, and typically this coincided with a substantial drop in their income. Most had

50  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

been on social assistance at one time. About half had finished high school. Long hours of work, shift work, low pay, and limited benefits were common for those working outside the home. They described similar employment conditions for their partners. Rented living space was modest and sometimes in neighbourhoods considered harmful by the mothers. Almost all of these women described financial circumstances that were very vulnerable to disruptions. Particularly striking was the level of daily living stress described by some of these women as they invested so much of themselves into working to pay the bills, caring for their children, keeping their families together, and maintaining a home. For example, Karen, after leaving her adoptive home and moving through several foster homes, was living on her own at a young age. She and her partner worked overlapping shifts for six days a week, trading off care of the children. At the time of the interview, Karen worked night shift, six days a week at a coffee shop. On a typical day, her partner Taylor worked nine to five, they had dinner, and then Karen went to work until 1:30 a.m. She returned home by cab, fell asleep by 3 a.m., and got the children up for school at 7:30 a.m. Karen then walked her children to school and returned home for some rest and did housework. When the children returned from school, they did their homework, and Karen prepared dinner for the children and Taylor, and then she was off to work again. She described her efforts as “running really hard just to live on the margins.” Sandy also talked about working very long hours at a variety of lowpaying jobs, while she cared for her “hyperactive and aggressive” young daughter and babysat two neighbour children during the week. Rebecca’s husband often worked six days a week and helped out with some of her odd jobs. Not surprisingly, she talked about feeling emotionally and physically exhausted. These women did not have surplus time or money to invest in self-care. Lives as Children Mothers and mothering receive most of the attention in child welfare interventions (Davies, 2011; Swift & Callahan, 2006). Even when there is a long-time partner in the home, he often only comes to the attention of child welfare service providers if he is suspected to be a perpetrator of child or partner abuse. Even then, the mother may be held accountable for controlling or removing the danger that he might pose for her children (Strega et al., 2008).

Mothers and Child Welfare 51

Mothers were the primary caregivers of the children in each of these life stories. They provided the continuity in children’s lives, as biological fathers were frequently absent. Even for the children who had been in care, over time, almost all returned to live in their mothers’ homes and to depend upon them for their sense of belonging. The well-being of these women was central to these children’s and families’ well-being. Yet many of these women told truly horrendous stories of what they had had to overcome in their own childhoods and how this had impacted on their adult lives. Julie Julie talked about her difficult childhood. Both her mom and dad accused each other of being abusive. Julie remembered being threatened as a child that she would be dropped off at Children’s Aid and actually being left there on one occasion: I don’t know if we went into care but if we did anything bad we were really threatened that we were going to be dropped off at Children’s Aid. I know my mom dropped me off a couple of times, I don’t know what age I was, but she just left me there and came back a couple hours later.

Julie’s mom married her step-dad when Julie was 11 or 12 years old. Her mom and step-dad drank excessively, to the point that they were abusing each other. She recalled that when she was 13 and her brother was 11 years old, they would try to stop the fights: … they’d drink with friends and they’d drink until they were beating the crap out of each other. My brother and I had seen it all. Then all of a sudden, my brother and I got certain age … I would have been 13 so my brother would have 11, when we started getting involved in the fights where we’d jump in, you know, you’re hitting my mom or whatever. Or if we saw mom hit dad first and the other way around.

Jen Jen’s mom and dad were divorced when she was very young and Jen remembered her mom becoming “a mean drunk.” Jen’s mom was 20 years old when she was married and had four kids; Jen was the oldest. Jen did not live with her mom and said that her mom had a great

52  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

deal of contact with Children’s Aid. Jen and her mom lived with her grandparents until Jen was three or four years old and then Jen’s mom moved to British Columbia. Jen and her dad continued to live with her grandparents. Jen said that she got along well with her grandparents until she started to miss school. When she decided not to go to school, she and her grandparents would argue and they would often phone the police: I didn’t go to school but that was when I was way younger. I never liked school. I never ever wanted to go because I barely had any friends and when I did have friends, they were boys because I was a tomboy … so I didn’t want to go. I never got charges. Just that the cops would always be at my house because like not going to school and like arguing with my grandma basically because she’d say that I can go to my friend’s house and then I’d get ready, then she’d say I couldn’t, things like that. So, that would make me mad so we would just yell at each other and then one of us would call the cops. If I didn’t end up calling the cops, she would.

When Jen was 16 years old, she gave birth to Rachael. Jen and Rachael’s dad, Tony, were still dating at the time of the interview. Children’s Aid has been a part of Jen’s life since Rachael’s birth. Of course, there was variation in the stories these women told of growing up. A couple of women described relatively stable childhood homes. Nine of the women told childhood stories that were at times particularly horrible. For example, Amber said that she came from “a very dysfunctional family” and was in a foster home at 11 and pregnant at 14. Karen was adopted at two and, after being sexually molested by an adopted brother, moved through three foster homes until living on her own at 17. None of us could live through some of these occurrences and emerge unscathed. This was a reality recognized by the child protection service providers reading these stories. However, perhaps because of their emphasis on “mothers dealing with their issues,” the service providers in their focus groups did not talk about the limitations posed by time and resource constraints on these mothers, and the great amount of time and effort such “healing” efforts required. An important commonality in many of these stories, particularly surprising in stories of very abusive childhoods, was the central role that relations with their parents, especially with their mothers, and other family members had for many of these women and their families.

Mothers and Child Welfare 53

Susan talked every day to her mom and dad. They helped her out with money and “stuck with me when my kids were in care.” Jen talked to her mom every day, lived near her dad, was emotionally close with her brothers, and lived with her grandparents. Amy’s bipolar mom was particularly nurturing to her in the last five years before her mom died. She stated that she could not have made it with four kids without the support of her parents. Elizabeth talked most days with her mom and believed that her mom really loved her. Stories told by Karen, Julie, and Annette of having no connection to family seemed to us to be lonely in comparison. Partners and Relations with Children Along with mothers and mothering, family functioning receives a major proportion of the attention in child welfare investigations and interventions. The literature is replete with descriptions of the “dysfunctional” nature of these families. These family characteristics are presented as very harmful to children and often provide a rationale for child protection interventions into homes. These women’s stories did little to dispel such images; many of these characteristics were dramatically evident in many of their families. It was not hard to understand why there would be concern for the children in some of these homes. Yet there was another critical story told by these mothers. It was a tale about the continuity and central importance of family in their lives and their children’s, and their persistent desire and effort to have a family and a home. These contrasting stories co-exist and need to be understood in relationship to each other as we hear about ways of living that may be very different from our own. Susan All four of Susan’s kids have different fathers; according to Susan, the first three men did not want the responsibility of children. When Susan’s kids were young, she tried to encourage a relationship between the kids and their fathers, but she no longer had contact with any of these men. Susan was 19 years old when she had Adam and her relationship was over when Adam’s father found out that she was pregnant. She then moved in with Owen’s father and that relationship ended when she found out that he was cheating on her. Susan was with Sarah’s dad for three years and said that he was abusive:

54  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy … It was off and on. He was there, he wasn’t there, he was there … It was okay in the beginning. And then, you know, we just fight too much … a lot of pushing and shoving and that sort of stuff. One time I did [get seriously hurt] … I had hand marks around my neck … he got charged and he beat the charge. I called the cops but the cops actually laid the charges because I had marks.

Susan’s youngest child was planned with her current fiancé, Nick. Nick had no children and wanted a child. Susan thought that they had a good relationship, but things between them became tense when the Children’s Aid Society removed the kids because her house was “full of dogs and dirt.” Under the supervision order, Nick was required to attend an anger management group that he had almost finished at the time of the interview. Susan went to various counsellors and programs. Once the kids were returned home, Susan said that she and Nick got along better again. Money remained tight, but they planned to be married once their finances improved. Susan was on maternity leave with her new daughter at the time of the interview and was happy to have her kids back home. She wanted to make sure that they didn’t get taken away again. She talked about caring for her three-year-old and her newborn: The last three nights she’s been really good. She slept pretty much all night. But before that yeah I was up in the middle of the night or up all night with her sometimes. Usually in the afternoons my daughter, she’s three, if I can get her to sit quietly on the couch, she usually falls asleep.

Her two boys were more rambunctious: Very stressful because the boys fight a lot but they’re boys, right. They just think nothing is fair in life because he has more cereal than I do or something.

The boys were also “special needs children.” Susan said that the boys acted out when she moved in with her current partner, Nick. Jen Jen and Tony had been together for four years at the time of the interview. They went through a period when they were very jealous of one

Mothers and Child Welfare 55

another and fought almost daily. They went to couple counselling and found their relationship improving: Well, now we’re getting along way better. Like we talk better to each other, doing more family things like swimming. Rachael is in dancing. So, we’re doing a lot more things. We go for like walks or things like that … We’ve both went to couples counselling together and it’s way better now because we listen to each other more and if I want to go someplace, he’ll let me.

Their daughter, Rachael, was born prematurely when Jen was 16 and stayed in the hospital for two months after the birth. Jen said that she really enjoyed being with Rachael, who was then two years old. She was very involved in different activities with her daughter. They regularly went to the park and other community events. Jen recalled when she and Tony took Rachael to see firecrackers: I was sitting on Tony’s lap and Rachael was sitting on my lap. She was laying in my arms like this. I had the blanket on, I had her wrapped up, my hands were freezing. I had to make sure her hands were underneath. I was just like shaking … And I said I don’t care if I’m freezing. I’m making sure she’s like not cold. I didn’t care if I froze. I’m like I know I’m here shaking making sure she’s warm …

Jen had recently noticed that Rachael had begun to play better with her cousins, who lived next door. Rachael had speech problems. She was using a few words, but not stringing enough words together for a child of her age. Jen took her to a resource centre that offered child care and speech therapy. She was surprised by how small Rachael was compared to the other children her age. She believed that socializing with the other children had helped Rachael. Afterwards, her daughter could say more words together. Children’s Aid had been involved since Jen had Rachael in the hospital at 16. After a home inspection, Rachael was placed in a foster home for about six months and, at the time of the interview, there was still a court supervision order in place that Jen hoped would end soon. While a few of these women talked about long-term marriages, most of the discussions of partnerships told of a series of relationships with different men over time. Most of the women said that they had been involved at some time in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship with a live-in male partner, some with several. Many of the

56  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

children in these stories were not living with their biological fathers and many had minimal if any contact with them. Siblings had different biological fathers in quite a few stories. The images of many fathers in these women’s stories were of irresponsible men who were not able or willing to play an active role in parenting. Many of these men reportedly struggled with substance misuse, particularly alcohol.2 Several of the mothers talked about their own addiction problems. While none of the women mentioned active substance abuse at the time of the interview, several stories suggested that the temptation to turn to alcohol to cope had not entirely vanished. Yet there was another side to the image of partnerships. Several women expressed a desire to stay out of a partnership, at least for the foreseeable future, and others remained committed to their wellestablished marriages. Many of these stories told of a strong motivation to partner, to try again, coupled with a strong desire for a “normal” family and home. In addition, in most of these current partnerships, the women felt that they were doing better than with past partners, and, in many if not all tales, there were descriptions suggesting that their perceptions of improvements might be accurate. The portraits of some families hinted at continuing “chaotic and unstable” family life. Some mothers talked of their very difficult trials in parenting an “explosive child.” Many children in these stories had endured some combination of the loss of a father, a number of “stepfathers” coming and going, violence and conflict at home, parents with alcohol or drug abuse problems, and unstable living arrangements. Some children had moved back and forth between parents and other extended family members. The stories suggested that some of these mothers struggled with managing the stress of their work/school, parenting, and home management burdens. The childhood stories of perhaps half of these women suggested that they might not have much to draw upon in terms of a “map” to guide their own parenting. Some may have been repeating patterns from their own difficult childhoods. Nonetheless, family remained central to mothers’ and children’s “being well” and “feeling that they belong and that someone cares.” As mentioned, quite a few mothers, including many with quite “horrendous” childhood experiences, established contact with their own

2 It was this limited and negative portrait of fathers that prompted the fathers’ life story research presented in the previous chapter.

Mothers and Child Welfare 57

mothers and other extended family members when they were adults. Family was the most common source of emotional and practical support for many mothers, and many of these women and their families did much of their socializing within their extended families. In almost all of these stories, mothers provided the only continuity of parenting and family for the children over time. In many of the stories, becoming and being a “mom” was central in the women’s lives. Many talked fondly about “who their children are” and strove to maintain a family and a home for themselves and their children, under sometimes very difficult circumstances. Involvement with Child Protection Services There were clearly important positive elements in many of these women’s stories about their experiences with child protection services. Quite a few women talked about a positive connection that they were able to make with a child protection service provider. What was most often appreciated was having someone who would listen to them and who believed that they were doing their best. Service providers were also appreciated for offering useful advice and finding helpful resources. For example, Rebecca appreciated finding a child protection worker with some life experience who knew what it was like to live with an alcoholic husband. Jen liked her second worker, who, despite being older, had her eyebrow pierced and listened to her. She liked “having her come over and talking with me.” Kaitlyn found her worker friendly and full of good advice. She “even offered to help clean the house”: The lady that comes is helpful. She has some good ideas on how to get things back to being organized in my life and I was just at that turnaround point where I was starting to come out of my own grief and starting to see things and started to get everything organized again and so she was very nice. She had lots of like suggestions on how to do this and how to do that and like to help out. She even offered to clean one day. She said well, I’ll help you clean no problem … what had happened with [son] and [daughter] they found it was unwarranted, like it wasn’t really true.

Karen, Annette, and Elizabeth gave credit to the Children’s Aid Society for helping them get out of an abusive relationship, though they did not necessarily appreciate how this was done. Jen believed that involvement helped her to argue less frequently with her boyfriend. Rebecca

58  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

said that child welfare forced her to face issues in her life that she would rather have ignored. Women talked about helpful programs and services that they voluntarily used or were ordered to use by child welfare. Susan liked talking to her in-home visitor and found a women’s group a good place to “get things off her chest.” Rebecca thought that family counselling had helped her relationship with her husband. Jen, as a very young mother, liked the in-home services provided by the Children’s Aid Society as well as some of her individual counselling and group involvements. She talked about trying out some new recipes that she had learned from her home visitor. Karen valued her involvement with the “mutual support” group and her “summer placement” through the Native community centre that child welfare helped her to access. However, these positive experiences were not the dominant themes in the women’s child welfare stories. Having more than one child protection worker while their case was most recently opened was the norm. Many commented about having infrequent contact with child welfare workers and how hard it was to get a response to their calls. Some child welfare workers were clearly experienced as insensitive and judgmental. Some mothers talked about workers assuming that they were guilty until they proved themselves innocent. Others felt that information about their circumstances was misrepresented or exaggerated. Others wished that child welfare workers had listened to them before making up their minds. Fear was a prevalent theme in most of these stories – fear when child welfare first showed up and fear that they might come back in the future. Even “voluntary” clients talked about not feeling that they had any choice but to agree with what the agency wanted. Most mothers were very clear that they believed that they needed to do what they were told to do, especially if their child was in care. Some complained about feeling constrained as parents and unclear about what they could do with their children after child welfare came into their lives. Many expressed confusion about what child welfare expected of them and sometimes even whether their case was still open at the agency. Others talked about going through the motions with some elements on their supervision orders or simply not telling the child protection worker what was going on. Even when a supervision order was in effect, or when a child had just returned home from care, child protection worker visits often were characterized as infrequent. Most mothers were anxious for child welfare to be out of their lives.

Mothers and Child Welfare 59

Chen was very unclear about what her next court appearance was about. She liked her new child welfare worker but preferred the mental health worker because she couldn’t take her kids away. Susan and her partner fought the child welfare agency’s version of events in court. She was unsure what was happening in her case and wanted the involvement to be over. Julie didn’t know the status of her case at the agency. Janet said that she was not happy with the Children’s Aid Society or her child protection worker and “would never ask for help again.” Rebecca was afraid to tell her child welfare worker, whom she liked, about her husband’s renewed drinking. She felt that her service providers did not understand how it feels to be caught between your commitment as a wife and as a mother. In these stories, child protection service providers prescribed a fairly standard range of interventions for families: individual and group counselling of various types, anger management and parenting courses, and alcohol and drug testing and treatment were the most common. Parents were monitored to make sure that they followed through with “treatment” and behaved appropriately with their children. While they were sometimes appreciated, these helping strategies were not necessarily congruent with the everyday lives of these parents and their children or sufficient to respond to the obstacles that they confronted. Of particular concern was the use of short-term placements in these stories (from five days to four months) as a precaution (e.g., Annette) and as leverage to secure changes in family functioning (e.g., Susan and Chen). These placements were described as horrible ordeals by the mothers. Most of the mothers with young children apprehended and returned home talked of the children’s insecurities and confusion afterwards. A subsequent chapter provides a more in-depth discussion of mothers’ experiences with child placements. Over half of these stories described the trials of parents trying to cope with a child exhibiting very difficult behaviours. None of these stories included talk about receiving useful assistance from the Children’s Aid Society for these children. Clearly, many families facing these types of challenges become involved with child welfare, and the absence of appreciated responses in the stories is troubling. Heroines/Survivors Heroine: “a woman admired for her courage”; survivor: someone who is “coping successfully with the difficulties” (Concise Oxford English

60  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

Dictionary, tenth edition, revised, 2002). These two descriptors refer to the theme of enduring through extremely difficult times and continuing to strive for a “good” life that is central to understanding these mothers’ stories. “Heroine” was the term first selected by the research team. “Survivor” was a term some of these women used to characterize themselves in telling their stories and the term most mothers found more comfortable. The descriptor “Heroine” was attractive to the researchers because it illustrates characteristics of these stories that are too often obscured from our vision – courage and being admirable. It also jars and makes us uncomfortable. “Survivor” is the more culturally acceptable term and is easier to integrate with established images of these mothers. It is certainly easier to say to ourselves and others that I’m a survivor than to point to the heroic efforts that this required – though not necessarily more accurate or revealing or helpful. This observation is related to an important point evident throughout this volume. Both service providers and parents had great difficulty in recognizing parents’ admirable personal characteristics. Apparently, we’re more comfortable focusing on difficulties and limitations. If we began to find things to be admired about these women, what else might change? Does a Heroine/Survivor always succeed? Does a Heroine/Survivor emerge undamaged from her trials? Does a Heroine/Survivor never fail? Not necessarily. Heroines/Survivors endure under exceptional difficulty. They continue to hope and to strive. Life has given most of these women many reasons to give up. Less resourceful or determined or perhaps fortunate women might have ended up in a mental hospital or prison, on the street, or dead. Many have. Yet most of the women in these stories continued to talk about their joys and aspirations. They were trying to have a better life for themselves and their kids. The broader challenge from this theme is to create a child and family welfare system that has a capacity to acknowledge and build on this determination and hope, in addition to recognizing the challenges facing these women and their families. Amber Amber has faced many obstacles in her life. Growing up, she lived on the streets, “living hungry, and moving from place to place.” When she moved to a new province, she started seeing a counsellor, and she began having flashbacks as a result of her experiences of childhood sexual

Mothers and Child Welfare 61

abuse. Amber recalled that she became suicidal. For many years, she used drugs and alcohol to deal with the pain caused by her childhood experiences. She still drank occasionally, but she said that she had been “clean” for 12 years. Amber said that she avoided social activities because she could not be around people consuming alcohol, or she would drink. She avoided these situations because the Children’s Aid Society had instructed her not to drink around her children. To reduce stress, Amber said that she enjoyed cleaning, gardening, baking, and canning. While she found it difficult to give herself praise, she explained that one of her proudest moments was when she received her grade 12 diploma. Amber spent most of her time around the house with her partner. They enjoyed watching movies, going on motorcycle rides, walking the dog, and going on picnics. They were planning a weekend getaway up north for their anniversary. Amber recalled that a psychic once said of her, “this person is a helper, this person helps people and looks at people different than other people …” Amber illustrated her helpful nature by talking about how she brought a homeless senior into her home. The man’s home was destroyed in a fire and he was left destitute. Amber felt compelled to help him. She received treatment for cervical cancer several years ago. She was happy because she was able to go on and have another child. Amber had dreams of one day opening her own restaurant. She wanted to be married some day and “ride off into the sunset” on a motorcycle. Annette Annette says that she feels lucky that she has survived. She lived through her abusive childhood, abusive relationships, and an injury from a bad car accident, and she also had survived cancer and a risky pregnancy. When Annette was diagnosed with cervical cancer, she recalls thinking: “I just had this determination that this is not going to get me, I’m going to keep on with my life and I’m going to look after myself, and hope to God I don’t have any more.” One of the happiest days of Annette’s life was when she received her high school diploma. She took this “ticket to freedom,” and travelled to a different province to begin a “new life.” Reflecting upon her life, Annette stated: “I’ve done well on my own, except for getting messed up with the wrong men.” She recalled that when her husband was abusive, she would cope with her situation by distracting herself by painting with her son or going for walks. Annette stated that if you dwell on the past and on

62  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

negative things in life, you won’t get very far. She said that the best part of her life was having her children in her life and knowing that both she and her children were safe. She described how she remains hopeful for the future: “I’m a never-giver-upper. I’m determined that everybody around me is going to be happy, including myself … happiness awaits me.” Comparing Parent and Service Provider Reactions to the Stories3 Several service providers were surprised and disappointed that many women in the stories misunderstood the role of Children’s Aid Society. They were surprised how many of these women were unclear about why the Children’s Aid Society was involved as well as unclear about why children were being apprehended. One service provider noted: “It’s as if, in all the work, I hadn’t been speaking their language. That really surprised me.” Many of these service providers talked at length about the challenges and difficulties associated with their work. A common concern was the challenge posed by the “dual roles” built into their jobs. Many service providers recognized the importance of developing positive relationships with parents, but they found this difficult to balance with their child protection functions. One service provider noted, “The system, the way it is set up, forces you to police more than social work.” One service provider described child protection work as “… like you have to take this broken piece of glass and find all the shards and all the little pieces and glue it all back together again. It can’t be done.” Several service providers noted that the time constraints placed upon their work often required them to make quick judgments about their clients. An unanticipated reaction from the service providers was their reluctance to focus their discussions upon the women in the 16 stories. Much of the service provider discussion concentrated on the challenges in their own work, and their comments about mothers were often generalized to the women that they worked with rather than being specific to the women in the stories. In addition, from our perspective, these service providers, with some exceptions, made sometimes

3 A different perspective and a more complete discussion of parents’ and child service providers’ reactions to the mothers’ and fathers’ life stories is found in chapter 3 in this volume.

Mothers and Child Welfare 63

surprisingly disparaging comments about the behaviours and abilities of the mothers with whom they worked. By our count, comments reflecting lack of confidence in these mothers’ potential outnumbered positive observations in these discussions by about three to one. Several service providers observed that the mothers in the story expressed great fear of the power of Children’s Aid Society service providers. They agreed that the moms’ fears were “pretty realistic,” and many service providers discussed the power differential that existed between service providers and parents. Child protection workers noticed that the mothers in the stories had very different life experiences from themselves. Several service providers referred to the “extreme trauma, crisis, and chaos” experienced by the women in the stories. They talked about finding it difficult to understand many of the decisions made by the mothers. Several service providers believed that they had different value systems from the women. A number of service providers found it difficult to understand why the women maintained relationships with their family of origin, given the abuse they had suffered. Others expressed surprise that the women seemed to give little thought to the needs of their children. There was limited discussion among these agency participants about poverty or lack of opportunity in these women’s lives. One participant explained that they expected poverty to be present in families they meet though their work: “… the majority of people that we work with are females who are marginalized and who struggle with poverty … You don’t even question it anymore because that’s what it is.” Several service providers noticed the lack of men’s voices in the stories. They were not surprised. One service provider explained: … a lot of the time the women that we work with have multiple partners and they can change fairly quick so that we automatically don’t spend a whole lot of time holding them [men] accountable unless there was an incident of domestic violence or physical abuse … For the everyday kind of stuff we really don’t focus on the men.

While this was a less frequent focus of conversation, some workers also talked about the strengths of the women in the stories. One participant noted that many of the women were working hard to go back to school. Another felt that there were examples of “positive parenting” in many of the stories. Quite a few service providers commented on the resilience and “survival” ability of the women.

64  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

Some service providers felt the stories highlighted how they don’t know the stories of many of their clients. They stated that the stories supplied more of an appreciation for the things people deal with daily. For others, the stories reminded them of the importance of seeing people as individuals and listening to and valuing their stories. Parents in their focus groups generally identified very strongly with the women in the stories and drew parallels with their own lives. They identified the women in the stories by their names in their comments. They offered “explanations” why the women sometimes made “erroneous” choices in their lives and suggestions about what might be helpful to them. For some, it was a comfort to know that they were not the only mothers who were struggling. They debated the appropriateness of some of the parenting behaviours in the stories and were quite unhappy with the help that the women received from the Children’s Aid Societies. Conclusion This research provided an opportunity to hear the voices of 16 mothers involved with child protection services. Our hope is that it provides a credible counterpoint to professional and academic statements about who these women are, one that encourages thinking about these mothers’ strengths and struggles. We would be pleased if it invites service professionals to imagine living in worlds probably quite different from their own. When, as professionals, we do not feel such a strong need to defend what we know and how we intervene, it becomes easier to open to other ways of understanding. And perhaps, from that place, new conversations become possible. If a child and family welfare system were to credit the realities of lives of lesser privilege, as a complement to investigating risks of specific types of harm to children and providing out-of-home care for children, it would prioritize the provision of useful resources to children and parents and welcome the sharing of responsibility for child care with parents. It would also work towards sharing responses to children and families with a greater variety of formal and informal organizations and groups. Ideally, these reforms would also stress the collective empowerment of parents and communities by creating space where women such as these and other members of their families can meet and support each other.

Mothers and Child Welfare 65

While more recent reforms of North American child protection systems have tried to allow for more flexible responses to families and, in some jurisdictions, encourage the building of service partnerships, these reforms have not made “the realities of lives of lesser privilege” conceptually and ethically central to explanations of family life or to understanding how best to intervene. Particularly important in understanding the mothers’ stories in this chapter was the great persistence and courage many of these women showed in overcoming obstacles in their lives. There is desire and strength in these mothers’ stories usually not recognized in official dialogues. The successes have to be situated in the everyday possibilities and challenges in these stories; accomplishments important to these mothers may be missed or dismissed when considered from perspectives of substantially greater privilege or child protection intervention priorities. Besides assisting these women with “healing,” and enhancing their educational and career opportunities, these stories point to a need, in some instances, for a community to share the responsibility with parents for buffering children from dangers and enhancing children’s well-being. Home help, daycare and after-school programming, respite programs, and mentoring for children or parents are well-known ways to share such responsibilities over moderate to lengthy periods of time (Cameron, O’Reilly, Laurendeau, & Chamberland, 2001; Nelson, Laurendeau, Chamberland, & Peirson, 2001). There was an endurance and continuity of family in these stories that was central to understanding the lives of many of these women. There were strengths in these family networks that often went unrecognized in child protection focuses on past and current troubles. Family networks remained around for many of the women and their kids long after child protective services had moved on. A recognition of the centrality and endurance of family, along with a willingness to share with families the responsibilities for enhancing the well-being of children, need to find space among the principles that shape our systems of child and family welfare. These need to be understood as principles that enhance rather than diminish our capacity to keep children safe from harm. As characterized to us recently by an experienced child protection supervisor, we need to find a way out of a dilemma that was too familiar to her and contributed to her doubt about continuing in her job: “I can risk hurt to children by leaving them in unstable homes or damage to them by bringing them into state care.”4 Removing this dilemma

66  Gary Cameron and Sandy Hoy

requires broader guiding templates about managing risks and providing more supportive “intermediate” helping options (Freymond, 2007). Finally, to our eyes, there was no indication from the focus group discussions that the “clients” reading these mothers’ life stories were any less observant or insightful than the service providers who read the same stories. But the difference in world views was evident. A more complete and balanced understanding would benefit from both perspectives. From our perspective, reducing the conceptual and emotional distances between service providers and clientele described in this chapter must be a priority consideration in our search for an improved child and family welfare system. These mothers’ stories can be usefully considered at the same time as the fathers’ stories in the previous chapter. It is clear that both fathers and mothers have perspectives on similar circumstances that differ in important ways. One point of view cannot be substituted for the other, and both are needed for a more complete and balanced understanding. A valuable but missing perspective in our program of research would be how the children saw the same family circumstances and child protection service involvements. An important insight from these life stories is that many of these mothers and fathers were willing to do a great deal to help their children and to continue their connections as parents. Also, they and their family networks had more resources and abilities to help than is often acknowledged. Indeed, in many of both fathers’ and mothers’ stories, extended family members were long-term sources of encouragement, assistance, and belonging for both children and parents. Some of the conclusions to the fathers’ stories chapter are worth repeating here. A core message from these life stories is that the more we understand about the everyday realities of clients’ lives, and about how they make sense of their experiences, the less credible the common stereotypes become. Mary Jo Leddy’s caution remains relevant (2011) about the harm done when “clients” (people service providers often see and/or prefer to see as different from themselves) are defined by “categories of concern or contempt” (p. 29). Equally central is her observation that these “strangers” are typically both more resourceful and less dangerous than sympathizers and critics presume.

4 From a personal conversation in June 2009 at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

3 Stand by Me, Engage Me: Reviewing Child Protection Experiences and Preferences of Mothers and of Fathers marshall fine

One important step on the way to honing client services in any helping organization is to learn from the experiences of the primary stakeholders – clients and service providers. Historically, more has been heard from providers; however, of late, researchers have been interested in hearing about the experiences of service recipients/clients (Davies, 2011; Fine, Palmer, & Coady, 2007). Clients are in unique positions to assess the impact that helping practices have on their lives. As other chapters in this volume illustrate, in child protection parents often feel that they are in precarious positions, considering the legal authority child protection providers have to remove their children and to oblige parents to comply with their service plans. However, this also places parents in positions to be thorough observers of professionals such as child protection workers because their ways of life depend on such observations (Strega, 2005). Child protection providers, while having much more power than clients, are also in positions to experience the effects of the power in their work with clients – power that rests in the hands of their legal mandates and service regulations and expectations. The detailed stories told by mothers and fathers who were involved with child protection services provided the data on which the focus group discussions with child protection providers and parent participants were based. These stories are detailed in chapters 1 and 2 of this volume (see Cameron, Coady, & Hoy, and Cameron & Hoy). The focus group discussions brought forth a myriad of thoughts, emotions, and ideas related to the lives and the experiences of clients in child protection services. These discussions and subsequent analyses provided material that led to suggestions for potential enhancements in service delivery.

68  Marshall Fine

Methodology The study was qualitative in nature and based on focus group discussion transcripts. Qualitative analysis is particularly appropriate when studying areas that are complex and require a great deal of description (Charmaz, 2007). Chapters 1 and 2 of this volume were based on data from the full life story interviews of mother and father participants. For this particular study, the same full life stories were condensed specifically for the reading of focus group members. The original life stories were reduced to approximately 15 pages each because it would have been impossible for the focus group participants to read the many hundreds of pages in the original transcripts. Two researchers developed the abbreviated stories and revised them until they were satisfied with the stories’ accuracy and full life story representativeness. Each mother and father participant then received a copy of the original interview life story as well as the abbreviated version. They were asked to identify any concerns they had about the accuracy of the abbreviated versions. The abbreviated stories were then read by both parent and child protection provider focus group participants, prior to their focus group meetings. Each focus group member read 18 abbreviated mother or father stories, depending on whether they were part of the mother or father focus groups. The focus group discussions were taped, transcribed, and analysed. The focus group interview transcripts for this chapter were analysed in the following manner. The transcripts were initially read, but not coded. The focus group interviews were then reread and coded. The focus group discussions for mothers and for fathers were coded separately. The coding involved excerpting quotations/meaning units in the form of “free” codes from the focus group interviews whose meanings appeared pertinent to the central question of this research; that is, the enhancement of services. NVivo 8, a qualitative software analysis package, was used for the analysis (Richards, 1999). The codes were organized, and compared both internally (within parent and child protection provider focus groups) and externally (across parent and child protection provider focus groups). All codes were reduced, refined, and organized according to constant comparison procedures as recommended in grounded theory (Charmaz, 2007).

Stand by Me, Engage Me 69

The Sample Four focus groups discussed the life stories of the mothers and two focus groups discussed those of the fathers. For the mothers’ stories, two groups involving 13 child protection provider participants and two groups involving 13 parent participants took part in focus group discussions. The parent participants included an equal number of mothers who were participants in the life stories and mothers who were not involved in the initial research but had familiarity with child protection services. One local community worker was asked to facilitate and participate in each focus group discussion. Child protection provider and parent participants came from two different regions served by two different child protection agencies, with groups from each region meeting separately. Six fathers who had been interviewed for the life story research participated in a focus group discussion. Nine child protection provider participants at one agency volunteered to do the same. These focus group discussions were facilitated by members of the research team. The Context This chapter reports primarily on focus group discussions regarding child protection services. However, two themes emanating from the analysis of the focus group participants’ comments on the mothers’ and fathers’ families of origin and adult lives are elucidated here because they provide a context within which to view the findings related to the service experiences. The themes are the importance of considering the “whole” person of the client and the appreciation of the impact that dominant discourses can have on experiences related to child protection work. The mothers’ and fathers’ disadvantages and hardships in their families of origin and daily adult lives were apparent and poignant for many participants in all focus groups. A number of child protection participants were reawakened to the “whole” lives of these mothers and fathers: the amount of stress, disadvantage, and disruption that many of the mothers and fathers and current clients experienced as children and as adults. Parent participants were also awakened to the struggles of the mothers and fathers and/or reminded of their own difficult lives. These “awakenings” for many provider and parent

70  Marshall Fine

participants came with a general sense that it was not unusual for the background contexts and disadvantaged lives of parents to be blurred, truncated, and fragmented by child protection providers in the complex, heated, and urgent arena of child protection services. These incomplete pictures of mothers, fathers/clients1 can lead to narrow and tainted conceptions of the person/client. The term “whole” is used in a similar sense as noted by Rossiter (2007). That is that the client is pictured in as large a context as possible – a panorama that allows for an appreciation of the person as a fully social subject bound by historically informed discourses. As such, the child protection lens would be focused most clearly if it included the personal and social contexts of the client and the power relations that have historically informed relationships between clients and the child protection system. For the client, not having the opportunity to be seen as a “whole” person can lead to a sense of powerlessness (Butler, Ford, & Tregaskis, 2007, p. 288). Linked to the subject of the “whole” person is the notion of dominant discourse. Dominant discourses are influential ideas that dominate the professions and societal thinking and when applied to individuals can have a totalizing effect, in that a characteristic defines the sum of the human being. An example of a particularly strong and totalizing discourse is noted by Freymond and Cameron (2007), who point out that child protection mothers, in particular, have been identified in society and by professionals as deficient in many regards, compared to the ideal of the “good” mother that is garnered in middle-class discourses. Child protection mothers, for example, have been negatively and narrowly depicted as inadequate, psychologically troubled, and unconcerned about the care of their children. Such discourses were apparent on the broader societal level in the comments of some parent participants, who, for example, had some trouble understanding why a mother would not always put her child first, regardless of the circumstances. A few child protection provider participants in the mothers’ focus groups seemed influenced by dominant professional discourses regarding the impact on behaviour of family of origin experiences. That is, given very difficult family of origin experiences, it would be hard for the mothers to have “insight” into their behaviours, and therefore they

1 “Client” is used at times because discussions often were related not only to the mothers and fathers, but to clients generally.

Stand by Me, Engage Me 71

might not be ready for change. These ideas are not uncommon, nor are they necessarily uninformed. They are tied to a modernist psychodynamic view that problems originate in the past and that the past needs to be worked through in order to achieve future change (Walsh, 2006b). While the past does set a context from which to understand some of the actions and thoughts of persons, the modernist view may leave little room for narratives of hope, curiosity, and strength (Madsen, 2007; Walsh, 2006b). As such, child protection providers maintaining a modernist approach to assessment might convey scepticism in their hopes for clients. Findings: Experiences with Child Protection The conversations generated by the focus group participants regarding the condensed stories of the mothers and fathers are presented separately and sequentially. The themes are offered with reliance on the actual words of the participants. While there are some differences of view between mother and father groups and parent and child protection provider groups, which will be noted, there were many similarities. The findings related to mothers and child protection will be presented first, followed by findings related to fathers and child protection. Mothers and Child Protection Several themes became apparent and are highlighted in this section. They are identified as a negative mind set towards F&CS (Family and Children’s Services) and impediments to service delivery. negative experience: a bitter pill It seemed clear from the perspectives of the parent and child protection participants that the mothers and fathers felt negatively towards child protection providers and the child protection system. PM:2 And that’s why the problems with the Children’s Aid Society is that they’re suppose to be an institution to help and most of the time, and it

2 Quotes by participants are identified as follows: PM stands for a parent in the mothers’ focus groups and PF stands for a parent in the fathers’ focus group. CPM and CPF stand for a child protection focus group member in the mother and father focus groups respectively. Q stands for a question by the facilitator.

72  Marshall Fine bothered me; not one story did they have a positive influence on the families’ lives.

The child protection participants were quite discouraged that there were few “nice stories.” CPM: I thought there might be some nice stories … I think we’ve all had clients where things have turned out very well [laughter] and you’ve felt really good about your involvement. I really didn’t read anything like that in here and I thought there might be one or two, not perfect stories or happy endings but certain ones where …

While child protection participants were discouraged, there was also a sense of understanding regarding the negativity of the mothers and fathers. CPM: Um … I saw their negativity in their feelings around the involvement and I understood that. I mean when you come in our position, in our position we are coming in basically I mean basically we are coming in to say you’re not doing your job as a parent properly.

Though positive experiences were not specifically seen by child protection participants, the parent participants, without solicitation, came up with some of their own. PM: And some of them they got great help.

The following parent participant and former client had the following to say. PM: Very, very positive. Very, very supportive. I’ve been lucky I guess compar[ing] my story to these stories cause it’s been nothing but positive. Excellent.

impediments to equitable service delivery: lack of resources There were a number of issues raised in the focus groups that were considered to be overriding impediments to service in the child protection system and reasons the participants might have thought that the mothers and fathers felt let down as opposed to feeling stood by. These

Stand by Me, Engage Me 73

impediments seem related to the lack of resources available to child protection providers, which is a familiar concern in many social service organizations (Mansell, Ota, Erasmus, & Marks, 2011; Papadaki & Papadaki, 2008). CPM: So, I think either the government gives us more money so we can hire more workers and we can do more work or the system needs to be changed.

As noted, the impediments identified below would appear to be related less to providers’ abilities and more to problems in pre-transformation child protection ideology and funding/resource issues. The impediments to equitable service are: missions impossible, lack of preventive services, need for follow-up, and provider inconsistency. The theme of revictimization, while not a specific impediment, is noted at the end as a possible consequence of the impediments. Missions Impossible. Child protection and parent participants were acutely aware that it was very challenging for the mothers and fathers, given their life situations, to meet the expectations of child protection providers, and some referred to it as an “impossible job.” This is a familiar concern (Papadaki & Papadaki, 2008). While the impossibility of the missions was noted by both parent and child protection participants, there is a very large and important difference between the two. The clients pay a much greater cost for not fulfilling their “missions” than do the providers. The comments below address the very real difficulty that the mothers and fathers had in attempting to accomplish the “mission.” CPM: They’re in a job where they can be replaced at the drop of a hat so taking time off is very difficult for them because then they lose their job and sometimes we do, we do make their life more difficult. PM: The one that really hit me where she was really trying to do what CAS said but then she was missing work. She didn’t have money for bus tickets to get to the appointments and it put her behind a lot financially.

In the following situation, an offer was made to a parent focus group member who had been a child welfare client. The offer was meant to address the “impossible” scenario for the family. Unfortunately, there was no follow-through.

74  Marshall Fine PM: Right because there was so many of us. With five children it was very hard to get them all together at the same time you know so it was Children’s Aid’s idea for the in-home counselling which we said great this is wonderful you know. Q: Did you get the [counselling] when you waited … ? PM: No we just quit waiting after three years.

Lack of Preventive Services. The parent participants reacted to aspects of the mothers’ and fathers’ stories by being critical of the fact that there were few, if any, child protection preventive services for families. Often, according to the participants, help could not be obtained unless there was a critical incident with a child. PM: You don’t, you don’t get it – especially now. Unless you beat your kids you can’t get the help …

The following child protection participant echoes the opinion of the parent participants. CPM: … I had a former client who just called in and asked for some help. It wasn’t a protection issue, but things were escalating. And I thought wow she actually called back which is really good and called in and asked for help … And I looked back to see what happened and they closed it because the child wasn’t at risk yet. So what are we going to do? So, we’re going to wait until that child is at risk and someone will call looking for some help. And I thought, that is a big gap in our system.

Need for Follow-Up. The next set of comments relates to the concerns expressed by parent participants that child protection providers had trouble following up with the mothers. The parent participant below comments on what she thought was a familiar experience for a few mothers and fathers. PM: I felt sometimes they felt so relieved when Children’s Aid came in, like there was so much turmoil in the family and it was almost like, you know they were finally going like, “Okay”… And you know it would be like, left hanging there. And um, there were offers of assistance kind of thing, or they were cut off quickly.

Stand by Me, Engage Me 75

The child protection participants came to similar conclusions. CPM: … I would feel very obligated to make sure that if you were going to identify all these problems you had to really make sure you were going to try and help them with them … but then you have such a heavy caseload that it gets buried somewhere. You are getting new cases constantly and then there is another crisis in another person and you had the best of intentions but …

Provider Inconsistency. Parent participants noticed from the condensed stories the frequent changing of front-line child protection providers. They thought this made it harder for the mothers to feel supported. PM: That makes it hard for them because they get use to one worker, and all of a sudden they’re switched over. And now you have to tell your stories all over again to a new worker. And people get frustrated.

Perhaps the most disconcerting issue in terms of revolving providers is noted by the following parent participant. She suspects that the frequent changing of providers could lead to a reluctance of clients to connect and work with the child protection system. PM: There are some cases where people are really withdrawn from society when they start to get used to being with one person, and switch workers on you. You’re not gonna want to talk to them cause you’re gonna pull back again.

revictimization: déjà vu all over again The child protection participants were keenly aware of the fact that, at times, and perhaps because of the aforementioned impediments, the experiences mothers and fathers had in the system were recreating their past experiences and also revictimizing them. CPF: These women are talking about, when you read these stories, all the instability and the changes and all the stepparents and all the moving. We do the same things to these families. It’s happening more and more that kids are not getting placed in one foster home. Sibs are being split off into all these homes so they are losing one of the connections that might be

76  Marshall Fine helpful for them right. They get different workers and they get moved into different homes. And we almost replicate all the things that make it tough for them in life.

Fathers and Child Protection This section on fathers is divided into four areas. The first two areas, like the mother focus groups participants, address the issues of general experience with child protection and impediments to equitable service. The third area concerns the issue of domestic violence. The fourth area deals with “the shadow” – the marginalization of fathers in child protection services. negative experiences: a bitter-sweet pill PF: There was some positivity, but I know I had a bad experience with them myself. Could have been worse, but they were overall, they came through …

It was clear from the comments in both the parent and child protection focus groups that the fathers, like the mothers, also had negative experiences in child protection. For example, some fathers felt there was too little contact with providers, a lack of follow-through, too many different workers, not enough sense that workers got to know them, and a feeling that the service was intrusive. However, as indicated in the quote above, despite similarities regarding negative experiences, the child protection participants, some of whom had also read the women’s life stories, noted that fathers generally seemed much less negative about child protection services than did the mothers. A group facilitator asked why the child protection participants thought that there was less negativity. CPF: Well it may be because we often let men just leave, like … we do what we have to do, to try and contact them, if they’re not willing to participate, we just let, let it go.

This answer fits with observations that emerged primarily from the child protection participants, that fathers are excused while mothers do

Stand by Me, Engage Me 77

the work and take the responsibility. Therefore, men don’t rub up as often against the stresses in the service delivery system. impediments to equitable service delivery Father participants talked about impediments to equitable service delivery for fathers. It is interesting that some of these impediments/ obstacles may, at times, and according to some child protection participants, serve as convenient rationales for not involving fathers. The impediments noted by the child protection and parent participants are: working fathers, age, heavy client loads, fear, and gender influences. Working Fathers CPF: I think their employment. You know, they’re working, and the mothers are usually, generally stay at home moms, that we get involved with, and the hours that they’re working, jobs, construction jobs, it’s hard to get a hold of them, especially during the investigation part where we don’t have a chance to interview a lot of these people.

The following child protection participant alludes to the idea that perhaps the structural issue of fathers not being around the home can be too easily used to avoid involving or getting to know fathers. CPF: … you know the cases where we can’t meet with dad because dad’s working … And we’re looking at that, saying well that’s fine, you don’t need to come and meet, you don’t need to sign the service agreement. You go off and do what you want to do, we’ll work with the person who’s available.

Age Considerations. Both child protection and parent participants saw age as a factor in the lack of contact with fathers. PF: I think probably age would play a big range in that, you’ll probably find it’s the younger fellows that don’t want, or that are the deadbeat dads. I would say probably at an age under twenty-five …

Age for the parent participants was related to the fact that young men are still maturing and are not as reflective as older men. The following child protection participant expresses a similar point.

78  Marshall Fine CPF: When I thought about the age thing … [it] … wasn’t a surprise, that those who wanted to talk were in this age group [30–40 yrs].3 I’m not sure that I would expect the 20, 25-year olds to talk. I think it’s just the nature of that age, when you’re 19 or 20, you know everything. When you’re 30, 40, you are more reflective … you begin to realize what’s most important in life … it’s like, I need to fight for my kids, what am I passing on to these kids, what’s going to happen with my kids.

Heavy Client Loads. A child protection participant made note of the fact that heavy caseloads can make it more enticing not to have as much contact with fathers. CPF: And I think when I look at my caseload … where I have dads that are not really involved, I’m missing a piece of contact … for practical reasons … [I’m] glad I don’t … have to comment on, or somebody I don’t have to call back. … I mean there are practical reasons why I have to look at why I’m … marginalizing people … that is a piece of contact that’s missing that’s really important.

Fear. A factor that may decrease the likelihood that providers involve fathers is fear of the reactions of fathers. Indeed, as the child protection participant implies below, there may be a built-in premise that fathers will be difficult and reactive. CPF: And I think we all tend to think that dads will be more resistant. Or more hostile of the fact that CAS is involved with them.

The following child protection participant confirms this notion and the fear that goes with it, particularly in a situation involving violence. CPF: I think there’s also a fear of talking to the offender … who’s usually the male. I think we all … fear you know, confronting people. I know I do it sometimes, when there’s a, an extremely violent case or a violent man … I think we hesitate to talk to them.

3 It is helpful to note that the fathers in the study tended to be older than the men many of the focus group participants said they encountered in their practice and life experiences.

Stand by Me, Engage Me 79

Child protection participants were not alone in their thinking about the idea of being more cautious with fathers. A parent participant made the following comment. PF: ’Cause some men, men are more violent, and more, they lie, they’re more deceitful …

These fears, while understandable, again provide a potential rationale for child protection providers to avoid contact with fathers, thus marginalizing them. Gender Influences. Views on gender held by child protection providers can have an impact on the marginalization of fathers, according to participants. The first child protection participant below talks about being inclined towards thinking that women seem more caring and easier to work with, while the second talks about fathers as being more resistant and hostile. CPF: … my own preconceived ideas, that women are more, they communicate more with their emotions, more likely to be in a nurturing role, a caregiving role, they’re all just my own, I think biases … CPF: And I think we all tend to think that dads will be more resistant. Or more hostile of the fact that CAS is involved with them, so it’s a lot easier to just work with the woman who probably, because of our beliefs of our gender roles and so on, probably would be more acceptant of getting help …

Another gender bias obstacle has to do with traditional gender stereotypes about men as atypical carers in their families. CPF: I’ve never asked, I’ve just realized that, oh my gosh, I have never asked a father, what do you see your role in this family, how do you see your role in this family. Never.

As a consequence of reading the stories of the fathers, child protection participants challenged their thinking about slipping so easily into traditional gender discourses about men and losing sight of the nurturing feelings of fathers. CPF: … what really struck me was the level of joy at the births of their children, which is a normal thing to expect. And maybe in this line of work, I’m

80  Marshall Fine disillusioned from that, maybe that is something that I need to, to think about myself, is the fact that when you’re not seeing the dads in families, it’s very easy to start thinking well, men don’t really care about their kids … it brought me back to the reality that men do care about their children.

domestic violence A substantial amount of discussion in both father focus groups related to the issue of domestic violence. A parent participant spoke of it as “common,” and a child protection participant noted that it was a “huge” issue in child protection, which is consistent with the literature (Hughes, Chau, & Poff, 2011; Postmus & Merritt, 2010). Fathers were typically the offenders. There were differences in perceptions of domestic violence between the two groups of participants. Parent participants were more likely to be understanding of the “perpetrators.” Child protection participants were wary about how fathers’ life stories depicted domestic violence – thinking that the fathers were not able to see their powerful and intimidating actions in these situations. CPF: Yeah. I struggled with those stories a little bit, ’cause I thought you know, I think we’re getting one perspective of it, and I think when you look at the dynamics of domestic violence, I think we need to always be really cautious about how those stories unfold from a male perspective.

It seems from the parent participants’ discussion that they were less likely than the child protection participants to see the power imbalances between the genders. An issue that is illustrative of this which was discussed in both focus groups had to do with a father who was charged with assault in what I will refer to as the “Ketchup Incident.” This is an incident described by one father whereby a verbal exchange ended up with the female partner allegedly throwing a bottle of ketchup at the father (her partner), who then “dumped” the bottle of ketchup onto her head. A number of father participants tended to see the situation as one in which the mother was more violent, and that the father’s “violence” was only provoked by her. As such they saw his subsequent police charge as unfair. PF: Well she threw it at him and it splat, she should be charged with assault with a weapon. Why did he get charged? ’Cause he’s the man.

Stand by Me, Engage Me 81

As noted previously, child protection participants tended to be wary of the above accounts. The ketchup incident is referred to in this account. CPF: … he minimized it I think a lot, what he did and how childish he was doing that to her. But thinking it was more of a joke and a prank rather than a, an assault on his wife. But that, that case just struck me as horrible.

The following point raised by the child protection participants addresses the idea that fathers felt, at times, that the punishment for fathers’ violent actions was out of proportion to their actual actions. The ketchup incident is used again to make this point. CPF: ’Cause his main point [the father’s] was that “yes, we needed intervention, and yes we were getting out of control. But the extent of the intervention, having me out of the house for as long as I was, not having any contact with me and the kids for a long time, and then between me and my wife for a long time, it could have destroyed a lesser family.”

The next child protection participant suggests that perhaps more consideration needs to be given to the specific nature of the consequences, particularly if the violence has not been with the children. She also suggests that situations of violence need to be more clearly and thoroughly understood so that assessments of the child protection actions can be more nuanced. CPF: I don’t think child welfare deals well with domestic violence to begin with. And you know, sometimes we’ll ask for orders that say that dad can only have supervised access because he’s assaulted mom, but when you read these stories, you can see that it’s either been an isolated incident, or the, the violence occurred between the two adults, had nothing to do with the children, but we don’t know that, because we don’t have the luxury of this, all this information. So we ask for those orders right, to protect. And I think that’s part, part of the problem … you don’t really know how domestic violence equals to child protection, I didn’t abuse my kid, I hit my wife, like so it’d be clear.

One final comment relates to the contextualization of domestic violence. A child protection participant suggested that “connecting with them [fathers] at the level … where they have actually been the victim” is important. This point makes sense in that it is easy to forget that many of these

82  Marshall Fine

men had very difficult and possibly abusive childhoods. This perspective places their behaviour in a more understandable context and speaks to the importance of the “whole” person perspective. Yet, the same participant notes that it is important not to excuse men or allow them to “shift responsibility or not take responsibility for whatever they’ve done.” shadow land: marginalization and fathers CPF: They’re like shadows. You go to a court setting, you don’t see them. They, they come in and go, they don’t have a lot of involvement, they are on any given day, sitting in the lobby, they’re not sitting here. It’s the mothers you see.

One theme identified as running through the child protection participants’ discussions was that of the fathers as shadows, the persons at the margins. In reality, this shadow scenario is not specific to child protection, as fathers are less apparent in the research and helping professions generally (Duhig, Phares, and Birkeland, 2002; Walker, 2010). The child protection participants expressed their awareness of the absence of fathers, but also placed some responsibility on themselves for treating the fathers as marginal. CPF: Well, I mean even the ones that were the most involved, really talked about having short connections, like just brief discussions with Children’s Aid workers … not seeing them on a regular basis, like not, their calls not being returned, and I got a lot of sense of not being really engaged in the process, that the Children’s Aid worker kept them at arm’s length in their perception.

The following parent participants were aware of being marginalized. PF: But they’re not taking me seriously. And, and, and you think they’re going to get back to you, but they don’t and then three weeks go by. PF: To them you were like a number. Where to me, my whole world has just fallen apart, and they can’t even bother to pick up a phone call.

One of the child protection participants continues to not only observe that many fathers are like, and are treated like, shadows, but that opportunities are being missed because some fathers appear to want more involvement with F&CS.

Stand by Me, Engage Me 83 CPF: So I think I probably treat some of the fathers on my caseload as shadows. When I read these [discussions], I felt that these were living, breathing, people, who, I think what Interviewee 4 said earlier that, that I need to be more aware of, as possibly really wanting to have a role in their interactions with our involvement.

A repercussion of the shadow status of fathers, according to one child protection participant, is the effect it can have on other potential human resources in the system. CPF: … I think that when fathers are in the shadow, the family’s also in the shadow and … those grandparents and aunts and uncles are too though, and one of the fathers spoke about how he struggled to get his mom to have access to … the child. And often that family becomes demonized, or seen as less than, because of what’s happening for the man …

What We Can Learn Participants had many suggestions as to what could be learned from the mothers’ and fathers’ life stories in relation to their F&CS experiences. Many ideas were noted above and included the need for more support and preventive services, fewer changes in child protection providers, greater gender bias awareness, and less heavy workloads. However, rather than reiterate them here, I will highlight two themes representative of improvements for fathers and mothers. The themes are respectful working relationships in the mother life story focus groups and engagement practices in the father life story focus groups. The difference between the mother and father groups seems intuitive given that mothers are typically worked with, and therefore would be concerned about how they were treated. Fathers, on the other hand, seemed to have been less involved, and therefore suggestions tended to be related to ways of engaging them. Respectful and Supportive Working Relationships: Stand by Me Five aspects seemed to underlie a need for approaches to child protection work with mothers that would be respectful and supportive in such a way that mothers would experience a sense that their service providers were standing by them. The aspects identified are: focus on

84  Marshall Fine

strengths, humanizing ways of being, parental authority, respectful use of power, and support groups and services. Focus on Strengths. One of the major postmodern criticisms of the helping professions is the focus on a deficit model (Walsh, 2006a). While progress is being made, there can still be a tendency to look at the negative, as noted by the following child protection participant. CPM: We are so busy focusing on the concerns … that what gets left to the bottom is the strengths. I think we need to spend more time focusing on what are the strengths.

Another child protection participant noted how strengths, if identified, could be used to the benefit of clients. Humanizing Ways of Being. The parent participants had much to say about the importance of providers treating clients as equal human beings. PM: They’re humans. They’re individuals. PM: Treat them like they’re equal.

Parental Authority. The community participant below notes that having the worker acknowledge to her children that they still had to attend to their parent was very helpful. This, it can be argued, is related to respect, in that the child is not only reminded of the authority of the parent but the mother is given back her authority as a parent. PM: And I was really glad when our case worker told our children that they still had to listen to their parents.

This simple intervention acted as an antidote to the power that the parent felt she lost through child protection interventions. It is subtle, but meaningful, particularly given the fact that issues might escalate for the family if the parents felt unable to assert authority with their children, whether for fear of repercussions or because the children learned to devalue their parents’ authority through the child welfare intervention, as noted here by a child protection and a parent participant. CPM: … after the CAS involvement the parents had a hard time disciplining the children because they felt, they all said they felt like big

Stand by Me, Engage Me 85 brother was watching what they were doing. They had to second guess before they did anything, they felt watched, so disciplining the children was very hard for them when the children came back into the home. PM: It was almost like they were afraid of the kids, because they knew their kids knew their rights and if they so much looked at them wrong, CAS would be right back there.

Respectful Use of Power. The parent participants were quite aware of the power that workers possessed and thought that it was not always used equitably. PM: I was scared of their power. ’Cause we was told that it was volunteerbased and we’re looking at it and [I’m] going, yeah right. PM: If you don’t sign the volunteer form, we can’t take it to court. PM: (Yeah) Hello, that’s not volunteering. It’s blackmailing.

Child protection participants also saw power as problematic, and the participant below brings forth the idea that there is a concern if the power they do possess is hidden. CPM: It’s a power thing all the time. And so, it is how we use that power. And if we pretend that we don’t have that power then it is a disservice to the client because it feels a like a deception to them. And power can be empowering.

Support Groups and Services. While both parent and provider participants talked about concerns related to the not-so-supportive services experienced by mothers, parent participants had the most to say. For some participants the need was for “simple things” like babysitting. PM: Umm … for some it would just be as simple as just babysitting so that they could have a little time off …

In the above light, a community participant saw herself as similar to many of the mothers and attributed her relative success to support groups that many of the mothers did not seem to have.

86  Marshall Fine

Men and Engagement Practices The attempt to lift men from the shadows and to engage them, as noted by a child protection participant, is based on “fundamentally believing that dads have a place in the home, in the lives of their kids. ” Indeed engagement practices are seen as a crucial aspect of child welfare work (Gladstone, Dumbrill, Leslie, Koster, Young, & Ismaila, 2012), though it may be particularly important with respect to gaining the involvement of fathers. The participants in both child protection and parent focus groups had many practice-related suggestions around the importance of engaging fathers. The practices are: knowing fathers, staying in touch, being flexible in time and venue, being clear and honest, connecting with fathers’ commitment to their children, connecting to the fathers’ own childhoods, and working pragmatically. Knowing Fathers: Snapshots and Portraits. Participants noted that by taking more time, it is possible to paint a detailed portrait, rather than (as noted by the next child protection participant) just taking snapshots. CPF: And I think with the caseload that some of the workers carry, are they taking a snapshot of the situation, and going on to the next case, as opposed to, I suspect strongly that your interview brought out more than most case workers ever realize is going on in a family.

Parent participants also thought that fathers needed to be known more by workers. PF: … they need to know about the father’s character. And I think they need to go up to the father and ask him, we need to know a little about you, do you have friends and family that we can contact …

Staying in Touch. While, as indicated by the following parent participant, there is an awareness and appreciation of the fact that workers “simply don’t have the time to know the person, to know the father,” many parent participants would have appreciated more connection, even if just briefly. PF: They, just a call, just to know that you, you’re not forgotten, we are working on it, I know it’s frustrating … let the guy rant a little bit, ok, I understand your frustration.

Stand by Me, Engage Me 87

Staying in touch can involve some persistence from the child protection provider. CPF: I remember a case where I went to the home, and the dad was obviously not wanting to meet with me and just basically kind of was being dismissive himself, basically saying yeah, you can come and you can talk with her whenever you want and pulling him back and letting him know that, while I may not have to see him at every visit … I did want to see him and it was important for me to see him.

Flexibility in Time and Venue. In order to create more space to engage fathers, child protection participants suggested flexibility in terms of time and with respect to meeting locations and conditions. This issue was also raised in the mothers’ participant groups. CPF: Like maybe going later, and maybe having the dad come over on his lunch break and, and meet with him alone, or you meet with him with kids, and, and kind of see him more regularly.

Parent participants also commented on the need for flexibility. Like the mothers, the fathers cannot realistically meet all the expectations that the child protection might place on them. PF: … Children’s Aid has to be a little more lenient … They think you’re a bad parent because, if you can’t make it during the week, during business hours, you don’t have visitation rights.

Being Clear and Honest. Child protection participants in particular tended to think that many fathers did not understand why child protection was involved, and what the expectations regarding service were – ­aspects which could be blocks in terms of engagement. CPF: I think we need to be clearer with dads, and I think that’s what I saw in here too, is [be] clearer with them … what exactly do we expect and why.

Parent participants were concerned that not only were the child protection providers not clear, but they were not always honest. PF: I know they’ve had the answers but they would not provide them … they don’t give you a straight answer …

88  Marshall Fine PF: They, they would sidestep some questions. And they wouldn’t give you a direct answer for things that they should have had direct answers for.

Commitment to Children. The following child protection participant noted that acknowledging the commitment fathers have to their children was “probably the greatest, or even sometimes the only way to engage dads.” The child protection participant below cautions that many of the fathers are more “traditional” in their ways, and that should not be mistaken as a fact that they do not care. CPF: I think a lot of it too is, it’s sort of a change in mindset for us, we, ’cause a lot of these men are very traditional, and, and, and they’re fathers because they’re providing to their families, they’re protecting them, they’re doing the things that traditional fathers do. We look at that and say, well they’re not involved … And I think we need to sort of change that perspective a little bit and recognize that they are committed, and they are parenting the way they know how to parent.

Connecting to Father’s Childhood. The following child protection participant brought forth, as one way of engaging fathers, the importance of connecting the father to his own needs when he was in a similar situation as a child. CPF: … going back to your question about how we can hook fathers … just helping dads to see what they needed when they were the victims. What they needed when, say their dad was going away, and things like that, or when their dad was violent …

Pragmatic and Outcome-Oriented Approach. One of the threads that ran through the focus groups was how men tend to be more pragmatic and outcome oriented. While it may be a gender bias to some extent, it is consistent with the practice literature (Duhig et al., 2002; Dienhart, 2001). CPF: I think we need to know how to engage men. Right and, and you know, maybe that we need to be more pragmatic about it.

The following female child protection participant makes a genderbased observation about the pragmatic approach. CPF: … if men need a, an outcome-oriented outlook, then I think as women we need to maybe take that into account and say ok, let’s not be so

Stand by Me, Engage Me 89 touchy feely, and just, this is, this is, this is the practical thing, and this is how it’s gonna help your file …

Discussion From the author’s reading of the focus group conversations, and with the exception of domestic violence, child protection and parent participants in the mother and father focus groups were not that dissimilar in what they had to say. Notwithstanding this, it generally appeared that participants in the mother focus groups had more critical things to say about mothers and F&CS than did the participants in the father focus groups about fathers and F&CS. Mothers were seen as angry with F&CS and that anger appeared to be “lived” by some of the parent participants in the mother focus groups, a number of whom had participated in the life story interviews. Child protection participants were notably affected by the anger in the mothers’ life stories. It also seemed that some child protection participants in the mother focus groups appeared more critical of mothers than child protection participants in the father focus groups were of fathers. I argue that these differences are important and may have to do with the degree of exposure mothers and fathers have with F&CS – that is, the extent to which child protection providers and clients are placed together in the high-stakes child protection arena. Child protection providers are under the fairly constant stress and deluge of potentially life-threatening situations, vigilant public scrutiny, underfunding, and excessive workloads. In such roiling seas it can be extraordinarily difficult for them to find the time and energy to fully attend to everything they might think is important – to attend to the “whole” person. Clients are caught in a similar melee of high emotions, loss or threat of loss of children and family members, and expectations that are to a large extent frustratingly unachievable. As highlighted above, both providers and clients are burdened with pressing expectations to perform impossible missions. It should be noted at this point that the preceding impossible missions context cannot lie hidden because otherwise the blame tends to rest on the shoulders of child protection providers and clients – both being asked, in many instances, to do the impossible. As such, it is important to note that close-ups on the individual child protection provider or client, as portrayed in this chapter, tend to blur the larger agency, political, and social landscape (Swift & Callahan, 2006), which shifts the focus and responsibility away from policies and practices

90  Marshall Fine

developed and implemented by these systems – policies that are not always in the best interests of child protection clients or child protection providers. While there is absolutely no question as to who has more power between clients and providers, there is little doubt that they are caught alike in a drama that is not always of their own making, particularly given that “child protection systems tend to be overorganized by fear of failure and dominated by the ‘big’ voices of researchers, policy makers, academics and bureaucrats” (Turnell, 2006, p. 3). I would speculate that being caught in such an intense drama and feeling relatively powerless can lead to antagonisms and resentments. Given that mothers were more exposed to this “drama” than fathers, it is not surprising that they experienced, and voiced more acutely, ill feelings. It is interesting that the discussion about the over-exposure of mothers arose primarily from the father focus group child protection participants. It is possible, as noted by one child protection participant who had participated in both the mother and father focus groups, that the discussion of the under-exposure of fathers in child protection brought to light the fact that mothers were over-exposed. Reasons for working primarily with mothers included suggestions that they were more open, more able to communicate their emotions, more nurturing, more likely to ask for help, and generally easier to work with, which one might add are interesting commentaries in light of the fact that the mothers were often angry with child protection providers and services. Mothers were also the preferred work venue because fathers appeared more inaccessible, distant, reactive, and intimidating and less likely to ask for help. Indeed, it seemed that child protection providers and fathers often found ways to avoid one another. However, this leaves the responsibility on mothers even under circumstances when the fathers have been violent (Farmer & Owen, 1998; Hughes, Chau, & Poff, 2011). The consideration of dominant discourses regarding motherhood, as noted earlier, adds extra stress and unfairness on mothers and further takes the heat off fathers. Mothers are seen as the primary caretakers of children (Deutsch, 2001; Nichols, 2011; Zimmerman et al., 2008) and are therefore expected to be the primary clients. What makes this situation even more damning and ironical, however, is that child protection mothers are judged by “white, middle-class” standards, as noted by a child protection participant. Middle-class standards are not only unrealistic straitjackets for women generally (Deutsch, 2001), but quite clearly they pay little if any heed to

Stand by Me, Engage Me 91

the social and political contexts of many mothers who are involved in child protection services and who often live disadvantaged lives (Marcenko, Lyons, & Courtney, 2011). Such valuations can also lead to negative moral and totalizing characterizations that make it more challenging for mothers to be viewed in a positive light by child protection providers (Urek, 2005). I would agree with Nichols (2011) that “only when we become more gender sensitive will we stop blaming mothers and looking to them to do all the changing” (p. 211). I caught myself moving on at this point – the argument about women’s over-exposure seeming somehow compelling and indirectly addressing the problem of the under-exposure of fathers. However, to do so might again place fathers in the shadows, particularly given the discussions in the father focus groups about fathers’ desires to have more involvement with their children. This may in part be due to the changing social discourse and behaviour of men regarding fatherhood, and/ or the argument that discourses about men, which tend to be complex and ambiguous, can be limiting (Storhaug & Øien, 2012). An example of a limiting and ambiguous discourse is the traditional belief that women are better suited to care for children than men, which can influence not only child protection workers but also the father clients themselves (Storhaug & Øien, 2012). Indeed, a number of child protection participants were surprised after reading the life stories of the fathers because their stigmatized images of an estranged father were altered by the fact that the fathers cared for and attempted to connect with their children. They, as well as parent participants, noted the changes in the social discourse regarding fatherhood, which were reflected in the life stories of some of the fathers. There is still a way to go before fathers assume more equitable roles with mothers in child care. Indeed, men continue to be judged less harshly than mothers in the child care arena because responsibilities they do take with their children are seen as exceptional (Deutsch, 2001), while mothers’ child care responsibilities are seen as status quo. So, while there is yet a long road ahead, discussions within the fathers’ focus group suggest that change may be on its way. In light of discussion on exposure, it would seem apparent that child protection work would benefit from a more nuanced script that more fully incorporates fathers into service delivery and that judges mothers less harshly. Doing so could lead to at least two important consequences. First, women would be relieved from the unfair burden of blame and sole responsibility for change (Duhig et al., 2002; Nichols, 2011). Second, research tends to suggest that father involvement in family life has

92  Marshall Fine

a positive impact on child development (McBride, Schoppe-Sullivan, & Ho, 2005; Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2008). Limitations A number of the parent participants were also the mother and father life story participants in the research. A few were commenting on their own life stories. The life stories, therefore, touched close to home for some parent participants and might have made it difficult for them to step back from their experiences to appraise more distantly aspects of the mothers’ and fathers’ life stories. With that caution in mind, the parent participants seemed generally thoughtful and inclusive in their observations. As noted by child protection participants, many of the fathers were older than the men with whom they typically worked. Therefore, it is possible that the participants were reading the life stories of fathers who, as they suggested, given their age and accompanying maturity, were more reflective and less reactive than the younger fathers with whom they often worked. Notwithstanding this observation, it is useful to take into account the observation of one child protection participant who wondered what she might have noticed in the younger men if she had had the opportunity to spend time with them and know them as “whole” persons. Finally, this research, like qualitative research generally, involved a number of levels of interpretation and decision making. With respect to myself as researcher, I took from the discussions what appeared to be the most salient features relating to the helpful possibilities for child protection services. Nevertheless, I am limited by my own world view. Given that it was not possible to have these findings reviewed by the study participants, I cannot know what important stories might be lying on the editing room floor or if what has reached this chapter fits comfortably for the participants. I can only hope that through frequent use of the participants’ words and through constant critical self-reflection, I have done some justice to their meanings. Last Words Projecting the detailed lives of mothers and fathers through the lenses of child protection providers and parent participants, without the press of immediate service delivery expectations, exposed participants to

Stand by Me, Engage Me 93

often missing images that appeared to alter their vision of clients and service in a number of noticeable ways. Stigmas were disrupted, service delivery ideas were challenged, gender and gender relations were questioned, and “whole” persons took form. I hope that this chapter has invited expanded considerations of client and provider stakeholders and potential enhancements in child protective services.

4 Home Truths: What Mothers of Children in Placement Say about Their Lives nancy freymond

Since the inception of systems of child welfare, out-of-home placement has been a principal method of protecting children from various forms of maternal abuse and neglect. The removal of a child from a mother’s care, whether by agreement of those involved or not, is seldom a neutral event. The lives of children, their family members, and others with whom they have significant connections are deeply affected and sometimes permanently altered by out-of-home placement. There are parts of mothers’ experiences of child placement that are difficult to write about, and perhaps difficult to read. This chapter is not an indictment of front-line child welfare workers. I have been at the front lines of child welfare work and experienced the demands and constraints of this role. I believe that the actions of workers and managers are coordinated by organizational practices and processes where accountability and standardization are central. It is what people, like mothers of placed children, say about their experience of child welfare intervention that can direct our attention to important truths about systems of child welfare. Their stories highlight a disjuncture between child welfare practices and processes and the experience of receiving services. As we contemplate more humane ways of delivering child welfare services, this experiential knowledge draws our attention to those things that need to be in view. During the 1980s I was a front-line child protection worker in Ontario. My view of mothers’ abilities was shaped and constrained by child protection protocols, where the routine evaluation of mothering risk was expected. I recognized particular risk factors for child maltreatment such as poverty, addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, and isolation. These categories, particularly when combined, produced

Home Truths 95

a specific and generally negative image of these mothers. It also obscured aspects of their everyday lives as women, daughters, friends, employees, community members, and mothers. I recognize how knowledge of these women’s lives was shaped by risk categorizations, which did not necessarily account for their broader everyday circumstances. The child protection workers’ view of these mothers affects the services the mothers receive. If our understanding of these mothers’ lives and abilities is limited or distorted, we are less likely to recommend relevant interventions. Recipients of helping services do not make changes simply based on a professional recommendation: services must make sense in the context of the mothers’ lives. Failing that, they will meet offers of help with resistance. In this chapter, I present findings from a qualitative research study that explores the everyday reality of 31 mothers and their experience with child placement. The objective is to focus on what they say about their lives and, using this knowledge, bring forward ideas for providing constructive help to mothers of placed children. The chapter begins with some highlights from the literature that describe mothers involved with child welfare systems, followed by an exploration of the influence of motherhood ideology on the portrayal of child welfare mothers. This discussion serves as a backdrop for the presentation of key themes that surfaced in the stories mothers told of their lives. The chapter concludes with discussion of the implications for child welfare systems. Literature There is an emphasis on the evaluation of mothers and mothering in the practice of child protection (Davies & Krane, 1996; Scourfield, 2001). Life circumstances and personal attributes understood to be risk factors in child maltreatment are dominant, resulting in a literature replete with negative images of mothers who receive child welfare services. Poverty is a frequently highlighted life circumstance for them and has been shown to be more pervasive for child welfare mothers of placed children than for child welfare mothers of children at home (Marcenko, Lyons, & Courtney, 2011). In some research, poverty overlaps with single mothering to increase the probability of child neglect (Mayer, Dufour, Lavergne, Girard, & Trocmé, 2003). Single mothers are more likely to be targeted for intervention and some research indicates an increased likelihood that their children will be placed in foster care (Davidson Arad, 2001). Adolescent mothers are sometimes portrayed

96  Nancy Freymond

as having a greater potential for child maltreatment than adult mothers and greater likelihood of child protection involvements (DePaúl & Domenech, 2000; Lee & Goerge, 1999). Other factors that are highlighted in the evaluation of child welfare mothers include social isolation (Mayer et al., 2003), domestic violence when paired with another form of child maltreatment (Black, Trocmé, Fallon, & MacLaurin, 2008), and addictions (Kovalesky & Flagler, 1997). Also highlighted as risk factors are attributes such as faulty emotional attachments to their children and previous trauma (Fernandez, 1996; Mennen & O’Keefe, 2005), impulsivity (Wilson, Kuebli, & Hughes, 2005), and parental stress (Ethier, Lacharité, & Couture, 1995). Mental illness such as depression has been linked to the child’s increased risk of exposure to physical punishment (Woodward & Fergusson, 2002) or neglect (Wilson et al., 2005), and to the increased likelihood that children will be placed in out-of-home care (Leschied, Chiodo, Whitehead, & Hurley, 2005) The pervasiveness of negative portrayals of mothers is counterbalanced by researchers and authors who highlight issues of gender and oppression (e.g., Callahan, 1993; Davies & Krane, 1996; Gordon, 1985; Kline, 1995; Krane, 2003; Roberts, 1999; Rutman, Strega, Callahan, & Dominelli, 2002; Scourfield, 2001; Swift, 1998; Sykes, 2011).This literature makes an important contribution in highlighting the multiple oppressions experienced by child welfare mothers. Mothers’ Experience of Child Placement In my experience as a child protection worker, contact with mothers of children placed in out-of-home care was minimal outside the context of child visitation or legal processes. The absence of attention to these mothers is reflected in the literature as well, where their experience of child placement lacks attention. Jenkins (1981) described the literature as “singularly barren with regard to the feelings, reactions and roles of parents when their children enter foster care” (p. 41). In the same year, Hubbell (1981) reported that an extensive review of the literature reveals little information on biological families whose children have been placed in foster homes. More than 20 years later, Alpert (2005), in her review of the research on foster care case outcomes, describes the research that studies the perspectives of parents of children in care as “scarce” (p. 364). More recently a gap has been identified in relation to outcomes for mothers not reunified with their placed children (Hiilamo & Saarikallio-Torp, 2011). Some notable exceptions include Kapp and Propp (2002), who conducted a series of eight focus groups with

Home Truths 97

parents of children in a privatized foster care system in a mid-western state. In total, 47 parents participated; 75% of the attendees at each group were women. The researchers identified key themes among participants, including inconsistent communication and lack of responsiveness from workers; lack of availability of workers because of workload and turnover; lack of respect from workers; exclusion from decision making and planning; and feelings of helplessness, confusion, and lack of control. Tuttle, Knudson-Martin, Levin, Taylor, and Andrews (2007) explored the experiences of parents of children placed in out-of-home care in the context of dialogical groups. The groups were designed to create a supportive environment in which to manage the parents’ experience in child protection systems. All participants were hoping to regain custody of their children; nine of the 16 participants were identified as mothers. The parents reported intense emotional reactions of sadness, confusion, and anger. Many blamed child protection services for the removal of their children and reported highly conflictual relationships with CPS. In a study by Dumbrill and Maiter (2003), eight parents who had experienced the placement of a child were asked their views about how to improve child protection services. While this study does not indicate the gender of participating parents, reference is made repeatedly to mothers and only one reference is made to a father. The parents reported that they had little choice or participation in decisions that affected their children in placement. They felt that workers did not listen to them, understand their concerns, or keep them informed about issues related to their cases. The Effect of Mothering Ideology The absence of attention to mothers’ experience of child placement and the pervasiveness of negative portrayals in the literature can be understood in relation to the dominant ideology of mothering and motherhood. Motherhood ideology frames and constructs our understanding of mothers and mothering work. Hays (1996) describes a dominant ideology of intensive mothering which imposes expectations that mothers will be consistently available to their children. Good mothers are defined as child-centred, which means that their time, energy, and resources are devoted to their children. When one ideology is socially dominant or idealized, alternatives are typically discussed using deviancy discourses (Arendell, 1999). The effect of the deviancy discourse is to reinforce the prototypical good mother through comparison (Kline, 1995). Mothers of children placed

98  Nancy Freymond

in out-of-home care are marginalized in relation to images of the good mother. They are constructed as high risk in child protection discourse and occupy a position that is far removed from the ideals of good mothering. In an effort to broaden our understanding of mothers of children in placement and to undermine the pervasive influence of good mothering ideology in child protection practices, this research focuses on mothers’ subjectivities. Interpretive Framework The sample for this study comprised 31 mothers who shared their life stories. Participants were selected randomly from the databases of two child protection agencies in southern Ontario. Twenty-six mothers were interviewed on one occasion using a comprehensive semi-structured interview about their everyday realities and child placement experiences. Five mothers were interviewed on two or more occasions using an oral story approach (Plummer, 2001). There was minimal structure for the oral story interviews, which ranged from 90 minutes to two hours in length and involved any topic of the mother’s choosing. Together, these two interviewing strategies allowed participation from a greater number of mothers, and in-depth information from some. Eighteen of the 31 mothers interviewed had experienced an involuntary placement. Thirteen of the mothers in the sample came to the attention of the child welfare agency because of the extreme behaviour of a child. I attempted to make audible the different voices of these mothers by relying on extensive presentation of their own words. In conducting a thematic analysis, I sought to first maintain “a low level of abstraction” (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000, p. 12). In addition, I examined the effects of the institutional context, motherhood ideology, and lesser privilege on the mothers’ experience as well as the breadth and variation of mothers’ experience. I carefully read and reread the data, identifying tensions across the identified themes and subthemes. In describing mothers of children placed in out-of-home care, I use the term “lesser privilege.” Their realities include but are not limited to higher than average rates of substance abuse, mental and physical health problems, disability and unemployment, child abuse experiences and ongoing risks of assault, inadequate housing conditions in unsafe neighbourhoods, limited educational opportunities, and unstable jobs (Cameron & Hoy, 2003). Lesser privilege comprises the everyday

Home Truths 99

realities conditioned by social and economic disadvantage. “Lesser” is a relative term, and is understood in relation to those who experience the privileges of the middle class, such as child protection personnel, other professionals involved in these mothers’ lives, and this researcher. What Mothers Say about Their Lives In this analysis, the conditions of lesser privilege shape these mothers’ perceptions of their needs. In the following paragraphs, I present a collection of the most salient messages that emerged from these mothers’ stories. “Life Is Hard” It is hard to raise my son on my own. I only have one part-time job. Money is hard. Life is hard. He’s had a lot of trauma. For a nine-year-old little boy, he’s been through a lot. We both have.

That these mothers have lesser-privileged lives filled with multiple challenges is an observation unlikely to engender protest or controversy, even from those most unsympathetic to mothers with children in placement. Adversity finds its way into these mothers’ lives in the form of violence, deprivation, and loss. These adversities are persistent and intense. They are not the challenges that those of greater privilege might reasonably expect over a lifetime. There is an insidious relationship between adversity and lesser privilege. The conditions of lesser privilege focus these mothers’ attention on obtaining resources for basic living needs. Providing for their families consumes significant time and energy; lesser privilege is an unrelenting taskmaster. In this study, the employed mothers were working long hours in jobs with low wages, few benefits, and irregular part-time hours, often during the evening, the night, or on the weekend: The one job I had was at [local] College. I was working from 10 at night until 1:30, 2:00 in the morning. And then from there … I did custodial [work] in a factory. And there I worked from 3 in the morning ’til 6:00. And then on weekends, I worked for another cleaning company.

Despite the strain of sleep deprivation, working night shift enabled this mother to care for her children during daytime hours.

100  Nancy Freymond

There was persistent worry among these mothers that their jobs might disappear. Many mothers in this sample did not complete their secondary school education, often because of chaotic adolescent years: I was moving back and forth from family to family. He kicked me out for leaving mayonnaise on the counter so I moved back in with my mom and then, not even six months later, I was back living with my dad. And so I never ended up finishing school. So that’s, that’s like the biggest part, that I never got to finish school.

In Ontario, a secondary school diploma is the minimum educational requirement for many jobs. Mothers who rely on government assistance worry about how to meet basic living needs. Even the smallest unexpected expense can create a financial crisis. Usually these mothers are forced to live in low-rent neighbourhoods. Their surroundings appeared neither desirable nor family friendly. Living space was often inadequate and rooms were cluttered. The mothers were not apologetic about the condition of their homes or the absence of material possessions. They were more likely to express concern about the stares of gossiping neighbours in these densely populated communities: … they were calling her, crazy girl. The kids would hear her screaming, during her temper tantrums. She used to throw things out the window, um … we had to nail the window shut, because we got an eviction notice, for her throwing garbage and stuff out the window during these temper tantrums … Our next door neighbour gave her a really hard time because her kids would be kept up at night because of the noise.

Absence of privacy emerged as a theme across many stories. Moth­ ers of children who have committed neighbourhood crimes or are known for disruptive behaviours described feeling ostracized by their neighbours. When terrible events compound these mothers’ everyday reality, they may find themselves without sufficient resources to ward off or hide the effects of adversity from neighbours or the child welfare authority: Q: Let’s just go back to talking about CAS, when they first showed up. Did you know they were coming?

Home Truths 101 Um … I had an idea, because … I couldn’t pay the bills, plus the affair, plus, menopause coming in, and … I was grieving the loss of my mom, and three miscarriages. And I think … like I said, it just came to a head. Plus what happened when I was twelve came out too. Yeah, everything.

The adversity faced by these women can have many forms. Sometimes they contended with the knowledge that their male partners had perpetrated physical or sexual violence against their children. When men in trusted roles as fathers, lovers, or family friends abused their children, the mothers felt intensely betrayed. In situations of domestic violence, there tended to be overlap between the abuse of women and the abuse of children by partners/fathers: My son was three years old … He has a wicked temper, really bad. Like, he had witnessed his father abuse me. He witnessed his father rape me. Like, he used to take phone cords and wrap them around my neck. I’d lay in bed and he’d like strangle or choke me until I’d pass out literally from gasping for air … And that’s hard to see your three-year-old jump up, tackling his father, throwing punches like a man … I knew I had to run …

These mothers were painfully aware of the connection between violence by an intimate partner and negative effects on children. Sometimes mothers experienced adversity in the form of mental health problems. “I just wanted to get back on my medication. I needed to do that. I went off it and I went thinking weird things again, and … I don’t like taking medication, but I need to for me and the kids.” Sometimes they were entrapped in a cycle of addiction that had spiralled out of control, and sometimes they could no longer cope with the demands of parenting children who exhibited extreme behaviours. It seems unrealistic to expect women to be consistently gentle, kind, loving mothers when their lives are shaped by the difficulties associated with lesser privilege and persistent adversity. The mothers in this study lacked opportunity for self-care and relaxation. Periodically, some of the mothers enjoyed a break from parenting routines when family members offered respite care for their children. But they seldom described events that more privileged mothers anticipate and enjoy such as holidays, hobbies, and entertainment. I suspect that the pressures of time and financial resources exclude these from their lives. Undoubtedly, the absence of activities directed towards self-care and relaxation affects stress levels and reduces the capacity for patient mothering.

102  Nancy Freymond

Life Is “Just a Bunch of Hurdles … I’ll Still Get Over Them” I’m one of those people that you don’t expect to go somewhere. And it’s nice … yes, I did survive. I was given a shitty life, but I managed to get out of it.

In hearing these mothers’ stories, I became aware that they do not focus on the emotional consequences of traumatic events. I believe this is in part because they expect hardship; it has been a persistent feature of their lives. Contrary to some representations in the literature, the lives of the mothers in this data were dominated by the desire to change their circumstances. For example, the mothers often organized their lives to resist the effects of adversity. As I engaged with the mothers’ stories, I tried to imagine what I might do if faced with a similar adversity. Invariably my solutions depended on resources, services, and supports that are available to me because of my middle-class status and its accompanying privileges. My construction of valid and effective responses to adversity is shaped by that dependence. The problem is that from this vantage point, I and others like me have difficulty recognizing and understanding responses to adversity that are conditioned and constrained by the circumstances of lesser privilege. Mothers who experienced addiction problems or lived with the ill effects of addicted boyfriends or husbands recognized the need to change their surroundings. Although the term “transient population” is often used in disparaging ways to describe mothers of children placed in out-of-home care, changing environments was key to overcoming adversity in many of their stories. Women with limited financial resources are often forced to move from one situation to another, sometimes without hope that the change will be positive. And he and I had made a decision … I was going to quit drugs and he was going to slow down on the drinking … They say you can never change somebody. You either stay with them or you don’t, you can’t change them. Well, in my case I pushed on him to change because I didn’t want to be with an alcoholic … I said, I don’t want this around our kids … I won’t have our kids raised around an alcoholic … Yet, I didn’t want to lose him either because he was, he is, a good person when he’s not drinking … And then me and my husband moved from our first apartment … to [name of small town], but we didn’t know anybody. There wasn’t, there wasn’t a beer store in that town.

Home Truths 103

Sometimes flight is a strategy for managing adversity. Many women talked of abruptly leaving men who abuse. This mother spoke of knowing that she had to leave, but her resources for doing so presented a major barrier: … eventually, after the marriage, within weeks, like maybe two weeks, we came back to [this geographical area] and that’s when I knew … [that] I had to get out. I had to get away from this man. And the only source of income I had was baby bonus … I ran.

Making a plan was not always possible or desirable. With limited access to resources, exiting an abusive relationship may depend on an instinct for survival. Sometimes mothers actively change friends or disconnect from family members who may not be supportive: … And I think that was the first the first step, that I realized that I didn’t want to be a drug addict. [Other steps were] getting rid of phone numbers and stuff like that and my connections. So that way I didn’t have the numbers. And then eliminating my friends that were druggies …

These mothers’ stories do not emphasize enduring, long-term supportive connections with families, friends, or communities. But as they described moving through adversity, the crucial role of supportive relationships, wherever these could be found, was clearly articulated. Despite the hardship that ensues when adversity and lesser privilege combine, many mothers in this study found ways to cope. One mother talked about finding something in her surroundings to make beautiful as a way of keeping depression at bay. Another mother displayed pictures of people she had hurt with her addiction as a reminder of the importance of staying clean. One mother was able to distract herself from the impulse to abuse substances by playing a video game with a friend. A strong determination was particularly evident in the stories of mothers whose children exhibited behavioural challenges. I was surprised by the perseverance of mothers seeking professional help: It’s hard to describe … temper tantrums that went on for hours. She would get into these tantrums, where she would bite me, and kick me, and … punch me, and scratch me … I knew something was wrong … They were more like rages. In the beginning I took out, uh, books on, what to do for a

104  Nancy Freymond temper tantrum, and stuff like this … She would cry for hours. She would stand up in her crib and just bang it against the wall … [Later] I put her in the hospital twice, trying to get some help. They didn’t give her much of a chance … now when I think back, if I had a video camera, I was pretty young, I just thought, okay, I’ll go in and tell them all about it, and they’ll believe me, right? I did put her in therapy, but she refused to go. So, I saw a counsellor. And I asked the counsellor what should I do? And I tried everything, every single suggestion. I tried breathing therapy with her, uh … but when she got to a certain point in the anger, uh … it’s like, nothing could calm her down … nothing. … Finally, the agency that came over to help … they would send two people over. I called them about ten times. I don’t know, I was just so tired. They would come over and hold my baby until she’d calm down. And they told me that she really, really needed help. And I said to them, I’m trying, I’m really, really trying … Finally, [my daughter] was hitting them. Finally they told me she was too violent for them. Just, to call the police.

Unfortunately for mothers of children with extreme behavioural challenges, the experience of locating and qualifying for professional help can be exasperating. Determination also surfaced in the stories of mothers who had experienced childhood abuse. Approximately two-thirds of the mothers in this study described or alluded to childhood abuse experiences and acknowledged the inner patterns that abuse creates. When discussing parenting priorities, they expressed a strong determination to chart a course away from these patterns: My son asked me about three months ago what my childhood was like, and I had to leave the room. I went to the bathroom and started to cry, because I couldn’t think of anything good to say to him. And I thought, this is not going to be coming out his mouth. He’s not going to stop when someone asks him that. He’s going to be proud.

This desire to create a more positive experience for their own children seemed to be an important point of reference for mothers who had experienced childhood abuse in organizing their understanding of themselves as mothers. These mothers’ determination and motivation to move through adversity appeared linked to their understanding of its effects on their children:

Home Truths 105 I guess we moved in together probably in September and then in January the following year [my eldest daughter] exposed that she had been [sexually] abused … it was just a shock. It was a shock to me … it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean, I was extremely angry and the first thought was you know you believe the child so get out.

Another mother said: In the end … it was because of my daughter. I was scared for my daughter more than for me. I could handle it. I had been beat at that point for two years. You know, I’d survived it but I knew that she couldn’t survive it.

The strong desire to protect children from the effects of adversity and to hold their families together is integral to the strategies they are able to create. “I Don’t Want to Lose My Child” Why couldn’t they keep us as a family? I didn’t care if they came every day ten times a day. They could have just worked with us as a family, but they didn’t. They tore us apart and that was that …

These mothers express a strong desire to hold their families together when they speak about their experience of child placement. They describe their experiences with a pronounced emotion and intensity; detailed descriptions of the placement event dominate their stories. In the longer interview format where the mothers were not specifically asked about child welfare involvements, the child placement event was central as well. And, regardless of the circumstances that led to child placement or the nature of their relationships with child welfare workers, the story of how their child or children came to be placed in out-of-home care is central to their lives. The entry of a child welfare worker into a mother’s life tends to coincide with a period of crisis, generally when the mother is struggling to withstand adversity and to hold her family together: I was on an antidepressant because it was so bad that I was falling apart too. And if I was falling apart, who’s going to look after my children? I didn’t have anybody I could get to look after my children. And I thought, I can’t live like this. I can’t live in fear any more because I lived like that

106  Nancy Freymond when I was a child. I didn’t want to go back there … I was so drained … with everything that was going on and my surgery. I just could not cope with everything so I wanted to hurt myself too because I couldn’t face it any more. I had tried so hard to look after everybody. The doctors weren’t helping. What could I do? I couldn’t live like that anymore.

During times of crisis, mothers may feel vulnerable; sometimes they are emotionally and physically exhausted. A salient message in these mothers’ stories is that how child welfare workers enter their lives is confusing, frightening, and disempowering. Several mothers described child welfare agencies as having a reputation for apprehending children. Mothers who were surprised by visits from the child welfare workers usually felt overwhelmed by the investigative questioning: They’re like “Can we sit down?” I’m like “Fine.” And I get in hysterics. I should have stayed calm, but I couldn’t. They kinda just sat down and start throwing questions at you. You have no chance to just know what they’re saying, ’cause they sound like chipmunks … Everything’s in fast. So, I was like, what are you talking about? … Like the first minute they walk in that door, you can’t breathe. You don’t even know what to do. And then before you know it, your whole life’s gone.

Later in the interview, this mother described her regret that during this investigation she was unable to find words to explain and defend herself against the allegation. But even in situations where the mother asks for child welfare involvement, the initial exchange with investigators can also be confusing and disempowering: At first they thought that I was some kinda crazy woman, just ranting and raving. They said they had no place to put her. I kept saying, “She can’t stay here. I can’t take it no more.” It was almost like they weren’t believing me. I felt like they didn’t understand what I was telling them. It was like, no way. That made me even look more crazy. I was screaming at them “You’ve got to help me.” They kept saying, “We have no place to put her.”

Ironically, in these data, the mothers who requested child welfare involvement had significant difficulty convincing workers of the need for intervention. Some believed that the agency’s refusal to provide intervention at an earlier point escalated the crisis.

Home Truths 107

There was one mother in these data who experienced the investigation as positive. This mother said: “I think it’s a really scary thing, for a mother to give up a child to someone else.” She described the child welfare investigators as two “wonderful ladies” who came to her home to speak with her. This mother was very upset and the workers talked to her for two hours about her frustrations. She said: “I felt for the first time, I felt … that somebody was actually listening to me. Like they actually wanted to help … they were really nice.” Unfortunately, this mother’s account is the exception in the otherwise painful and sometimes heart-wrenching accounts of investigation and child removal. Investigation is a powerful and memorable experience. Regardless of the circumstances that led to child welfare involvements, these mothers were, too often, rendered voiceless or their explanations were disregarded. “I Had No Chance, or No Choice, or No Say, or Nothing” They should have listened to us. I think they forced too much. And they should have worked on the areas that we needed to work on, rather than forcing us into things that we didn’t really need.

After placement, the treatment plans for mothers typically included conditions such as participating in regular, often supervised, visits with their children, attending a parenting course and a nutrition course for babies, attending addiction counselling and drug and alcohol testing as well as relationship counselling and anger management sessions. Some mothers felt pressured to leave violent relationships and to enter individual counselling to improve their self-esteem. Mothers believed that they were expected to demonstrate compliance with these conditions to build a case for reunification. One mother spoke of the experience of being presented with papers that outlined the child welfare position: It was just sickening, that that’s the kind of help they can offer. It was just not acceptable to me … I was just overwhelmed … “This is what’s gonna happen; there’s nothing you can do about it; the papers are here; it’s all done up; you have 24 hours to think about it; if you don’t wanna sign the papers, then we’ll get a court order.” I had no idea how to respond.

Not present in these stories was a climate for relationship-building time or negotiation. The similarity among treatment plans reported

108  Nancy Freymond

by mothers in this study was striking. Communication problems were prevalent. Many mothers felt that workers did not listen or understand. Relationships where mothers are rendered voiceless have consequences. A pronounced theme emerging from these mothers’ stories identified an absence of fit between child protection interventions and the mothers’ needs. One mother described the incongruousness between the child welfare apprehension of her children and her struggle to secure suitable safe housing: Not a lot of people with five children are looking to rent. So I don’t know how people end up moving from a rural situation to a city situation, unless they have money. But we couldn’t get ahead because we were stuck in one of the unemployment areas of the country. There was a waiting list that was five years for us for co-op housing/subsidized housing – five years, so I didn’t even bother applying.

The housing that this mother was able to locate developed unsafe well-water conditions. The child protection response was to contact the public health unit for details. Just as this mother was negotiating a deal to secure another home through Habitat for Humanity, her children were removed. She described her confusion: … nothing was ever offered. I’m the one that’s applied for Habitat for Humanity … We were right at the head of the priority list. We had a house within three months. We lost our kids and at the same time we lost the house. Two weeks before the kids were taken, we got a house through Habitat for Humanity. We signed papers the day after the kids were taken … all I ask for is some help to get out of where we weren’t doing well, with the bad water, which was a concern. They [CAS] were asking me about that. Like well, you know if you wanna call the public health unit, call the public health unit. You’re not gonna listen to me. If they woulda just said “How about some respite for the summer while you guys work on this house for Habitat?” we would have been fine …

In this mother’s story, child welfare workers did not offer support consistent with her circumstances, even though there was agreement about the nature of the concerns. Respite care seemed to be an option that could have met the needs of this family and ensured safety for the children. Instead, the mother experienced apprehension as both unnecessary and confusing.

Home Truths 109

The following quotation is from a mother who acknowledged a problem with drug addiction. She was cooperative with the addictions counselling component of her plan of care: I’m not allowed to go anywhere where there’s drugs or anything like that. And I have to go in for alcohol and drug tests every once in a while, whenever they decide to call. That’s okay …

Conversely, treatment conditions that did not make sense to this mother fuelled her resistance: I know how to be a parent. I went to a parenting course that they made me do … It blew me away. I thought to myself and you have your children, you know. I thought to myself you’re giving me advice … I finished it basically because I thought it looked good.

Her motivation for attending the parenting course was to demonstrate compliance. Mothers who were able to secure the return of their children tried to do everything that child welfare workers demanded of them, regardless of whether it made sense to them or not: She looked right at my husband and said you realize your daughter would be at home with you if it wasn’t for you … she’s talking to me about abuse and [how] I need to learn about all different kinds of abuse … But yet, she’s using abuse on my husband for saying, “This is all your fault.” That’s mental abuse and emotional abuse. That’s not okay, them making me lame. … So, I realized that it was a game. I had to play the game. I sat down and I cried my face off to my husband. Joe this is what I have to do in order to get Sarah back. I have to tell her [the worker], this was all your fault.

Another mother talked about advice she’d received in how to play the game: And like my aunt works – like she’s a foster mom for Children’s Aid … She was the only one always telling me there’s certain things you’ve got to do … You’ve got to listen to them and you’ve got to stay calm. Do everything they say.

I believe that “playing the game” was used as a protective strategy by many of the mothers in this study. One strategy for coping was to

110  Nancy Freymond

acquiesce in whatever workers said was required. This minimized the potential for disagreement and increased the probability that mothers would be seen as cooperative, willing to change, and sufficiently rehabilitated to resume parenting. Child placement and many of the conditions in the accompanying plan of care tended not to address the core issues of lesser privilege that compounded and intensified the adversities in these mothers’ everyday lives. There was little attention paid to the ways in which these mothers had persisted and triumphed in face of lesser privilege and to ways that treatment conditions might build on these pre-existing experiences and abilities. Simply put, these mothers were not convinced of the value of child placement and its possibilities for helping their children or their families, nor were they sold on how certain prescribed treatment plans would improve their everyday situations. “My Children Come First” I just want to give everything I have to [son’s name]. Things that I didn’t have growing up, I like to give to him. My children come first before I come first. I’m trying to keep it all together. That’s how it’s always been. I just want the best for them.

The strong desire to hold their families together reflects an intense emotional connection that these mothers have with their children. A dominant message from these mothers’ stories is the ardent emotional connection they have to their children that comes to the fore when placement separates them. Mothers of apprehended infants provided heart-wrenching descriptions of the effects of being separated from their babies. These mothers described a deep emotional and sometimes physical craving for connection with their children: The time when my son was taken away from me was hard … I bought a Winnie the Pooh blanket. He was with it for a week and every day I had to sleep with that blanket until he came home … Every time I went to the visits with him I wrapped him in it even if he was hot. I would wrap him in it so that it would get the smell of him.

Mothers who had persevered in parenting children with extreme behaviours were also passionate about their strong emotional ties to these children:

Home Truths 111 My son, we have always, as weird as it sounds, we’ve always had a close relationship. It’s been traumatic through all these things, but it’s also been very close … Every time I talk to him, you know, it’s always at the end, “Love you” … And when we go to visit he hugs us and says he loves us … it’s a good bond. It’s a strong bond.

Many spoke of their fears of losing contact with their children and wished more services were available to support them in these relationships. Child placement has a large, sometimes devastating impact on mothers’ lives. One mother spoke of her grief: “… it was hard; I cried every night”; another mother said: “… everything we’ve planned has been taken away from us.” Another mother said: It’s hard; a lot of sleepless nights; couple times I wanted to commit suicide. Um, at that point I lost faith in God completely. My mother-in-law said, “Don’t lose your faith.” I said, “Too late, it’s gone.” There is no God. God doesn’t exist, because God wouldn’t allow this to happen.

On the child welfare landscape, mothers’ emotional connectedness to their placed children is not clearly in view. However, when mothers tell their stories, it is a central theme. Their stories emphasize the pain and grief associated with placement, even if the placement is voluntary. In their dealings with child welfare workers, mothers describe exchanges with workers that centre on the workers’ expectations that they will demonstrate their cooperativeness with proposed interventions. Characterizations of workers as understanding were few, and I could not find any suggestion in these mothers’ stories that workers were responsive to their grief. They describe worker actions such as apprehending their child and leaving them with no definite plan other than instructions to contact a lawyer; failing to attend to the importance of visitation, and the often conflicted feelings that mothers experience about it; and neglecting to share information about the children’s location, their well-being, or future plans for them. One explanation for these practices is that mothers’ emotional connections are not appropriately in view. Mothers need to know that child welfare workers are invested in supporting and maintaining their relationships with their children. I am not denying that mothers’ actions may be hurtful to their children, nor am I advocating that mothers should never be separated from their children. But I am highlighting the intense emotional connection to their children that mothers expressed in these stories, and how our

112  Nancy Freymond

view of mothers can become limited and distorted when we fail to acknowledge this connection. Expanding Our Views of Mothers of Children Placed in Out-of-Home Care The social constructions of these mothers that cluster together and inform the deviant discourse of bad mothering begin to give way when mothers’ descriptions of their lives and experiences become the focus (Wells, 2011). These mothers’ stories focus our attention on aspects of their lives that are obscured or distorted if they are seen only in relation to risk factors for child maltreatment. It is important to increase our knowledge and appreciation of these aspects of mothers’ lives in order to move towards a more balanced view of these women that can be acknowledged and supported in systems of child welfare. What can we appreciate about these mothers’ everyday lives and experiences that lie outside the parameters defined by risk factors for child maltreatment? While their poverty is frequently identified, the ways in which their daily lives are contoured and constrained by the harsh conditions of lesser privilege are less so. The mothers in this study were not passive or helpless in the face of the condition of lesser privilege. They responded actively, determined to make the types of changes that were available to them. They were cognizant of the effects of adversity on the lives of their children and motivated by a strong desire to hold their families together. In many stories, the mothers spoke passionately about how the experience of giving birth to a child led to positive changes in their lives and to a renewed sense of purpose and hope for the future. The determination that characterized the stories many mothers told about their daily lives in this study seems out of step with characterizations of them as unmotivated. Child placement can disrupt the mothers’ response to adversity and undermine their efforts to maintain family unity. Too often, mothers in this study felt that they had no say about the placement or about which treatment conditions might be helpful. In situations where the mothers do appreciate child placement, they view the placement as necessary and as a method to create changes that may eventually restore family unity. When their children are put in placement, mothers grieve. It must be an extreme challenge to demonstrate the ability to make life changes in the midst of such grief and to show compliance with conditions that may be incongruent with their own perspectives of help and support.

Home Truths 113

Nonetheless, 23 of the 31 mothers had been reunited with their children or were anticipating the imminent return of their children. This speaks to strength of character and enduring connection to their children. Typically mothers in this study did not see a connection between the interventions proposed by child welfare workers and the capacity of these interventions to lessen their harsh living conditions. Rarely did workers make material offers of help such as food, transportation, or babysitting and, too often, child welfare involvements were constructed as yet another adversity for these women to manage. Neo-liberal sensibilities lead us towards holding parents responsible for the problems of child maltreatment (Robson, 2005). Canadian child welfare policy is focused on the child; mothers tend to be constructed as having failed to provide the necessary conditions of child safety (Greaves, Varcoe, Poole, Morrow, Johnson, & Pederson, 2002). The perspectives of mothers lack credibility, which was evident in this study by the repeated references to the frustrations associated with finding ways to make child welfare workers, and sometimes other professionals, listen. When this was not possible, some mothers demonstrated responsibility by creating stories that paralleled the workers’ interpretations of the difficulties and solutions, even though they did not agree. Sometimes they demonstrated compliance with treatment conditions in the spirit of “playing the game” (Dumbrill, 2006; Featherstone, 1999). Linking successful rehabilitation to their demonstrated admissions of responsibility and compliance activities not only compromises relationships between mothers and workers, it limits decision making about parenting capacity to a narrow set of criteria which might be more closely related to the ability to manage institutional expectations than to the capacity for caregiving (Dubowitz et al., 2005). It is important that the uniqueness of families and family members be identified and that mothers participate in customized forms of help that account for the realities of lesser privilege and support their efforts to hold their families together amidst adversity. We might expect workers who routinely engage with the daily living realities of mothers of placed children to have a mandate that supports them in helping these women develop consciousness of their social position, the problems that are most important to them, and the possibilities of community-based solutions. A citizen-engaged approach to child welfare that supports mothers with resources and tools to take action against the effects of lesser privilege and accompanying adversities opens possibilities for new ways of supporting families and children (The Early Help Project, 2012).

114  Nancy Freymond

I am an advocate of expanding the range of child placement services available to mothers and of using coercion only as a last and undesirable resort (Freymond & Cameron, 2011). But increasing service options and decreasing the use of court is only a beginning. The difficulties that eventually lead to child placement begin long before child placement occurs. Child welfare help that targets early-stage difficulties before they have a chance to intensify, multiply, or both is indicated. Totalizing negative social descriptions of mothers with children in placement not only reinforce and sustain their status as bad mothers but also influence the child welfare services that will be available to them and the way in which these will be delivered. It is critical to create space in child welfare procedures to shift the focus away from evaluation and towards conversations where mothers can put forward an understanding of their lives. They need a chance to affirm, and in situations of child placement perhaps reaffirm, their sense of themselves as mothers and their capacities for good mothering (Sykes, 2011). The lives of children are contoured by the everyday reality and experience of their mothers. In the absence of a full accounting of their everyday realities, mothers’ intentions and actions will be misunderstood.

5 Invisible Lives: A Qualitative Study of 61 Parents Receiving Child Protective Services sarah maiter, shehenaz manji, and sally palmer

In this chapter, we report on findings from one of the methods employed by the Partnerships for Children and Families Project to better understand the state of child welfare services in Ontario. Starting from the perspective that service participants’ views of their lives and their experiences can provide insights into service development and respectful approaches to service delivery, we embarked on a qualitative approach that sought to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the lives of families coming to the attention of child protective services (CPS). We also wanted to understand their experiences of child welfare interventions. Traditionally, the view that service participants do not know what would be helpful to them has resulted in services being developed that did not include their perspectives (Fine, Palmer, & Coady, 2003). This approach, however, can fail to provide us with full contextual insights into service participants’ lives and services that they would consider to be valid. Furthermore, the potential to further oppress service recipients and blame them for societal problems has been noted. Our aim therefore was to address this gap through in-depth interviews with families receiving CPS. Our study not only asked about the services that they received but obtained deeper information about their lives prior to child welfare interventions, their general social environment, and their experiences of caring for their children. This approach led to an understanding of the families’ context which has implications for practice. The service recipient’s perspective is central to a critical, anti-oppressive, and social justice approach to social work practice: it focuses on the voices of families themselves, provides opportunities to explore structural

116  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

inequalities in society that affect their lives, and questions ineffective, harmful, and taken-for-granted social and political structures. As CPS is a central part of our social welfare system, it is essential to continue searching for fair and equitable approaches in this area of practice. Modern social work and child welfare interventions have their roots in the dual goals of helping those in need and maintaining social order (Hicks, 2006; Swift, 1995a and b). Swift notes that the developers of modern child welfare organizations … believed that in “saving” neglected children, they also could save themselves and their positions of privilege. They most certainly hoped to help neglected children, but they wanted to reduce threats to the existing social order that they believed these children might come to pose. (p. 74)

She calls their approach “ingenuous” as it created an avenue for state-sanctioned intrusion into the private lives of those considered to be dangerous to the interests of the organizers. Essentially, this approach, albeit modified, remains today (Swift, 1995a) and continues to have insidious effects in child welfare intervention. Current statistics point to greater state intervention in the lives of poor, single-parent families. Data from the 1998 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (MacLaurin, Trocmé, & Fallon, 2003) indicate that national rates for child placement are lowest for households led by two biological parents or a biological parent and a grandparent (5%). They are slightly higher for single fathers (7%), single mothers (9%), and a biological parent with a step-parent or common-law partner (10%). Child investigation rates also varied by household source of income; for over one-third of the child investigations, social assistance (e.g., welfare, disability benefits) or employment insurance was the primary source of income; for 10% of investigations, part-time and seasonal income was the primary source. The percentage of children placed as a result of investigations was highest for those on social assistance or receiving unemployment insurance, followed by those with part-time or seasonal employment. Further, 20% of children placed were living in a shelter or hotel, 13% in public housing, 8% in private rental accommodations, and 7% in purchased homes. These figures point to the difficult circumstances of a large number of families who have involvement with CPS and bring our attention to some of their needs. Our study builds on this knowledge

Invisible Lives 117

by providing additional context to client lives from the perspectives of clients themselves. Research Method As the goal of this study was to understand the perspectives of parents receiving child protective services, with the purpose of building this understanding into service provision, we chose to use a qualitative approach. Qualitative research can deepen our understanding of people’s lived experiences by eliciting details about their feelings, thought processes, and emotions that may not be possible through a quantitative design (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Qualitative data also provide an understanding of the context of people’s lives and events, capture the diversity within groups, and enhance the inclusion of participants’ perspectives (Fetterman, 1989). An exploratory qualitative design was employed using a semi-structured interview schedule to collect data from research participants. The participants for this study were recruited from two CPS agencies servicing two of 53 regions in Ontario, Canada. Sixty-four per cent of parents were recruited from one agency, 36% from the other. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews that were 1½ to 2 hours in length. For the 61 families in the sample, 93% of the interviews were with mothers only, 5% were with fathers only, and one was a joint interview. Using a semi-structured interview guide, participants were asked to describe the important events in their lives, especially over the past five years, their initial involvement with the child welfare system, and the end of this involvement. After the interviews were transcribed, all three authors worked on developing and defining codes from themes and insights that emerged from their reading of the same four transcripts. Findings Sample The age of the participants ranged from 16 years to 47 years with the mean being 31.66 years. The marital status of the participants was as follows: single = 17 (28%); married = 15 (25%); living common-law = 10 (16%); divorced = 10 (16%); separated = 8 (13%); and widowed = 1 (2.0%). Fifty-eight (95%) participants were born in Canada, and 60 (98%)

118  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

spoke English as their first language. The families had one to six children (Mean = 2.18). They had been involved with CPS for 0.08 to 15 years (Mean = 2.4 years). Our interviews resulted in rich data providing deep insights into the lives of families, their struggles, strengths, support structures, and experiences with the child welfare system. Different aspects of these findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals (Manji, Maiter, & Palmer, 2005; Maiter, Palmer, & Manji, 2006; Palmer, Maiter, & Manji, 2006). In this chapter, we consider some of the connections between these aspects of family life, along with relevant findings that were not previously reported about parents’ struggles to live their daily lives, and the challenges presented by their children. The interconnection of parents’ struggles, their children’s problems, and the parents’ experiences with CPS intervention may show that intervention is often not providing the kind of support these families need. Parents’ Struggles The first important area of findings relates to parents’ struggles. The in-depth interviews with parents revealed that they faced many challenges in family life that would compromise the development of a supportive parenting environment. The most common of these were unsupportive relationships where predominantly mothers spoke about fathers (37, 61%), frequent moves (34, 56%), poverty (23, 38%), abuse of the mother by her male partner (21, 34%), abusive and insecure childhoods (17, 28%), living in socially toxic environments (16, 26%), other forms of oppression (15, 25%), and job struggles (12, 20%). unsupportive relationships Thirty-seven parents (61%) spoke about partners’ behaviour that made them feel unsupported in family life: lack of participation in household chores and decisions, lack of connection, poor communication, no unified front with the children, and marital infidelity on the part of the partner. Pseudonyms are used to report parent quotes. As all but four respondents were mothers, the data suggest that mothers were largely carrying the child-rearing responsibilities, with little or no emotional or financial support from their partners. The following quote from Joan, 43, captures the sentiments of many mothers in this sample: He doesn’t help me with the baby – he’ll drive my teenage son around, but

Invisible Lives 119 that’s about it. He doesn’t help around the house, he doesn’t cook or clean or do anything with the baby … I’m losing it. I’m exhausted. She [baby] doesn’t sleep.

frequent moves Many parents involved with CPS are perceived to have a transient lifestyle because of their frequent moves from one home to another. Reasons for these moves were revealed by 34 parents (56%): financial hardship, desire to obtain better housing or escape toxic environments, being in transition while waiting for public housing, need for more space as their children grew, work-related moves, and marital sepa­ ration. Jane, 25, married, commented on the number of moves that her  family had to make because of additional children as well as ­ finances: We have had a lot of moving around because our family grew quite quickly. We rented a house and it got really expensive so we had to move again, and we moved into an apartment to save money for a house. But we could not stay there, as it was too small when I became pregnant.

poverty Twenty-three parents (38%) noted concerns related to poverty. Parents struggled to pay bills for basic necessities and essential items such as rent, food, diapers, and medication. Those on welfare found that they were unable to meet their needs from this income, while some noted that they made decisions to move in order to cut back on their cost of living. Worries about having enough money for food and the high cost of living are evident in 16-year-old Denise’s comment: I have money put away just in case I run out of food and stuff like that. But bus tickets, just for 20 of them is $30 and 20 can go in a few days. That would be over $200 a month and bus passes are a hundred and something. If you want to go get something for yourself, you don’t, because you don’t know how much money you’ll have left or if you’ll run out of food.

abuse of mother by male partner Twenty-one mothers (34%) described abusive behaviour towards them by their male partners. The violence ranged from slight to extreme, with mothers reporting choking, grabbing, kicking, punching, shoving,

120  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

hair pulling, smashing beer bottles on the head, and force feeding. One mother had her jaw and nose broken. Mothers noted that it was difficult to know what triggered the violence, but it appeared that “some small thing would trigger it.” They reported an overwhelming sense of fear and vigilance in trying to understand their spouse’s mood, and one parent reported extreme anxiety resulting in nausea and throwing up during the violent episode. Mothers had also been hit while pregnant, and by other family members of the partner. They felt isolated and unsupported after the incident and some did not call the police based on previous experience when the partner was not charged. A situation of violence is noted by Paula, 40, mother of two, who stated: When I walked in the back door he was there, he just grabbed me and threw me out into the garage. I was begging him to stop and he goes, “You’re out of this house, if you fricking come back here … ” We were down the street and he was yelling, “You fucking bitch, you’re going to pay. You will not do this to me, you’re not welcome, you have nothing anymore and I’m going to destroy you and your life is finished”; and he just wouldn’t stop. I ran from him, but he caught me and threw me into the snowbank on the next street; I just curled up in a ball. I thought, “You’re right, I’m a loser.”

Tess, 23, remembered the lengthy duration of the abuse: It started at 9:00 at night and it didn’t end until 2:30 in the morning. And through the course of those hours he strangled me three times, threw me from where the high chair is to the bedroom twice, picked me up by my throat and threw me up against that wall there and punched me in the head.

abusive and insecure childhoods Many of the parents had been abused in childhood, which would compromise their own development into parents: 17 parents (28%) reported physical/sexual abuse, substance abuse by their parents, extreme mental health issues of their parents, family breakdown, and witnessing abuse of their mothers by male partners. Tess, 23, recalled: My dad sexually abused me from the age of five until 10 … because of the abuse that I suffered from my dad … and the neglect, I would find myself

Invisible Lives 121 walking down the street and seeing other kids with their fathers and seeing a happy relationship. I resented those kids.

socially toxic environments Linked with poverty was the parents’ concern about trying to raise their children in “socially toxic” environments: 16 parents (26%) raised concern about the neighbourhoods in which they lived or had lived. Their concerns were lack of privacy, and gossip that resulted in relationship problems with neighbours; conflict with neighbours; an unsafe environment because of drug dealing and drug use in the area; “rough and mean” neighbourhoods affecting children. Neighbourhoods can often provide a supportive environment for parents; however, many of the parents in this sample experienced their neighbourhoods as unsupportive or hostile. Susan, 40, mother of three, noted the disturbances that arose in her neighbourhood: We had six months of trouble over there and they’re finally gone, but we have another house where people come and go at all hours of the day and night, that we really wish weren’t there.

other forms of oppression Fifteen mothers (25%) also identified oppressive relationships with their partners. These parents experienced overt and subtle control, being ordered around, yelling, blaming, and being “kept in line.” Ten mothers noted that they were afraid of their partners or ex-partners. Mothers sometimes carried the financial responsibility for the family, despite being controlled and ordered around by their partner; for some, the control and interference continued even after separation. Paula, 40, discussed the verbal put-downs and the extreme levels of control from her ex-partner: My ex would be putting me down very much. He would say that I did not do anything around the house, but I did – I kept a great house, but you know, it’s just hard listening to that. He couldn’t say anything good to me. He told me I looked awful all the time … He wouldn’t let me go out, not even to go to the gym. It was crazy, it was just nuts, he had taken all the money away from me, my credit cards, my cell phone, and I asked for it back and he said, “Nope, you don’t need it!” If I wanted anything from the

122  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer store I had to give him a list and he would get it for me. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere.

job struggles Twelve parents (20%) cited problems relating to employment that affected their family lives: not having work, being laid off, having multiple jobs, being unable to keep a job because of child care and health care responsibilities, and wages being too low to meet daily basic needs were noted. Typical comments would be “My husband has been out of work for three years” or “My boyfriend is not working, so it’s hard” or “… and then he was off work, and I was off work, so it was hard.” Donna, 39, described her husband’s unstable employment: “Since our marriage 17 years ago, he has probably had 12 jobs.” Edna, 43, discussed the crisis of being laid off: My husband had several jobs here, but got laid off almost instantly from the first job he got when we first got here. It was most devastating. We thought, “Oh, no, what have we done!”

Challenges Presented by Children In addition to their own struggles, a number of parents described challenges presented by their children that increased the stressors in their lives. The children in the study ranged from 16 months to 16 years of age. Eleven (18%) parents struggled with difficult behaviour of their children and nine (15%) noted developmental challenges presented by their children. Eight (13%) parents described their children’s challenges as linked to maltreatment that had caused the children physical and psychological trauma. difficult behaviour The difficult behaviour described by the 11 parents (18%) included children being distractible, having extreme mood changes (from happiness to fear and anger), sleeplessness, hyperactivity, assaulting others verbally, and using physical aggression. Parents described how these behaviours caused problems at home and school. Midge’s daughter was often reprimanded at school for “not paying attention, getting up, wandering around, and not completing [her] work.” Ruth, 30, explained her frustration in communicating with her son: We’ve gone through a lot with him; like the listening and the frustration

Invisible Lives 123 and … he does not listen a lot of days, and it makes it harder on you … when you talk normally to [son], I don’t know if he ignores you or shuts you out.

Ruth also explained how her son would get “excited and all wound up” around unfamiliar people. His mood would swing from being “fine, happy, playing and then the next minute … throwing something against the wall; he’s like a light switch.” When Midge’s daughter was angry she would swear at her mother and call her names. She was “expelled on and off from school since grade 6” for being verbally abusive to the teachers. developmental challenges Nine (15%) parents reported that developmental disabilities impeded the growth and community integration of their children. All these parents discussed various causes and symptoms related to their child’s developmental disability. As well, six parents (10%) described the psychological impact of a developmental disability on a child, and four parents (7%) felt that the school system had failed to meet the special needs of their children. Parents stated that developmental challenges had been caused by complications at birth, such as the “cord was wrapped around his neck” and the baby “was blue, not breathing.” While growing, the children showed symptoms in the form of medical problems, such as hypothyroid disease, impaired kidneys, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). These children had impaired functioning and this interfered with their physical development, attention span, and learning processes. Having a developmental disability had a psychological impact on some children. Parents said their children “couldn’t do things like the other children [at school],” and when the children became aware of their differences, their self-esteem suffered because of embarrassment and frustration. For example, Dorothy’s son struggled in grade 5, but made “a really good connection” with the principal of his next school. This principal arranged for testing and introduced him to a special program. However, Dorothy felt that her son was … really embarrassed about that … and with him having difficulties at school it is really hard now because he doesn’t fit in. It is more his mindset.

124  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

On the other hand, Kathy, 34, said that her son’s teachers did not question his disengagement in class until he was in grade 4. His lack of expression was simply attributed to being shy. Having special needs meant that the children required additional support at school. However, parents were disappointed with the lack of resources, and with exclusionary practices in the school ­system. Sheila’s first son had Tourette’s syndrome and was not speaking at  two years old. His school was unable to accommodate his challenges: … in kindergarten he was expelled indefinitely. They didn’t even want him to go through the school system. He wasn’t able to sit properly, and at times, with the Tourette’s [syndrome], he would swear or have uncontrollable blurts.

effects of maltreatment Some parents linked their children’s negative behaviours to maltreatment that they had experienced. Eight (13%) parents reported that their children had endured maltreatment from caregivers in their families or in the community, and it had caused them physical and psychological trauma. The parents described incidents of sexual abuse, physical assault, punitive treatment, and neglect. Adults in the family or strangers in the community were identified as the perpetrators. For example, Kathy’s son said, “Daddy put my body in hot water.” Dorothy, 46, said, “My daughter was sexually assaulted by her big sister’s husband.” Midge, 39, said, “The man took [her daughter] into the bathroom in [name of department store] and asked her to perform oral sex on him.” The “inappropriate touching” or “sexual abuse” was sometimes reported as having occurred at a very young age: Barb, 40, indicated that her male partner had abused their son when he was only five months old. Sheila, 31, said her son had been “sexually molested at only a couple of weeks old.” She also described her husband’s ongoing harsh treatment of their children, which led her to leave him. Even when a family had separated, some mothers reported that their children continued to be maltreated by ex-spouses and other caregivers during parental visits. Dorothy, 47 and divorced, believed that her ex-husband was neglectful and maltreated their son and daughter when they were visiting with him, including sexually abusing their son. Parents in this sample noted a variety of problems that impinged on their families, including unsupportive relationships, frequent moves,

Invisible Lives 125

poverty, and abuse. Clearly, many of the mothers were in oppressive relationships with partners who were controlling and unsupportive, particularly in the day-to-day challenges of raising children. This lack of support was especially problematic as many endured abuse from their partners which included extreme violence, such as hitting, punching, and kicking, as well as restricting behaviour, such as supervising mothers’ movements and actions. These mothers were already feeling isolated and burdened, having themselves led difficult, disrupted, and insecure childhoods with experiences of childhood abuse. Within the difficult contexts noted above, some parents were coping with children who presented special challenges. Interventions by Child Protective Services Involvement with CPS created additional stressors for parents. Usually this involvement is involuntary – initiated because someone believes parents are not caring adequately for their children. This tells them that the community, or someone in the community, does not approve of them as parents. As many families who become involved with CPS are poor and socially marginalized, they may already feel rejected by the community around them; being approached by CPS also brings the fear that their children may be taken away from them, perhaps forever. Although parents spoke about positive experiences with the system and with specific workers, parents overwhelmingly described negative experiences with the CPS system and sometimes with workers. negative experiences The most common reports by parents of their negative experiences with CPS could be categorized as lack of help, unfair treatment, harassment, and being traumatized by CPS taking their children. Often parents expressed anger or fear about these experiences. Lack of Help. Thirty-two parents (52%) made comments about receiving less help than they expected: difficulty in accessing or communicating with workers, including worker turnover; scarcity of counselling and in-home services; and little help for children with special needs. Daisy, 37, separated, had experienced having her three children in foster care; she was shocked that no one visited her for five months after the children were returned to her: “I could have been doing anything [to them]. [During the placement] I was never allowed to have them on my own.”

126  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

Worker turnover was mentioned by nine parents (15%), who felt frustrated or deserted by the change of workers. For example, Nellie, 24, commented on this change when the previous worker quit the agency after a month: I was getting sick of worker after worker … because they ask you the same questions over and over again … none of them really knew me.

Jodie, 41, married, had a supportive worker, but when this worker left the agency, “I kind of felt we were deserted.” Unfair Treatment. Parents who felt unfairly treated included those who felt they had been unfairly judged, given too little information by CPS, and misled or betrayed. Feeling unfairly judged was mentioned by 19 parents (31%), who felt the agency had been too critical of them or set unfair standards. Lara, 28, living common-law, was upset that CPS had a history of her life and seemed to use it against her: “… I don’t think that’s right … [that] they should bring up my whole life history.” Hanna, 22, living common-law, felt the agency judged her too quickly: I admit my place was messy, but if they had given me a little time to prove that I’m not a neglectful parent, I wouldn’t be in this trouble right now.

Receiving too little information was mentioned by 16 parents (26%), who said they were not given adequate explanations of how CPS functioned, or were not given important information about their children in care. Nola, 27, single, had her children taken away, and was confused about how to obtain information from the agency: I don’t even know who I’m supposed to speak to [among different workers] … they didn’t tell me the rules of the organization … they just had the audacity to take them [her children] like that … I thought they would come to your home and talk to you.

Some parents were upset that they were not told about the foster home where their child was placed, or not informed when their children had problems in care. Sandy, 22, single, was upset that she was not told about her daughter being in hospital until she came for her regular visit. Georgia, 42, married, was upset that she wasn’t told her son was changing foster homes until the day before his move: “There was no input as far as we were concerned.” Moreover, the worker with whom

Invisible Lives 127

Georgia talked could tell her nothing about the new foster home, because another worker had arranged it. Harassment. Parents spoke about being scrutinized, invaded, threatened, attacked, or generally hassled. Scrutiny was mentioned by 13 parents (21%): they felt uncomfortable about close monitoring of their parenting behaviour or resented agency involvement in their visits with children during placement. Examples of scrutiny described by parents were having their food supply checked and being questioned about the suitability of their friends and relatives to care for their children. Elise, 25, single, objected to the agency’s rule that people who supervised her children should have a police check: … if you’re going to ask my friends if they have charges against them, most of them do … my father has been in jail most of his life, and I’m not going to stop him seeing his grandchildren.

Regarding the monitoring of parent-child visits, Kathy recalled: “A worker was behind the glass where nobody could see her … they were taking notes of what we [she and her husband] said and did – it was like you were in prison.” Feeling invaded, threatened, or attacked by CPS was mentioned by 20 parents (33%). They felt invaded when workers interviewed their children without their knowledge, arrived in their homes in officious manner, or took a police-like approach to searching their homes. Bart, 34, a divorced father, said the worker came “ … storming in, ‘Have the kids got food? Have the kids got clothes?’ … she went right through the whole place, checking.” Parents described threats that invoked the fear of losing their children. Melinda, 38, separated, said she had refused to talk with a new CPS worker (her third different worker), arguing that her son was soon to be admitted to a children’s mental health centre, and the worker countered with “Would you prefer to tell this to a judge?” Being harassed was mentioned by 10 parents (16%), who felt that CPS approaches were oppressive or controlling. Hanna, 22, living commonlaw, felt the agency expected too much: One worker comes in one day and then a worker comes out the next day and … we’re expected to go to “Healthy Babies, Healthy Children” [a weekly prevention program] and this is too much.

128  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

Feeling misled or betrayed was mentioned by 10 parents (16%). They felt the agency had not been open with them during the investigation or decision making, and another three (5%) spoke of being betrayed. Examples of being misled included being pressured to sign voluntary care agreements to avoid court, or being reassured that children would be left at home or placed only briefly, then having them removed or kept for a longer time. An example of this was given by Hilda, 23, who was living in a common-law union: They had promised me that [daughter] would be coming home that night … [After visit to hospital] they said that they were keeping her. And I said, “You told me that if nothing was wrong she could come home.” They said, “I’m sorry, we have to protect the children first and we were trying to calm you down at your house.” Which I didn’t think was fair – they lied to me.

Tess, 23, single, felt betrayed when her CPS worker spoke in court about disclosures Tess thought she had made to the worker in confidence: I told my social worker about my past suicide attempts [five years earlier] … so she could better understand why I sympathized with my boyfriend’s suicide attempt … and she put this into documents [for court] … I’m a completely different person today … and she had the nerve to put my suicide attempts in those legal papers … she was grasping at straws to put in anything negative she could and that’s how I took it.

Tess’s feeling illustrates the complexity of the CPS worker’s role as both helper and authority figure. Traumatized by Sudden Apprehension. Eleven parents (18%) spoke about the sudden apprehension of their children and the traumatic effects on them. Some would have liked a chance to call in a supportive family member to avert the need for placement. Four of the 11 families (7%) objected to the public manner in which their children were taken and/ or the number of people involved, including police. Kitty, 38, single, recalled: They came into the mall, in public, and snatched my kids right out of my hands … having people see this and having them ripped out of my arms

Invisible Lives 129 and being treated as if I was a bad person … I ended up in hospital for a long time.

Pat, 23, married, described having her infant daughter taken while she was still in hospital after giving birth: … the [CPS] worker came back with three police officers, three nurses, the “head honcho” guy from the hospital and they took my daughter.

Anger and Fear. CPS interventions causing anger and fear could be inferred from many of the parents’ reports; however, there were only seven parents (11%) who expressed anger directly, and three (5%) who expressed fear. Regarding anger, Kathy, 34, recalled: They brought a detective in … they asked me all these questions about [son] having marks on his fingers. At that point I just wanted to shoot them all.

positive experiences Most of the parents’ comments about good experiences with workers could be categorized as workers making them feel supported and valued, and treating them with respect. Feeling Supported and Valued. Workers made them feel supported and valued by making good referrals, being emotionally supportive, and providing concrete help. Good referrals by workers were mentioned by 21 parents (34%). These included arranging for their children to go to daycare, camps, counselling, psychological assessments, and treatment. Emma, 31, sought help from CPS after she had broken her son’s crib in anger, and was given a number of helpful referrals: When I told them how angry I was … they gave me names of the mental health clinic. I got a counsellor, I got support in for the child … you name it I got it on a silver platter. They were so willing to help me and so understanding.

Emotional support was mentioned by 19 parents (31%). They a­ppreciated workers who listened to and recognized their feel­ ings,  praised them for seeking help, responded promptly to phone calls, were non-judgmental, and supported them in parenting their

130  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

children. Paula, 40, divorced, recalled her first encounter with her worker: As soon as she walked in the door, she said, “I’m really sorry about this. I can tell that it’s been very hard on you … I will make it as easy as I can. We have to follow up all calls and I will have to speak to the children.”

The worker spoke with the children separately but, as Paula said, “… was very quickly back to me.” Concrete help was mentioned by 16 parents (18%); this included help in obtaining money, food, and shelter, as well as in-home help with children. Dorothy, 47, divorced, was enthusiastic about the “Family Preservation” workers who came in to help with her often angry and aggressive children: … the third one came and just spent a lot of time with [youngest son]. And they were great … they were wonderful!

Respectful Approaches. Parents who spoke of being treated with respect described workers who explained CPS processes and limits, and allowed parents some choice in how services were delivered. Explanations of processes and limits were mentioned by nine parents (15%). Their anxiety was relieved when workers explained agency processes, and/or reassured them when they did not intend to take their children. Denise, 16, single, recalled that, instead of taking her baby, the worker … supported me … explained things to me like she’s not coming here to take him away – she’s here to explain stuff.

Allowing choices was mentioned by six parents (10%), who said their workers had given them some choices, including the timing of appointments, the kind of help parents wanted, and the selection of a foster home for their child. Betty, 29, living in a common-law union, expressed appreciation for CPS because “They’re asking me how I need help and listening to me.” Discussion Overall, the parents described a range of problems that impinged on their families, including unsupportive relationships, frequent moves,

Invisible Lives 131

poverty, abuse of the mother by her male partner, socially toxic environments, other forms of oppression, and job struggles. Some parents had themselves experienced difficult, disrupted, and insecure childhoods, including childhood abuse. Along with the difficulties described above, many parents were coping with children who presented special challenges. Some children had been physically/sexually abused, while parents also noted children with physical health issues, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and other behaviour problems that were prevalent from an early age. The behaviours of these children with which parents had been contending appeared to escalate during adolescence. Parents felt overwhelmed by efforts to advocate for their children in the school system and in the social service system. They struggled to obtain the help they felt that their children needed and sometimes approached CPS to obtain this help. Despite all the challenges faced by parents in the study, our research also revealed strengths and personal resources that helped them to care for their children within a harsh social and economic environment. Parents endeavoured to find appropriate housing, and to protect their children from rough neighbourhoods. They struggled to find employment, and were willing to take casual, low-paid, insecure jobs to support their families. Parents often had employment that did not offer them security or allow them the flexibility to attend to personal, child care, and homerelated needs. This left them vulnerable to losing their jobs when they were absent for personal reasons. The low wages from their jobs, combined with child care costs, left them struggling to make ends meet. Although they tried to provide safe and secure environments for their children, many parents were exhausted and discouraged by the demands of their lives. The large number of parents who spoke about referrals and concrete help demonstrates the supportive role that CPS agencies can take when families are struggling or in crisis. Parents appreciated referrals that enabled them to access daycare, counselling, assessment, and/or treatment for themselves or their children. They also benefited from concrete help, such as food, shelter, and being linked to special education for their children. It was noteworthy that many parents spoke about the emotional support they received from workers in a context where the agency’s role often generates fear and hostility. At the time of this study, the two CPS agencies in the study were, along with most CPS agencies in Ontario, going through a period of increasing workloads and high worker turnover, with the added stress

132  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

of heightened government monitoring and public scrutiny. Yet some workers were able to develop warm and trusting relationships with families despite these tensions and pressures. Parents particularly appreciated workers who they felt listened to their stories, rather than focusing on the agency’s bureaucratic concerns and expectations. Workers who showed caring and empathy in specific ways were perceived favourably by parents. For example, they appreciated workers who spent extra time with them during a stressful period, or shared some personal information that revealed their own vulnerabilities. Respectful approaches to parents are especially important in a CPS agency, which has tremendous power to engender fear and a sense of powerlessness in families. Thus, it is significant that some parents felt they were given good explanations of agency processes, including reassurance about agency intentions regarding their children. Generally, parents described more negative than positive experiences with CPS interventions. Concerns around lack of help suggested that agencies may have been rationing their services at a time when there was high demand and limited resources. When families are at their most vulnerable, they should be able to get the casework help they need, and should be able to rely on having a consistent worker, rather than losing someone they trust and having to begin again with a stranger. Workers could help to minimize the demoralizing effects of service gaps on families by acknowledging that their requests and expectations are legitimate, but cannot be met because of limited resources. This would lessen the family’s feeling that resources were being rationed because the worker did not care about them. As for worker changes, these are sometimes caused by unavoidable staff turnover. However, some CPS agencies have built in changes as part of worker specialization; for example, a new worker takes over when a child comes into care. Losing a worker can be a crucial event for vulnerable parents who are undergoing a crisis in their lives, and their perspective should be considered when weighing the costs and benefits of a specialized service system. Parents’ sense of being unfairly judged, denied information, or being betrayed is an outcome of the agency’s mandatory function to protect children. The legislation under which workers operate gives them great power, and creates understandable fear and anger in parents. From the parents’ descriptions of positive experiences, it is clear that some workers are able to convey caring and understanding of how difficult the encounter is for parents. Often the same parent spoke positively

Invisible Lives 133

about one worker and negatively about another, suggesting that parents had an open mind towards CPS and could potentially respond well to respectful and supportive treatment. Workers can ensure that parents have sufficient information about agency practices, parental rights, and the agency’s perspective of the family’s situation. Innovative practices, such as Family Group Conferencing, provide a structure that gives parents the above information, draws in supportive others such as extended family, and allows the group to take the lead in considering alternatives for the ongoing care of children. Before a court hearing, when the agency may be presenting a negative view of the family, workers can prepare the parents for what they will hear. During placement, workers should always inform parents as soon as possible of important developments in their children’s lives, such as hospitalization or a move to a new placement. Respectful treatment along the way can help to reduce parents’ feelings that the agency is working against them, and enhance their sense of working as partners in the interests of their children. The workers who had a positive influence on parents were able to establish relationships characterized by caring and respect, so that parents and agencies could work collaboratively in caring for children in need of protection. Conclusions and Recommendations In reviewing our overall findings, three interrelated themes emerge: families in a non-supportive society, internal family struggles, and CPS orientation towards child rescue versus family support. Families in a Non-Supportive Society Many of the parents in the study were adversely affected by societal conditions such as poverty, unemployment, precarious jobs, and living in socially toxic neighbourhoods. Such conditions create a harsh environment for parents who are already struggling with their partnerships and the challenges presented by their children. Poverty is a large contributor to family breakdown, neglect and abuse of children, and ultimately to child placement. It has been documented that the largest numbers of child abuse and neglect reports come from poor, disadvantaged neighbourhoods (Bala, 2004; Garbarino & Sherman, 1980; Lindsey, 1994; MacLaurin, Trocmé, & Fallon, 2003). Further, a London, Ontario study showed that 83% of children admitted to CPS care in 2001

134  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

came from families on social assistance (Leschied, Whitehead, Hurley, & Chiodo, 2004). It seems that social problems such as poverty and social exclusion become pathways leading families to require the intervention of CPS agencies. Internal Family Struggles Interacting with pressures from the external environment, a substantial number of families reported serious behavioural and developmental problems with their children, and many mothers felt they were not being supported by their partners. In Ontario, it is generally recognized that treatment for children’s mental health and behaviour problems is a scarce resource, and families living with external stressors would probably have more difficulty than usual in accessing treatment. As for conflicts within the parents’ own partnerships, these could be addressed through family counselling or supportive programs. Yet CPS agencies have only limited resources for family support, so their response to families is often too little or too late. Child Rescue versus Family Support While some parents in this study described receiving valuable support from CPS workers, more of them described the agency as taking an investigative/child rescue approach. They reported unfair treatment, harassment, and, for some, traumatic experiences when their children were taken away in an abrupt, intrusive manner. We did not seek the perspective of the particular workers associated with the parents we interviewed; but a sample of workers was interviewed as part of the larger research project and their views are presented in other chapters in this volume. Our findings about child rescue being given priority over family support are consistent with the observations of Lindsey (1994), who argued that increasing reports of child abuse and neglect have tended to move the child welfare system towards a residual approach, with a focus on investigation and removal of children from families. Workers tend to spend most of their time investigating reports of abuse and attending to crises, so they have little time for prevention and intensive family support. Agency programs such as family preservation, child care workers in the home, and wraparound approaches tend to be invoked only after the family is in crisis.

Invisible Lives 135

In addition to increasing reports of child neglect and abuse, CPS workers have other pressures that may push them to focus more on child rescue than on family support: their legal mandate to keep children safe; ongoing scrutiny of their work by government, the media, and the public; and the ambiguity of their role. The CPS role is ambiguous because workers are mandated to protect children, so their top priority must be to ensure the child’s safety. On the other hand, child protection legislation in Ontario sets out the principle of “the least intrusive” approach; that is, every effort should be made to keep children with their birth families (Thomas, 2003). This approach includes the provision of services to help families to stay together; yet, without adequate resources available to them to support parents, workers are unable to take the least intrusive approach. Parents in this study felt that many of their workers took a child rescue approach, rather than offering them the support they needed. A child rescue approach is sometimes necessary because of the degree of abuse or neglect; but it may also be the workers’ reaction to families whom they view as being resistant or uncooperative. From the families’ perspective, it is understandable that parents living with the kind of stressors described earlier – an unsupportive society, internal family conflict, and the challenges of children with developmental and behavioural problems – may be resistant to CPS expectations for them to change their ways of parenting their children. Although we did not ask specific questions about the families’ economic functioning in this study, many of them spoke about living in poverty. As indicated in the study by Leschied et al. (2004), most children entering care in Ontario are from families on social assistance: these families’ incomes dropped abruptly in 1995 and have improved only minimally up to the present. In 1995, an ultra-Conservative government cut the rates of social assistance by over 20%, leaving many families struggling to survive. Small increments provided by a Liberal government since 2003 have barely kept up with the increased cost of living. Thus, many of the families coming to CPS attention are trying to survive with 35%–40% less spending power than they had in 1995, making it very difficult to provide food, shelter, and clothing for their children. Lindsey (1994), citing Kotlowitz (1992) and Kozol (1991), pointed out that children living in poverty are frequently exposed to neighbourhoods of drugs, crime, prostitution, and gang violence, and usually attend schools impoverished by underfunding. Individual CPS workers can do little about the harsh environments that affect the families with whom they work. They are somewhat

136  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

better equipped to tackle the multiple intra-family problems described by the families we interviewed. Child protection legislation across Canada sets out an expectation that CPS agencies will provide reasonable family support services (Thomas, 2003). Some examples in the legislation are teaching parenting skills, or helping families to manage their financial and housing situations. Yet the families we interviewed often said the agencies were not being supportive. Thomas (2003) describes the level of family support by CPS in Canada as “patchy.” As Lindsey (1994) points out, the support needed by CPS-involved families cannot all be provided by agency workers, who are not “miracle workers,” and tend to have large caseloads of families requiring their help. Recommendations Our findings show that the CPS-involved families we interviewed were subject to many external and internal stresses that undermined their ability to care for their children. If CPS is to take a non-intrusive, supportive approach to families requiring their help, they must understand and respond to the total context of their lives. This follows the thinking of Lindsey (1994), who identified socioeconomic factors as the root causes of child neglect and abuse, and concluded that we need to “rethink collective responsibility for the welfare of children” (p. 327). Callahan (1985) also argued for a child welfare system that takes into account the social and economic realities confronting children and families. She recommended a system that advocates for changes in the economic, health, education, and social policies that impact the wellbeing of families, and provides services that are “supportive, supplemental, and substitutive.” Our qualitative study of the lives of CPS-involved families leads us to similar conclusions. Ideally, we should move towards a structural approach to child welfare that acknowledges and addresses the root causes of child neglect and abuse. A more effective child welfare system would be cognizant of the societal and intra-family challenges experienced by parents; it would advocate for a better safety net for those living in poverty, as well as providing support for intra-family problems. Thomas (2003) examined child welfare legislation from other countries regarding the provision of family support by agencies. He notes, “Legislation from other jurisdictions indicates that provisions for family support can be more firmly entrenched as a policy expectation, and that this may encourage a more holistic service approach for families”

Invisible Lives 137

(p. 365). He asks the question whether “the legislative and policy emphasis should be on family support rather than child protection” (p. 365). From our findings, we would conclude that our child welfare legislation should be stronger about providing services to support families. The child welfare system in Ontario introduced new legislation in 2005 with the goal of transforming services, but this legislation gave little attention to family support. Rather, it focused on permanency for children through such changes as shortening the period of temporary care for the youngest children, so they would become Crown Wards after a year instead of two years; encouraging kinship care; and making provisions for long-term foster carers to apply for permanent custody of children in their care if they were unable to adopt them. Ideally, legislation should include a stronger emphasis on family support as a means of providing permanency for children in their original families. Our findings suggest that parents placed a high value on support they received from CPS workers, but many parents felt that support was lacking, and that the agency was working against them. This study has focused on the invisible aspects of families’ lives and their experiences with CPS agencies. The findings reveal the serious external and internal pressures on these families, and their great need for both societal and agency supports. We recommend that CPS agencies be funded to provide family support as an institutional part of child protection, rather than an option that is pursued only in a fragmented way. Many excellent approaches to family support have been developed within our child welfare system to help families care for their children in their own homes. These include collaboration with other agencies and community people to support multi-problem families through programs such as “wraparound” or individualized treatment; in-home help and training in homemaking and child care, using parent aides and child care workers; community family treatment programs, using parent therapists who help families in their own homes, rather than becoming foster carers for the children; and family group conferencing to draw in extended family and supportive friends. As for individual work with families, CPS workers could learn from the families who spoke to us about the services they most appreciated, such as: • Make referrals to appropriate services to address intra-family problems such as substance abuse, conflict between partners, children’s mental health and behaviour problems, and parent-child management.

138  Sarah Maiter, Shehenaz Manji, and Sally Palmer

• Use their social work skills to listen actively to parents’ concerns, show empathy, offer emotional support, and engage parents as partners in working towards better care for their children. • Recognize the power imbalance in the worker-client relationship and work at minimizing this by providing clear information about the role of the agency and the intentions of the worker, and sharing personal information when appropriate. • Respond to concrete needs of the family, recognizing that parents appreciated workers who “went the extra mile” for them. • Incorporate approaches that are effective from the parents’ perspective, e.g., encouraging foster carers to treat them as partners, allowing them input into decisions about their children, and keeping them informed about their children’s living experiences while in care. In terms of structural change, CPS agencies could advocate – alone or in partnership with other social services – for better societal supports, such as improved levels of social assistance, employment opportunities, and subsidized housing. In a more supportive society, many of the children who are taken away from their families might be able to stay in their homes where they belong.

6 “I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real”: A Study of Six Good Worker-Client Relationships in Child Welfare catherine de boer and nick coady

Research in counselling and psychotherapy has confirmed the longheld social work belief that the quality of a helping relationship is an important determinant of client outcome (Horvath, 2001; Lambert & Ogles, 2004). Such research has established that a good helping relationship is characterized by mutual respect, acceptance, trust, warmth, liking, understanding, and collaboration (Lambert & Ogles, 2004; Orlinsky, Ronnestad, & Willutzki, 2004). There is also evidence to suggest that similar relationship factors are important to child welfare work (Dore & Alexander, 1996; Drake, 1994, 1996; Lee & Ayón, 2004; Littell, 2001; Maluccio, 1979; Shulman, 1978; Yatchmenoff, 2005). However, when the social control function of child welfare is emphasized, there can be a tendency to downplay the viability and significance of good helping relationships in this type of social work. The nature of child welfare work offers unique challenges to the development of good helping relationships. Workers can feel unable to devote sufficient time to establish good relationships because of high case loads (Koeske & Koeske, 1989), paperwork demands, and unpredictable emergencies (Vinokur-Kaplan & Hartman, 1986). The work is emotionally laden (Pecora, 1989) and imbued with a power imbalance that privileges workers and can leave clients feeling vulnerable. Workers and clients are often joined in mandated relationships devoted to primal matters – the care and protection of children, the critical assessment of parenting abilities and family functioning, and the potential separation of children from parents. Ruch (2005) maintains that “uncertainty, anxiety, and emotionally charged subject matter” work against “relationship based practice” (p. 111). A wide range of knowledge and skill is required in child welfare work because of the complexity of daily

140  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

tasks (Vinokur-Kaplan & Hartman, 1986), the difficult and chronic nature of client needs (Pecora, 1989), and the intrusive nature of the work. The procedurally driven and bureaucratic nature of child welfare can engender a depersonalized approach that undermines the humanity of the endeavour (Howe, 2010; Hughes & Pengelly, 1997). Helfer (1997) argues that the development of a relationship with abusive and neglectful parents is “one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, kind of therapeutic interpersonal relationship to establish” (p. 109). Yatchmenoff (2005) suggests that engaging child welfare clients, particularly those considered “difficult or hard-to-reach,” is “one of the major challenges in the public child welfare field” (p. 84). Thus, it is not surprising that many child welfare workers consider their skills in developing good relationships with families to be deficient (Pecora, 1989). There is also evidence that poor helping relationships are not uncommon in child welfare and that the qualities of such relationships are the antithesis of those of good worker-client relationships. In focus group interviews with child welfare workers, Drake (1994) found that although most workers recognized the importance of a good relationship and described commonly accepted relationship competencies, “a substantial number recounted stories of intervention in which these skills were not practiced” (p. 601). In this same study, many clients reported instances of poor relationships with workers who were perceived as disrespectful (“pushy and rude”), judgmental, demeaning, and not wanting to listen or understand. Other studies of child welfare (Anderson, 1998; Callahan & Lumb, 1995) confirm that such client experiences are not infrequent. Despite the difficulties inherent in developing and maintaining positive helping relationships in child welfare, it is apparent that it is possible to achieve such relationships and that clients value these relationships. Clients in Drake’s (1994) study described good relationships with workers as respectful, comfortable, and friendly. They described the workers in these relationships as warm, empathic, honest, and good listeners. Winefield and Barlow (1995) found that child welfare clients were very satisfied with workers who were friendly and cared about them as individuals. McCurdy and Jones (2000) documented that parents in child abuse prevention programs described a good worker as someone they could depend on and confide in, and who never made them feel like “bad parents” (p. 111). Furthermore, there are reasons to believe that the development of a good relationship is a primary prerequisite to effective assessment and intervention in child welfare. Lee and Ayón (2004) discovered a significant correlation between a good worker-client relationship and

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 141

improvements in children’s physical care, discipline and emotional care, and parental coping. Shulman (1978) found a significant, positive correlation between child welfare clients’ perceptions of their relationships with workers and workers’ helpfulness. Drake (1994) pointed out that if workers do not build good relationships, clients will be less likely to disclose full information and to cooperate – thus compromising the protection of the child. Drawing on psychosocial models, Ruch (2005) contends that workerclient relationships act as the “medium” through which engagement occurs and help is offered. A good helping relationship is deemed to be both an “important source of information” and the “means” to help (Ruch 2005, p. 113). In drawing implications for child welfare from psychotherapy research on multi-problem, high-risk individuals, Dore and Alexander (1996) argued persuasively “that for families with significantly impaired psychosocial functioning, alliance formation should become an end in itself, at least in the beginning phase of treatment” (p. 357). Similarly, Winefield and Barlow (1995) have argued that because abusive and neglectful parents are often emotionally damaged themselves, positive, trusting relationships with child welfare workers are a necessary precondition for learning and change. The small-sample, qualitative study presented in this chapter involved in-depth exploration of worker and client perspectives on worker attitudes and behaviours that facilitated the development of good helping relationships in child welfare. The study employed a multiple interview strategy, two individual and one joint interview for each of the six worker-client dyads, totalling 30 (1 ½–2 hour) interviews in all. A unique aspect of the study’s methodology was having workers and clients selfidentify their common working relationship as “good” and having them share and reflect with one another, as well as with the researchers, their perspectives on the work together. Consistent with Drake (1994, 1996), the results of this study show high levels of congruence between workers and clients with respect to opinions about key relationship competencies and they support the critical importance of these skills to child welfare work. Method Sample Recruitment and Characteristics The sample consisted of six worker-client dyads drawn from two child welfare agencies in southwestern Ontario, Canada, regionally known

142  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

as “Family and Children’s Services” (F&CS). Four dyads came from one F&CS agency, and two from the other. The process of sample selection was initiated by sending a notice to workers in these two child welfare agencies explaining the focus and methodology of the study. Workers were invited to contact the researchers if they had a case that met the inclusion criteria of having developed a “good helping relationship” (minimum three-month period) with a recent ex-client (terminated within the last year) despite the fact that there had been difficult issues to deal with. The researchers intentionally refrained from defining the phrase “good helping relationship,” as they wished to discover what workers and clients considered to be “good,” hence avoiding the appraisal of relationships according to preconceived notions. The proviso that there had been difficult issues to deal with in the work together was included to ensure that the development of a good relationship was not primarily due to a lack of contentious issues in the case. The researchers conducted brief initial interviews with the workers who self-identified as having had a good working relationship with a client to ensure inclusion criteria were met and to secure the worker’s consent to participate in the study. Workers were told that the former client in question might or might not be contacted depending on final sample selection. This strategy was employed to prevent workers from knowing if their former client was contacted or not, thus eliminating any possibility of workers becoming disappointed or upset with former clients who might disagree with their positive assessment of the working relationship or refuse to participate for any other reason. Identifying information about the client was not revealed to the researchers at this time. Instead, for all cases that met the inclusion criteria, the clients were contacted by an agency staff person to obtain their consent for a researcher to call them about the study. Clients were told that unless they agreed to participate, their former workers would not know if they had been contacted or not. Hence clients were free to disclose their own perceptions of the quality of the relationship. A final inclusion criterion was that clients also had to characterize the relationship with their ex-worker as “good.” All clients contacted by the researchers agreed that the relationship with their ex-worker was “good” and agreed to participate. There were four female worker/female client dyads, one female worker/male client dyad, and one male worker/female client dyad in the sample. The range in age for the workers was 29 to 43 years, with a mean age of 35. The workers had been with their respective agencies for between two and nine years, with an average employment tenure of

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 143

four years. Five of the workers were in family service worker positions and one was a youth services worker. Three workers had MSW degrees and three had BA degrees. Four of the workers were married or in common-law unions, one was separated, and one was divorced. Three workers had children of their own and three did not. None of the workers were from racial or ethnic minority groups. Clients ranged in age from 17 to 45 years, with a mean age of 30. Four clients were single, one was separated, and one was divorced. Five of the clients had children (a 21-year-old female client did not – she had been an adolescent ward of the state). Five clients were Caucasian and one was Aboriginal. It should be emphasized that the six study cases did not represent the “easy” end of the continuum of child welfare cases. All of these clients had previous, often extensive involvement with other child welfare workers that had been fraught with difficulty and conflict. Furthermore, the child welfare issues in these cases were serious and complex. Two of the six cases resulted in the permanent out-of-home placement of children, three involved temporary court-ordered supervision, and one client was a long-term ward of the state who had not fared well in foster or group care. Also, it should be pointed out that the workers did not have more time or discretion than other child welfare workers – they worked under standard child welfare mandates and had standard caseloads and paperwork requirements. Procedures and Data Analysis A series of semi-structured audiotaped interviews were conducted with each dyad. The worker and client in each dyad were interviewed individually twice and then a third joint interview was conducted. Thus, the data set consisted of five interviews, each 1 ½–2 hours in length, for each dyad, totalling 30 interviews in all. The focus of these interviews was to elicit workers’ and clients’ stories of their work together, particularly with regard to how the good working relationship developed and what impact it had. A key feature of the design was having each dyad participant read the transcript (or listen to the audiotape) of the other dyad participant’s individual interviews and then reflect on the other’s views of the work together in subsequent interviews. This, along with the researcher reviewing, reflecting on, and coding each interview transcript prior to the next interview, produced results that were in-depth, rich, and deemed credible by all participants – the worker, client, and researcher.

144  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

Data analysis consisted of two distinct processes. First, using a unique case design, six stories, each describing the development and maintenance of the good relationship in one worker-client dyad, were produced. Because these stories were developed collaboratively by workers, clients, and researchers, they were deemed to be a “co-authored” consensus of all participants. These co-authored stories form part of a larger research report (de Boer & Coady, 2003), but are not the focus of this chapter. Second, the six stories and all interview transcripts previously coded were subjected to an across-case qualitative analysis focusing on worker attitudes and actions that facilitated the development of good relationships. Themes related to this focus that emerged from the narratives and transcripts were then grouped, integrated, and refined. The results of the across-case comparative analysis are the subject of this chapter. Results and Discussion Introduction These stories emphasize the importance of positive helping relationships and suggest that they are absolutely essential to good child welfare practice. Good helping relationships seem as essential to child welfare work as they are to counselling and psychotherapy and, in fact, evidence many of the same features, such as mutual liking, trust, and respect. They also evidence several features that may be unique to the child welfare context, such as informal worker style, the mindful and judicious use of power, and the pushing of professional boundaries. Ultimately, this study highlights the benefits of good helping relationships in the child welfare context. They benefit workers, parents, and children by increasing honest disclosures, creating climates of nurturance and support, generating the mutual ownership of service plans, improving worker and parent self-awareness, and, in several instances, increasing worker efficiency. This study shows that positive helping relationships can act as a salve in the raw, emotionally laden, and high-stakes child welfare arena. These stories speak about the life-changing impacts, and even healing, that a positive helping relationship can have on the individuals involved. As one of the parents in the study remarked: I owe [my worker] my child. I really do. I owe her my whole life. Just being able to sit here and being able to function and not be on drugs or

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 145 drinking … I wouldn’t want to look down that road to where I might have been without F&CS.

One worker noted: Here I am an educated woman with a master’s degree. I used to think to myself, “I would like to find a mentor, someone who can mentor me.” What I found was that these women in the neighbourhood group, the client being one of them, have in fact become my mentors … They have so much adversity in their lives. But somehow they have it in them to … make something of themselves … They have been good role models for me in terms of [showing me] there is a potential for people to really wake up and make a difference.

Attributes of Good Helping Relationships in the Child Welfare Context The following seven attributes of good helping relationships in child welfare emerged from the analysis of stories and transcripts: (1) mindful and judicious use of power, (2) humanistic attitude and interpersonal style, (3) mutual liking, (4) respect, (5) honesty, (6) trust, and (7) going the extra mile/challenging professional boundaries. Each will be discussed in turn. 1. Mindful and Judicious Use of Power. In the child welfare context, workers and families do not share equal amounts of power. Child welfare workers, by virtue of their agency connection and their child protection role, are in positions of authority. They hold the power to assess parental “fitness,” enforce voluntary and involuntary care agreements, withhold Extended Care and Maintenance (ECM) monies, and apprehend children, if necessary. These stories indicate that a power imbalance can be less of a barrier to the establishment of a positive helping relationship if the power is openly acknowledged and addressed. The workers in this study were mindful of the power they held and thoroughly explained their reasons and justifications for exercising that power when they needed to do so. As one worker noted, “You realize too or hopefully realize that if we are making recommendations … that it is just not for the sake of us having the power, but that it realistically makes sense in the situation.”

146  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

These workers recognized that regardless of the antecedents leading to F&CS involvement, and the range of service options and degrees of intrusion, parents ultimately fear the worst – that their child will be apprehended. One parent admitted, “I was shocked … I wouldn’t open the door. I was terrified and thought, oh my god! They are going to take my child away.” In response, the worker observed: What was really impressed upon me (in participating in this research) was how intrusive the worker-client relationship can be. I don’t think of myself as a scary person but with the authority piece I instil fear. I think I knew that but it was a good reminder in terms of how scary it is for someone when you come knocking on their door and they panic. They live like this all the time.

These workers emphasized that clear and direct communication about the reasons for F&CS involvement and clear explanations of agency expectations can help to alleviate parental fears. For example, if child apprehension is a possibility, the worker needs to explicitly state this up front. Child apprehension, although necessary in some circumstances, is an extreme option. Hence parents need to be reassured when apprehension is not being considered so that they do not have an unrealistic fear dominate the working relationship. As one worker noted, being explicit involves … keeping in mind the difficulty clients have in working with us [F&CS] and not forgetting that I still have the big agency behind me and there is fear [associated with that], always remembering that and naming it because I know that there tends to be a lot of fears. It can be very reassuring to say, “That is not why I am here” [to apprehend your child]. But if there is a concern, I am not going to say it’s not either. I will be honest. I think that is really, really important.

A mother recalled: She reassured me that F&CS doesn’t just come in and snatch your kids away first thing. You know F&CS is not all bad and that if you work together then you can basically – everything will be okay.

Several workers noted they dealt with the power imbalance by consciously trying to mitigate its potentially damaging effects on the

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 147

helping relationship. Workers admitted that the power imbalance can impinge on their own willingness and ability to remain open and receptive and to actively listen to parents. Hence these workers were mindful of their power but tried not to let it prevent them from listening to the parent or prevent the parent hearing them. Below is one example: There are a few things that are key and one is that when you go in, are you starting with your own agenda – “This is what we expect,” or are you genuinely listening to somebody. Are you listening to what they have to say and validating it? Are you pointing out some of the good things? Are you being honest about why you are involved and what your role is?

A worker’s power can increase a parent’s defensiveness, which ultimately works against the establishment of a positive working relationship. All of the clients involved in this study acknowledged that child welfare workers were involved in their lives for legitimate reasons. Many admitted that they were embarrassed and disappointed with themselves and their situations when their workers first became involved. If the workers then came in heavy-handed, the clients found it exceedingly difficult to be forthcoming and admit to current difficulties for fear of their children being apprehended or being themselves further shamed or judged. Here is one client’s opinion about how workers should deal with power imbalance: Well … listen to us … work with us, not against us … I mean a lot of us already have mother’s guilt … I carry a lot of guilt around on my shoulders … I have this parental guilt and F&CS are great at piling it on higher … A lot of F&CS workers are judgmental. We don’t like to be judged. Like for me, I live with the harshest judge of all, which is myself … Even the way they talk to you. You know, like you are an idiot and you know nothing.

The stories in this study suggest that power needs to be put in its rightful place. Although power influences the helping relationships in the child welfare context, it should never be the sole defining characteristic. Having the power to assess parental fitness, for example, need not prevent a worker from simultaneously observing parental strengths and demonstrating care and compassion. Our study revealed that if a worker came in with an attitude of support and receptiveness, client

148  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

defensiveness was reduced and the relationship was less adversarial. In the quotation below, a mother describes how a worker put her power and authority aside to openly acknowledge the mother’s love and care for her children: Interviewer: I guess some of the ways that she [went beyond judgment] was in her belief that you cared for your kids. She never believed that you didn’t care for your kids. Did it surprise you that she felt that way? Mom: Absolutely! … because they don’t need to say that. I was relieved when she said it after feeling so judged, that somebody did finally come along and give me a break. For me that was huge … She recognized some of the beauty in me too, which made me feel good. I wasn’t just an awful drunk.

Power imbalances are intrinsic to most helping relationships, and are not unique to the child welfare context. For example, in psychotherapy the therapist is usually considered the “expert,” the one providing the help, and the “client” is the non-expert, the one requiring help. In psychotherapy, however, the power imbalance is usually softened by the client’s voluntary engagement with the worker and his or her ability to terminate the relationship. Voluntary engagement and termination are seldom realities in the child welfare context, yet these stories also suggest that a softening of power helps advance a positive helping relationship. Ultimately it is the manner in which the power is exercised, specifically the worker’s attitude and “style of telling the truth,” that makes the difference. Two mothers compared the attitudes and “style of telling the truth” of the workers with whom they had positive relationships with previous workers with whom they did not. One mother noted: My first worker was not honest with me at all. Come in my house and show attitude with me and see where you are going to get because it is just rude. They have the higher power but that [rudeness] is enough to make anybody crazy. They can come in and tell me what I need to do but they don’t have to threaten every time they come.

By comparison this mom described her next worker (the worker who participated in this study) as “kind,” “polite,” and “comforting.” The mom made specific reference to the worker’s voice, which she described as “kind” and “soft.” Another mother recalled:

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 149 My impression [of my first F&CS worker] was not very good. He was just very short [with me] … he just believed everything that he was told. I felt he believed everything that whoever called had said. He believed that person and that was it. There was no ifs ands or buts and he was going to come here and he was going to investigate me and find something wrong … he just wasn’t listening to anything I said. He wasn’t having any of it.

In contrast to her experiences with this first worker, this mom felt listened to by her next worker (the worker participating in this study): I felt like she was going to listen to what I was going to say. I had a chance to explain everything … and once things were explained I felt that things were going along better.

In both of these examples, the “good” workers wielded the same amount of power and shared the identical child safety and parenting concerns as their predecessors. Yet their attitudes and approaches were markedly different. Whereas the initial workers were perceived as rude, overpowering, condescending, and closed-minded, the “good” workers were perceived as “good listeners,” “kind,” and “comforting.” In conclusion, helping relationships in the child welfare context will always evidence power imbalances. However, these stories suggest that when workers openly acknowledge their power, mindfully and judiciously exercise it, soften their attitudes and approach, and refuse to let their power dominate the relationship, the measure to which power is a barrier in the establishment of a good helping relationship is lessened. 2. Humanistic Attitude and Interpersonal Style. These stories reveal that one of the primary factors contributing to a good helping relationship is an authentic style of working. These workers were able to take off their professional masks and relate to their clients on a person-toperson level, albeit with a professional focus. They talked and dressed in a manner that decreased professional distance. They interacted comfortably and authentically. They talked to their clients about things other than child welfare concerns and as a result got to know their clients more personally while simultaneously revealing aspects of themselves. Clients developed an understanding of their workers as individuals who had life experiences not unlike their own. Without

150  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

revealing specifics to their clients, these workers were able to communicate that they knew what it was like, for example, to be a single parent, to be divorced, to have lived through pain and loss, and to have hopes and dreams that transcend current life circumstances. The following client quotations illustrate the humanism displayed by these workers: She has her job but she is very human about it. There are so many of them [child welfare workers] that are just so by the book that there is no room for feelings. And we need the human contact. She treated me like a person who needs help instead of treating me like a single mother … a bad parent. [She treated me] like a person with a child who needs help … like what I said and what I thought matters. We would sit down and … I felt really listened to. I didn’t feel like I was being put up with or professionally listened to.

In the dialogue below between the second author and one of the research participants, the mom acknowledges that her worker’s ability to be “real” moderated the pain and powerlessness she had expected would accompany her working relationship with a child welfare worker: Interviewer: You had that first meeting [with your worker]. You got some answers. You had a good impression of [her]. Did this first meeting go as expected? Mom: I expected more pain because that was usually what I got from [F&CS]. These people are controlling me and my children’s lives … and that hurts. Interviewer: But you didn’t feel that way in your first meeting with [your worker] though? Mom: Oh, it was still on my mind but I knew, maybe, this one is real. This person is actually real … Maybe she has a child, or two, herself.

Although the relationship that developed was between an F&CS worker and a client, there was another dimension, the relationship between one mother and another. The client had accurately perceived during the first interview that her worker was also a mother. During a subsequent meeting the worker was paged about a medical emergency pertaining to her own daughter, who, rather ironically, had the same name as the client’s daughter. The worker and the client were in the

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 151

midst of talking about the possible long-term placement for the client’s daughter, which understandably was difficult and painful for the client. Then, upon receiving the call about her own daughter, the worker felt pulled between the stress and anxiety she was feeling because of her own child and a desire to be professional and refocus on the conversation she was having with the client about the client’s child. The client, despite her own grief, reached out to the worker and encouraged her to go and attend to her daughter. The worker feared she had been grossly insensitive. Yet the client responded in such a supportive manner. The worker recalled: Looking back, I know that was probably really difficult for [mom] because here we are talking about something really important to her and I had to leave. She was so wonderful. She said, “No, go.” She was really wonderful and you know I felt terrible about that because it was a terrible thing [to leave during such an important conversation].

According to the client: You know I felt bad for her. I mean, what are you going to do? Her child was in the hospital. I told her, “Go.” No, she was not being insensitive at all … I had no problem with her leaving.

It needs to be explicitly stated that workers need not be parents to develop good helping relationships. In fact, only three of the six workers who participated in the study were parents. However, it is important to be “real” and authentic. The workers who were parents were able to connect to their clients using that shared experience. The workers who were not parents were able to connect using other shared experiences. One worker noted: I put myself in the place of the person I am working with … I go to where they are, where their head space is. And I think I do that really well. Although I cannot identify with being a mother and losing my child, I have also experienced painful situations in my life and have given up things and have let go of people in my life. That can be painful.

In all cases the workers were able to reach into themselves, their own life experiences, and use them to connect as one human being to another. For example, in one of the dyads, the worker, who was twice as old as

152  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

the young mom, tried to remember what life was like for her when she was of the same age. The client recalled: I think that’s why I liked [worker] because she used to take trips back down memory lane and … she’d really relate to how I am now. She was a very comfortable worker … I think [worker] had the most influence on me by letting me know little tidbits of information about her own life to let me know that she was a person who deals with things herself. Knowing that she didn’t have the perfect life and that she had been through things was really helpful to know. She may be a F&CS worker but she has had a couple of knocks too.

A humanistic style of working helped “clients” feel normal. As one youth-in-care noted: He [worker] said he wanted me to feel normal … He talked about examples [from his work and life] that made me feel less like – he made it more personal, and that was a good thing.

Many of the comments made by these workers evidenced their sincere desire to normalize rather than “otherize” parents. For example, one worker investigated an allegation about her client being an unfit mother because she went out drinking. Once she ascertained that the mom had arranged appropriate child care, she reassured her client, saying, “Moms have a right to go out and have a few drinks with friends. If they get a sitter, that is okay. That is my point of view.” Another worker received a complaint about a parent who had mouldy bread in his fridge. Once the worker ascertained that there was appropriate food in the house, she said: “I just wanted to laugh. Who doesn’t have things go mouldy in their fridge once in a while?” One worker observed, “I think having my own children also helped. Often I watch my kids play in the backyard through the kitchen window. Does that mean I am failing to provide adequate supervision? Does that make me a bad mom?” Parents appreciated it when workers demonstrated their care and concern for them in matters not specifically related to the identified child welfare concerns. For example, when workers expressed interest and concern for their daily living realities and stresses, parents interpreted this as care for them as individuals: She brought me clothes … She bought me Christmas presents. It was really great. It showed that she wasn’t there just for F&CS. It showed she had a heart and that she does care.

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 153

These stories also speak to the untidiness of human relationships that are seldom black and white. True feelings and emotions cannot be turned on and off. For the workers in these stories, their ability to be “human” left them open and vulnerable to feeling both the highs and the lows of their clients’ lives. Several of the workers admitted they cried with parents. Others talked about feeling “distressed,” “devastated,” losing sleep, and worrying: I put my arm around her sometimes. I joked with her. When she was feeling sad or when she cried, I listened to her tears. My heart broke for her. I was really worried about her physically and emotionally. I was concerned for her. Just watching her go through the process of finally signing the piece of paper [the crown ward application] – that was hard. That was hard for me to see. I was heavy inside. I felt really heavy.

Clients also felt for their workers and at times were protective of them: I know I was saddened to see her sad and again I respected her being able to express it. You know? I’d rather that than some cold-nose bitch that’s never had a child. That’s why it comes back to her being a real person. I think more so than some of the people I met from the agency.

Although these parents were both appreciative and disquieted by their workers’ care and concern for them, they concluded that having a worker be “human” was ultimately the best: I miss [worker]. There should be more like her … you need more people like that, that can help or be supportive rather than be judgmental and critical. You do not want someone who is judgmental and critical going in and scooping up your kids. You need someone with a heart.

3. Mutual Liking. Although as helping professionals we can at times naively assume, or perhaps ideally hope, that we can work with any and all people, research suggests otherwise. Sue and Sue (2003) argue that helping professionals who are of similar background (e.g., cultural, socioeconomic, religious) and share similar values and attitudes with the individuals they serve are viewed as more capable, trustworthy,

154  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

and interpersonally “attractive” than workers who do not share these characteristics. According to Sue and Sue (2003), interpersonal attractiveness between workers and clients is important in establishing a good helping relationship. Likewise, this study also suggests that positive helping relationships in child welfare evidence commonalities between worker and client that lead to mutual liking or attractiveness. Several of the workers and clients noted that they liked each other almost immediately because of such things as a shared sense of humour, similar work backgrounds, common life experiences, views of the world, and approaches to work. Others noted that they grew to appreciate and like each other more and more as their relationship deepened and matured. As one worker articulated: I think we are attracted to people whether they are clients or friends that we share something with. One of the things I loved about [client] was her sense of humour, which I think I have too.

There is evidence in these stories that commonalities helped workers and clients establish rapport: Maybe being female and working with a female was a good match for her. I think we had a commonality. She works at [a grocery store] and I used to work [at the same grocery store] so we had that in common and we could talk about that. I grew up in a culture very much like the neighbourhood [where the mom lives] … the shift for me comes very easily because it is a world that I grew up in. It makes it real for me. She was blunt too and I am extremely blunt person so that worked out well. I liked [mom]. She is a bit of a firecracker. She is fairly opinionated, which I like.

Even though these stories suggest that mutual liking can be one of the qualities of a good helping relationship, several workers noted that they had a responsibility to work with all people, even those they might not be “fond of.” Perhaps there is an ease that accompanies the development of a positive helping relationship when mutual liking exists. But this does not excuse workers from trying just as hard, or perhaps even harder, to develop positive relationships with those to whom they are less attracted. As one worker noted:

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 155 It is easier when you like somebody. There is no question. It is a given. But I have cases right now where I am not particularly fond of the people. But in the end, it is about me saying, “You need to be fair. You need to be objective, and you need to be respectful.” Then I say to myself, “Look, in all that, how can I continue to work with her to make sure that I meet her basic needs too.”

4. Respect. Mutual liking may help to facilitate positive relationships but a worker’s respect for his or her client can keep the relationship going. As one worker noted: I think what made the relationship work is that I respected him and he knew it. Even when he had his falls … the bottom line is … that I had known him long enough and he knew I respected him enough that I could be forthright and I think that is kind of why the relationship worked … Respect and honesty, I think they are the two main ingredients that kept the relationship going.

Not only did these workers indicate that they respected their clients but their assertions were supported by clients’ accounts of feeling respected. At times workers overtly expressed their respect, at other times they conveyed it through their actions and their attitudes. Likewise, in the audiotapes and transcripts collected as part of this study, workers revealed obvious respect in their words, tone, and descriptions. For example, one worker frequently used adjectives like “intelligent,” “fascinating,” “motivated,” “creative,” and “insightful” to refer to the dad she had worked with. The following quote provides another example of this: I give a lot of credit to [mom] for that. I give a lot of credit to any parent who can finally come to a place and say, “I love my son so much I have to give him up so that he, so that we can work on the best interests for him.” And to be able to let go but still be part of his life, I give her a lot of credit. I give her the big chunk of credit. That was a pretty difficult thing to do.

5. Honesty. Honest disclosures, although an element of any good helping relationship, are crucial in the child welfare context. This point cannot be overstressed. Without honest client disclosure, workers are functioning with one hand tied behind their backs. Without such disclosure, workers can lack the assurance of a child’s safety, a parent’s

156  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

fitness, and the satisfaction of service requirements. They can be left to wrongly judge, for example, why a mom didn’t follow through on a service plan, or they can misunderstand behaviour because of being under-informed or misinformed about the extent of pain or the difficulties in a client’s life. Without workers’ disclosure, parents are left wondering what “evidence” has been collected against them. From each side, worries and fears contaminate the relationship. Yet honest disclosures are extremely risky, especially for clients. Much is at stake. We can learn about the importance and facilitation of honest disclosures from the positive relationships represented in this study. These stories suggest an association between the honesty modelled by workers and that evidenced by clients. For example, a mom offered the following reflections: She [worker] clarified things by telling me the guidelines and stuff I had to do. My previous worker hadn’t told me anything. She didn’t even tell me what she was there for. I was very dishonest with her too … if she wasn’t going to be honest with me I wasn’t going to be honest with her.

Workers need to take the initiative in establishing an honest relationship, since they have the power and thus less at stake. Worker honesty, then, can begin with the clear presentation of concerns and expectations coupled with the acknowledgment of strengths and a conveyance of respect. Listening to and validating a client’s accounts and experiences when they are revealed also encourages client honesty. A worker’s reaction to client disclosure is critical. If a client feels judged or punished, future disclosures will be less forthcoming. As one worker noted: I am pretty good at getting a youth to tell me that they are doing drugs and what they are doing. I am not angry with them if they are doing it. A lot of them are fearful of how someone will react when they tell them. If you can get them to believe that you are not angry and that you just want to know because you care about them and you want to be able to help them and give them some options …

A mother recalled: I found it easy to be open with her. I felt like no matter what I said to her it was going to be OK because she would help me no matter what … like she wasn’t there to judge.

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 157

Many of the workers in this study viewed client disclosures as indicative of a good helping relationship. The youth worker quoted above viewed the youth’s disclosure about drug use as suggestive of her trust in him and her desire and ability to deal with the problem. The worker hypothesized that youth are often reluctant to disclose drug use because it can lead to a termination of ECM monies. But when workers respond punitively, everyone loses. The youth buries the drug problem and doesn’t get appropriate help. The worker is less informed about the youth’s needs. The relationship suffers as honest disclosures decrease. The stories in this study impressed upon us the incredible risks clients, especially parents, take when self-disclosing. The stakes are extremely high. They risk shame and judgment, a loss of control, further supervision, and ultimately, loss of custody of children. However, when disclosures did occur and workers responded favourably, the experience for these parents was positive, and for one parent in particular, nothing short of grace. A dad recollected: After eight years of not drinking … I fell off the wagon myself … My biggest ally was my worker. She stood there and I was crying and saying “Oh no, I’m going to lose my kid” … [The worker] stood right there in the middle of my filthy place. I said, “Can you believe that a happy child once played in this place?” and she said, “He will again. You have had a relapse. It is not the end of the world.” It was like, “Holy shit!” These were the first people I thought would turn on me and scoop [son] from me … But [worker] stuck up for me and encouraged me. I am used to people dropping me like a fly when [I relapsed] … but she stuck up for me.

The worker talked about her supportive response to the father’s relapse. She said: I had known him for a little while and I knew he cared for his son … he was making a real effort. Also the length of time that he had been sober [eight years] – that was a big chunk of time to be sober … I knew he had it in him to [come back from the relapse] … I really thought he was good for his son.

6. Trust. Unfortunately, as social workers we can tend to think about “trust issues” in helping relationships as rooted in the client’s inability to trust. This inability to trust, we surmise, stems from the client’s history of having trust violated. It is assumed that workers and child welfare agencies are inherently trustworthy. “Not so!” claim the clients in

158  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

our study. They all had stories to tell us of being lied to, threatened, or manipulated by F&CS workers in the past. One mother reported that an F&CS worker had told her, “Sign these papers or else your child will go to the furthest group home in the province.” Another mom claimed that her worker kept reminding her, “I have a baby seat in my car and I can take your daughter right now if I wanted to.” These clients had workers who had not followed through with things that they had promised to do, who had not returned phone calls when they said they would, who did not arrive on time for appointments, and who did not fully reveal who had access to information. By comparison, one of the common characteristics of the workers in our sample was their trustworthiness. This research told us some important things about how trust is established and maintained in the helping relationship. First of all, trust comes from a care and concern for (and knowledge of) the entire person, not just the parenting concern. Certainly the story above attests to this fact. The worker knew the dad’s history, his five years of sobriety, his achievements, and hence was able to trust he would pull through. Second, trust is not established through some slick social work intervention but through constant slogging and consistent (often repetitious) behaviour. Examples of this include returning phone calls, arriving to appointments on time, and completing tasks as promised. A youth indicated that her trust of her worker was rooted in his timely delivery of her ECM cheque: These things are not trivial. It’s like the hand that feeds you pretty much. If I hadn’t had that contact with him constantly, I probably would not have trusted him because he would never have met the needs that I had so what would my trust of him be based on? What would he have ever done to show me that he was [trustworthy]?

Third, trust is increased when the substance of what a worker says is validated by another source; for example, when what the worker says is consistent with what other helping professionals have said, or is consistent with the client’s experience, or through time proves to be accurate. One client noted: I kept getting different answers from different people. So it got that the more answers I got from her the more I realized “Yeah, that is the way it is. This is the truth.” So now I am building more and more trust in what she’s telling me … She seems to know her stuff.

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 159

Another client noted: This is not a long relationship and for me to develop any sort of trust, it takes me a long, long time. But with her – I trusted her judgment because I got the right answers … I got some answers where I wasn’t getting them from my kids’ workers. Or she would direct me at least or mention it to [kids’ workers] … so I could get the answers I needed.

Fourth, trust, as one worker observed, develops through a lot of “talking back and forth.” Workers need to constantly check and recheck with clients to confirm that what was said was understood. These stories suggest that misunderstandings happen on both sides. Workers can misunderstand clients and clients can misunderstand workers. The onus, however, is on the worker to ensure that misunderstandings are sorted out. Several ways in which this can be done include debriefings between workers and clients after meetings and case conferences, scrupulous note taking on behalf of both parties, phone calls, and, for important meetings, the presence of a third party who can act as a second set of ears and eyes. One worker indicated that she encourages her clients to get second opinions and to seek legal counsel. Several clients in the study recalled past workers getting defensive and even angry when they did any of these things. As one mother argued, “When parents are uninformed they [F&CS] can bully you. If you don’t know your rights, you can’t say anything.” If trust is to be developed, clients need to be informed and understood. In our view, workers should not consider actions taken by clients to increase their knowledge of the process and to obtain outside support as personal affronts or evidence of client mistrust, but rather as positive efforts to establish a trusting and productive working relationship. One worker said: It was a lot of talking back and forth, giving her all the information I could and being really clear with her … If we had any [case conferences] … she would always bring along a community member for support, which I completely supported … then after the meeting we would talk about it … making sure she understood everything.

Finally, and closely connected to the previous point, is the need for workers to understand and sensitively inquire about client realities, specifically around circumstances which on initial inspection “appear” to be acts of distrust or defiance. One worker discovered that what

160  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

appeared to be distrust was actually attributable to the mom’s independent nature and her desire to exercise as much control as possible over her own life. Another worker became aware that a dad’s avoidance of her was in fact shame about his living environment and housekeeping abilities, and in another instance, worker avoidance was attributable to a lack of a telephone. Another example concerns a mom who was not making it to all of her scheduled access visits with her children. It was initially inferred that her failure to make these visits was indicative of her neglect as a parent and her inability to meet her children’s needs and service requirements. However, through some gentle probing by the worker, the mother revealed that these visits were extremely painful because they reminded her of her loss, and her absence in her children’s lives. She said it would take her days to recover from these visits and at times she didn’t have the strength to bear them. It was also revealed that on several occasions the visits didn’t occur because of an F&CS mix-up. This refrain was echoed by another client who indicated that paperwork confirming her compliance with some agency expectations never made it into her file. Another mom in our sample indicated that her lack of money meant that she was unable to comply with an agency requirement that she purchase some safety features for her home. When workers understood these realities, they could place a client’s behaviour within a context that was ultimately more favourable, resulting in decreased defensiveness and increased trust. 7. Going the Extra Mile/Challenging Professional Boundaries. The workers in our sample took the time to do the “extras” that helped build the relationship (e.g., calling for no reason except to see how things are going, taking clients for a coffee, dropping by a client’s house on the way home from work, attending the funeral of a client’s mother on a Saturday, dropping off Christmas presents for a family over the Christmas holidays, and writing a letter of concern and support). The workers noted that these “extras” were the more enjoyable aspects of their child welfare work. One worker called it “good social work” compared to the other aspects of her job, which she considered “messy social work.” There was a theme here that “good social work” was an “extra” but well worth the time. One mom recalled: She [worker] met me a couple of weeks later [after mom had gone to court to relinquish custody of her son] and we met for coffee. She just wanted to

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 161 tell me how impressed she was that I was able to do that for my son … But you know how many social workers really would take that extra five minutes out just to let somebody know that – to give them that validation … I don’t think they are supposed to do that [workers taking clients out for coffee] but it is important … It is almost like, “Oh no, you shouldn’t be mixing.” Cuz, you know, here it is again, the client and the worker they shouldn’t be getting too close, and that is bad. Like I think the roles need to be bent a bit.

These stories suggest that in good helping relationships workers go the extra mile, often pushing, stretching, or challenging professional boundaries. The workers in our sample swam in muddy waters as they strove for consistency between agency expectations and mandates, their own modus operandi, and their human capacity to feel and act. Clients noticed and appreciated these efforts and struggles, as evidenced in the following quotations: She came to my house and I don’t think she needed to. When she offered to drive [to a destination 1½ hours out of her catchment area] I thought, “Oh!” That surprised me because it was my belief that the case could have been transferred … I thought it was decent of her to come. He [worker] goes out on a limb to the point where he gives you chances to the point where he has gotten in trouble for it … I think that is the best quality about him, which probably is the reason why so many of us are going to college and university or having normal lives. He goes out on limbs he is not supposed to go out on and I think that is a positive thing about how he does things.

Several workers in our sample credited their supervisors for encouraging them to stretch professional boundaries. These workers felt they benefited from having a supervisor who was willing to talk things over with them and was prepared to support new and creative ways of working. One worker remarked: I had a really good supervisor so the relationship was good with my supervisor so that is going to make a difference too because she trusts my judgment … she genuinely cares about people and puts children first but also I had a good relationship with her so she would trust my opinions and judgments, so that is key too.

162  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

What Accounts for the Development of an Exemplary Relationship? The co-authored stories and the across-story themes in this study offer some suggestions as to why the workers in our select sample were able to develop very positive helping relationships despite the “forces” working against them. These workers had the ability to relate well to people. They had good intuition, social skills, and self-esteem. They had an informal style and a way of being that encouraged connection. They related to clients as people – as interesting, worthy individuals who merited respect, understanding, and empathy. As one mom noted about her worker, “I think a lot of it is her. It is her attitude and her compassion.” Another mom observed, “When [worker] is there, we can kick back. She can put us at ease and she is not threatening.” A worker observed: I think it comes from being at ease … with who I am. I have worked hard on building my own self-esteem and I have worked hard on the spiritual side of me and I continue to do so. I think what happens over time is that when you are comfortable in your own skin … people pick up on that … you become real. I don’t have to be something that I am not, and if I screw up, I am prepared to own it.

The following transcript excerpt provides another example: Interviewer: I wanted to ask you about a couple of times when she [client] commented on your meetings. She said things like you would discuss supervision [of her children] but it wasn’t like you were drilling her with questions. She said it was more like sitting and talking with a friend and having normal conversations. She was very positive about that. Worker: That is just my style … There is probably a reason why I’m able to work with clients and it is turning out positive.

Most of these workers had a strong presence about them; a way of being that seemed authentic and true. Clients perceived them as “real” and genuine. Part of what appeared to come naturally was an ability to focus on the matter at hand, to be present and engaging with a client and not appear distracted by other things. For example, when clients talked, these workers were open and receptive. They didn’t just appear to be listening – they were listening. One worker suggested that what allowed her to have that presence were her good time

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 163

management skills. She was an efficient worker and a “good organizer.” She told us: The job is very, very stressful. We have way more things to do than hours. I am a good organizer so I am able to be very efficient with my time. I think this plays into the relationship with a client because if I have only a half hour to spend with someone because I have this or that piling up, I am not going to have the same patience level with the person I am working with. I would rather be with my client without my head scrambling around to see what there is to do back in the office.

These workers also seemed less bound to rigidly following “agency bureaucracy” and less susceptible to “putting on the professional mask” than some workers might be. This seemed due to such things as rich life experience, varied work experiences, and a natural proclivity to reflect on their practice. Two workers’ comments addressed such issues: I think my understanding of women abuse and the cycle of violence was helpful because I had worked in a shelter for a number of years. That helped me understand what [the client] had been dealing with. I have been a child welfare worker for seven years but I have been a social worker for 23. I have a lot of experience. My social work background is quite varied. I have done a lot of different things and a lot of my jobs have been “outside the box.”

A client offered the following comment: Like I [mom] said, when you come right out of university, if you have never, never been exposed to any kind of family violence, or abuse, drugs, anything, you really have no clue. How can you help somebody if you don’t know what you are talking about except from what you have read in a book? … I find sometimes with the younger staff coming out of school, they have this professional demeanour that kind of sticks to them. It can make them look rigid.

The workers in our sample were reflective and creative people. It was evident that they thought about their work and their relationships with clients. They worked within agency mandate, rules, and procedures, but did so flexibly, creatively, and with humanity.

164  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

Implications and Conclusions The attributes of good helping relationships in child welfare that emerged from this study provide useful ideas and guidelines for practice. Although these themes identify many things that a worker can do to build good relationships with child welfare clients, we wish to stress that the results of this research are not reducible to a list of “dos and don’ts.” Our findings suggest that good helping relationships are more about “ways of being” than they are about strategies and techniques. If the effort a worker makes in establishing a positive relationship with clients is prescriptive and technique-driven, it is likely to fail. Workers’ relationship and engagement skills can only blossom when they are rooted in the genuine care, interest, and respect for the clients they serve. Specific techniques can augment an empathic, supportive, and collaborative mind-set (perhaps more aptly termed a “heart-set”), but they cannot substitute for it. Two other qualitative studies, one of child welfare (Drake, 1994) and one of general social work counselling (although with a population similar to that of child welfare; Ribner & Knei-Paz, 2002), describe relationship competencies in much the same terms as this study. For example, both of the aforementioned studies identified the importance of workers being like a “friend.” Drake (1994) identified the importance of workers using “small talk,” and Ribner and Knei-Paz (2002) noted the importance of workers having an “informal, conversational style” and going “beyond the boundaries of their formal roles” (p. 384). These studies also document that clients frequently have unsatisfying experiences with social workers who are more typically “professional,” in the sense of being distant, superior, and formal. It is noteworthy that many of the workers in our sample were sheepish and apologetic about the times they went the extra mile to meet the needs of a family, engaged in small talk, self-disclosed, or exhibited informality with clients in some way. They seemed concerned that their ways of being went against the prevailing beliefs about proper professional conduct. Gitterman (1988) identified the problematic tendency for professional education and socialization to lead social workers to put on “professional masks,” consequently “obscuring their client’s humanity behind the ‘case’ and their own behind their ‘professionalism’” (p. 37). The workers in our sample did not fall prey to such a tendency and they displayed admirable humanity in pursuit of their

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 165

professional function. Relationship competencies and ways of being such as those displayed by the workers in this study need to be valued, encouraged, and supported. To this end we offer the following suggestions for the hiring, education and training, and supervision of child welfare workers. First, there are considerations for the hiring of child welfare workers. Perlman (1979) has suggested that some relationship abilities, such as warmth and genuineness, are not easily taught or cultivated because they are products of life experiences and become rooted in an individual’s disposition. If this is indeed the case, it is critical that child welfare agencies attempt to hire individuals who already possess such attributes. Hiring processes for child welfare workers need to include consideration of personal characteristics, interpersonal style, and attitudes towards clients. A specific suggestion we offer is to include a former client on agency hiring committees. This strategy can serve several purposes: the interpersonal sensitivity and ability of prospective workers to relate to child welfare clientele can be readily observed, ex-clients’ experience of prospective workers can be factored into hiring decisions, and prospective workers receive the message that the child welfare agency values and respects client input and desires to work collaboratively. Second, with regard to the education and training of workers, the unique challenges to the development and maintenance of good helping relationships in child welfare need to be acknowledged and addressed. Helfer (1997) argues that the development of a relationship with abusive and neglectful parents is “one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, kind of therapeutic interpersonal relationship to establish” (p. 109). Dealing with concerns of child safety and parental capacity in the context of a worker’s state-sanctioned power and authority can produce high emotion and a degree of interpersonal complexity unparalleled in other types of helping relationships. Child welfare workers are constantly challenged to exercise power, yet show compassion. Pecora’s (1989) study revealed that child welfare workers feel hindered by their lack of knowledge and skill in working with involuntary and resistant clients. Child welfare education and training should focus on these unique challenges to the development of engagement and relationship skills inherent in the child welfare context. The themes about worker attitudes and actions that build good helping relationships that emerged in this study provide good ideas for

166  Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady

focusing such education and training. Towards this end, Mullins (2011) has provided useful suggestions for how child welfare training could help to increase workers’ empathy towards parents. To facilitate such training within child welfare agencies, the skills and ways of being of the workers who consistently develop positive relationships with clients should be harnessed. Through mentoring, job sharing, peer consultation, training, and supervision opportunities, such workers can assist others who evidence underdeveloped relationship competencies. It is encouraging that some current approaches to child welfare practice, such as the Signs of Safety approach (Myers, 2005; Turnell & Edwards, 1997) and Differential Response (Conley & Duerr Berrick, 2010), place an emphasis on fostering collaborative, supportive relationships with parents. Third, there are implications for supervision, as it is a powerful tool in communicating and supporting agency standards with respect to good helping relationships. Workers need to be encouraged in supervision to reflect on the power they hold and how they use it and to develop engagement skills and ways of being that facilitate relationship development. The mind-set and heart-set of workers need to be both monitored and nurtured. Workers’ assessments of the quality of their relationships with clients need to be a constant item on the supervisory agenda. Assessments of the helping relationship act as a barometer, alerting both worker and supervisor to instances where client needs are not being met or where workers are unable to accurately assess parental capacity or risk to a child because the lack of trust in the relationship inhibits honest client disclosures. Although caution must be exercised in interpreting the results of this study, owing to its qualitative, exploratory nature, we have pointed out how strikingly similar are the results of other, related studies (Drake, 1994; Ribner & Knei-Paz, 2002). Furthermore, the vast body of research on relationship factors in psychotherapy lends support to the importance of the worker attitudes and actions identified in this study. Reflecting on this body of psychotherapy research, Lambert and Ogles (2004) conclude that therapeutic change is best facilitated in a “relationship that is characterized by trust, warmth, understanding, acceptance, kindness and human wisdom” (p. 181). Relationship development and therapeutic change are not the only or primary focuses of child welfare; however, as Drake (1994) has pointed out, “the ability of the worker to engage the family is crucial to the protection of the child” (p. 601).

“I Knew, Maybe, This One Is Real” 167

The importance of good helping relationships in child welfare must be emphasized. Workers need to be encouraged and trained to exercise power softly and judiciously, lay aside professional masks, be human, be down-to-earth, and go “the extra mile.” Ultimately, this research has not produced results that are new or earth-shattering – the importance of relationship has long been held as a cornerstone for all social work practice. The results serve, however, as gentle and necessary reminders that good helping relationships in child welfare are important and are ultimately about good human relations in general – treating others with kindness, respect, and dignity; being honest and genuine; and striving to understand and work collaboratively.

7 Bridging or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison of Parent and  Service Provider Perceptions karen frensch and gary cameron

When child welfare service providers and parents engage with each other, do they have similar impressions of what is important and what is helpful? Do they have comparable assessments of their interactions and the services provided? Are there systemic or interpersonal processes that increase or reduce the psychological and social distance between service providers and parents? Is there shared motivation between parents and service providers to reduce this distance? This chapter offers a structured comparison of the perspectives of service providers, parents, and the views reflected in “official records” – the files that describe parents, children, and the services provided. We examined 15 matched triads of parent and service provider interviews and case file information. By reflecting on similarities and differences between these perspectives, we explore patterns of engagement that keep parents and service providers at a distance or bring them closer in helping relationships. Our overarching purpose is to reflect on the feasibility and desirability of creating more cooperative helping relationships in child and family welfare. Background In 2005, the Ontario government launched an ambitious and multifaceted Transformation Agenda for child welfare services. Central to this Agenda is developing more cooperative helping relationships in child welfare and reducing the system’s reliance on legal authority to engage families and move children into out-of-home placements. The data upon which the analyses in this chapter are based were collected under the earlier Ontario Risk Assessment Model (ORAM) of child

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 169

protection. However, as the chapters in this volume about accessible service delivery settings show, there is evidence that many service delivery and employment realities have not been significantly modified under the Transformation Agenda to date. Consequently, even more recently, the Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare (2010) is revisiting some of the main issues that provoked the Transformation Agenda (e.g., controlling costs, reducing administrative burdens to free more service provider time to help parents and children, creating more service partnerships, etc.). It was the unintended consequences of ORAM that provided the motivation for undertaking the Transformation Agenda and, indirectly, the “Sustainability” Commission. The data in this study remain useful for identifying possibilities as well as obstacles to developing more cooperative helping relationships. In what ways helping relationships will change under the Transformation Agenda or reforms stemming from the Commission is unclear; however, it has been suggested that relationships between parents and service providers continue to be undervalued in these changes (Jenney, 2011). What is clear is that the undertaking is exceedingly challenging, and how best to move forward is poorly understood. Parent–Service Provider Relationships Research in other helping professions, such as counselling psychology and psychotherapy, has found a moderate but consistent association between good working alliances and positive treatment outcomes (Horvath & Symonds, 1991). Similarly, child welfare researchers assert that parents and children can benefit from nurturing positive helping relationships between parents and service providers (Gladstone, Dumbrill, Leslie, Koster, Young, et al., 2012; Holland, 2000; Lee & Ayón, 2004). To examine the relationship between parent and service provider relationships and child welfare outcomes, Lee and Ayón (2004) interviewed 100 parents formerly involved with the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS). A measure of “relationship with social worker” was positively correlated with the outcome variables “physical child care” (r = .25, p = .04), “discipline and emotional care” (r = .36, p = .002) and “parent coping” (r = .29, p = .014). They identified several predictors of a positive helping relationship in child welfare, including the “ability to openly communicate” and “frequency of worker visits,”

170  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

which accounted for 42% of the variance in the relationship with service providers. Similarly, Gladstone et al. (2012) examined the relationship between engagement and outcomes in child welfare for matched dyads of child protection workers and parents. An analysis of 131 parent-worker dyads revealed significant associations between relationship engagement and parent outcomes such as child safety, parenting practices, and perceptions of positive change. Specifically, parents who were more engaged (assessed using Yatchmenoff’s (2005) four dimensions of social service engagement including “buy-in,” “receptivity,” “working relationship,” and “mistrust”) were more likely to report positive change in parenting ways, increased feelings of child safety, more satisfaction with their relationship with their worker and the agency as a whole, and were also more likely to say they would contact their worker in the future if they had a problem. Reciprocal benefits were noted for service providers as well, with more engaged workers reporting greater satisfaction in the way services were provided and in the outcome of service. Gladstone et al. (2012) also noted that service providers placed value on parents’ motivation and cooperation, emphasizing the dimensions of “receptivity” and “buy-in.” Parents valued their service providers’ use of helping skills and trust. Holland (2000) suggested that the way in which parents engage and react to the parent–service provider relationship can determine the outcome of child welfare assessments. In her in-depth analysis of 16 comprehensive assessments of whether or not children should be returned to the family, and the decision-making evidence considered by service providers in completing these assessments, she asserted that “the verbal basis of the comprehensive assessment means that the relationship between assessor and assessed plays an important role in both the process and outcome of the assessment” (p. 150). She concluded that “cooperation, a positive relationship, articulacy, and an agreed plausible explanation for the family situation were all important factors [in recommending family reunification]” (p. 161). Leigh and Miller (2004) argued that service quality is influenced by “whom one has contact with, their way of working and how they are received” (p. 251). These authors conducted focus groups with service providers and managers, as well as qualitative interviews with 16 families, to understand how parents judged their initial contacts with child welfare workers and the extent to which parents’ assessments of services as helpful were congruent with direct service providers’ and

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 171

managers’ assessments. Parents described their desire for practical assistance and a time commitment from service providers to help families with the “day to day features of their lives” (p. 253). However, both parents and service providers identified the limitation of time restrictions on providing worthwhile and meaningful services to parents. Other common themes identified by both parents and service providers included the need for clear identification of the services being offered, individuals seeking help wanting to be heard and valued, and who you are being as important as your professional role. According to Dumbrill (2006), parents respond to child welfare interventions in three identifiable patterns, and how they respond depends in part upon the way in which they perceive the use of power by service providers in the relationship. More specifically, parents respond by (1) fighting or challenging, (2) playing the game, or (3) working in genuine and collaborative ways with service providers. Service providers were described as either using “power over” parents (such as making threats, evoking fear, and offering little opportunity for parents to challenge the interpretation of events) or using “power with” parents in a positive way (such as advocating for parents and offering practical assistance). When parents perceived service providers using their power in threatening and negative ways, they responded either by fighting/challenging interventions or playing the game, acting as if they were cooperating with interventions. In Dumbrill’s study, parents only worked in true collaboration with interventions when they perceived that service providers used their power in positive ways. Stating that perceptions of power permeate all aspects of child welfare services (even in voluntary situations), Dumbrill (2005) concluded that interventions must acknowledge the fear parents may have as well as address the power imbalance between parents and service providers within the helping relationship. Several studies have identified core competencies of child welfare service providers that contribute to positive helping relationships (Drake, 1994; Gladstone & Brown, 2007). Drake (1994) noted strong congruency between parents and service providers in their identification of service provider relationship competencies. Parents appreciated service providers who were respectful and demonstrated their respect by spending time with parents. Parents spoke negatively about service providers who carried themselves with a “superior attitude, commanding the client rather than working with him or her” (p. 597). Similarly, service provider–identified competencies included clearly recognizing parents’ right to participate in the relationship and the creation of treatment

172  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

plans “through a blending of worker and client agendas and … open communication” (p. 600). In another study, qualities associated with positive working relationships were identified by service providers and grandparents raising their grandchildren involved with child welfare (Gladstone & Brown, 2007). Grandparents identified several factors that contributed to positive relationships with social workers: friendliness, provision of emotional and material support, offers of advice and services, information giving, and the competency of social workers and the child welfare agency to keep their grandchildren safe and well cared for. As a companion list, service providers identified a set of grandparent qualities that contributed to positive relationship development. These included the perception that grandparents were caring, committed, and effective in providing assistance to grandchildren, shared information with service providers, were problem-focused, recognized service providers’ expertise and authority, shared service providers’ goals for child safety, and complied with service plans. The Study The sample for this study was drawn from a larger sample of interviews conducted through the Partnerships for Children and Families Project (2000–2009) in Children’s Aid Societies (CAS) in southern ­Ontario. Parents who consented to researchers contacting their child welfare worker and where the researchers were able to interview the service providers with the parents’ consent were included in this study. Parent and Service Provider Sample The sample included 15 child welfare dyads consisting of a matched parent interview and a service provider interview. In eight cases, the corresponding qualitative file information was available. All 15 parents in this sample were females. The average age of parents was 32.9 years old (range 18–47 years old). At the time the interviews took place, six parents were married (40%), five were single (33.3%), two were in common-law relationships (13.3%), and two were divorced (13.3%). Parents had been involved with the CAS for an average of 2.85 years (ranging from one month to 10 years). The average number of children for each parent was 2.26. Only two parents reported having more than three children.

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 173

There were 13 female and two male service providers interviewed. The average age of service providers was 41.2 years old. Six service providers were married (40%), three were divorced (20%), two were single (13.3%), and one was in a common-law relationship (6.7%). Three service providers did not indicate their marital status. The average number of service providers’ children was 1.67. Only three service providers reported having more than two children (three service providers did not indicate how many children they had). The average length of employment with the CAS was 5.23 years (ranging from four months to 23 years), with 69% of the service providers being employed two years or less in child welfare. Procedure Parents participated in an interview approximately 1½ hours in length and were asked open-ended questions about their everyday lives and child welfare service experiences. Parents were also asked for consent to allow researchers to contact their child welfare worker for an interview, as well as to allow researchers to view and extract qualitative information from their case files at the CAS. Service provider interviews consisted of the same series of open-ended questions that were asked of parents. Service providers were asked to answer these questions specifically about the parent who had already participated in an interview with researchers. Qualitative file information included, but was not limited to, text excerpts found in the safety assessment, risk and/or comprehensive assessment, plan of service, or initial referral call or report, all of which were components of mandated child welfare recordings in Ontario at that time. Analysis We approached each matched case of three subjective perspectives (parent, service provider, and file) as if we did not know which version was “correct” and did not assign superiority to one perspective over another. Our purpose was not to determine the most accurate account of events; rather, our focus was on points of convergence and divergence among perspectives. To begin, each parent and service provider interview transcript was condensed into a summary of approximately 10–12 pages. Each summary was organized by a standardized set of topic areas which mirrored the original interview schedule. Topics

174  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

included information related to descriptions of daily living realities for families, including children’s lives, parents’ lives, family functioning, extended family, community, social, and economic factors. Topics specific to families’ service involvements included descriptions, perceptions, and assessments of services provided by the CAS, as well as any other professional services families may have received. Approaching the qualitative analysis from a perspective drawing on some insights from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000; Mills, Bonner, & Francis, 2006), we identified several interpretive dimensions along which multiple realities (parent, service provider, file) could be represented and understood. Comparative dimensions examined similarities and differences in the ways in which parents and service providers described and made meaning of parents’ critical incidents, life circumstances, or experiences. For example, how did each perspective explain or understand parents’ life events? We also considered the underlying values or expectations influencing the interpretations parents and service providers had of events. What were some of the reasons for parents’ behaviours and outcomes articulated by parents and service providers? Interpretive dimensions used for comparing perceptions and assessments of agency involvement reflected parents’ and service providers’ expectations, emphases, and understanding of their own role in the helping relationship. For example, how did parents and service providers understand their own role as well as the other’s in the helping relationship? Were services meaningful and useful from each perspective? Family Challenges and Explanations Description of Everyday Living Circumstances Our comparative analysis began with an examination of descriptions by parents and service providers of parents’ everyday living circumstances. Written documentation within the case files was also included in this analysis whenever available. Not surprisingly, parents’ accounts contained the most detail about their everyday lives. Parents’ discussions encompassed a broad scope of information and reflected the passage of time. These interviews provided a sense of parents’ life stories: childhood memories, marriages, the arrival of children, dissolutions of marriages, subsequent re-partnering, educational pursuits, and personal triumphs and challenges. Parents generally talked about various life domains such as work, family, and community pursuits. In addition,

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 175

their discussions were interwoven with thoughts and feelings about events, how events impacted their families, and comments about the complexity of family relationships. While service providers’ accounts contained less information than parents’ discussions, they were generally congruent. Service providers identified many of the same issues as parents. There was, however, an emphasis on the present or current family situation in service providers’ accounts. Their interviews did not provide a temporal sequencing of events; rather, the information was like a snapshot of the family at the time of the interview. Information was presented in a simpler and more compartmentalized fashion than in parents’ discussions. Service providers’ accounts placed a substantially greater emphasis on family functioning and the impact it had on parents’ capacity to care for their children. For other life domains, such as extended family, community involvement, or recreational pursuits, many service providers struggled to recall information about families. It was not uncommon to hear service providers concede that they simply “didn’t know.” The following matched pairs of parent and service provider discussions illustrate some of these patterns in the descriptions of everyday realities and life circumstances by parents and service providers. This parent described her struggle as a single mother with limited financial resources returning to school while caring for her child: I couldn’t give up my schooling because I had already borrowed money from OSAP [government loan] … and there was no turning back … I spent a lot of late nights doing work … In the meantime I guess my son’s in the background. You get carried away as a single mom. The kids don’t get as much time. (Parent 15)

Her service provider also conveyed a sense of the struggles this parent faced: … she was on her own and I think she had just recently broken up in a relationship … I think she has some difficulty being, just coping, being a single parent trying to work full you know, a full-time job, dealing with a 13-year-old who is hitting the teen years, you know, and has puberty and that is in trouble with the law. (Service provider 15)

While the two accounts were generally congruent, the parent’s description contained more detailed information about her daily life as well as her feelings around balancing competing demands.

176  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

The following excerpt is from a parent who spoke of her desire to have more money in hopes of improving the comfort of her living situation: I wish I could just, you know, grab a diploma right now, go get a job, so I make more money … I’m on basic cable, and basic phone, and on basic everything … it’s difficult … the house is pretty [unclear], and it’s okay. The paints peels … in the winter, it’s really bad. (Parent 19)

Again with less detail, her service provider also identified this parent’s wish to have more financial security: She does not want to be on social assistance forever. She wants to get a good job … she wants more than what she’s able to have on social assistance income. She struggles, you know, to provide for her kids for food and everything. (Service provider 19)

This service provider also identified the impact this parent’s limited financial resources had on providing for her children’s basic needs. While the following parent described a dire financial predicament she and her partner were facing, her service provider’s account did not communicate the same degree of desperation: Went back to work, um, the beginning of November, lost my house beginning of December because they wouldn’t hold off and let me make up the mortgage payment … We’re not gonna have July’s rent because the van broke down twice in two weeks, that cost us a thousand dollars … (Parent 17) She lives with another family and I think she’s a bit concerned about her being able to keep it all afloat, like financially … They don’t have a lot of money … As far as I know they’ve been able to maintain housing for some time. (Service provider 17)

The files generally contained information about fewer topics and less detailed information about families than either parents’ or service providers’ accounts. It also was common for the files to present contradictory information or information not mentioned by either parents or service providers. This is likely due to the transitioning of multiple service providers on any given case over time. Of the eight matched comparisons for which we had file information, there was only one case

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 177

in which the service provider interviewed was the person who had completed the file information. The information contained within files was sparse. Documentation typically contained a series of standardized checklists and a short paragraph or two to accompany the numerical ratings generated from the checklists for a family. Coupled with the sometimes contradictory content of files, the scarcity of information raised some serious questions about its usefulness in making difficult decisions. Service decisions, such as whether or not to apprehend a child, can have lasting impacts on children’s and families’ lives. Newly assigned service providers are obliged to rely on file information that may not be complete or accurate to orient them to working with a family. Explanations of Circumstances and Experiences In all three perspectives, there was minimal identification of parents’ or families’ resources, such as familial supports, links to community resources, stable housing, or steady employment. Such topics were discussed but rarely in ways that acknowledged their potential usefulness in helping parents and children. As an illustration of different understandings, in one matched comparison, extended family had been important to this particular parent: My grandmother and I were very close … I used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother … my grandmother has taught me a lot of morals. She’s taught me a lot of values. Uh, my grandmother was very much a family oriented person. (Parent 2)

However, her service provider’s focus on the present minimized the importance of family to her: I think family is pretty peripheral for her. [Her boyfriend] is her family now. (Service provider 2)

In contrast, both the parent and her service provider, in the next example, articulated social connections with friends as a source of support for this mother: We sit out and have coffee at night and bitch about our kids, which is always nice. Bitch about our neighbours, which is even nicer. Well sometimes you

178  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron need a break from the kids. Actually, we’re taking tomorrow as a ladies’ day … There’s three of us going out to the lake. (Parent 17) She really looked forward to that trailer [at the lake] when they got out there but I don’t think she has a lot of opportunity to – to do things that are just for herself. Yeah. I think she relies on the relationships with people that she has in her complex for some support and for social outlets … (Service provider 17)

In some service provider accounts, family strengths and resources were noticed. However, the amount of attention these social connections received was minimal compared to the focus on parent and family problems and deficits. Even smaller was the attention families’ or parents’ strengths and resources received in the case files. The officially required case recordings and accompanying terminology in use at the time of this research were risk-focused (e.g., “safety intervention plan,” “risk assessment”). Strengths were generally included only as an absence of risk or with respect to their importance in reducing other risk factors. Under the Transformation Agenda, the revised case-recording procedures incorporate a more explicit emphasis on family strengths and resources. It is unknown whether this new system will provide a more balanced portrait of family life. However, our ongoing research suggests that service providers continue to complain about the time required to satisfy official recording requirements and fear that information useful for case decision making from the new procedures might be minimal.1 While all three perspectives reported in this study shared a focus on problems, what each party defined as a problem and how these problems were understood varied, particularly between parents and service providers. This was most evident in discussions of children’s lives – more specifically, their behavioural, emotional, or developmental difficulties. For service providers, the reason for children’s problem behaviours often was located in family dysfunction and inadequate parenting capacities: … things were pretty chaotic for [the children] there were three … kids really close in age … they did not have a daily routine. And they were all

1 See the chapters on child welfare employment in this volume.

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 179 living in a very small space. And they weren’t getting outside. So these kids were flipping off the walls. (Service provider 4) She wants us to fix things, but she’ll say “I want you to fix this kid” and doesn’t recognize the family dynamics … It’s all about [daughter who] has been identified as the problem and there’s nothing I can do to change that. (Service provider 2)

Parents’ explanations focused more on medical and developmental conditions, influences perceived as external to parenting, such as the nature of a child or a particular disorder: … he’s clumsy for some reason and his temper, he’s like a light switch. He’s kind of like I was when I drank. I’m a moody person and I think he is sort of too. One minute he’ll be fine … and the next he’ll be throwing something against the wall. (Parent 3)

Parents also tended to offer more general explanations that “there’s something going on” or attribute difficulties to children’s temperaments. For example, one parent describes her frustration with her son: he don’t listen a lot of the days and it makes it harder on you … But when you talk normal to [son], I don’t know if he ignores you or shuts you out, but when you raise your voice, or sometimes you yell, then that gets his attention. (Parent 3)

This parent’s service provider explained the same situation as a parenting difficulty: How she would scream at him, and everything was negative. The little boy would just stand there and look at her, which infuriated mom. He didn’t respond anymore, because he was used to it. (Service provider 3)

Similarly, another service provider understood the behaviours of a young teenage girl as the product of her upbringing: … she had a girlfriend who had gotten on the Internet and met a guy from [city] who came to pick them up to take them out to dinner … she’s looking for someone to love her because her dad doesn’t and her mom has a real hard approach to her. (Service provider 2)

180  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

This child’s parent described the same situation, emphasizing the poor choices her daughter makes: … she’s hanging out with the wrong crowds, very much putting her personal safety at risk … I had an episode where a pimp was gonna take her to [city] … Even the police have stated she’s the type of kid that will be dead by the time she’s 18 because of the poor choices she makes … (Parent 2)

While this divergence is more apparent between parents and service providers, the file content generally reflected the same understanding of problems shared by service providers. There was little representation of parents’ perspectives on problems in the case files. To return to the previous matched comparison, the corresponding file stated: … [Mother] and [father] are unwilling to consider adapting their expectations of [daughter] or their behaviour management practices, since they believe that it is [daughter’s] behaviour – and not their parenting – that is to blame for the problems that the family is experiencing. (Case file 2)

However, the information in the file record was much less detailed and nuanced than either the parent or service provider interviews about this family situation. We cannot ascertain the relative accuracy of these contrasting perspectives from the data. However, the fact that service providers generally locate responsibilities for problems with parents in combination with parents explaining the same circumstances in terms of children’s behaviours or environmental factors does point to a potential obstacle to cooperation in helping strategies. Most likely there is some veracity in both perspectives that perhaps could be bridged under different service conditions. Values and Expectations In all three perspectives, there was a clear emphasis on women as mothers. Particular emphasis was placed on mothers’ unresolved personal issues, such as childhood trauma, alcoholism, or involvement in abusive relationships. This was observed in all three perspectives. For example: We talked about the drinking, I tried to kind of go a little bit deeper and suggested to her that because there were lots of things that were bothering her emotionally and … really deep down the hurts that she had as a child

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 181 … that those things she really needed to address and really needed to seek some help and some counselling … I don’t think I see any improvement there … (Service provider 20) I wasn’t feeding her, or bathing her, or clothing or taking care of her, or abusing her physically, but you know, drinking and having her shoved here and shoved there … it doesn’t matter that it was just family … It was still not right. (Parent 20) … most of the file was focused on her alcoholism. (Service provider 20)

Mothers’ unresolved personal issues were frequently identified as risk factors in assessing parenting capacity. Mothers were expected to deal with their personal problems. In the background was an expectation that they then would be able to manage their often stressful and sometimes chaotic daily lives. Interviews in which service providers talked about holding mothers accountable for family and child problems were common: … if people weren’t marching to the beat of her [mother’s] drum, then forget it. She didn’t want what was being offered … ultimately she wanted what was best for her son … but I think she might have lost sight of what is best for him. (Service provider 13) … for the longest time I don’t think she [daughter] had any respect for her caregivers because she herself is very resentful of her mother for not providing the supervision and safety she needed from her brother and other caregivers … she was sexually abused by her brother. (Service provider 21) Given her resourcefulness and her cognitive ability, I would expect her to do better. To do a better job with her children and I do suspect strongly that there are neglect issues … I’ve never seen her playing with them, talking with them, being in direct conversation or direct interaction with them. (Service provider 23)

In the same vein, the mother was frequently the person identified as being responsible for making improvements in family functioning. This was evidenced most strongly in the case files, particularly in the language used to document plans of service. For example, in a documented plan of service with 10 service objectives, six of these objectives solely identified the mother as the person most responsible to meet these objectives:

182  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

1 [Mother] is to reside apart from [violent husband]. 2 [Mother] is to attend individual counselling … 3 [Mother] is to attend counselling to deal with issues of domestic violence … 4 [Mother] is to have psychological assessment … and is to follow through with treatment recommendations. 5 [Mother] is to take all medications prescribed. 6 [Mother] is to attend individual and/or group counselling for parenting … (Case file 5) Even in files where a partner was identified as responsible for an objective, mothers were usually added as part of the couple. Not all references to mothers identified their deficiencies. There were acknowledgments of mothers’ abilities and dedication to their children by service providers and in case files: [Mother] really hangs in there and she really does her best, you know, and she works so hard to try to make things better for her kids … and to keep them busy and to keep positive things in their life. (Service provider 8) There’s often like cookies like sitting on the table, you know, that they’ve made together … she plays with her … I get a sense that that mothering role is very important for her … She repeatedly says that this girl is all she has, and she’s right. (Service provider 20)

These women typically were narrowly assessed as mothers and not as individuals with their own needs, challenges, and triumphs. To a lesser extent, mothers identified with this emphasis on mothering, seeing themselves as the primary person responsible for child care. It is not hard to conceive of the ways in which such a dominant focus on mothers’ accountability for proper child care and family functioning would inhibit considerations of fathers, extended family, and community in solutions, as well as considerations of service organizations sharing responsibility for the care of children with families. Perception and Assessment of Service Involvement Assessment of Agency Involvement Given the intrusive nature of child welfare work, it is reasonable to ­anticipate that parents would be critical of their agency involvement

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 183

and that the congruence between parent and service provider assessments of interventions would be minimal. However, while parents were generally critical of their involvements with child protective services, in this study, to our surprise, service providers were equally critical of the services provided. There was generally agreement between parents’ and service providers’ overall assessments of involvement with the CAS. That is, when a parent identified the agency involvement as helpful, the matched service provider also made the same assessment: … [husband] and I are getting better along … we would have never really noticed the problem that our family was having with domestic violence and alcohol abuse. We would have never noticed it if they hadn’t become involved … we’re going to be a better family for it, hopefully, down the road. (Parent 24) I think that it’s very helpful … this … has and will continue to impact in this family for a long time … this is going to be a considerably changed family in terms of some of these dysfunctional things that went on behind the scenes. (Service provider 24)

Similarly, parents and service providers tended to agree when child welfare involvement was seen as unhelpful: I think she perceived her experience with us as being a negative one, so I doubt that she would [refer the agency to a friend] … I don’t feel that they had good service at all … (Service provider 15) They detained me for two hours at that school. Questioning me … [service provider] was the one that had come to my house and told me three-quarters of a year prior to that, “I see no problem. Where do you want me to help you? You’re handling things fine.” The same bloody woman from Children’s Aid. I think that’s about the last time I had a good relationship with anyone from Children’s Aid. (Parent 15)

Moving beyond overall impressions of service involvement, however, there was a divide between parents and service providers in their reported satisfaction with the type of services delivered. More specifically, parents reported an appreciation for services such as links to other services including counselling, subsidies, and concrete support:

184  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron [Worker 2] was absolutely wonderful when it came to vouchers or cribs … It was a resources kind of thing. I just needed to know where things were and how to get around … How do I get to a food bank if I need it? … When me and my husband broke off and I needed counselling, where do I go? (Parent 23) F&CS, they know a lot of places to go to for help … She asked me to make out a list, for the kids, for Christmas, if they wanted something special, which was pretty nice … They gave pretty generously at Christmas time. (Parent 24)

While service providers acknowledged the usefulness of such tangible services, they also reported frustration with not being able to address what they perceived to be “root causes” for family or individual dysfunction: I hoped that sometime down the line, [parent] would seek out other forms of counselling … It would really affect her parenting and … and her choice in partners. (Service provider 4) I would have liked to have her look at where her stress really came from. Why she had such a difficulty coping with this guy. Try to get her to explore some issues in her life that I really wasn’t aware of. (Service provider 3)

The practice of transferring a family’s file across multiple service providers throughout the stages of an ongoing child protection case was identified as an area of dissatisfaction by both parents and service providers. The reasons for dissatisfaction, however, appeared to be slightly different for each perspective. Parents expressed frustration with having to tell their story over and over: I ended up with a new worker. Well I was getting sick of workers after workers because they ask you the same questions over and over again. (Parent 5) Every time I have to deal with a new person that doesn’t know my situation … I’m really sick of explaining myself. (Parent 2) I’m going to want someone here for more than two weeks … it takes a lot to build up that, you know, I felt like I had to tell her things over and over and over again. (Parent 8)

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 185

For service providers, the frequent transferring of cases was associated with a feeling of not ever really getting to know a family in the little time that they worked together. Sometimes the involvement of multiple service providers complicated communication among service providers about family circumstances: There’s no continuity of service or not continuity of information … because of the workload … it’s really hard to read every new file that you get from beginning to end and place all the pieces together … people get lost in there somewhere … no one is really watching, you know, on a long-term basis … the little girl slips through the cracks. (Service provider 20) … that has been a beef of [parent]’s, that she’s had a variety of different workers in a short space of time … her feeling that some … things fell through the cracks in the transitions from worker to worker and I think that’s a realistic concern … (Service provider 17)

Another common concern identified by both parents and service providers was the potential negative impact of using intrusive or coercive interventions early in service involvement. Such interventions included unannounced home visits, the accompaniment of police on the initial visit, immediate apprehension of children, and searching through a family’s home, including kitchen cupboards and the refrigerator. Parents clearly identified the impact that these sorts of procedures had on their own experience of services. They evoked fear, helplessness, hostility, and a perception that their rights had been violated. Several parents discussed the power of CAS: I think Family and Children Service workers have too much power … I’m sure that there are a lot of decent people in the Family and Children Services work but I think what they need to do is to pare out the ones that think they’re God and they’re really easy to spot … [Worker 3] starts going through my house … Bullshit! You don’t go sauntering into somebody’s house like you own it. I’m sorry! (Parent 13) Like the first minute [Children’s Aid] walk in that door, you can’t breathe. You don’t even know what to do. And then before you know it, your whole life’s gone … I went [to counselling] the next day after they took her [child] … the part I didn’t like was what you said to your counsellor,

186  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron they had to know. And I felt like my privacy was being totally invaded. (Parent 5)

In order to build more positive relationships with parents, a few service providers talked about trying to avoid actions that could be perceived as overbearing: I mean you’re trying to develop a relationship with these people that they’re going to trust you and that they’re going to feel that they’re able to speak to you about anything. So if you’re throwing up barriers off the bat, anything, in your body language, your voice, I don’t think you should do it. (Service provider 13) … I hate walking in people’s homes and saying show me your house and opening cupboard doors. I feel so rude and so intrusive, like I’m only going to do it when I have a suspicion of my own … And I get into trouble from the Society for not being that suspicious … (Service provider 5)

A final area of convergence in parents’ and service providers’ assessments of agency involvement, and perhaps the most striking, was the desire to establish more meaningful helping relationships. This sentiment was heard clearly in both parent and service provider accounts. Service providers acknowledged the challenge of getting to know the parents that they worked with, as they faced the reality of heavy workloads and the unfeasibility of visiting parents regularly. One worker warned of the dangers in adhering to “a military model of name it, respond, and move on.” At least a third of the service providers talked about wanting the opportunity to gain a fuller understanding of parents: … people really need to feel valued and worth something, you know, and that all comes back to my frustration then with this job because we get so very little time to do that … I think that’s really the way that people will make changes that, you know, positive changes in their lives and not by doing it because we say so or we’ll take your children. (Service provider 20) If I could do it over again, I would’ve maybe tried to follow up right away and tried to see her alone, like in the week. Maybe if I could have made a connection earlier, it might have been more effective. (Service provider 3)

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 187

Parents also often commented on the infrequent and short visits made by their service providers: … when she does come she kinda just updates, or sees if anything is new. But if nothing, she’s here maybe ten minutes and she’s gone for another three months. (Parent 3) I just felt that by them coming out once a week or once every two weeks, I felt it wasn’t enough and they weren’t doing any more than what we were. (Parent 2) Generally Children’s Aid hasn’t gotten to know me at all … They come out with these ten minute appointments and run in and run out … Get to know the person … that’s what they need to do. (Parent 23)

Overall, both parents and service providers identified similar procedural concerns around the delivery of services, such as the transfer of families across service providers, the use of early intrusive measures, and the need to establish better connections between parents and service providers. The shared desire to establish more meaningful connections potentially represents fertile ground for growing useful helping relationships. Both parents and service providers generally agreed that spending more time together getting to know each other better was essential for this to happen. Service providers lamented that their work demands made spending more time with families impossible. Patterns of Engagement This analytic dimension examines how parents and service providers acted and reacted within the service relationship. These ways of engaging were influenced by the attitudes, ideas, and assumptions each party made of the other and the service environments within which they interacted. Several patterns were unique to parents’ perceptions of the service engagements, including a lack of clarity about the reasons for service involvement, fear of the child welfare agency, and a desire for the agency to “just go away.” Patterns unique to service providers’ perceptions of these engagements included a focus on assessing child protection risks, system-level constraints on the work they wanted to do with families, and the expectation that service providers would meet with opposition from parents.

188  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

Parents’ Patterns Generally, when parents talked about their reasons for involvement with the CAS, they expressed limited understanding of why the agency was involved beyond the reasons for a specific referral (such as that the school called CAS after seeing bruises on a child’s arm). The reasons for this lack of clarity for parents were not apparent. Possible explanations may have included a failure to clarify the role of CAS with families, the general public’s misconceptions around the purpose of the CAS, parents’ immobilizing fear, or parents’ reluctance to see that they might in fact need assistance from the CAS. There were only a few instances where parents mentioned that service providers took the time and effort to adequately explain the purpose of CAS involvement, as well as their rights as parents: … they told me everything that was going on, and they just guided me … They’re pretty friendly… They were concerned … They made me feel comfortable. (Parent 24)

Most parents, at some point in their involvement with CAS, expressed that they “just want CAS to go away”: None of my experiences have been pleasant … Helpful? Well really the only thing that they helped me do was to try to learn now to stay away from them. (Parent 13) I wouldn’t say [to] contact Children’s Aid because they are hard people to get out of your life once they’re in … nobody wants people looking at your life under a microscope … (Parent 20)

Parents talked about complying with the demands of CAS service providers in hope that it would expedite the agency’s departure. Service Providers’ Patterns The primary job of service providers from their perspective was to “assess risk.” The required case recordings and the terminology within service documents were by design risk-focused (e.g., safety intervention plan, risk assessment). This emphasis on assessing risk to children drove the way in which service providers gathered information, what they chose to talk about with parents, and the types of service plans

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 189

they devised. In particular, service providers were limited by the finite number of services that they could offer families. Service providers often prescribed families a fairly standardized service package that was predominately focused on mandated protection issues: We asked the basic that we always ask for: go to a parenting group; go to counselling; get a drug alcohol assessment; get a psychiatric assessment. (Service provider 5) [Parent] got caught up in the system in that she called a few times and asked for help and we said we can’t help her, it’s not child protection … this is probably one of those families where I felt like the system just couldn’t do what needed to be done … I feel we have nothing to offer. (Service provider 2)

Child protection interventions were rarely described by service providers as negotiated agreements between service providers and parents. More often client compliance was stressed and adversarial relationships expected: We are confronting them, the clients and they’re confronting us in all aspects. In every single meeting they do have to confront us. (Service provider 23) I’m also realizing that with every other client there is inevitably a term or two that we have to argue about why they should do it. (Service provider 5)

Despite service providers’ awareness of the ability of parents to resist prescribed interventions, there was an expectation that parents would eventually comply with the service plan. The process of obtaining compliance sometimes involved legal authorities. When parents refused services or were perceived as non-cooperative, they were sometimes blamed for allowing a situation to escalate: We’re having some difficulty with them [birth parents] right now as we speak, in terms of getting papers served and her being cooperative with the Society, and her new partner has some choice words for me. (Service provider 21) … the family was highly uncooperative and very verbally abusive with the intake worker. That’s the reason why a court order was sought. (Service provider 24)

190  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

There was a limited range of service options that service providers felt they were able to offer families. Parent resistance was normalized and their compliance with official service expectations was required. Coupled with parents’ fears, confusions, and their desire to have the agency “go away,” these diverging assessments of patterns of engagement clearly set the stage for conflicted interactions between many parents and service providers. Despite the above general patterns, there were examples of cooperative relationships with families. The patterns of engagement described in these service provider interviews were characterized by increased face-to-face contact with families, a grasp of the significant events and circumstances important to the family, and the ability to recall family circumstances with almost as much detail as parents themselves. These service provider interviews more clearly emphasized mothers’ strengths and service providers’ resources to support a family as a significant part of the service plan: [Parent] is one of those women [single mother] I really respect because I don’t know that I could cope with parenting her kids … Her sense of humour is one of the most amazing things about her … I think that helps her ride through a lot of the rough times. (Service provider 8) … she didn’t really want to meet to talk about the stuff in the beginning, but, then I ended up being there for probably over an hour … I’m really open to answering any questions and I think that she knew that there was the option to talk to me. (Service provider 18)

Parents described some service providers “going the extra mile” and taking time to listen. They talked about valuing the empathy and sharing in these relationships: I knew a man that was a social worker and I know that there isn’t anything that he wouldn’t have done for his clients … He told it like it was and he listened to all sides and he gave loving criticism … it was done in such a way that you could take it. (Parent 13) [Worker] was here, and was very supportive … she basically has a really good sense of humour. I really appreciate that. (Parent 8) [Worker 4] didn’t jump in like the other workers and say how it is. She listened and understood what I was saying. (Parent 5)

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 191

Parent and Service Provider Frames of Reference This final section discusses the general frames of reference parents and service providers bring to their engagements. It examines how the patterns discussed earlier fit together to create the general template that shapes, consciously or not, how parents and child welfare service providers relate to each other. It allows us to look for areas of convergence as well as where the distances between the two general perspectives are substantial. These frames of reference comprise overt and less evident considerations for each party, referred to here as foreground and background considerations respectively. Considerations found in the foreground are familiar ways of thinking that are frequently accessed to explain circumstances and to guide behaviours. The foreground influences in this analysis are what parents and service providers pay attention to in their child welfare involvements. Attitudes, beliefs, or ways of thinking that are not readily acknowledged, or in some instances may not even be known to parents and service providers in their interactions with one another, make up the background considerations in this analysis. While background items may be hidden from parents’ and service providers’ awareness, our assessment of these data suggests that they still influenced the ways each party thought and behaved. A caution in these analyses is that they involve the authors creating a sense-making structure or template for the patterns that emerged in this study matching the perspectives of parents and child protection service providers. This template extrapolates from the patterns presented previously in this chapter. A second caveat for reading this discussion is that the focus is only on the most evident patterns in these data. For example, while there were illustrations of helping relationships appreciated by parents, frustrations were expressed much more frequently in these interviews. It is the more common pattern that appears in the framework. Readers must judge for themselves the fairness and usefulness of this template and our interpretations. Table 7.1 presents an overview of the elements that we included as the foreground and background of the frames of reference for both parents and service providers in this study. As we move down the list of considerations in each of the four quadrants, the items become more hidden in the dialogue of parents and service providers, until we reach the most obscure elements, which were rarely named by participants. Nonetheless, our contention is that these less acknowledged elements were not less important in structuring these relationships.

192  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron Table 7.1   Overview of Parent and Service Provider Frames of Reference Foreground

Background

Parents

•  Daily living stress • Personal struggles and pursuits • Problems with children’s behaviours and difficulties getting help • Fear of CAS • Getting rid of CAS • Power of CAS

• Need for genuine connections with service providers • Impact of parenting environment on children • Identification of strengths

Service providers

• Child protection and safety • Unresolved personal issues of mothers • Conflict, problems, areas of dysfunction • Parental (mothers’) accountability and responsibility • Parents’ compliance with agency requirements

• Need for genuine connections with parents • Daily stress of parents • Identification of strengths • Limitations of standardized service responses • Right to make and enforce decisions

Foreground – Parents For many parents, the struggles of daily life were central to their discussions. Parents talked of their challenges in raising children, maintaining relationships, the realities of oppressive employment situations, and securing adequate housing. Daily stress was a common topic in the parent interviews. In the same vein, parents readily discussed their own personal struggles and pursuits. Parents were generally able to identify difficulties they were having with addictions, emotional issues, health, relationships, or finding employment. They also identified personal accomplishments and goals, albeit with less frequency, such as returning to school or leaving an abusive partner. Parents focused on medical and developmental conditions, negative behaviours, and influences external to parenting, such as the nature of a child or a particular disorder, when explaining problems with children. Consequently, parents clearly articulated their need for help in dealing with their children. Equally apparent was parents’ frustration at the difficulty in securing services that they perceived to be helpful with such challenges.

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 193

At the same time, parents frequently described their tumultuous relationship with the CAS. Often citing fear of the agency, traumatic first encounters, inflexible services, and infrequent contact with service providers, many parents expressed the sentiment that they just wanted the agency to go away. Many parents recognized that this was not easily accomplished, acknowledging that the agency wielded enormous power. Background – Parents Working collaboratively with service providers in child welfare remained elusive for most of the parents interviewed. Nonetheless, despite their wariness, many parents expressed a desire to be understood and for more assistance. Our data and discussions elsewhere in this volume show that many parents are cautiously open to positive engagements with child welfare service providers. While parents clearly articulated their daily living struggles and the difficulties presented by their children, they talked very little about the impact of their parenting on their children. From our perspective, this was a significant gap in their discussions of their family circumstances. It also was an area of significant difference between parents’ and service providers’ understanding of children’s difficulties and family challenges. Parents talked a great deal about the challenges in their lives. What was notably absent from these interviews was a focus on their abilities and successes. Other discussions in this volume make clear the strengths and commitment many parents and families bring to confronting such challenges. They also highlight some of the joys and triumphs of these families. From our perspective, it is concerning that so many of these parents as well as service providers in these interviews gave so little attention to positive elements in parents’ lives. Foreground – Service Providers Assessing risk to children and preventing harm to children from their parents and home environments was the dominant focus in the service provider interviews and in the case files. This is not surprising, given the formal child protection mandate for which service providers were held accountable. This emphasis shaped all other elements in the foreground for service providers in these interviews.

194  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

Central to assessing risk was evaluating the parenting capacity of mothers. In most cases, this evaluation focused on mothers’ mental, emotional, and physical well-being and its impact on caring for children. Mothers’ personal issues received a lot of attention, most notably as the focus of agency interventions. Service providers also talked extensively about problems and deficiencies in parenting and family life. The language and structure used in mandated recordings at that time reinforced a problem-focused frame of reference for service providers. It was also evident that, in their descriptions of their involvements with these families, service providers paid attention to holding parents (mothers) accountable. The emphasis was on parents changing and acting to make family life more acceptable to service providers. Despite the services and supports provided, there was little sense of these changes being seen as child care challenges to be shared with parents over time. Service plans were based on service provider judgments, sometimes mediated by the authority of the courts. They were seldom seen as agreements to be negotiated with parents. It was also clear that service providers expected parents to comply with service plan requirements. Legal coercion (such as police presence or court orders) was a tool sometimes used in obtaining parental compliance. Service providers identified concerns around non-compliant parents, including confronting parents about not following through with service plan elements. Background – Service Providers Consistent with the parent interviews, service providers also cautiously identified a desire to establish more genuine connections with parents. Both the amount of work and how service providers were required to carry out this work made it difficult to engage with families in ways that providers would have liked to do. Nonetheless, despite the obstacles, there was still a desire among many of these service providers for more cooperative engagements with families. Service providers focused extensively on the impacts of parenting on children. Parents talked little about how their parenting might affect their children. They highlighted the many stresses and challenges that they faced every day, often reflective of the social and economic disadvantages in their lives. Service providers provided little information about the everyday stress of parents and families or their relative

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 195

social and economic disadvantages. Many of these service providers would have been aware of these realities for many families. Nonetheless, it is striking that they did not give such struggles an important place in their dialogue about families or interventions. These perspectives seem to us to be two incomplete parts of a portrait that have to come together to provide a credible image to guide us in helping these parents and children. Both parents and service providers talked mostly about family problems and inadequacies. Neither gave much time to uncovering the strengths of these parents or families and how they might be engaged in helping. From our perspective, this is another missing part of the portrait that is needed to shape credible helping. Recent interest in the use of solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) in child welfare has placed greater emphasis on uncovering and incorporating strengths into service planning. Through the process of “co-constructing” new meaning around parents’ concerns, SFBT aims to envision a “preferred future and to draw upon past successes and strengths to help resolve issues” (Lipchik, Derks, Lacourt, & Nunnally, 2012, p. 4). Several service providers referred to providing the typical or standard package of services to families. Generally, there was recognition of a shortage of services, which often denied families timely and adequate access to assistance. But there was no reflection among service providers about whether this typical service package made sense in light of the realities of the lives of these parents and children. Indeed, the elements of these packages focused on personal and parenting deficiencies that are in the foreground of the service providers’ frame of reference. An emphasis throughout this volume is that an expanded frame of reference, more congruent with the challenges of everyday family life as well as the concerns of service providers, would benefit family assessments and interventions. Service providers recognized that they were too busy to get to know family circumstances as well as they felt that they should. They acknowledged that difficult decisions often had to be made quickly based on limited information. However, there was no questioning of either the child protection service providers’ capacity to make credible assessments and service plans or the propriety of unilaterally making and enforcing these kinds of decisions on families. This was simply how the job was done, justified by the need to protect children from harmful home environments. Little second guessing of this process was evident in these interviews. Questioning whether more cooperative engagements with

196  Karen Frensch and Gary Cameron

families might inform more credible and mutually acceptable service decisions did not surface in these interviews. Implications In this research, despite important points of convergence, parents and service providers brought different optics to understanding family circumstances and child protection service involvements. From our perspective, this often seemed like a photograph torn in half. The two images need to come together to provide a useful view. There were clearly important images present in and missing from each perspective. For example, parents seldom focused on the impacts of home environments on children. Service providers underrepresented the stress of everyday living for families and parents’ lack of options in confronting daily challenges. Each party saw critical elements that the other did not. Both to protect children and to support parents, there is value in bringing these images together. An important element in merging these understandings is improving the quality of relationships between parents and child protection service providers. From our perspective, two changes would be necessary for this to happen – more mutually acceptable negotiated service plans and more service provider time available to families. Of course, it would also expand possibilities to have a greater variety of service and support options available to children and parents. Elements of the recent reforms to child protection in Ontario – including the mandate for flexible responses to families and greater openness to kinship care, formal mediation services, and family group conferencing – have potential to improve child welfare helping relationships. While in a positive direction, these changes are still subject to centralized formal service delivery guidelines and documentation requirements. As seen in later chapters, there is no evidence that these changes have reduced the amount of time front-line child protection service providers spend documenting their work, and thus they are not likely to substantially affect most everyday contacts between families and their front-line child protection service provider. From our point of view, more emphasis is needed on the negotiation of mutually agreeable service agreements between front-line service providers and parents and on the employment of a strengths-based approach to doing child protection work. Already in use in other jurisdictions and gaining popularity in Canada, the Signs of Safety (Turnell

Bridging or Maintaining Distance 197

& Edwards, 1999) assessment tool and planning framework focuses on how partnerships can be built with parents and children in highrisk abuse situations and still address issues of maltreatment (www. signsofsafety.net). Outcome studies (Appleton & Weld, 2005; Sundman, 2002; Westbrock, 2006) for this tool are encouraging, with various positive impacts noted: increased use of voluntary agreements, improved staff retention, more time for workers to reflect, improvements to parents’ perceptions of service providers, and more service options. Negotiating service agreements does not preclude using formal risk assessment methods or having specified service delivery documentation and review procedures. Ideally these standard procedures could focus and inform local decision making. But two major shifts would be necessary. First, the emphasis on producing evidence suitable for a formal court application from the opening of every case would have to be greatly diluted. Second, front-line service providers cannot continue to spend two-thirds or more of their time in front of a computer documenting what they have done with their cases. This demand on service providers’ time prevents them from having good information about families and providing reasonable assistance to children and parents (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare, 2010). Negotiated agreements would depend more on discussions between child protection service providers and family members. Ideally, system responsibility for decisions would be shared by a team of child protection (and perhaps other) service providers. Agencies and service providers would need to feel supported in reaching negotiated agreements with families. And there would have to be a process of learning how to reach and monitor these agreements. There would also have to be an acceptance that parents and children bring useful perspectives and preferences that can improve such agreements. These are not trivial challenges. They require modification to core principles and procedures that have guided the “Anglo-American” child protection model for a long time (Freymond & Cameron, 2006). Cultivating more mutually productive and respectful relationships between parents and service providers in a variety of ways has the potential to bring about further understanding of child and family realities and to make families more willing to engage with service providers.

8  See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us: Families and Family & Child Services marshall fine and deena mandell

Our interest in family experiences of child welfare services comes from a strong practice background with families and from agreement with others (Combrinck-Graham, 2006; Walsh, 2006b) that the family occupies a central position in the socialization, resilience, and well-being of children and all family members. We were concerned, therefore, at the time this study was undertaken, that child welfare in Ontario (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth, 2005) was only secondarily addressing the needs of the family in carrying out its mandate for the protection of the child (Cameron & Freymond, 2006). The protection focus, while essential, meant that the possibility for families to achieve, or be helped to achieve, a secure and nurturing environment was not being augmented. To add to our concerns regarding the secondary place of the family in child welfare, helping professionals, when they did work with families, often viewed them through a deficit/damaged lens, as opposed to a strength-based lens (Walsh, 2006b). With our commitment to the importance of family in hand, we wanted to talk with families who had been through child welfare services in order to see what their experiences had been like, which, as Davies (2011) suggests, can be very valuable with respect to improvements in service delivery. Were child welfare services helpful or not? What changed in the families’ lives? Where their general experiences positive or not so positive? As we set out to review the research in the area of family and child welfare, it became obvious that not much had been written about the experience of the family as a whole. Indeed, we found only a few studies that specifically focused on the responses of the whole family to service delivery (Davies, Seymour, & Read, 2000; Farmer, 1993). Most studies

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 199

looking into experiences with child welfare focused on the participation of one parent (see, for example, Drake, 1994; Fine, Palmer, & Coady, 2007). It did not take us by surprise that the participating parent in these studies was most often the biological mother (Davies, 2011; Freymond, 2003). The risks of placing the research spotlight on child welfare mothers (along with biological mothers in general) is that it reinforces mother blaming (Freymond, 2003). Our experiences as family therapists also cautioned us that mother blaming has been an unfortunate outcome not only of research and theory, but also of family and child protection practices (Davies, 2011; Nichols, 2011). Urek (2005) describes in detail the processes by which a mother can be constructed as “unsuitable,” in the child welfare and social service sectors, again reinforcing the motherblaming perspective in practice. Another unfortunate consequence of a persistent emphasis on the experiences of mothers is that little is known about the experiences of fathers or male partners (Shapiro & Krysik, 2010). We found only a few studies that opened participation to both parents (e.g., Dale, 2004; Davies, Seymour, & Read, 2000; Maiter, Palmer, & Manji, 2006; Palmer, Maiter, & Manji, 2006). Even in these studies, the participants were mainly mothers. Thus, not only do we know little about the experience of men involved with child welfare systems, but the focus on women relegates the accountability of men to the shadows. Equipped with our desire to even out, to some extent, the issues of mother blaming and “shadow” fathers and take a more encompassing, less potentially “blaming” view of experience, we made one further observation: child welfare interventions can have a very disruptive effect on families (Itzkowitz, 2006). Many of the families live in poverty at the margins of society (Fine et al., 2007; Minuchin, Colapinto, & Minuchin, 2007). Child welfare interventions can further ingrain their lack of fit with society and undermine their sense of competence as a family unit (Minuchin et al., 2007). When these factors are combined with a protection focus that draws attention away from the needs and possibilities of families, parents can feel support is sorely lacking (Davies et al., 2000). The missing family link is expressed well by one of the participants in this study. We only see Children’s Aid at this point to a brief degree as protection (okay) for the child. They’re not Family and Children’s Aid, they’re still Children’s Aid.

200  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

The Families Families who had been previously involved with either of two Family and Children’s Service agencies (F&CS)1 in southern Ontario were invited to participate in the study. Eight mothers, four fathers, and three children ultimately participated; five of the families, consisting of five mothers, two fathers, and two children received service from Agency A. Three families, consisting of three mothers, two fathers, and one child, received service from Agency B. Each family was interviewed together, not individually. Methodology We were interested in looking at ideas, thoughts, and meanings from interview conversations. The specific qualitative approach we used is referred to as Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Willig, 2008). Specifically, this study adopted an abbreviated version of grounded theory, meaning that we did not go back and forth between data collection and analysis and therefore issues of theoretical sensitivity and saturation could only be based on the original data we had collected (Willig, 2008). This approach offers a systematic way of developing meaning from the conversations held with the families. It is a starting point for initial theorizing on the basis of what we learned from the participants. The interviews with the families were conducted and audiotaped by research assistants. The initial broad questions asked of all families in the interviews were: What do the research participants want agencies to know about the service that was provided to them? How did the agency help? What changed as a result of the service? What thoughts did they have about the workers they most liked and disliked? All of the interviews were transcribed for analysis. We coded the things family members said that were related to the above questions. We used a qualitative software package called NVivo to help us organize the codes (Richards, 1999). Through constant comparison (Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Willig, 2008), all the codes were compared for similarities and differences and were grouped accordingly. This activity was repeated

1 We use F&CS throughout, though, on occasion, Children’s Aid is used by participants and has the same meaning.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 201

until the codes were categorized in ways that seemed to represent thoroughly, yet concisely, the meanings of the family participants. In order to determine whether or not the meanings we developed were relatively reasonable representations of what families were trying to tell us, we asked if the interviewed families would read the transcripts of their interviews and look at our findings. The authors interviewed the four families who volunteered to discuss our findings. The families we interviewed thought that we had captured their meanings. The Findings It is important to place our results of the experiences families from the two agencies had with F&CS in the context of the agencies’ functions and accountability requirements at the time of the study. These agencies delivered mandated services oriented primarily towards child protection. Our participants frequently experienced these services as intrusive and unwanted. It would therefore be surprising to hear consistently glowing stories about the services provided by F&CS from participants in this research. Even so, positive things did happen and the family participants in this study were able to identify and appreciate them, as noted in this participant’s response. M241: It’s been rough. It’s been depressing. It’s been exasperating. But it’s also been exciting, and it’s also been thrilling, and for all of the ups, down, peaks, valleys, backs, forths, moments of clouded confusion – when all is said and done, my involvement with Children’s Aid, for me, was a positive experience, and not one that I regret.

Like the other participants interviewed, this individual is able to discriminate between positive and negative experiences with F&CS, and the negative experiences did not rule out appreciation of the positive ones. Indeed, seven of the eight families reported having some positive experiences, while three had mainly positive experiences and three found the service generally not helpful. 2 Please note throughout that the letter M at the beginning of a quote represents a mother as speaker, F represents a father, C represents a child and Q represents a question or response from the interviewer. The numbers following these letters indicate our file numbers and are included in order to help readers distinguish among individual speakers.

202  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

Two key organizing categories emerged from our data. First, participants’ descriptions of what transpired in the F&CS services were permeated with a sense of having been criminalized at each stage of the service process (table 8.1). Our participants’ perceptions were that, while many child protection workers intended to assess risk, what they actually did was make assumptions about risk and fault. When this happened, participants experienced it as a process that constructed them as bad parents, and the process became a criminalizing one. The second key theme is that, despite the nature and structure of the child protection investigation process itself, different workers could intensify or ameliorate the sense of being criminalized. Feeling Criminalized Table 8.1 compares what we understand to be a delineation of the child protection process with the way in which it emerged from our data. In using the term “criminalized,” we picked up on the participants’ perceptions that they felt as if they were prejudged and found guilty, rather than heard and understood. In addition, participants felt as if they had been left forever marked or labelled in their own communities as bad parents. This affected their relationships within their community and the way in which they felt and behaved as parents. The overall sense of having been criminalized by their involvement with F&CS is captured in the two quotes below. M113: And that’s no way to raise a child, being afraid that every time you raise your voice, every time you put them in a corner, every time you send them to their room somebody is going to report you, you know. M33: You know, I’m even paranoid that if [son] – God forbid, he ever breaks a bone – um – God forbid – because I’m not going to want to take him to the hospital.

Below, we go through the stages of the process, highlighting those that were emphasized by the participants themselves. However, prior to describing the various stages of the process, it is important to draw attention to an essential ingredient in determining the extent to which the criminalizing experience/perception came into play for participants: the worker.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 203 Table 8.1   The F&CS Experience – Two Perspectives on the Stages of the Process Risk Focused

Criminalizing

Report

Report/Accusation

Investigation

Investigation

Assessment

Judgment/Prejudgment

Intervention

Intervention/Coercion

Monitoring

Surveillance

The Difference That Makes a Difference: Use of Power Once the report had been made, how the family experienced the rest of the process, whether positively or negatively, had a great deal to do with the way in which the individual worker conducted him- or herself in working with the family. The skills and way of being of the worker did make a difference. This finding opens important possibilities for work education, child welfare training, and agency culture for fostering “the difference that makes a difference.” We distilled many codes referring to worker behaviours and characteristics into the two categories that seemed to be most salient to the crucial difference that workers can make to how participants felt about the process. These categories are worker attitude and worker use of power. Attitude represents the participants’ view that either the worker was positive, accepting, and open in her/his views and ways of seeing the family, or she/he was disparaging, distant, and patronizing. Use of power represents participants’ views of how wisely the worker wielded the positional power inherent in her/his role and whether or not the worker was prejudging of participants. The ways in which both attitude and use of power were perceived by participants appeared to determine whether the process was experienced as depersonalizing or humanizing. A depersonalizing approach was one that left the family member feeling that he or she had been treated impersonally, with disdain, or objectified, distanced. M74: And he treated us like we were the bad people and we were basically low-lives.

204  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

A humanizing approach, on the other hand, was what participants described as being treated with respect, as if they were individuals with a point of view worthy of being heard and taken into account. M40: She was always very open to hear what we had to say and was ready and available to listen and she never ever, ever passed judgment, which I thought was so awesome.

When we looked at the specifics of the verbal and non-verbal communication participants identified as conveying these two contrasting attitudes, we identified elements which can be understood in traditional terms as differential use of self, rather than simply personal attributes or skills alone. We will return to the notion of use of self in our discussion. Use of power and attitude were often difficult to separate out in the analyses. For example, when a worker’s attitude appeared to be distancing or demeaning, an accompanying hint of power misuse may be inferred. The quote below is an example of attitude and power appearing to overlap in such a way. M41: Well, no. I have the right to be treated as a decent human being. You have no right to come in here like Hitler, going, “Thou shalt do, and if you don’t, you’re going to be suffering major consequences.” Sit down and talk to me as a human being. I’ll work with you.

We have attempted as best we could to separate these notions out; however, there are necessarily areas of convergence. Stage I: Report/Accusation People can feel criminalized at the very outset by the fact that a report has been made by a third party or by the response of the agency to someone who self-reports. Participants’ observations about the reporting phase focused on their feelings about the effects of anonymous mandatory reporting, instances where the reporter was known, and agency response to self-reporting. Anonymous reporting raised the issue of accountability: the callers are free to say whatever they wish without having to answer for it. M40: I had somebody call the children’s aid saying that I beat [my child] and make her do all the chores and they came and had to investigate some of that. I was furious. I was infuriated that somebody would say something like that.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 205 F113: … I think people would probably not make such stupid complaints if they knew their name was coming up as soon as the complaints were taken to the people.

When the individual making the report is known to the participant, there may be feelings of having been betrayed or maliciously accused. M47: … I was called to come and pick him up and when I picked him up I said in front of the teacher that I am pounding your ass when I get home. I am so angry at you, right. So, she picked up the phone right away and phoned Family and Children Services.

Even self-reporting can expose a parent to feeling accused, labelled, or punished, depending on the response they receive. F107: But if you go to Children’s Aid and say we need help – “No, no, you people are doing something wrong.”

Those who reported themselves thus experienced judgment de facto; they felt judged for declaring themselves to be in need of intervention. Those who reported others became part of a network of relations in which they immediately assumed power over those they reported, with no accountability for that power. Stage II: Investigation attitude: depersonalizing versus humanizing The investigation stage is crucial, as it can set the tone for the rest of the process. Workers’ attitudes at this stage can help determine the degree of cooperation that they might receive from family members. Our participants made it clear that a worker could have a depersonalizing effect on them or a humanizing one and that their response to the worker was greatly affected by which worker attitude they encountered. The quote below gives an example of one way in which a worker was experienced as having a depersonalizing effect: M41: “We think there’s a concern here” – and they come in. To automatically assume that I’m going to be belligerent or negative or what have you – It’s like – Do not walk in with any preconceived conception of who we are. This attitude leads clients to feel less willing to cooperate.

206  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

Depersonalizing was also enacted when workers demonstrated a lack of interest in the lives of family members. It may be that interest in family members’ histories, needs, and difficulties was considered outside the scope of child protection investigations – so that lack of interest was therefore not necessarily worker-generated distancing. The net effect, however, was that this lack of interest had the effect of depersonalizing the family member, which negated the possibility of understanding her or him. M132: They didn’t understand the background because they didn’t probe. They didn’t try.

It is possible for a worker to set a very different, humanizing, tone for the investigative stage, which our participants indicated elicited a different kind of response from them. M41: And, I’m more likely to be cooperative, from the beginning, if a worker comes in, like the second worker, and said, we’ve had this report come into our office. Now, there’s been some concern, which is why I’m here. But I’d like to hear what, your part of the story. Where do you stand on this?

use of power and prejudgment As noted previously, the way in which the worker used power could also have a depersonalizing effect on the participants. The quote below illustrates one worker’s use of her power in a way that left this father feeling intimidated and acutely aware of the worker being in a position to make life-altering decisions for him and his family. F40: She just came in angry, closed the door and she looks at me, opens it halfway and then she comes over, sits down, throws herself into the chair, throws her paperwork on the table – All this intimidation. And I’m thinking, this is not gonna go good.

It should be said that the worker referred to in this quote arrived having been told that this father was abusive of his wife. The worker herself may have felt fearful, as a female confronting a possibly abusive male face to face, and may have intended to use her positional power to compensate in a self-protective way.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 207

The next quote also suggests how the participant, like others, linked prejudgment with the process of being criminalized. M41: I’ve had a situation where a worker has come in with the assumption that what’s been reported was concrete fact, and I’m guilty before I’ve been proven innocent. You know, like – you’re not innocent until you’re proven guilty, you’re guilty until you can prove you’re innocent.

Stage III: Intervention/Coercion The worker’s attitude and use of power are also conveyed through the intervention phase, which some participants experienced as the coercive phase. Interventions were sometimes experienced quite positively, whether they were useful or not, and sometimes quite negatively. The best way we can categorize how participants described positive experiences of intervention is to say they were strengthening. The negative way in which intervention was experienced – including coercion – was as disempowering. strengthening experiences Concrete Help. This area incorporated information about or referral to resources, educational information about child development, help setting parenting priorities, and dealing with specific difficult child behaviours. Support Provided. The appreciation of support was expressed, among others, by this father, for whom support came as a surprise: F52: Just being there, somebody to talk to or anything like that. I never realized you can just phone them up to chat to them or anything like that. They’re there for that.

Openness of Worker. The positive feelings of participants and their willingness to reciprocate were greatly enhanced when they perceived workers as being honest and open. M40: And she was very open and honest and we felt, that’s why we felt that we could be open and honest with her.

208  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

Worker Was Understanding and Recognized Need. When workers assessed needs as well as risk, and reached out to help the family, participants said they felt recognized and understood within their personal context. M41: Umm, I felt helped because they didn’t just look at the situation as there’s a problem with the child, the child’s at risk. I finally got the right kind of workers who sat back and said, this family needs help.

The family’s lives and difficulties were rendered visible in this way and it opened up the possibility for meaningful help to be offered. Careful Use of Power. The mother below offers an example of a worker’s careful use of power: M52: She never overstepped her bounds, never accused me of anything, always gave me the benefit of the doubt to – to say what I had to say before an accusation was – you know, before any judgment.

In this example, being non-judgmental was understood by the mother to be an expression of respectful boundaries, hence respectful use of the worker’s power. As we saw above, when the worker has not prejudged, the family member can see this demonstrated through an openness to him or her, which in turn is experienced as a careful use of power. disempowering and depersonalizing practices Some workers left participants feeling depersonalized or disempowered by the way that they dealt with them. Of course, structural issues such as child welfare legislation itself and administrative policies and practices can produce depersonalization and disempowerment. For example, one mother was concerned about a breach of confidentiality in her situation. In other work settings, the breach of her personal information would constitute an unethical violation of confidentiality. Yet, under F&CS legislation, the particular breach was condoned. Our focus here, however, will be on those elements – structural or not – that appeared to vary from worker to worker because that was what the participants identified. Distancing Practices. One form of depersonalization described by participants was distancing by the worker. In the quote below we can hear the extent to which the participant felt erased by the worker’s attitude towards her.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 209 Q113: What about the way the workers interact with you? Is there anything that you would change or recommend? M113: At least pretend they’re interested.

Being on a Mission. In the following quote, the worker was characterized regarding attitude and power in a way that we have called being on a mission. F40: She came out gangbusters, like she was gonna save the world in one minute and – uh – that’s all she had to do it in. And she attacked us.

The implications of being on a mission are complex and illuminating. The participant’s perception was that the worker had constructed herself as a rescuer or good guy and had necessarily constructed a victim to rescue and a “bad guy” from whom to save the victim. The theme of feeling they had been constructed as bad guys or bad parents by the worker before the worker ever arrived made parents feel they had been erased as individuals, along with any good parent aspects they had. Dehumanized, Judged, Criminalized, and Disempowered. The following quote serves to illustrate a number of other themes in our findings. It names a feeling of being dehumanized, being judged, criminalized, and disempowered. We use it here to clarify the connection the participant made between those experiences and the worker’s use of power. F33: Well, what I’d like them to know is that people are human … They make mistakes. And treat people as humans, not like somebody that broke the law and you’re going to change the world. You know? That’s – that’s how some get on their high horse.

The following quote tells what happened when a mother reported to F&CS for alleged abuse became increasingly angry throughout the course of the investigative interview. The mother perceived that the worker came into the home hostile and closed to anything she had to say. The mother responded in turn with hostility, and things escalated to the point where she told the worker to leave and the worker refused. M41: “Well I can’t leave because you’re upset, you’re gonna hurt your child.” I’m not upset at my child, I’m upset at you. You’re the one who’s

210  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell upsetting me, you’re the one who’s causing this stress, you’re the one who’s making everything continue and escalate! Just leave. “Well I can’t leave; your child’s at risk.” My child is not at risk, you are! Leave!

The mother saw the worker as being so committed to her construction of the mother as a bad parent that she thought the worker could not recognize what was going on between the two of them. It illustrates the production of anger and belligerence in the family member by a worker whose perceived attitude and behaviour contributed to this mother’s feeling of being pre-judged and depersonalized. Stage IV: Surveillance At the stage of continued monitoring, participants described a number of issues that contributed to a sense of having been criminalized, in addition to the length of time that agency surveillance continued. The data suggest that these concerns, while real, are heightened when the process was experienced as a criminalizing one. The Long Life of the Record. The static, time-bound, a-contextual, and constitutive nature of written records has been noted as a problematic issue (Turner & Fine, 1995), and the following mother called attention to these concerns. M33: Because like I said in my situation, if someone is to phone and say, well, could you do a check on her? – Even though my file is closed, I may – I think that when it says it’s closed, it’s closed, rip it up, throw it out, goodbye – not keep somebody on a computer that isn’t going through this anymore … because like I said people do change.

Constraints on Family Life in Response to Having Become the Object of Others’ Scrutiny. This mother noted that being overly scrutinized can unrealistically and unnaturally constrain how people live life. This is akin to Foucault’s (1979) ideas of hierarchical observation and observational gaze, which together refer to the sense on the part of the one seeking legitimization (the child welfare clients in this instance) that they are under constant surveillance by those who have authorized power to ensure that the clients meet expectations. This mother wanted workers to understand and appreciate this idea in their work.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 211 M33: You know, that was in the contract, okay? And it was basically like – we felt like pretty soon we’re not going to be able to smoke cigarettes, we’re not going to be able to go to the bathroom, we’re not – you know? Work with the people, don’t – you know.

A Sense of Vulnerability, Fear, and Worry. The following mother expressed a similar sentiment to the aforementioned mother. However, the concern regarding scrutiny in this situation restrained the mother from feeling as if she could discipline her child. The lack of discipline could result in the loss of parental authority and acting out on the part of the child. Ironically, this could lead to more involvement with child welfare. M113: And that’s no way to raise a child, being afraid that every time you raise your voice, every time you put them in a corner, every time you send them to their room somebody is going to report you, you know …

And in the End It is clear from our study that many families had what they perceived as criminalizing experiences with child welfare workers and the system. However, it is also clear from our research, as noted at the beginning, that families had positive and helpful experiences. We would like to end our findings section on this positive note, as we believe that such experiences can be fostered, even in the most difficult of circumstances. M52: … and in the end of it, she’s always the first one and only – the only person ever that’s looked at me and said I can see that your love is unconditional for your kids. You know, I can see that you’re strong enough to get through it. C44: It was good.

Summary of Findings In commenting on our findings, we must emphasize that for the most part the children in our study did not speak a great deal when they were present in the interviews. In addition, when interviewers asked questions directly, the child participants’ answers were often brief.

212  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

It is useful to note that we could not discern, from our data, a gendered difference between what men and women participants were expressing with respect to their experiences. Both experienced feeling criminalized and defensive. Both also commented on how helpful some workers and services were. Indeed, it was a man who said what we might stereotypically have thought would be more likely to come from a woman: “I never realized you can just phone them up to chat to them or anything like that. They’re there for that.” The similarities between men and women may simply be a consequence of the smallness of the sample, its self-selective nature, or the fact that we did not attempt to tease out gender differences in the research interviews. It also may be that when it comes to the specific issues involved – being treated humanely and respectfully, or being treated in a depersonalizing and judgmental way – men and women have similar reactions. Our findings suggest that parent participants felt that they were being viewed, at least initially, as criminals in their interactions with workers – sensing prejudgment, depersonalization, patronization, and disparagement. As noted in the findings, one participant indicated that she felt as if she was presumed guilty from the start. It was apparent from the data that such experiences precluded positive alliances and engagement between workers and clients, which, according to the literature, is of fundamental importance to good outcomes for the client (Davies et al., 2000; Drake, 1994; Gladstone, Dumbrill, Leslie, Koster, Young, & Ismaila, 2012). It must be said that, given Canadian society’s legal and moral stance on the possible mistreatment and neglect of children, it is understandable that those being investigated could be predisposed to perceiving themselves as criminals prior to any encounter with a worker. It is, therefore, very important that workers be mindful of the ways in which they represent power and that they be sensitive in the ways that they use it. One important aspect that appeared to make a difference in what participants experienced from the investigation stage on is related to the attitude of the worker. This corresponds with other research findings (Dale, 2004; Davies et al., 2000; Drake, 1994; Fine et al., 2007). If the participant perceived the worker’s attitude to be positive and accepting, the participant generally was at ease, and willing to cooperate. On the other hand, if the attitude of the worker was perceived as

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 213

patronizing, disparaging, and closed, participants were inclined to be reluctant to cooperate. Another aspect that appears linked to attitude was how the worker used the power given to her or him by the nature of the job and mandate. Given our findings, we would speculate that the more respectfully a worker used power, the more likely the participants were to feel heard and the more likely they were to work with the system. As such, the experience would feel more humane. Conversely, we would suspect that the more likely the worker was to use power in ways that were not respectful, the more likely the process was to feel dehumanizing or depersonalizing for participants. This is consistent, of course, with the literature that advocates a critical and constant questioning of the power relations between worker and service user for the sake of ethical and good client relations (Davies, 2011; Rossiter, 2007) as well as in the interests of meaningful outcomes (Lietz, 2009). With respect to the stages in the overall process of involvement with child welfare, we concur with Drake (1994) that a positive investigation, particularly given that the report stage can be very jarring to families, can contribute greatly to establishing a constructive process. In other words, as the participants indicated, an honest and respectful approach sets the stage for future collaboration at all stages. It is helpful to bear in mind, however, that investigation can be the most stressful stage even for the best of social workers (Farmer, 1993), as social workers can feel stressed from having to determine what has taken place while making a rapid decision for the safety of the child. And, as Davies (2011) notes, social workers are “damned if they do and damned if they do not” (p. 202). What is encouraging, according to our results, is that having a disrespectful worker in the investigation stage did not necessarily spell disaster or produce uncooperativeness, if other workers whom the family perceived as respectful became involved. The remaining stages of assessment/judgment/prejudgment, intervention/coercion, and monitoring/surveillance follow a similar path to the above, according to our participants. It seemed as if families who did not feel criminalized and who thought that workers were respectful with regard to attitude and use of power noted that things went smoothly and that there was a mutual sense of cooperation. This is consistent with research looking at interventions involving sexual and physical abuse situations (Davies et al., 2000; Farmer, 1993).

214  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

A Few Questions about “Good” Workers Given the mandate of F&CS, even in this time of the Transformation Agenda, it is unlikely that many families would welcome interventions, particularly if they are involuntary. The threat is too great and the power vested in the worker is too immense. Nonetheless, as noted above, the worker’s ability to use power carefully and justly and to apply him- or herself in a way that conveys a caring and humanizing attitude goes a long way in making room for families to be more open to the service. We are not, however, so naïve as to believe that the job of a worker in F&CS is easy. In fact, we believe it may be one of the most difficult jobs a social worker can occupy. It is understandable how a worker could “burn out” after dealing with these intense situations for a long time, particularly given the nature of the work and the political and legal atmosphere currently surrounding child protection (see Stalker, Mandell, Frensch, Harvey, & Wright, 2007). We find ourselves, therefore, left with several questions about the workers who were experienced positively by family member research participants. Who are these workers? Are they novices or seasoned? What enables them to maintain these positive stances with families, particularly when it seems the working conditions can be so trying (Gonzalez, Faller, Ortega, & Tropman, 2009)? Are they able to nurture successful working relationships with most of their client families? For example, there is evidence in the psychotherapy literature that some psychotherapists have consistently better outcomes than others (Okiishi, Lambert, Nielsen, & Ogles, 2003). Would a similar finding be likely with child welfare workers? What are the personal and professional characteristics of a worker who is able to have mainly positive relationships? Are there family characteristics that make it easier for a worker to be positive and humanizing? By focusing on these and other similar questions in the future, we believe that we could learn much more to benefit families, workers, and the overall system. Some of these questions have been addressed in the literature and will no doubt be of interest to workers and their employers (Stalker et al., 2007). What about Practice? We approach the area of practice with some caution, given that the findings are based on a small sample and the issues are complex. With

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 215

respect to sample size, it is important to bear in mind that, consistent with the aims of qualitative research in general, we cannot generalize from this sample – we can only speak to and from it. The complexity of the issues is a different matter and needs to be embedded in the following understanding. The data presented here deal primarily with the interactions between families and workers. These data do not address the larger systemic issues around which the interactions take place. Indeed, the data highlight the micro-interaction of the client and worker and overshadow the impact and reality of the larger system in which these interactions take place. It is helpful here to bear in mind the notion of type I (Alpha) and type II (Beta) errors, or what Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1988) suggest is a schema comparable to hypothesis testing. A type I error would be to reject the notion that the individual worker has influence, while favouring the larger systemic factors surrounding child welfare services. A type II error would be a failure to understand that the individual worker is part of a much larger and very powerful system that influences, in great part, what the individual worker can see and can accomplish. Davies (2011), for example, notes that even while the social worker involved in the investigation of her son’s injury was fair, respectful, and supportive, the worker’s good practices could not protect the author (Davies) from the “suffering” she experienced at the hands of the larger system as the investigation of her son’s injury unfolded. In that our study focuses on worker-client interaction – one small aspect of a complex system – we wish to acknowledge that such a focus has important limitations. At this point we wish to comment on the worker-client relationship, particularly with respect to collaboration and power. We then address what we consider vital in the development of good client-worker relationships, particularly in the complex world of child welfare – the worker’s use of self. The Worker-Client Relationship Our participants wanted what the literature suggests leads to good working alliances. These include the wish to be heard and acknowledged; to be seen in context as caring human beings who were trying their best, sometimes under very difficult circumstances; and to be included in the decision-making process, as much as possible (Fine et al., 2007).

216  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

These client wishes, which we think of as belonging to the realm of equity and ethics, may be challenging for the worker, however, particularly in the investigation stage, given the sometimes overwhelmingly serious nature of the concern and the compelling need for decision making. This is compounded by the understandable reluctance many clients have to willingly engage with what they may see as an intrusive and criminalizing system. However, as seen from this study, the maintenance of a positive and respectful working relationship is possible, if not always at the point of investigation, then certainly afterward, given the “right” worker and the right approach. Our belief is that the “right” worker/approach is to work collaboratively with clients and use power respectfully. These abilities are by no means simple or straightforward in child welfare, and we address, now, some of the complexities. The Problem of Collaboration, the Big Stick and Client Cooperation. Studies in child welfare have pointed to the success and importance of collaborative practice (Burford, Pennell, & Edwards, 2011; Jenson, Pine, Spath, & Kerman, 2009). Healy (2001, p. 7) notes that there has been a “rich tradition of collaboration between service workers and service users in critical social work.” However, collaborative practice is complicated in the child welfare field. Authors are aware of the primary dilemma facing many social workers in child welfare practice: offering help while having the authority to control (Mandell, 2008; Swift & Callahan, 2006). How does one espouse collaboration when carrying a very big stick? This is particularly difficult given that the “big stick” is wrapped in “the backcloth of the wider policy, organizational, economic and legal contexts” (Evans & Harris, 2004, p. 74) and the fear of glaring public reprisal if the situation is mishandled and serious harm comes to a child. Margolin (1997, p. 106) adds further casing to the stick by pointing out that social work has a “proclivity to adapt itself to the value systems of which it is a part.” The value system in which social work is primarily embedded is middle class (Freymond, 2003; Margolin, 1997), which is a different value system from the one in which many families caught up in the child welfare system are rooted. As such, the possibility for value clashes increases, and as we have seen, the one holding the power is more likely to come out on top. The stick, therefore, is not only big but is given extra weight by systems and values that could favour its use.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 217

It is clear from our participants that those who did not readily “cooperate” appeared to have difficulties with their workers. Indeed, clients who are not seen as cooperative can be viewed as being of “bad character” (Margolin, 1997, p. 80). Certainly this was the experience of many of the participants in this study, which led some to feel criminalized. Margolin raises the point that the more clients cooperate with social work directives, the more likely they are to have a positive outcome. Turning the focus back on collaboration, one must ask the questions: Are clients allowed to be “uncooperative” in a collaborative relationship? How is “uncooperative” behaviour read: as defiance or as being misunderstood? The dynamics are complex, and the expectations of the worker to use her or his power in ways that balance collaboration and openness with the realities of the larger sociopolitical forces, which often demand “unrealistic certainties” (Walsh, 2006a, p. 48), is indeed challenging. Power. It seems apparent from this study that the use of power is at the crux of the collaborative relationship, especially given the complexities we have heretofore outlined. Respectful use of power appears in our findings to bode well for collaborative relationships with clients. Solomon (2002) suggests a number of actions to help social workers use their power with clients in equitable ways. Her proposals include being transparent and discussing with clients the power dynamics and realities in the worker-client relationship and being aware of the biases held by workers, agencies, and society that may contribute to the oppression of clients, whether it be in the theories they hold or the policies and under which they work. For example, it would appear that there exists a negative social discourse about child welfare mothers not meeting middle-class standards (Freymond, 2003). It has been noted that “Front-line child protection practice tends to be over-organized by notions of family pathology” (Turnell, 2006, p. 4). Besides being misguided, these prejudgments and deficit-focused assessments overlook the fact that these families tend to be poor (Swift & Callahan, 2006) and have not been the recipients of the social and political benefits that often touch the lives of the more economically fortunate. Solomon’s (2002) proposals are aimed at keeping collaboration and trust on a “realistic” level. Under these conditions of openness and honesty, families would hopefully understand that while the social worker will do everything in her power to help them, there are limitations that may impede “perfectly” collaborative efforts.

218  Marshall Fine and Deena Mandell

Use of Self – See Us, Hear Us, Work with Us We view Solomon’s (2002) suggestions as fitting in the framework of use of self because they involve processes by which workers, in order not to let prejudgments and biases cloud their work, must be painstakingly analytical and self-reflective (Fook & Gardner, 2007). Indeed, we believe that if a worker is not aware of these prejudgments and personal and organizational biases, she or he could further do harm to already disadvantaged clients (Mandell, 2007). The use-of-self literature historically spoke to the social worker’s need to understand his or her own biases and areas of reactivity in order, as much as possible, to avoid imposing uninformed personal judgments upon clients (Mandell, 2007). However, the notion of use of self has taken on a much more sophisticated and encompassing meaning of late. As Mandell (2007, p. 9) notes, use of self consists of a process of asking penetrating questions ranging from “interrogating unconscious process underlying impasses and inappropriate, intense or irrational responses to clients, to questions in a critical mode about where the power lies and how it operates, the privileged versus subjugated discourses in everything from policy to personal interchanges to record-keeping.” As suggested above, world-view biases and prejudgments can often be hidden from the professional as they are assimilated into his or her very fabric. Use-of-self practices challenge social workers to unravel their cultural threads in order to more clearly see the composition of the material and pattern. Dealing with these less visible constructions is crucial in accessing social and ideological locations so that they do not inadvertently and negatively affect the people with whom we are working. When these ideas become visible, they can be monitored, moderated, and bracketed by the social worker. This type of conscientious environment, which takes into account a sophisticated contextual perspective, ushers forth the possibility of non-violative relationships (Weinberg, 2005), which allow for respectful and humane working relationships. All persons are seen and heard and work is done together. A study participant sums this up. M41: Two-way communication. That’s what I found to be most beneficial. Honest communication and openness were met with honest communication and openness – work got done. Changes were made, life got better.

See Us. Hear Us. Work with Us 219

Concluding Remarks The data analysed in this chapter support the idea that the positive alliance between worker and client is central to a positive child welfare endeavour. However, this research also speaks to the complexity of establishing positive working relationships. The child welfare arena is fraught with intricacies and potential hazards. While our research draws from the perspective of clients, we are quite aware that all participants in child welfare service are important and all need to be understood and comprehended from a variety of perspectives. Much needs to be learned in order to increase the likelihood that children are safe and families are dealt with in the most respectful manner possible. We have suggested ways in which families could be engaged in order to increase the likelihood of a beneficial working relationship. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. While this aspect of our study did not explore the larger system, we believe that in order for positive working relationships to be initiated and maintained, the very difficult jobs of child welfare social workers that are embedded within, and heavily influenced by, the policies and politics surrounding the child welfare system must be addressed. We trust that the Child Welfare Transformation Agenda (Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth, 2005) is a first step on this liberating path.

9 Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Helping Relationships in Accessible and in Central Service Delivery Settings lirondel hazineh and gary cameron

Freymond and Cameron (2006) present evidence of an emerging consensus about the central importance of building positive helping relationships in the major child and family welfare paradigms in Western countries. There is ample evidence that cooperative relationships with child welfare service providers are valued by children and parents (Cooper Altman, 2008a, 2008b; Chapman, Gibbons, Barth, McCrae, & NSCAW Research Group, 2003; Drake, 1994; Gockel, Russell, & Harris, 2008; Lee & Ayón, 2004). The study by Frensch and Cameron matching child protection service provider and parent perspectives presented in an earlier chapter suggested at least a cautious openness by both parties to closer helping relationships. This chapter focuses on the results of a study comparing the impacts on helping relationships of locating front-line child welfare service providers in central and in accessible service delivery sites. Accessible service providers in this study were located in local schools or neighbourhood centres geographically close to their clientele. Central service providers were located in child welfare agency premises not physically close to most of their clientele.1 Compared to central service delivery settings, creating better access for families to front-line service providers was one of the main ambitions of those developing the community and school service delivery settings in this research. They also hoped to improve how child welfare services were perceived in the 1 This investigation is part of the Transforming Front-Line Practice research funded by the Ontario Ministry for Children and Youth (136: A16176-576810: A770). More information about this program of research and its products is available at www.wlu. ca/pcfproject.

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 221

communities served. They wanted to reduce the stigma and fear of service involvement. They hoped that families would be more willing to ask for help. Three service delivery dimensions characterized the accessible service sites in this research: (1) Their creation included explicit intentions to improve relationships with clientele, (2) the sites were located geographically close to the clientele that they served, and (3) the workers usually shared space with other professionals (e.g., teachers, public health nurses) and less frequently also with members of community associations. It is this particular configuration of service delivery dimensions that produced the outcomes described in this chapter, with each dimension linked to different types of outcomes. For example, one central site in this study shared a large central setting with mental health and other professionals. The study identified benefits associated with this central co-location such as easier and quicker access for clients to these professional services. But this site did not differ from other central sites in this study on indicators of the nature of front-line child protection helping relationships or client perceptions of the accessibility and familiarity of child protection service providers. A persistent challenge for child protection models internationally has been to develop meaningful helping relationships with families. In many settings, children and parents are often fearful and resistant to involvement with child protection agencies. Service providers are heavily constrained by competing demands on their time. Yet some argue that creating more positive helping relationships is central to improving outcomes in child welfare (Lee & Ayón, 2004; Trotter, 2002). Others suggest that it is feasible to increase the proportion of positive child welfare helping relationships, despite existing child protection system constraints (Maiter, Palmer, & Manji, 2006; Ribner & Knei-Paz, 2002). Leigh and Miller (2004) presented evidence that service users want child welfare service providers to be clear about their role, to listen to them, and to attempt to gain an understanding of their world. They pointed out that to do these things well took time, something that the demands of front-line child welfare work did not often allow. In fact, some authors in this volume (see chapter 4 by Freymond, chapter 6 by de Boer and Coady, chapter 7 by Frensch and Cameron, and chapter 8 by Fine and Mandell) have argued that helping relationships in child welfare that are appreciated by parents may be the exception rather than the norm.

222  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron

The germane point from these chapters is that cooperative helping relationships can be important contributors to parents’ willingness to be involved with child protection services and to more favourable outcomes for children and families. However, these chapters also highlighted the many obstacles to forming good helping relationships in existing child protection settings. These earlier chapters focused substantially on how child welfare service providers’ attitudes and behaviours fostered or obstructed positive engagements with clients. This chapter examines whether a shift in program intentions, coupled with locating front-line child protection service providers in more accessible service delivery settings and their co-location with service partners, can make cooperative child welfare helping relationships more common. Methodology This research examined six accessible (three school and three neighbourhood) and five central child welfare service delivery sites at six child welfare agencies in Ontario. More specifically, this multi-faceted research incorporated an assessment of the impacts of accessible and central service delivery models on (1) family functioning and child welfare system indicators (e.g., formal court applications); (2) front-line child welfare service providers’ satisfaction with services; (3) parents’ satisfaction with services; (4) the services and supports available to families; (5) front-line service employment satisfaction and job sustainability; and (6) front-line helping relationships in child welfare. The broader study included a quasi-experimental outcome design gathering data from parents at case opening and approximately 10 months later. It also incorporated semi-structured qualitative interviews for child welfare personnel and parents. Finally, selected system indicators were gathered from family files at the child welfare agency. The samples for the study included the following: • 261 parents completed a set of standardized outcome measures to assess parent, child, and family functioning at the time their case was opened to ongoing services. • 188 parents completed the same set of measures occurring approximately 10 months later. • 73 parents participated in a semi-structured qualitative interview about their service experiences and satisfaction with services. • 115 front-line service providers completed a quantitative questionnaire about their child welfare jobs including job satisfaction,

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 223

workload, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and intention to leave measures. • 18 focus groups involving approximately 150 front-line child welfare service providers were conducted about their perceptions of services and their work environments. • 17 individual qualitative interviews were completed with child welfare supervisors and administrators about their perceptions of front-line services and work environments. • 201 agency files were reviewed to gather data on selected system indicators including court applications, supervision orders, and child placements. The discussion in this chapter draws upon data from all of these sources that shed light on front-line helping relationships at the 11 research sites. Focus groups and individual qualitative interviews were recorded and transcribed. These transcripts were analysed for differential patterns among service delivery models using the NVivo software (Richards, 1999). Before a pattern was considered to represent a difference between models, two conditions had to be satisfied: (1) The pattern had to be substantially more prevalent in interviews within particular models than others; and (2) when more than one service delivery model was present at a child welfare agency (e.g., a community as well as a central site), the differential pattern had to be evident in the service delivery models at that agency. These conditions ensured that the differences were robust and represented service delivery model rather than agency differences. Finally, in examining qualitative data, care was taken to clarify whether the patterns were shared across all or some of the sites representing particular service delivery approaches. Statistical analyses focused on identifying similarities and statistically significant differences among service delivery models on a variety of indicators. The robustness of this study’s findings was strengthened by the strong convergence of perceptions and assessments between parents and service providers as well as clear agreements across the different types of data gathered in this research. A limitation is that this study reflects experiences in particular child welfare settings in Ontario. Another limitation is the relatively small size of the accessible programs included in this research. We cannot with confidence draw conclusions about system-wide applications of such approaches or about their applicability in very different contexts.

224  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron

First Contact Previous Partnerships for Children and Families research had explored the nature of helping relationships between families and front-line child welfare service providers. Service relationships were described as stressful and difficult for many parents and children (Frensch, Cameron, & Hazineh, 2005). Parents often expressed fear of children being apprehended and stigma around being investigated by child welfare authorities. First contacts were particularly difficult for parents. Table 9.1 provides an overview of first contact experiences in the current study based on the 73 semi-structured qualitative interviews with parents. Parents at both accessible and central settings appreciated service providers who were clear and respectful in their initial contact and who left them with a sense that they would be supported or helped in some way. There were more examples in the central settings of parents appreciating clarity from service providers during their initial phase of contact: P: Um, it … it was okay. I … I was a lot calmer afterwards, after they left, because I knew exactly what was going to happen. She told me exactly what she was going to do. (Central site 2) P: They – they were very thorough. They discussed everything with me as to what was going on, spoke to my daughter and then made an action plan to what they could do to help. (Central site 5)

Having a service plan early on helped families believe that they would get some support through their involvement with child welfare: After the first visit, I felt better. I did feel like things that they were going to do were going to be helpful and I wasn’t nervous as much as I was before they showed up. Yeah, it was … it was better afterwards. (Central site 4)

On the other hand, at the central sites, a parent not feeling consulted by service providers was common. Parents reporting negative first experiences often described the service provider’s approach as authoritarian: P: Makes me feel … like … I … have no power when it comes to … like, it makes it harder for me, anyways, to do the right thing, like, because they put more stress on me. (Central site 3)

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 225 Table 9.1   First Contact Dimensions

Central Settings

Accessible Settings

Clarity

A larger number of families reported that service providers were clear about what was going to happen and what the follow-up would be.

Somewhat fewer families reported that service providers were clear about plans and next steps.

Consultation

Families did not describe consultative or collaborative approaches as an element of their experience.

Parents often used language that suggested the inclusion of their perspectives and the idea that the service providers were working “with them.”

Use of power

Somewhat more criticisms of service providers being authoritarian and using/ misusing power.

Fewer criticisms of service providers being authoritarian in first contacts.

Positive shift in perception

Some examples of experiences and perception shifting from negative towards more positive during the first contact.

More examples of experiences and perceptions shifting from negative towards more positive during the first contact.

P: We did not get off on a good start at all … she kept threatening me with my daughter – if I didn’t place [child’s name] here or do something with my son, that she would remove my daughter. So I brought that to the attention of her supervisor who was then … there was a big meeting. (Central site 5)

Descriptions of what parents saw as inappropriate use of power and authority by service providers was the most common criticism of first contact experiences. In accessible settings, parents were more likely to talk about first contacts where service providers listened and made them feel as if their opinions were valued in decision: I: And on that day when they showed up, how did you feel about that visit? P: [Pause] Like somebody was on my side. Somebody was listening [tearfully]. (Accessible site) P: She felt my frustration and she listened to me when I said I’m frustrated, she like heard me and felt, you know, some compassion like she wasn’t mean to me or anything. (Accessible site 1)

226  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron

Similarly to central sites, at accessible sites there were numerous examples of first contacts that were described as negative by parents. However, a service provider being authoritarian at first contact was not as prevalent a critique at the accessible sites. In the qualitative interviews, for quite a few parents, initial negative perceptions shifted to more positive feelings by the end of the first contact. There were slightly more examples of this pattern reported at the accessible settings: I: So how did you feel after that first visit? P: After the first visit, I felt better. I did feel like things that they were going to do were going to be helpful and I wasn’t nervous as much as I was before they showed up. Yeah, it was … it was better afterwards. (Central site 4) I: Okay, what was it like when the CAS service provider showed up that next day? P: It was nerve-racking … I: And on that day when they showed up, how did you feel about that visit? P: Like somebody was on my side. Somebody was listening [tearfully]. (Accessible site 2)

There were no clear differences in parents’ overall satisfaction with first contacts between the central and accessible service delivery settings in the qualitative interviews study. More parents from central settings appreciated knowing exactly what was happening. More parents from accessible settings appreciated being consulted, listened to, and included in the decision-making process. In accessible settings, marginally more parents described a shift towards more positive feelings about the service provider at the end of first contact. First contacts remained stressful for many families. Parents in both groups in this study valued clarity of expectations and feeling heard during initial discussions. Level of Contact Geographic proximity to families was a defining feature of the accessible models. It was expected that families would have easier physical access to these service delivery sites than to the central sites. However,

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 227 Table 9.2   Level and Ease of Contact Dimension

Central Settings

Accessible Settings

Access by phone

Significant difficulty reported reaching service providers by phone.

Most service providers appeared easier to reach and more likely to call back quickly. Parents also identified multiple methods of reaching their service provider.

Frequency of contact

Slightly less frequent contacts/visits described overall.

Slightly more frequent contact/visits described overall. More examples of service providers who would come over immediately if needed.

Overall intensity and extent of contact

Some examples of service providers who invested extra time with families.

More examples of service providers who invested extra time with families.

accessibility also refers to how easily the family could contact their service provider and whether the service provider returned phone calls, made visits, and generally invested time with the family. Table 9.2 provides an overview of these aspects of accessibility in the qualitative interviews. In the qualitative semi-structured interviews, all parents were asked whether their service providers were easy to get in touch with by phone and how quickly they returned calls. In the central sample, 15 parents reported satisfactory access to service providers by phone and 15 described difficulties making phone contact. In the accessible sites, 30 parents said that their service provider was easy to get in touch with by phone and 13 reported difficulties. Usually families felt access was good if their calls were returned within a day or so. Access was usually perceived as poor when it took a week or more or when calls were just not returned: P: Yes. Yeah that’s … yeah like, yeah if I had any questions or something would bother me I would like call her up and leave her a message if she wasn’t in the office and whatever and usually she gets back with me by like twenty four hours. (Central site 3)

228  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron P: Oh yes. She’s one of my main supports. I … I talk to her all the time; probably a couple times a week [laughs]. (Accessible site 6) P: Whatever I need I go talk to him and if there is a way he can help out, he can. I: So is there – how often have you seen him over the two years? P: At the beginning, I’d say about two or three times a week. And now it’s like one – once every other week. (Accessible site 1)

A few families talked about service providers who went well beyond their expectations in the time they invested in helping their families. There were about twice as many examples of this type of helping relationship at the accessible sites: I had um a service provider when … ’cause this is our second time with them, the first time [daughter] was very physically violent and um she came every day for a week and she would stay for two-three hours. After the first hour [daughter] would get used to her … and then [daughter] would show … her other side. So that service provider got to see what [daughter] was really like. (Central site 3) P: She’s amazing actually, like, I can call her and I can tell her anything and ya know, we have a very honest, upfront relationship and I, I can call her and say you know this is what’s going on at … the kid’s dad’s house, this is what they have been telling me … I can call her and say ya know, “[Name] I need to know can I borrow or can I have a food voucher for ten dollars or something ’cause the kids need snacks or whatever the case may be” and she’s, okay, we’ll see what we can do. She’s, they’ve, she’s given me bus tickets to help get where I need to go. So, she’s been, she’s been really well, really good. (Accessible site 1)

A unique feature at some accessible sites was that parents described a greater awareness of when their service provider was at the office and likely to be available: I: So your service provider for the most part, your service providers have been easy to get in touch with? P: I don’t have a problem, I’m – but I see them pull in, so, I knew their car so I just look out the window, see if my service provider’s car was there, look at the time, make sure it wasn’t lunch time and then I’d call

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 229 and they normally [come] I called and [I] talk to them about what my issue was. (Accessible site 4)

Overall, in the qualitative interviews, parents from accessible sites talked more often about having frequent contacts with service providers. There were examples at both central and accessible sites of service providers who had much higher levels of contact with families than the norm. However, most of these high-contact examples were from accessible settings. It was also apparent that parents appreciated service providers who they felt went out of their way to talk to them regularly. Parents appreciated service providers who spent time with them and who took the extra time to get to know them. There were more frequent examples of service providers spending substantial time and being flexible in trying to help at the accessible sites. Perhaps greater physical proximity and the accessible programs’ objective to improve relationships with families contributed to these patterns. A caveat is that there were variations on this dimension among the accessible sites as well as among the central sites. Data from parent surveys with a larger sample of parents provided only partial confirmation of the accessibility and contact patterns from the qualitative interviews. The survey results showed little difference between accessible and central sites’ phone access to service providers. More than 80% of parents from both program types reported being able to talk with their service provider either the “same day” or within the “same week” that they tried to get in touch with them. This does not necessarily negate the possibility that generally parents at the accessible sites may have felt that they had easier access to front-line service providers. On the other hand, at follow-up, almost 48% of central site parents said that they spoke with their service provider only one time per month or less frequently compared to 38.6% of accessible site parents. Also, 12.3% of accessible site and 7.5% of central site parents said that they spoke to service providers a few times a week. These findings provided tentative evidence that accessible program parents perhaps did speak a little more frequently on average with their service providers than central site parents. Helping Relationships In the qualitative interviews, parents in this study were asked to assess their relationship with their primary child welfare service provider.

230  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron

About twice the proportion of parent reports at the accessible sites described positive helping relationships as at the central settings. There were of course also notable differences among individual accessible sites as well as among individual central sites. In this analysis, three dimensions were used to identify positive helping relationships from the parents’ perspective: 1 Service providers who communicated well with parents (i.e., listened, did not judge, sought their opinions, made them comfortable). 2 Service providers who had a good understanding of their family issues and were knowledgeable about how to help them. 3 Service providers that they trusted. Table 9.3 provides an overview of these dimensions from the qualitative interviews with parents. Parents appreciated service providers who listened to their experiences. The majority of examples of service providers whom parents perceived as listening came from accessible settings. In the following examples, parents indicated how service provider listening was important to them: P: She was great. She listened to me. She did not make me feel like what I was seeing, that I, things that happened in my past didn’t happen … I already went and got my school teacher letters and stuff like that so there was already proof of everything that my brother did to me. (Accessible site 4) P: And you just got to listen and [service provider] knows that. And she pays attention to that. She can sense things with the kids. Like she … is great with my kids when the kids see her walking through [the centre] they’re “hi” … and they run and give her a hug. So, they’re not threatened by her at all. (Accessible site 1)

Participants also appreciated when a service provider was able to engage them in dialogue about their family situation. They liked service providers who were “easy to talk to.” Such a description was again more common at the accessible sites: P: She was easy to talk to … She gave me lots of information, yeah. If I asked the questions and she didn’t know the answer, she’d go to her service provider and call me back … (Accessible site 1)

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 231 Table 9.3   Overview of Helping Relationships Element

Central Settings

Accessible Settings

Communication

Fewer parents described good or easy communication between themselves and their service provider.

More parents described service providers who were easy to talk to, were good listeners, and were “like a friend.”

Knowledge

About 1/6 of parents described their service provider as knowledgeable.

About 1/3 of parents described their service provider as knowledgeable.

Trust

Only one parent explicitly identified trust in the relationship.

Many more examples of trust were identified in relationships.

P: She became really, really involved with everything in what was going on with the children and we … we were talking about a lot more than just what was happening. There was a lot of surrounding situations and you know things that happen surrounding that time that created what happened with them? And she was really interested in that as well and she was interested in knowing how I was coping … what was happening with the children and where they were going and what they were doing … (Central site 2)

Sometimes parents described service providers who were easy to talk to as being “like a friend.” Service providers being considered “friends” were identified primarily at the accessible sites: P: And he would say hello to the girls and you know ask them how school is doing but just mainly like you know a friend coming over and having coffee with me and sticking around. (Accessible site 6) P: Yeah and I like her, she’s … she comes in and it’s like talking to a friend. (Central site 3) P: She was easy to ask advice to, she was easy for schooling, like where do I let my kids go, like anything I had to ask her, you know, because she comes to see me the week before they were coming, “Are you excited? did you get them into school,” you know. She was kind of like having a friend … a friend that knew everything, you know what I mean? (Accessible site 5)

232  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron

Parents in this study appreciated when service providers approached their families and asked what was going on. Several parents indicated that a non-judgmental approach helped to make them feel better about their parenting and more willing to share and to accept help. There were many examples of service providers whom parents perceived as non-judgmental at the accessible sites and far fewer examples at the central sites: P: He just … made me feel like I could trust him. I trusted him fully, like from day one. And he was … it was like you could tell he wasn’t out to finger me or just say that I was a bad parent or to make me feel like I had done something wrong … (Accessible site 1) P: She’s just, I can’t say enough good things about her. She really was meant to be a social service provider. She doesn’t judge, she doesn’t make you feel bad because you’re having a hard time or anything – she really is there for the kids – and she really is there to support my family. (Accessible site 6) P: She talks to me like I’m a human being not like you know what, this is what you did and now you’ve got to be punished … Like you know I can tell when people are going to be negative, I can feel their negativity … and it just felt like relief, she was there just to support me not to judge me. (Central site 3)

Parents identified the importance of feeling that service providers were aware of what was happening in their homes. Once again parents at the accessible sites were more likely to describe their service providers as knowing how things were for them and their families: P: She read up on the file before she met with me. So I didn’t have to reexplain everything again like all my past service providers … And then she went into the past, like, before with my dad and my mom and stuff like that and realized maybe that’s some of the mental health issues that I have. (Accessible site 4) P: Somebody who understands that it’s not easy being a single parent, raising two kids who are not even a year apart … So somebody who just understood that it’s not easy being a single parent, who has a little learning disability, who takes longer to learn things then what everybody else wants … somebody who understood. (Accessible site 5)

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 233

However, at both central and accessible sites, when service providers were not perceived as having the knowledge necessary to help the family, they were often harshly criticized by parents: P: … they’re young. Like, the one girl couldn’t help me at all. Like, everything she told me to do for [child’s name], I already do. You know, take things away. Well, hello! I’ve already done that. And she had no suggestions, whatsoever. Like, she was boggled because of everything that was going on. Like she couldn’t believe my daughter would destroy my house, put holes in my wall. (Central site 5)

In the parent survey, accessible program parents were more likely than central site parents to perceive that their service providers knew more at follow-up about what was going on in their family than they had done at case opening (Z = −2.685, p < .01). There was little change in central site parents’ assessments of service provider knowledge from case opening to follow-up. At follow-up, a greater proportion of accessible program parents (38.6%) believed that their service provider “definitely” knew how to help their family compared to 23.6% of central site parents (Z = −1.867, p = .062). At follow-up, 52.6% of accessible parents saw their service provider as definitely knowledgeable about what was going on in their homes compared to 32.5% at the central settings. These positive shifts in parents’ assessment from case opening to follow-up suggest a greater capacity at the accessible sites to foster welcome, helping relationships with parents. These assessments by parents do not mean that service providers were necessary more informed at the accessible sites than at the central sites. This assessment is based on parents’ experiences. This judgment likely would be affected by parents’ overall satisfaction with their relationships with child welfare service providers. A greater proportion of parents from the accessible sites indicated that they trusted their service providers and felt that they could be honest with them about what was going on in their lives. In some instances, this included sharing information that they knew could have negative consequences for them: P: Very good, actually. She was really very good with me … She was very supportive of me. Well, I can say that she didn’t look down on me or anything … she wanted to work with me and with the kids and – So I wasn’t going to lie to her about anything – (Accessible site 6)

234  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron P: Yeah. She did what she said she was going to do unlike the other service providers, and I ended up really trusting her and liking her. Thought she was really good for, you know, keeping her word and doing what she said she was going to do. (Accessible site 4)

In the qualitative interviews, only one participant from a central site used the word “trust” when talking about relationships with a service provider. One of the most important considerations about having a positive connection with a child welfare service provider is whether it would make parents more likely to ask for help if problems arose in the future. Here the differences between the responses of accessible and central site parents were notable. In the larger parent survey, about 61% of parents whose cases had been opened directly to an accessible service model2 said they definitely or probably would ask for help again if they were having difficulties. This compared to about 39% of central site parents. About 61% of these accessible site parents said they definitely or probably would tell a friend in difficulty to contact the agency for help, compared to about 41% of central site parents. Approximately 58% of these accessible site parents said that they were “very” or “mostly” satisfied with their child welfare involvement, compared to about 41% of central site parents. Discussion Front-line child welfare service providers build positive relationships with parents in all service delivery models. Similarities exist across service delivery settings in how these service providers engage parents and what parents appreciate about the helping relationships with the service providers. Nonetheless, this study strongly suggests that accessible service delivery sites had some substantial advantages in creating appreciated helping relationships over central service delivery sites. Equally important, appreciated helping relationships contributed a good deal to parents’ expressed willingness to ask for help again should the need arise. They also motivated parents to say they would be more likely to tell their friends to ask for help. More parents were satisfied with their

2 They had not been transferred from another site or program model.

Parents’ Views of Child Welfare Relationships 235

service involvements and more found their involvements worthwhile. These gains at accessible sites were accomplished operating under the same provincial child welfare service regulations and time lines as the central sites. They complied with the same substantial documentation and accountability requirements. They received no additional resources. There was an equally stringent focus on keeping children safe. As the companion employment chapter in this volume documents, front-line child welfare jobs at both accessible and central sites were equally stressful, and workers had similar concerns about their liability should something go wrong. Clearly there is something worth understanding at these accessible sites. They demonstrate that existing ways of engaging families and providing assistance are not immutable. They also suggest that the “frightening” image of child welfare agencies that is common in many communities can at least be softened. The differences between accessible and central sites were differences of degree. Parents involved with both accessible and central sites were very aware that the agency had great power over them. Both had clients that respected and resented how this power was used. Both had satisfied and very unhappy clients. Both created helping relationships that were appreciated and resented by parents. Yet the magnitudes of the differences between accessible and central sites on these dimensions were large enough to merit closer inspection. It seems probable that there are service delivery characteristics at these accessible sites that are worth emulating. Intentions were pivotal at the accessible sites. Workers there began with a desire to improve relations with families and neighbourhoods. They wanted to be more familiar with the lives of the parents and children involved with their services. They wanted parents and children to know them and to be willing to approach them. They wanted service providers to become familiar with communities and to develop relationships with potential partners. Striving for these intentions brought them to greater fruition at the accessible sites in this study. Physically locating child welfare service providers in settings accessible and acceptable to families was a central consideration. This allowed for more informal contacts between family members and service providers. Children and parents dropped by to say hello or to ask questions more frequently. Service providers felt that they had access to better information about families and communities. Both felt that this arrangement helped them to diffuse troublesome situations more quickly. Some accessible sites were co-located with other service providers and

236  Lirondel Hazineh and Gary Cameron

neighbourhood associations. This enabled them to access more quickly a broader range of service and supports for families. The accessible sites in this study were not without their internal challenges. They were also relatively small initiatives. There would be substantial obstacles to be overcome in implementing these approaches on a much larger scale. It would not be sufficient to simply transfer the predominant approaches in child welfare to more localized settings. In addition, existing control and accountability procedures imposed substantial constraints on front-line child welfare work in both accessible and central locations. Nonetheless, the images emerging from these accessible sites are encouraging. These sites were created by the vision and initiative of local child welfare personnel. At the very least, the same type of local initiatives can take place elsewhere if there is sufficient motivation and will. The benefits for helping relationships from accessible service delivery highlighted in this chapter are compatible with the goals of Ontario’s Transformation Agenda for Child Welfare and with the goals of differential response systems in general (Differential Response Sub-Committee of Ontario Children’s Aid Society Directors of Service, 2004; Schene, 2006; Siegel & Loman, 2000). They also fit well with recent strengthsfocused shifts in emphasis in family assessment procedures in child welfare such as the Signs of Safety (Turnell & Edwards, 1999) assessment tool and planning framework. However, in our opinion, as discussed in greater detail in the concluding chapter of this volume, without fundamental shifts in the values and priorities, service delivery procedures, and accountability methods of the current child protection model, the potential benefits from any of these changes will be much less promising than they could be.

10 When the Going Gets Tough: A Workplace Study of Four Southern Ontario Children’s Aid Societies deena mandell, carol stalker, cheryl harvey, karen frensch, and peter ringrose

During the late 1990s, child welfare in Ontario was substantially reformed, guided by the new Ontario Risk Assessment Model (ORAM). Despite some benefits, this reform was linked with many challenges for front-line child protective service providers. About 10 years later, dissatisfaction with ORAM led to a second major reform, the Transformation Agenda (TA) that currently guides child protection services in Ontario. Even more recently, the Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario (2010) began searching for ways to build a more satisfactory organization of child welfare in Ontario. Among other issues, such as escalating system costs and rigidities, some of these reforms focused on improving front-line staffing and making this work more sustainable and productive. The research discussed in this chapter examines child welfare employment during the ORAM period. The next chapter examines similar aspects of employment under the early TA. Together, these two chapters illustrate the rewards and difficulties of front-line child protection employment. They also show that core employment patterns have been remarkably persistent across these two reform periods. The authors of these chapters also share their ideas about how to improve child welfare employment, with significant convergence as well as differences in their suggestions. Under ORAM, the number of front-line workers increased greatly in response to large increases in service volume, attributable in part to an expanded child protection mandate and more investigations required under ORAM. In the period between January 1999 and September 2001, the proportion of Direct Services Workers (DSW) in Ontario child welfare agencies increased 34%, and many more children began to enter

238  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

state care. The challenges of recruiting and retaining staff increased. The desire of child protection managers to address these employment issues gave rise to the research discussed in this chapter. A Few Words about Turnover and Burnout Staff burnout and turnover levels have been linked to a complex set of individual and organizational characteristics (Andersen & Gobeil, 2002; DePanfilis & Zlotnik, 2008; Harvey & Stalker, 2007). For example, in a review of the literature on the roots of turnover, Harvey and Stalker (2007, p. 277) organized the antecedents of turnover into five categories: 1 characteristics of individuals; 2 factors that are a part of the job itself and how it is done; 3 factors that relate to the organization and its practices and procedures; 4 job attitudes and states that develop as a result of the interaction of individual, job, and organizational factors; 5 individual behaviours and intentions proximal to actual turnover. Studies of job retention in child welfare have been informed by conceptual models that include similar categories and variables (e.g., Hopkins, Cohen-Callow, Kim, & Hwang, 2010). The cost of turnover to organizations involves not only recruiting, integrating, and training new staff, but also … the costs borne by a child or a family who lose, at a minimum, a sense of continuity with a worker, cost related to the impact on co-workers of seeing a valued colleague leave, the costs of the increased workloads assumed by others who must do more until a replacement is found and upto-speed, and the cost of losing the knowledge and skills that extensive experience creates. (Harvey & Stalker, 2007, p. 274)

Canadian child welfare agencies surveyed in 2002 by the Child Welfare League of Canada (Andersen & Gobeil, 2002) reported that agencies had begun to address dissatisfaction among workers in an effort to recruit and retain qualified staff. Many were addressing the antecedents of turnover identified in the literature and examined in this research (Andersen & Gobeil, 2002). Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario are non-profit agencies working in specific geographic locations to protect children and to support their

When the Going Gets Tough 239

families. Established under the authority of The Child and Family Services Act, each Children’s Aid Society (CAS) is operated by a board of directors and members at large. Services are funded through the Ministry of Children and Youth Services. CASs are responsible for the investigation and assessment of all allegations of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse and neglect towards children and for the management of a case when a child is taken into care. The Child Welfare Reforms and Their Impact on Practice The ORAM reform agenda of 1997 followed several years of frozen budgets and reduced funding of many publicly funded services. It was immediately preceded by a tripartite survey of child deaths in Ontario and six inquests into the deaths of children who had been receiving services from CAS at the time of their deaths. In this context, ORAM focused on increasing safety when responding to those children in greatest need. This response included the legal framework and detailed guidelines for detection and reporting of child maltreatment, carrying out investigations and assessments, and documentation and accountability procedures. Official prescriptions were developed for improving the capabilities of staff, board members, and foster parents. For most CASs, the introduction of ORAM resulted in considerably more children being identified as needing protection. From 1998 to 2003, the caseload, staff complement, and expenditures of many urban CASs experienced dramatic increases. During the peak period of growth, CASs often had job vacancies; cases had to be managed by existing staff while awaiting new recruits. For many staff, this was a time of high job stress. While ORAM was credited for some positive changes (e.g., increased protection for children at risk, more thorough investigation procedures, increased staffing and financial resources for agencies), problematic elements also emerged, including: • lack of a balanced service model that provided an adequate range of interventions; • failure to focus on building strengths and capacity in families; • lack of supportive programming options, leading to higher levels of conflict between families and service providers and a greater reliance on court orders; • children remaining in care with less permanency and at greater cost; • client frustration and hostility in response to agency intrusiveness that resulted in little help;

240  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

• staff feeling overwhelmed with work and fearful of liability for not meeting standards; • lack of opportunity to provide the clinical services many staff were trained to do. The Workplace Study This Workplace Study is one of several conducted between 2000 and 2010 as part of the Partnerships for Children and Families Project (PCFP) based at the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. The overarching purpose of the Workplace Study was to learn about the experiences of employees in child welfare and to give voice to their challenges and gratifications. More specific objectives were to explore sources of job satisfaction and stress, to better understand why employees stay with and leave these organizations, and to discover what contributes to a satisfying and productive workplace in child welfare organizations. The Workplace Study, conducted in 2001, consisted of a survey of employees in four agencies followed by focus groups held at each agency. The survey gathered quantitative and qualitative information from 403 Ontario CAS employees; the focus groups gave us further context and additional subjective perspectives to help us interpret the survey results. A subsequent study (Mandell, Stalker, de Zeeuw Wright, Frensch, & Harvey, 2012) focused on a particular subgroup identified in the original survey (i.e. service providers who were emotionally exhausted yet satisfied with their jobs) in order to articulate what differentiated the job experiences of this subgroup from those of other employee subgroups. Employee Survey The original employee survey consisted of 254 questions designed to capture the experience of being a CAS employee in a multidimensional way. It was divided into eight sections reflecting dimensions linked in the literature to turnover intention as well as measures of commitment to the organization. The majority of items were answered using Likert scales (e.g., strongly disagree to strongly agree). A series of demographic questions asked employees to indicate their age, marital status, agency department, length of service, etc. Survey respondents were also invited to include written comments at the end of the survey.

When the Going Gets Tough 241

Focus Groups Approximately six to eight months following the distribution of the employee survey, participants were invited to take part in a series of focus groups. Separate groups were offered for support staff, direct service workers (DSWs), supervisors, and managers. In total, 13 focus groups were conducted across the four participating child welfare agencies. There were four focus groups with DSWs (one per agency), three supervisor groups, three administrative staff groups, and three focus groups with senior management. Focus group questions were the same for each employee focus group. We asked about what it was like to work in the organization, what the good things and the not-so-good things about the job were, and how the work of different departments changed people’s experience in the agency. Everyone was asked what changes they would enact, if given the power, that would make their agency a place they could see themselves working in years hence. What We Learned This chapter focuses on the findings for DSWs for several reasons: they constitute the majority of our respondent group; intention to leave and levels of emotional exhaustion were highest among these employees; and the implications for service to clients are most direct and significant in relation to this group. We refer to the data from other employee groups when such comparison seems useful. Interwoven with the quantitative results are comments from the surveys and excerpts from the focus group discussions to illustrate the employees’ experience. While the quantitative findings focus primarily on the DSWs, the qualitative data have been gleaned from the full range of respondents and focus group participants, where their perspective sheds light on the DSW findings. Additional qualitative findings appear at the end of the section. Our study was guided by Harvey and Stalker’s (2007) conceptual model of the relationship between burnout and turnover, in which the relationships among the five categories of antecedents to turnover (listed above) are shown to lead to proximal intentions and behaviours associated with voluntary turnover and ultimately to leaving the job (p. 278). In presenting our results, we follow this model in reverse, considering how workers who were intending to leave got to that point, over time. This way of looking at the data orients us towards possible solutions at various stages in a worker’s career.

242  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

Participants A total of 236 DSWs responded, 81% of them female and 17% male (2% did not respond to this question). The largest proportion of DSWs was between 25 and 30 years old with the next largest group between 31 and 39 years. Forty per cent were 30 years old or younger. The educational preparation most commonly found was a BSW (38.6%), while 18.6% held a MSW and 2.7% held another Master’s degree. Employee Turnover: Thinking about Leaving To learn about the subgroup of DSWs who were thinking a lot about leaving their agency, and to compare their experiences with those of colleagues who scored lower on the scale measuring intention to leave, we classified their scores into three categories: Low, Medium, and High. Overall, 16% of DSWs scored in the high range on intention to leave, and 40% scored in the medium range. While we were pleased to see that 44% of all DSW participants scored in the low range, the potential impact for the organization and the clients of 16% of the front-line workers giving a lot of thought to leaving was concerning. Longer-tenured DSWs tended to score lower on intention to leave than those who had been with the agency for only a few years. Among DSWs who were thinking of leaving, the largest proportion scoring high on intention to leave were those who had been with the agency between 1 and 2 years and between 2.5 and 5 years. What these data do not show is whether many actually followed through on their intention and did leave. Harvey and Stalker (2007) maintain that one of the best predictors of actual turnover is, in fact, intention to leave. As much can be learned from understanding what contributes to employees wanting to stay as from what makes them want to leave. We therefore examined the “high intention” and “low intention” groups to get a clearer sense of what each group looked like along other dimensions of the survey. Employees with strong intentions were discontented on several dimensions. They were more emotionally exhausted and more likely to distance themselves from their clients (depersonalization) than employees who did not have strong intentions to leave. They were experiencing considerable role conflict and role ambiguity in their jobs and they felt that their personal values and those of the agency did not match (image violation). They perceived that their work was negatively affecting their family life. They were more dissatisfied with their jobs overall, and more dissatisfied on five of the six dimensions of job satisfaction.

When the Going Gets Tough 243

Interestingly, those with high intention to leave were no more dissatisfied with financial reward than their colleagues. Strong intention to leave was also accompanied by a lack of trust in the organization and a perception that the organization treated employees unfairly. Probably related to this, they did not feel as much pride in the agency as did other employees. They experienced less support from the organization to do their work. As might be expected, they were more likely to be preparing to look for another job. The qualitative data provided more detail about what reduces DSWs’ satisfaction with their jobs: Have thought about leaving because of workload … Overtime is unpaid and it is next to impossible to take off time in lieu of time worked … Management talks about work load and stress … Actually, management have instead instituted policies re: vacation, overtime and returning phone calls, that have increased our work load and stress.

Some found the work highly stressful, unsatisfying, and not what they had expected. This was related in large part to the volume of work and the fact that, for many DSWs, more time was spent in documentation than in contact with clients. It was reflected in the perception that many families are angry and difficult to work with, and that workers saw little change over time for some clients. It is incredibly draining to work with families who are so resistant to intervention and the work being done.

Comments indicated that too little time and too few community resources were available to do meaningful social work that could help families. Resources are stretched to over capacity – foster homes, mental health resources, CAS staff. However, we are expected to still provide services and meet ministry expectations. All of this while often working with unwilling, hostile clients and defence counsel.

Community-based workers1 said that despite their caseloads, their jobs allowed for more prevention-oriented service and for seeing that 1 Community workers are direct service workers based outside of the agency building itself in a visible, informal setting with a more visible, integrated role in a particular neighbourhood.

244  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

one is having a positive effect; other employees, however, worried about the effects on clients of the way child welfare services were currently structured. The emphases on standardized risk assessment, documentation, court preparation, and funding dilemmas appeared to change the way many employees experienced the work. This emphasis limited the scope of their work and affected the way they perceived their role. I have found the process of going to court and the events at court to be very adversarial to my working relationship with my clients. I feel that I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth – saying I’m supporting them as parents but gathering evidence for my case at the same time.

The nature of child welfare work had exposed employees to attitudes within the court system and the broader community that they experienced as devaluing their role and being “often [more stressful] than working with clients.” Some employees perceived that in the face of demanding work and excessive workload, more could be done by the organization to help them manage the challenging conditions, such as flexible work options (part time or shared positions). For others, the support they found lacking was fundamentally related to the nature of the work itself, i.e., concerns about the responsibilities and liabilities entailed in trying to manage these risks. The organization was sometimes perceived as failing to adequately support vulnerable workers. Often when a child dies, it is the social worker who is fingered as being responsible. The worker’s reputation is destroyed, the worker’s emotional well-being is compromised, and all too often the worker is hung out to dry by the Society.

Previous research suggests that maintaining a balanced life and having boundaries in place between work and one’s personal life is an important way to make the work itself more manageable. The following comment gives us an idea of how the “doability” of the job, perception of organizational justice, emotional exhaustion, and work-family conflict are interrelated. It’s not a particular event … that has led me to start a job search, it’s the cumulative effect of having way too many details, not enough time to accomplish what I need to, and the impact the stress of overtime/

When the Going Gets Tough 245 deadlines has on myself. As well, it breaks my heart that this stress is obviously spilling over onto my child … I don’t always feel I have the emotional energy left over for her.

In the next comment, a long-time employee who described having a positive work experience reflected on his/her own way of dealing with the difficult nature of the work and the workplace. I am often asked why I stay, or how I cope with the stress level. One, I have held various positions in the agency … which prevents “burnout.” Two, my stress level outside the job is minimal – this is essential to work in this field! Three, I have very good time management, organizational skills. Four, I have high expectations of myself and others – this generally works in my favour. Five, I do not consider my work as my Number One priority, but at the same time it is important to meet the expectations of the job.

In spite of the comments about the stresses of the job, positive comments about commitment to staying were quite common. Among DSWs, supervisors, and managers, a sense of strong agency purpose and values congruent with their own were seen as helping to make the stresses and challenges worthwhile. I chose to come work at this particular agency because of the stated (and practised) philosophy of service. It was and continues to be the glue that holds me here.

Employees’ Experience of Burnout Burnout “is usually understood to result from ongoing stress in the workplace that, over time, impairs functioning on the job and in the individual’s personal life” (Harvey & Stalker, 2007, p. 273). The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)2 defines burnout operationally as “a three dimensional syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization … and reduced personal accomplishment (‘the tendency to evaluate oneself negatively, particularly with regard to one’s work with

2 Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey by Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson. Copyright 1986 by Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. Palo Alto, CA 94303.

246  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

clients’)” (Maslach & Jackson as cited in Schaufeli, Enzmann, & Girault, 1993, p. 200). Emotional Exhaustion Emotional exhaustion was measured using the MBI’s scale for Emotional Exhaustion (EE). Using the classifications provided by the scale developers specifically for social service employees, we examined the distribution of low (0–16), moderate or medium (17–27), and high (28 or more) scores. EE was widespread throughout the agencies surveyed. Forty-seven per cent of managers, 33.3% of supervisors, and 44% of DSWs scored in the high range. In addition, nearly 33% of DSWs were in the moderate range. DSWs in Intake (44.6%) and Family Services (45%) were only somewhat more likely to score in the high range on EE than those in Children’s Services (40%). Table 10.1 shows that 42% of DSWs who had been with the agency for less than six months reported high levels of EE, suggesting that introduction to the work was particularly stressful. The most difficult time appeared, however, to occur between 2 and 2.5 years, when 73% of DSWs reported high EE. This was also the point in time when intention to leave was highest. Still, over 40% of DSWs reported that the experience of EE remained intense beyond the 5-year mark. In multiple regression analyses, the following were all significant contributors to EE for the entire group of DSWs: the perception of an inequitable employment relationship, a perception of lack of fairness in the outcomes of employment decisions, role conflict, and lack of satisfaction with the “doability” of the job. For new DSWs (less than 2.5 years tenure), there were only two significant predictors: role conflict and the perceived fairness of the outcomes of organizational decisions. In the survey respondents’ written comments and in focus group discussions, the main issue appeared to be the “doability” of the job, although to varying degrees in different agencies. Previous research suggests that high levels of work–family life conflict can be a consequence of high EE and burnout (Harvey & Stalker, 2007). Leiter and Durup (1996) found that there was more “spillover” of work stress onto family than family stress onto work. Nissly, Barak, and Levin (2005) found that work-family conflict was a significant predictor of intention to leave, although it did not have as strong an effect as organizational stress. In our qualitative interviews, the difficulty in maintaining a balance between work and one’s personal life was seen by respondents as a major contributor to stress and exhaustion.

When the Going Gets Tough 247 Table 10.1   Emotional Exhaustion by Organizational Tenure for DSWs l/m/h emotional exhaustion Low

Med

High

Total

0.5 year or less

9 29.0%

9 29.0%

13 41.9%

31 100.0%

0.5–1 year

7 21.9%

16 50.0%

9 28.1%

32 100.0%

1–2 years

10 19.2%

17 32.7%

25 48.1%

52 100.0%

2–2.5 years

21 3.3%

2 13.3%

117 3.3%

15 100.0%

2.5–5 years

11 27.5%

13 32.5%

16 40.0%

40 100.0%

5–10 years

5 22.7%

7 31.8%

10 45.5%

22 100.0%

More than 10 years

9 29.0%

9 29.9%

13 41.9%

31 100.0%

Total

53 23.8%

73 32.7%

97 43.5%

223 100.0%

Overtime is the norm for each worker, each week, and very few people claim for all of it. It rapidly changes from a money issue to a health issue. Workers are exhausted and know they are short-changing themselves and their families and friends to cope with the work load here.

In addition, the quantitative data suggest that high emotional exhaustion is a dominant norm in these child welfare agencies. We note that 42% of long-tenured DSWs reported high levels of EE, and so did 47% of the agencies’ managers, a pattern indicating that agency leaders and their longest-term employees seem to have considerable tolerance for high EE, so that being emotionally drained has become normative, accepted as part of the job, perhaps even expected. There is an incongruent message from management. The people who tell you to take care of yourself are working 100 hours a week themselves. I believe that some management staff get so caught up in the ministry standards and their own liability that they push front-line staff to work long hours and to feel guilty for having any sort of life outside of work.

248  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose Table 10.2   Depersonalization by Department for DSWs Low

Med

High

Total

Family Services/Ongoing

35 36.1%

30 30.9%

32 33.0%

97 100.0%

Intake

9 15.8%

20 35.1%

28 49.1%

57 100.0%

Children’s Services

26 43.3%

17 28.3%

17 28.3%

60 100.0%

Total

70 32.7%

67 31.3%

77 36.0%

214 100.0%

Depersonalization The Depersonalization Scale (DP) contained in the MBI measures the degree to which individuals experience “an unfeeling and impersonal response towards recipients of one’s service” (Maslach et al., 1996, p. 4). Since DSWs have the most contact with the clients of the child welfare system, it was troubling that, as shown in table 10.2, 36% of them scored high on depersonalization, a dramatically higher proportion than supervisors (19%), support staff (19%), and managers (13%). In the Intake Department, almost half (49%) of the DSWs – those responsible for the initial encounter between client and agency – indicated that they were highly likely to depersonalize their relationships with clients. Over 40% of DSWs new to child welfare work scored high on depersonalization. The proportion dropped afterwards and subsequently rose to a peak of 64% at the 2–2.5 year mark, then diminished again; however, among DSWs who had worked in their agencies for more than 10 years, 36% scored in the high range on depersonalization. Time Spent with Clients and on Documentation Since the implementation of the ORAM and TA reforms, a common concern among DSWs has been the amount of time they spend formally documenting their activities. In response to the question, “What percentage of your time do you spend in documenting your work?” almost 62% of DSWs reported that it was more than half. Conversely, in response to the question, “What percentage of your time do you spend in face to face contact with service recipients?” only 10.6% of DSWs reported spending more than half of their time in this way. Figure 10.1

When the Going Gets Tough 249 Figure 10.1

illustrates that face-to-face contact with clients drops dramatically as time spent on documentation rises. The following quote illustrates how these work demands were perceived by DSWs: The emphasis on paperwork prevents quality interaction and actual assistance being provided to clients. I am not winning the race but I am supporting my clients as best I can within all the limitations that exist.

Sense of Personal Accomplishment The third component of the MBI is a sense of personal accomplishment (PA). This scale “assesses feelings of competence and successful achievement in one’s work with people” (Maslach et al., 1996, p. 4). Among the DSWs, Children’s Services workers were most likely to report high PA (60%) and least likely to indicate low PA (7%). Forty-two per cent of the DSWs working in Intake departments and 46% of those in Family Services scored high on PA. At every stage of tenure with the organization – with the exception of one period – between 41% and 61% of DSWs reported high PA. The exception was the 2–2.5 year stage, during which the majority (67%) of DSWs experienced only moderate PA. These levels of PA were surprising, given the high levels of EE and DP; further surprises were found in relation to the measure of job satisfaction.

250  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose Table 10.3   Overall Job Satisfaction by Department for DSWs l/m/h emotional exhaustion Low

Med

High

Total

Family Services/Ongoing

9 8.8%

55 53.9%

38 37.3%

102 100.0%

Intake

4 6.8%

27 45.8%

28 47.5%

59 100.0%

Children’s Services

8 11.9%

29 43.3%

30 44.8%

67 100.0%

Total

2 19.2%

11 148.7%

96 42.1%

228 100.0%

Employees’ Satisfaction with Their Jobs The question of whether or not an employee is content in her/his job, and with which aspects of it, was measured by a set of six job satisfaction scales (Quinn & Staines, 1979). One of those scales measures overall job satisfaction (JS), while the other five measure satisfaction with specific aspects of one’s job. JS was examined by position, department, and organizational tenure. Table 10.3 shows that 42% of all DSWs reported being highly satisfied with their jobs overall. Almost 49% were moderately satisfied, and only 9% scored in the low range. The proportion indicating high overall satisfaction was even greater for managers (73%) and supervisors (53%). In light of the high levels of EE, it is striking that almost half of the DSWs reported high overall job satisfaction. The proportion of DSWs scoring high on JS dropped considerably between one and 2.5 years in the job (from 54.5% in the first 6 months to 33.3%). The proportion of high overall satisfaction scores increased to 48% for those employed between 2.5 and 5 years, and remained around 45% for those employed more than 5 years. Challenge. One of the JS scales, “Challenge,” measures “satisfaction with the intellectual stimulation of the work.” An overwhelming proportion of DSWs found the challenge of their jobs a source of satisfaction: 59% scored in the high range and 39% in the medium range. The qualitative data suggested that satisfaction was connected to believing that one’s work is important and conducive to positive change for clients:

When the Going Gets Tough 251 Table 10.4   Job Satisfaction – Comfort by Organizational Tenure (DSWs) l/m/h emotional exhaustion Low

Med

High

Total

1 2.9% 2 3.8% 42 6.7% 5 12.8% 2 8.3% 2 5.9% 16 6.9%

25 75.8% 26 74.3% 41 77.4% 10 66.7% 24 61.5% 19 79.2% 20 58.8% 165 70.8%

8 24.2% 8 22.9% 10 18.9% 1 6.7% 10 25.6% 3 12.5% 12 35.3% 52 22.3%

33 100.0% 35 100.0% 53 100.0% 15 100.0% 39 100.0% 24 100.0% 34 100.0% 233 100.0%

0.5 year or less 0.5–1 year 1–2 years 2–2.5 years 2.5–5 years 5–10 years More than 10 years Total

I love working with kids. And just um, just knowing that you can have some sort of impact, or seeing that, them change or grow, that’s very satisfying … having like a really hands on, I can see change.

Comfort. Another JS scale, “Comfort,” measures the perceived “doability” of the job (i.e., capacity to get the job done). For the DSWs, their perception of their capacity to get the job done appeared to be linked to adequacy of training, size of caseloads, excessive amounts of documentation, unrealistic service timelines, and heavy workload expectations that exceeded the number of hours available. The non-doability of the work created stress and contributed to DSWs feeling limited in their effectiveness. When you do your job well in child welfare you are only rewarded with more. In the past year I have lost sight of the value of my life outside of my work. I have become consumed by what I can’t accomplish at work …

DSWs in Intake were least likely (15.5%) to rate the “doability” of the job as highly satisfying, compared to approximately 25% in Family Services and Children’s Services departments. Table 10.4 shows that in

252  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

the first six months of employment, DSWs reported either medium or high satisfaction with the “doability” of their jobs. In contrast, only 6.7% of the group that had been with the agency between 2 and 2.5 years rated satisfaction with the “doability” of the job as high. Employees with more than 10 years of tenure were more likely to rate satisfaction with the “doability” of the job as moderate rather than as high. Financial Reward refers to employees’ satisfaction with pay, benefits, and job security. Thirty-four per cent of DSWs were highly satisfied with the financial rewards offered by their agency and 63% were moderately satisfied. While this degree of satisfaction is high, it is not as high as that reported by other employee groups (e.g., 64% of managers were highly satisfied and 29% were moderately satisfied with the financial reward). Promotions. Seventy-four per cent of DSWs were moderately satisfied with the availability and process of promotions, 16% were highly satisfied, and 10% were not satisfied. Resource Adequacy. This scale assessed the information provided to enable employees to do the job and the perceived competence of supervisory resources provided by the organization. Since 58% of DSWs were high and 42% were moderate on satisfaction with resource adequacy, this is another area where the quantitative data suggest that DSWs were largely satisfied. The qualitative data indicated a broad consensus about the value of work teams, collegial support, and supervisory support. These were especially important because of the risk, stress, liability, and potentially high visibility associated with the work. Where these supports were experienced as strongly positive, the dissatisfactions with the work itself seemed to be mitigated to some degree: Our supervisor understands that we don’t always have the necessary tools to complete our job. He trusts us and encourages us to reach beyond our grasp. He has truly built a team. My supervisor makes the job one that I want to do. She makes all the difference in this stressful field.

The Organizational Context Having a stable core of qualified, experienced front-line workers who are suited to child welfare work was identified as being very important;

When the Going Gets Tough 253

however, the notion of what constitutes a well-qualified or suitable worker varied. I am concerned about the downgrading in educational requirements for my position. My concerns surround the skills set of individuals who have not been trained in critical analysis and communication skills. Also I become very concerned about the values and ethics. We make decisions each day that require an ethical base. I get concerned that important social work values will be overlooked in the decision-making process.

This statement expresses more than a concern about worker competence; it hints at the concept of image violation for social workers. Image violation is defined by Lee, Mitchell, Holtom, McDaniel, and Hill (1999) as a poor fit between an “individual’s values, goals, and strategies for goal attainment … [and] those of the employing organization” (p. 451). We get a sense of the image violation involved for some employees from this next reflection on how the worker’s experience of doing the day-to-day job is structured by the milieu. … this is a value-laden area with many shades of grey. A huge system that is difficult to convey and articulate. I would have different priorities but am not sure how such a true child welfare vs. child protection system could operate in the current economic political/social context. This organization is largely child protection.

When workers who are just learning their jobs leave, they must be replaced by other workers who will have to repeat the same learning process. One veteran DSW offered a sense of why relatively inexperienced (or young) workers may be inclined to leave after a brief period of employment: I believe that child welfare organizations need to appeal to the more experienced workers out there. It is a role with great authority and responsibility. Generally, younger workers struggle with the appropriate use of authority … Your perspective, sense of balance and understanding of the general condition of society is more finely honed and developed as you mature and one is better equipped to deal with this role.

Inadequate resources were a problem within agencies (staffing levels, caseloads, lack of time to work with clients) and within the broader community (funds and services available to support families):

254  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose There is frequently difficulty in providing a level of service which I personally feel is appropriate given the amount of time and resources allowed/available. Not enough time or resources available per case, meeting only minimal level of service not optimum level, also increases level of frustration within workers and increases staff turnover.

Within each agency, restructuring was experienced by some positively and by others negatively. Many employees described difficulties experienced when their agency had undertaken major restructuring or expansion. The following comments illustrate perceptions of inadequate planning and lack of appropriate consultation: … There have been many organizational and structural changes with staff and physical plant expansions as the agency strives to protect the children in our community, comply with ministry guidelines, and keep pace with technological advances. Many of these changes have been made without front-line staff input, apparent lack of concern for impact on staff, or seemingly without long-term planning.

Some workers felt that supervisors and senior management did not always demonstrate the leadership, especially in planning and team building, that they felt was crucial to their success and satisfaction in the job. I believe the present leadership style is not well suited to the political climate and managing the pressures brought to bear by the ministry which have created a roller coaster of funding ups and downs and potential for staff change. Staff require stability, consistency, confidence, the courtesy of communication, respect for their role in the organization, hope, and inspiration. Supervisors in this agency are appointed mainly on the basis of seniority with the agency – some are competent, others never will be, some are completely burned out, others have absolutely NO people management skills. They are not given proper training or support and as a result they do not treat, mentor, or support staff well, which leads to high turnover … I love my clients and enjoy many of the job functions. However, at the end of the day, I have no loyalty to this organization. This is sad because I have never felt this way before.

These comments were consistent with senior management’s observations about the lack of time to do the kind of debriefing and planning that they deemed necessary and their reflections about how little “real

When the Going Gets Tough 255

change” or “progress” had actually resulted from the many changes that had been implemented. Senior managers were aware of the dilemma that workers faced as a result of competing demands; they themselves experienced similar dilemmas. Discussion In our view, the most important finding from this study was the relatively high level of job satisfaction and sense of personal accomplishment reported by DSWs in spite of very high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. We wondered how people who were working so hard and feeling so emotionally burdened could be satisfied with their jobs. We have speculated that, at least to some degree, this unexpected finding of high EE and high JS could be explained by research suggesting that social workers as a group are strongly motivated to give of themselves in order to help others. This speculation is supported to some extent by the literature on women’s roles in the helping professions (e.g., Baines, Evans, & Neysmith, 1991; Callahan, 1993) and socialization into gender roles requiring women to engage in caring labour (Badgett & Folbre, 2001). The importance of an “ethic of care” (Baines, 1998) in social workers’ motivation has been supported by a study that developed a measure of human caring and found it to be associated with child welfare employees’ intentions to remain employed in child welfare and also with self-efficacy beliefs about ability to accomplish work tasks (Ellett, 2009). From a critical perspective, some argue that when social workers’ sense of personal gratification or professional identity is predicated upon being able to bring about changes in or for their clients, the inherent power differentials between worker and client can lead to the imposition of personal and/or organizational values and agendas. (See, for example, Margolin, 1997, and Rossiter, 2001.) Questions about what makes it possible for some child welfare workers to demonstrate altruism (even to the point of self-sacrifice) and still be happy in their work led us to conduct a follow-up study (Mandell et al., 2012), to which we will refer again later in this chapter. What emerged most clearly in the quantitative data was how unmanageable the job felt and the toll this took on DSWs. The importance of collegial or team support and a good supervisor was strongly emphasized in both the quantitative and the qualitative data. This is consistent with the findings of a number of studies that have found supervisor support to be an important factor affecting retention and job satisfaction

256  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

(Andersen & Gobeil, 2002; DePanfilis & Zlotnik, 2008; Dickinson & Perry, 2002; Landsman, 2001). Even “high-functioning” child welfare workers tend to leave the workplace when they experience inadequate supervision, weak support from peers, and organizational stress (Barbee, Antle, Sullivan, Huebner, Fox, & Hall, 2009). Our findings also correspond with the Child Welfare League of Canada (CWLC) survey results regarding the high stress levels, heavy workloads, and long working hours experienced by many in child welfare agencies and with CWLC recommendations that agencies develop strong supervisory training programs and provide better support to workers in order to increase worker morale and effectiveness (Andersen & Gobeil, 2002). Our finding that longer-tenured employees are less likely to be thinking of leaving than those who have been with the agency a relatively short time is consistent with Andersen and Gobeil’s finding that child welfare employees “either left within the first few years or stayed for a prolonged period of time” (2002, p. 12). Perhaps the first couple of years are those when both employee and employer assess their mutual suitability. The finding that emotional exhaustion peaked for DSWs between 2.5 and 5 years prompted us to speculate that structural conditions may converge with accumulated stressful experiences at this point in one’s career. Is this a time when some are asked to take on additional responsibility? Are they now given more difficult cases or asked to fill in for others when they may not yet have achieved a sufficient level of confidence or optimal strategies for managing the job? Are they expected to pick up extra cases when new staff are starting out? If the intellectual challenge of the job serves as a major source of satisfaction, could it be that by this point in a worker’s career there is need for new and/or different challenges but promotion is not quite within reach? If positive challenge diminishes, is stress experienced more negatively? The two job characteristics that emerged as significant predictors of EE were high role conflict (being subject to competing demands or expectations) and low satisfaction with the perceived “doability” of the job. Finding oneself in a position where the workload is persistently excessive seems a logical precursor to the experience of stress as wearing. Role conflict has been found to be an antecedent of EE by other researchers as well (Lee & Ashforth, 1996) and has been linked with EE to measure stress in more recent studies (Hopkins et al., 2010). Two variables related to fairness emerged as significant organizational-level predictors of EE: these were perceptions of a lack of fairness in the outcomes of employment decisions and in the employment

When the Going Gets Tough 257

relationship itself. Thus, a sense of giving more than one receives and feeling resentful about one’s level of rewards and responsibilities contributed to child welfare workers feeling emotionally exhausted. These findings, too, are consistent with previous research on EE. These results raised a number of questions and concerns. How were these employees with high EE coping? How was this level of stress affecting the clients the agency was serving? Was this high level of stress manifesting itself in high levels of illness, absenteeism, or disability claims? Were agency role models (i.e., managers and long-tenured employees) inadvertently conveying that high EE is an inevitable part of the job? Is it possible to intervene early in the employee’s tenure with the agency in a way that would reduce high levels of EE at later stages? Some specific dimensions of job satisfaction clearly contributed to the experience of high overall job satisfaction. These included a sense of personal accomplishment, satisfaction with the intellectual challenges provided by the job, and having adequate supports in terms of informational resources and competent supervisors. These opportunities and conditions in an agency made a difference for employees, perhaps helping to counter the heavy emotional burden associated with the work. A prevalent theme in the qualitative data was that DSWs felt undervalued, particularly in light of the high expectations that they placed upon themselves. Given that the risks and hard work go unappreciated by many clients, by the courts, by the community, and sometimes even by the agency itself, it makes sense that feeling valued and supported within the organization would be of paramount importance. Andersen and Gobeil (2002) reported that salaries and benefits were a secondary factor in predicting JS in child welfare agencies and that agencies’ efforts to improve recruitment and retention by raising salaries had not been a very effective strategy. Smith’s (2005) findings regarding the association between salary and benefits and job retention were mixed, but a systematic review (DePanfilis & Zlotnik, 2008) reported that two methodologically strong studies found that salary and benefits predicated retention or intent to turnover. These mixed findings may be related to differences in DSW salary levels between the United States and Canada. The high levels of depersonalization found among DSWs raise a question about how trusting, respectful relationships can possibly be formed under those conditions. The literature on clients’ perceptions of child welfare workers is clear that workers who approach clients in a

258  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

depersonalizing, uncaring way are disliked by the clients and, as a result, are resisted. Clients whose voices have entered the research literature have expressed particular appreciation for the workers who demonstrate genuine caring for them and their children by “going the extra mile” (see chapter 4 by Freymond, chapter 6 by de Boer and Coady, and chapter 8 by Fine and Mandell in this volume). In discussing retention problems, some supervisors and managers offered a useful insight: the first two years (approximately) of the front-line worker’s job act as a kind of “seasoning” period. During this time, DSWs have a great deal to learn about the substantive and procedural realms of the work, and they develop their own ways of managing their heavy workloads. Those who stay may have begun, at that point, to develop serviceable coping strategies. This speculation is consistent with Barbee et al.’s finding (2009) that workers tend to leave around the two-year mark. Two other things may happen at around the point where DSWs are considered to be “experienced.” They may be hoping for promotion or transfer to a preferred department, or they may achieve the promotion or desired transfer and – whether they succeed in these or not – they may be given increased autonomy. Thus, job satisfaction may go up for some. In the qualitative data, a move to a different department was indeed seen as one way to cope with the stresses of the work. For others (such as those denied a promotion or lateral transfer or who perceive limited opportunities for advancement), feelings about the organization may become more negative. According to Barbee et al. (2009), those who have been specially prepared for the job may find (particularly at around the fouryear mark, in that study) that the job does not offer sufficient opportunity to use their specialized skills. Despite all the problematic aspects of the work, it is important to recognize that many DSWs working in child welfare are long tenured and highly satisfied. Among DSWs with 10 or more years tenure, we see that only 6% were giving a lot of thought to leaving the agency, while 34% were highly satisfied with their jobs overall and 58% were not highly emotionally exhausted. Clearly, these individuals were managing their jobs well; they appeared to have found a fit that eluded others. The qualitative data revealed the same phenomenon. Many employees described the work as worthwhile, gratifying, and socially important. The Follow-Up Workplace Study Our finding that a sizeable proportion of employees scored in the high range on both EE and JS prompted us to conduct further research to

When the Going Gets Tough 259

understand how high levels of stress could coexist with high levels of satisfaction. In a second mixed-method study, we also sought to discover some of the ways in which these workers were similar to and different from those who were high on JS and low on EE (considered the ideal condition) and those who were high on EE and low on JS. The methodology of that study is described elsewhere (Mandell et al., 2012) in a forthcoming article called “Sinking, Swimming and Sailing: Experiences of Job Satisfaction and Emotional Exhaustion in Child Welfare Employees.” Here, we summarize very briefly the relevant findings from the data gathered by interviewing 25 CAS employees who fell into one of three categories of interest: High EE and High JS (“Swimming”), Low EE and High JS (“Sailing”), and High EE and Low JS (“Sinking”). In semi-structured interviews with 25 selected participants, we informed them about the category in which they had scored and asked them to reflect on their experiences of stress and satisfaction in their jobs. From the analysis of the interview data, we were able to develop a composite profile of the child welfare worker whom participants in each group described as “successful” and who was, in fact, reflected in the data from the low EE, high JS (Sailing) category workers. Broad consensus among participants yielded the following portrait of the successful worker. She has firm but flexible boundaries that allow her to disengage emotionally in a constructive way from the distressing issues her clients face and from difficult interactions; this helps her to avoid feeling personally responsible and personally vulnerable. Despite recognizing the limitations and challenges of her role, the successful worker perceives she is making a valuable contribution, however small, to the families she works with. She intentionally balances energy devoted to work with attention to her own personal restoration. Finally, she is able to draw constructively on personal and professional supports, both of which she recognizes as being available to her. Implications for Research and Practice The results of this study suggest the need for further evaluation of child welfare agencies’ specific attempts to reduce the experience of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and image violation among DSWs. The experience of workers in their first 2½ years with an agency requires particular attention. This study and others indicate that strategies that target improved working environments and working conditions are likely to be the most successful (Andersen & Gobeil, 2002). More specifically, greater

260  Mandell, Stalker, Harvey, Frensch, and Ringrose

attention to ensuring effective supervision, especially of new workers, seems essential. Recent US studies have pointed to the value of strong supervision in child welfare as a way of increasing job satisfaction, worker retention, and client outcomes (Collins-Camargo et al., 2009; Gomez, Travis, Ayers-Lopez, & Schwab, 2010; Renner, Porter, & Preister, 2009). Chen and Scannapieco (2010) revealed that along with JS, supervisory support plays a significant role in encouraging workers to remain in child welfare jobs, especially workers with low job-related self-efficacy. In an international study examining the influence of national context on supervision needs – specifically, in England, Denmark, and South Africa – Bradley, Engelbrecht, and Hojer (2010) concluded that high-level skills among child welfare supervisors are of paramount importance. Supervision needs to go beyond an administrative focus of checking on case documentation and “meeting minimum standards”; it must focus on the day-to-day work with families, offer support for difficult decisions, and reinforce the strengths and skills of workers as well as families. Front-line workers must feel that they can trust supervisors to be non-judgmental so that dilemmas and role conflicts can be openly discussed; they must feel respected and supported in their struggles to do a difficult job with integrity and self-care. Supervisors must be – and must be perceived to be – experienced, knowledgeable individuals. Since the families who are the focus of the work are often subject to multiple social and economic inequities affecting their ability to meet regulatory parenting standards, their progress in meeting those standards is often frustrating to workers. Workers can be discouraged by what they refer to as the “revolving door” that sees some families repeatedly back under agency surveillance. Supervisors who can help workers recognize and value even the small gains their clients make under difficult conditions can sustain the experience of personal accomplishment. Many workers might find it helpful if they were offered guidance and support by supervisors in advocating for broader changes to economic and social policies that would improve the lives of their clients. The high levels of depersonalization among employees also need to be addressed. Can supervisors and managers foster a caring view of the agency’s clients, encouraging a helping relationship that itself reflects an overall agency culture of caring? Expanding workers’ opportunities for personal connection with clients might also mitigate depersonalization and offer the possibility of more productive, genuinely supportive work with families. This, after all, is what many workers said was their goal in entering the field of child welfare and what many

When the Going Gets Tough 261

child welfare organizations see as a crucial element of successful intervention in communities. To counter perceptions of a deficit in the reciprocity between employees and their agencies and of a lack of fairness in the outcomes of employment decisions, managers might communicate more clearly how and why decisions are made. More managerial and supervisory attention to demonstrating appreciation for a job well done under challenging conditions may also reduce perceptions of an inequitable employment relationship and enhance a sense of personal accomplishment. Agencies that cultivate a culture of caring and service excellence are less likely to have employees who experience incongruence with their own values and goals. We have suggested some actions above that can establish or enhance a culture of caring. Proactive leadership can also emphasize a culture of service excellence that would entail working with the ministry and community partners for adequate supports, selecting expert and caring supervisors, and making sure they have time to engage in regular supervision. Transparent decisions and adequate communication on a consistent basis also build these cultures and promote trust in the organization at the same time. It is important for managers to reduce the perceived normalcy of EE by demonstrating behaviours congruent with greater work-life balance. In addition to modelling such balance, managers must create policies and practices that reinforce it along with an overall culture of care. As suggested by our participants, this would include consistent regulation of flextime, overtime, and compensatory time, as well as equitable distribution of caseloads and a cap on caseloads. Caseload management must address not only numbers but complexity and likelihood of preparation for court. It may also be helpful if seasoned workers were able to provide specific training for new workers on how to manage a caseload and the accompanying documentation demands. Self-care for workers should not be seen as the concern of individual employees; it must be enabled and encouraged by management as part of minimizing the conditions that affect workers’ relationships to their work, the agency, their private lives, and their clients. All these actions contribute to creating a workplace in which people commit themselves to staying – they are challenged but not overwhelmed, satisfied but not complacent, and they feel that they are doing work that they, their leaders, and their community value.

11 Child Protection Jobs in Accessible and Central Service Delivery Settings gary cameron

Introduction An earlier chapter in this volume provided evidence that parents involved with accessible (school- and community-based) services made different assessments of their relationships with service providers and other service involvements from parents at central service delivery sites. Generally, parents involved with accessible sites were significantly more satisfied with their involvements with child welfare services and indicated that they were more likely to ask for help in the future if difficulties arose. This chapter presents the results of an investigation comparing the employment experiences of front-line child protection service workers at the same 11 central and accessible service delivery settings.1 It also allows comparisons with the previous chapter, which assessed frontline employment experiences about a half a dozen years earlier under a different child protection legislative framework in Ontario. Central service providers were located in child welfare agency premises that were not physically close to most of their clientele. These central settings housed many more service providers than the accessible settings. Accessible service providers were located in local schools or neighbourhood centres geographically close to their clientele. The main ambitions of the community and school service delivery settings in this research included creating better service access for families and more 1 This investigation is part of the Transforming Front-Line Practice Project research funded by the Ontario Ministry for Children and Youth (136: A16176-576810: A770). More information about this program of research and its products is available at www.wlu.ca/pcfproject.

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  263

constructive helping relationships between families and front-line service providers. Accessible service delivery settings also hoped to improve how child welfare services were perceived in the communities served and to create partnerships with other service and community organizations. They wanted to create environments that produced more satisfying experiences for both front-line service providers and their clientele. The Ontario Transformation Agenda around 2006 began to implement a flexible response model for child protection services in Ontario. Within the general flexible response framework set by Ontario’s Transformation Agenda, all central and accessible sites in this study followed the same regulatory guidelines in responding to calls and determining eligibility for service. Each was governed by the same service delivery timelines and case documentation procedures. Each received financial resources based upon the same state funding formula. Front-line child protection caseloads were similar at central and accessible sites. There are some cautions to keep in mind when reading these analyses of child welfare employment. It would be erroneous to present either an image of employment homogeneity among similar service delivery models or an image of black and white differences in front-line employment realities across the different models. Front-line service providers’ perceptions of employment were more nuanced. Notwithstanding these caveats, there were meaningful differences across the various service delivery models investigated. Describing these variations is relevant to understanding the nature of front-line child protection employment and to reflecting about improving these experiences. Literature The literature documents that child protection services in North America have to confront persistently high levels of turnover among front-line child protection service providers (Ellett, 2009; Faller, Grabarek, & Ortega, 2010). These service providers describe having too much to do and feeling overly constrained by bureaucracy (Zell, 2006). Higher turnover rates in child protection agencies have contributed to increased recruitment costs, difficulties responding to cases, larger caseloads, reliance on less experienced service providers, and discouragement among remaining service providers (Tham & Meagher, 2009). On the other hand, in previous research, front-line child protection service providers have often highlighted their belief in the importance of the work that they do (Wagner, van Reyk, & Spence, 2001; Westbrook, Ellis, & Ellett,

264  Gary Cameron

2006). Nonetheless, front-line child protection service providers have often characterized the system’s bureaucratic controls as restrictive and frustrating (Glisson, 2007; Smith, 2005; Strand, Spath, & Bosco-Ruggiero, 2010). The pressures to complete documentation and to comply with formal service guidelines have been common focuses of service provider complaints (Ellett, Ellis, Westbrook, & Dews, 2007; McGowan, Auerbach, & Strolin-Goltzman, 2009; Westbrook, Ellis, & Ellett, 2006; Zell, 2006). Some have suggested that child protection service providers report higher levels of satisfaction working within a differential or flexible service response framework (Schene, 2001, 2005; Shusterman, Hollinshead, Fluke, & Yuan, 2005). There is some evidence emerging from studies of flexible response child protection demonstration projects of more families receiving assistance, higher levels of cooperative helping relationships, and greater family satisfaction (Chahine, van Straaten, & Williams-Isom, 2005; Differential Response Sub-Committee of Ontario Children’s Aid Society Directors of Service, 2004; Schene, 2006). In addition, some of these these projects have emphasized service delivery settings that are familiar and comfortable for families served (Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, 2010; Taylor, Janzen, Murtha, Powell, & Majstorovic, 2001). The school- and community-based models in this research incorporated some of the elements purported to augment the effectiveness of differential response approaches – for example, accessible service delivery and building local community association and service partnerships (Schene, 2006). However, our literature search uncovered almost no research focused on the experiences or consequences of locating front-line child protection service providers in schools or neighbourhood centres. Most of the available information about community-based or school-based child protection service delivery was descriptive or focused on why these accessible settings should improve services. Methods This discussion is based on information from group qualitative interviews with front-line child protection service providers about their jobs. It also draws on individual qualitative interviews with child protection supervisors and senior managers about front-line child protection jobs. Finally, it is supplemented with information from an employment survey of front-line service providers at each of the research

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  265

sites.2 In addition, comparisons are made with findings of previous employment surveys conducted by the Partnerships for Children and Families Project in the same child welfare agencies (Frensch, Cameron, & Hazineh, 2005; Partnerships for Children and Families Project, 2003). Focus groups and individual qualitative interviews were recorded and transcribed. These transcripts were analysed for differential patterns among service delivery models using the NVivo software (Richards, 1999). Before a pattern was considered to represent a difference between models, two conditions had to be satisfied: (1) The pattern had to be substantially more prevalent in interviews within particular models than others; and (2) When more than one service delivery model was present at a child welfare agency (e.g., a community as well as a central site), the differential pattern had to be evident in the service delivery models at that agency. These conditions ensured that the differences were robust and represented the service delivery model rather than agency differences. Finally, in examining qualitative data, care was taken to clarify whether the patterns were shared across all or some of the sites representing particular service delivery approaches. Statistical analyses focused on identifying similarities and statistically significant differences among service delivery models on a variety of indicators. Job-Sustaining Narratives It is normal for colleagues sharing a workplace to elaborate a shared story about what makes their work worthwhile and what is hard to accept. There were some very clear differences in the shared employment narratives between agency-based service delivery models and the more accessible school and community models. This section presents two contrasting general narratives about employment realities in the central and accessible service delivery settings in this research that we have entitled (1) Pride and Endurance and (2) Belief and Integration. Elaborating these two general narratives demonstrates that central and accessible service delivery settings can lead to meaningful differences in how front-line child protection service

2 A more complete discussion of the research methods for the broader study is available in the helping relationship chapter by Hazineh and Cameron (chapter 9) in this volume and in the Transforming Child Welfare Practice main report available at www.wlu.ca/ pcfproject.

266  Gary Cameron

providers understand and experience their work. How readers assess these different perceptions of employment realities will depend on their values and experiences. There were also substantial areas of overlap in perceptions of job satisfaction and stress across all of the central and accessible service delivery sites. These commonalties are discussed later in this chapter. Pride and Endurance There was a narrative present at several central sites and not at all at the school- or community-based sites. This narrative reflected a pride in being able to do a very difficult and important job that many others could not do. Related to this were feelings that this difficult work was not understood or appreciated by families and outsiders. The following quotes illustrate these patterns: P31: I think, for me, it’s a very, very difficult job that I don’t think a lot of people could do. I don’t know certainly not every social service provider could do it … I find it rewarding to do a job that a lot of people couldn’t do … [if] you’ve lasted more than two years, then maybe you have what it takes to do the job. P4: You know, one of the most rewarding things that happens to me is the times when I am out in the community … and they’re like “Whoa, I could not do that job, oh my goodness, you guys should get a medal,” that is kind of rewarding when that happens. (Central site 1: front-line service providers)

This theme of pride in enduring or “having what it takes” under very challenging work circumstances was voiced at all of the central sites in these interviews. It certainly should not be assumed that all frontline service providers at these four sites viewed their employment this way. However, what was striking was that this ethos was not present at all in the school- and community-based interviews. This difference was particularly surprising, since front-line service providers at these more accessible sites talked about levels of job stress similar to those of central service providers.

3 Prefers to a participant in a focus group interview and numbers indicate different participants.

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  267

Central child protection service providers described a more insular or disconnected world of work than their more accessible model counterparts. They talked about less frequent contacts with families and service partners. They portrayed adversarial rather than cooperative relationships with families more frequently. They were more likely to talk about a lack of cooperation from community service partners. Central service providers focused more within their own teams for support and a sense of employment identity than did school- or community-based service providers. From our perspective, this distinction between perceptions of relatively insular and connected worlds of work is one of the most important distinctions between central and accessible service delivery models emanating from this research.4 While service providers at all research sites expressed concern about inordinate work demands, front-line child protection service providers at central sites were more likely to focus on the obstacles to connecting with families and to perceive their work as misunderstood and unappreciated by others. Overall, while seeing their work as important and having its rewards, central service providers were more problemfocused in their narratives about their employment conditions: P1: … we work really hard to do that but we can only do what we can do and sometimes it’s just not possible, but it seems like the common misconception is that we’re just trying to tear families apart, but we work extremely hard to try to do the opposite, but sometimes it can’t be done. P3: See, I never get … to say that I’m a child protection service provider. I would say I’m a social service provider that works with children and families. (Central site 1: front-line service providers) P2: … that other stuff … is on the back burner … the therapeutic piece, the counselling piece as much as possible, we can’t do it on a regular basis, we can’t spend any more time with our families because it’s impossible. (Central site 4: front-line service provider)

While concerns with heavy documentation demands were voiced at every research site, and service providers everywhere were cognizant

4 For more details on community and service partnerships see the reports available at www.wlu.ca/pcfproject.

268  Gary Cameron

of personal liability risks in their work, central service providers did talk more explicitly about their liability fears in their work: P6: Yes, the liability is huge. I don’t worry about that as much as I worry about other things, but it’s always in the back of your head … P3: It’s with you every day. You can never turn it off. You just have to learn how to live with it. (Central site 2: front-line service providers)

There was agreement among service providers across the central sites that access to the support of other child welfare service providers in their service team was very important to being able to cope with the pressures of their job. Closely connected was the importance placed on having accessible support from a supervisor. This valuation of team also was connected to a sentiment that only others facing similar challenges could understand what they were going through. P2: … we’re all in the same boat and we all understand the stress that somebody is going through so we may make off-colour jokes that only we get, because it’s a sense of humour that you probably develop that helps you through it. P3: Our supervisor … is always open to our ideas and open to discussion and things and – you know, especially when we get into verifications of things if, you know, because she really values our assessment skills and things like that. (Central site 5: front-line service providers) P: I like the sense of team that we have. Having been alone out there in [accessible model site] I like this camaraderie of being able to pick somebody else’s brain and, you know … I think among service providers that’s really strong. (Central site 2: front-line service provider)

Central service providers also expressed belief in the value of their work and talked about aspects of their service involvements that they found rewarding. There were strong expressions of commitment and appreciation of their child welfare jobs at several central sites. The work was considered interesting and challenging. Service providers also appreciated when they were able to establish good helping relationships with children and parents and being part of facilitating positive changes in families.

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  269 P4: I think, for myself, I see it as a privilege; like I really see it as a privilege for me – or an honour to be just so intimately involved in people’s lives … but I’m there to help them to develop their parenting skills or to enhance them or to have their children returned or to prevent the child from coming in … but deep down they all want to be good parents and it’s really neat for me to go in their homes and be with them … (Central site 5: frontline service provider) P4: I’ve had families five years that I’ve been involved with the same family for a long, long time. When you get that opportunity to know people that well then you can build a really good rapport with the family, like a very – a really good relationship and it’s from that kind of relationship that you can start making really good changes … P3: I think knowing that we’re here to better children. As a whole, I think, the agency is, we are keeping a lot of children in the community safe that would be struggling a lot more if the agency wasn’t around. So I think that’s personally rewarding. (Central site 4: front-line service providers)

Another common positive theme was that the work “is not boring.” Central service providers at three sites expressed appreciation for the challenges and diversity in their everyday work: P1: And you’re constantly learning … about something new and a different way of doing things … it’s the clients for the most part that I love … even the most difficult ones, you enjoy the challenge. (Central site 1: frontline service provider) P6: I’m never bored and I’m always I don’t know if excited is the word, but intrigued the case that keeps me up at night intrigues me … and trying to figure it out, you … (Central site 2: front-line service providers)

There were several dominant themes in these central front-line child protection service providers’ narratives about their employment. There was a belief that the work they were doing was important and necessary. And for some, there was a commitment to continuing to do this type of work. There was a pride expressed in “having what it takes” to carry out this stressful and personally demanding work. There was a sense of being able to endure in these jobs rather than an enthusiasm for how they were required to go about their jobs. They talked about the personal costs for themselves and their families.

270  Gary Cameron

Service providers saw access to collegial and supervisor support as an integral and much appreciated aspect of doing their jobs. They also portrayed a fairly insular everyday world of work with the main referents being within the formal child protection system. There was a sense that others would not understand their challenges or be necessarily supportive. They described their work as fast paced with lots of variety, exposing them to a broad range of family situations and work responsibilities. They said the work was “never boring.” While they talked a good deal about obstacles to establishing cooperative relationships with families, they also drew satisfaction from instances when they were able to establish good helping relationships with parents or children and when they were able to perceive positive benefits for kids or families from their efforts. Belief and Integration There was an enthusiasm among front-line service providers and their supervisors about the school- and community-based approaches to service delivery that was not evident in the central employment narratives. There was not only satisfaction with specific aspects of these approaches but also belief in the value of the accessible service delivery model. These expressions of enthusiasm and conviction for the service delivery model were clearly present in the narratives at four of the five accessible sites in this research. Not every service provider at these sites reflected these sentiments. There were also differences in the intensity of these convictions across accessible sites. Nonetheless, these positive statements and belief in the value of the service delivery approach were broadly shared at these sites. P1: It’s nice when you run into clients that maybe you’re not working with, or that you are working with, and you know, they just stop and say “Hello.” They’re not intimidated to come up to you in public and speak with you; that it’s more than just a relationship with an authoritative figure. (Community site 1: front-line service provider) P1: Like they’re there, they pop by, their little eyes are like glued to my window in my door right so I think they would have an easier time because they know me … they see you know every day, to knock on the door and say hi, you know, maybe they’d come in themselves you know …

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  271 P2: I think it’s enhanced me as a person too because I’ve met such wonderful people in the community … I’m just really quite thrilled to be part of the community. P4: … you’re a part of that whole family and the teachers like to know who they’re dealing with as well … it’s a huge piece. It’s wonderful I think. (School site 3: front-line service providers)

While accessible model service providers did stress the limitations that broader system expectations placed on their work, their talk about their immediate service models emphasized the positive things that they believed that they could do. The overall sense in these employment narratives was that these accessible model service providers generally found a good fit between the kind of service involvements they enjoyed and these service delivery models. They talked about frequent and flexible engagements with many children and parents. They felt that they were parts of a school or neighbourhood community and described advantages in access to information as well as a capacity to respond to protection concerns. Sometimes, they illustrated situations where they had quick contact with other types of service professionals to gather information and to obtain assistance for families. From our perspective, these front-line service providers expressed a relatively integrated conception of their service jobs. They talked about protection and prevention responsibilities with little focus on irresolvable tensions between these undertakings. There was no sense of an excessive distance or mistrust with families. Partnerships with other types of service providers were normal parts of everyday work. They talked positively of “doing more than child protection.” The sense in these narratives was that all of the above, for the most part, were experienced as rewarding aspects of their jobs. P1: … If I walk out the door and we’re going to go get a coffee and somebody – there’s a baby left in the car … and I’ve literally knocked and I’ve got lucky … happened to be that house … and you’re doing all that with your bag over there and your water bottle, your laptop on your other shoulder … You’re in the moment … P2: … So … there’s a really big transition here coming [to accessible site] and being able to offer people some help aside from me just going in and being a child protection service provider … (Community site 1: front-line service providers)

272  Gary Cameron P2: We’re running groups, we are … we’re supposed to be consultants, so we’re supposed to handle any questions, any general Children’s Aid question that may come to us … We’re expected to see ongoing kids regularly for counselling in the schools. For doing the lice stuff. P5: It’s fun, because, y’know, I tell the kids, y’know, the principal’s office and y’know, bring a book, bring some spelling sheets, I’m doing paperwork, so you could read to me, did you do spelling while I’m typing … I love it. (School site 2: front-line service providers) P4: It’s the dropping in at the breakfast club on your way in to see if any of your kids are there and to say “Hi,” it’s taking a few minutes on the exit to the after-school clubs or getting to know the youth service provider or stuff like that … P6: … New Year’s Eve day I was working and saw a client that morning. A newborn baby like a week old and the baby wasn’t nursing well. Mom’s milk hadn’t come in or so she thought. Anyhow, I was worried you know, very vulnerable baby. So I come back here to the office and I just you know, zipped down to the next door, to Public Health. They sent a public health nurse over right away with a scale, weighed the baby, did some nursing instruction. About an hour later the public health nurse comes to my office and says here’s a prescription for Mom. I just went to the community health clinic, “Here’s a prescription for Mom can you fill it and get it to her.” (Community site 2: front-line service providers)5

One of the frustrations of being a front-line service provider at one of the accessible service delivery sites was coping with periodic isolation from other child protection service providers. Because they were often dispersed across different school or community settings, a common lament was not having quick access to a colleague for support or assistance when making decisions in a school or neighbourhood setting. Where the accessible service delivery team was physically located in one community setting, concerns with access to team and collegial support were less prevalent. In some instances, front-line child protection service providers described outside school and community personnel as providing their everyday sense of support and belonging.

5 It was not possible to identify individual speakers at all times on this tape.

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  273

Earlier, evidence was presented that front-line service providers in accessible school and community settings valued their greater accessibility to service clientele and to service partners. Nonetheless, this accessibility also contributed to their sense of working in “fish bowl environments.” Service providers described frequent interruptions to their everyday work routines and feeling the need to respond constructively in these interactions. They talked about needing to work at home or elsewhere to be able to have the uninterrupted time needed to complete their documentation requirements. Overall, the sense was that most service providers enjoyed and believed in the merit of their accessible service models, but the price was some unique employment frustrations as well: P4: It’s pretty much impossible to do paperwork in your office. If you plan your day to just do paperwork, you can’t do it. People are at your door all day long, so you have days at home to do that. (School site 2: front-line service providers)

Despite belief in their accessible models of child protection services, there was a perception at several sites that working in these “fish bowl environments” was not for everyone: P3: But again, I think it’s the type of service provider you put in a community setting, is very much all the difference in the world. Some will not ever adjust properly and other ones have – just the type of approach you use is going to make the difference. P6: And your manager also has to have that same – because there’s some managers that wouldn’t fit. (Community site 1: front-line service providers) I’ve seen a few service providers that have sort of landed themselves in a community position that hasn’t been for them. … And one in particular stands out for me and she ended up going back to … to a traditional team … she liked the going in and getting things done and getting out … she was very much more that old way of doing things, old-school. (Schoolbased site 2: supervisor)

At one community-based site, some front-line service providers did comment about a lack of security in their work locations. For most, this did not cause them to question the overall value of their service delivery model.

274  Gary Cameron

School and community service providers enjoyed when they were able to establish welcoming helping relationships with parents and children, as did central service providers. A difference was that service providers in the more accessible service delivery sites believed that they were able to establish cooperative relationships with a larger proportion of families that they serviced. Both groups recounted with pride those instances when kids and parents appeared to benefit from their interventions. There are several encouraging aspects of the employment narratives from these school and community child protection service delivery sites. First, there was an enthusiasm and a belief in the value of these service delivery models. Second, there was a belief that these service delivery models allowed them to be more flexible and do more things to be helpful to children and parents. Third, these service providers felt that these approaches provided them with earlier and more complete information about what was going on in the lives of children and families. Fourth, they described sometimes being able to respond to requests for assistance or to perceptions of danger to children more rapidly because of their informal contacts and networks. Fifth, they talked about being more accessible to service partners and, in some instances, being able to access resources for kids and parents faster. There was no sense in these narratives of the inevitable tension between protecting children and supporting parents common in many discussions of child welfare. Service providers felt that these models enabled them to do both better than the less accessible models. On the other hand, they had to manage the unique challenges of working in “fish bowl environments” and having less access to the support of child protection colleagues, teams, or supervisors. A few thought that they might be less safe from angry clients by working in less physically secure premises. Overall, there was a clear impression from these service providers that the benefits of working in these accessible service models outweighed the costs. Job Impacts of the Formal Child Protection System Despite the presence of contrasting local employment narratives at the central and accessible service delivery sites, another narrative about the impacts of the formal child protection system on jobs was shared across all research sites. This narrative was noteworthy not only for its pervasiveness but also for the strong emotions it evoked from respondents.

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  275

The central theme of this formal system employment narrative was that the front-line child protection expectations from the formal child protection system were very excessive. There were several main components to this description. First, front-line service providers were expected to do far too much. The job was never done. It was not possible to meet all expectations or to remain up to date meeting their job responsibilities. There were always trade-offs and choices about what were the most important responsibilities. Second, there was a perception of a disconnection between formal system requirements and the realities of everyday front-line work. Finally, there were vivid descriptions of the inordinate pressures these expectations placed on front-line service providers, with significant negative personal and professional consequences: P3: It’s a huge thing so now we’re accessible so you’re driving, you answer your phone and you have a conversation you still have to document that and then your phone rings again? So it’s brutal. (School site 1: front-line service provider) P2: You are, absolutely. I take three-week blocks [to get ready] now for one three-week block [of vacation} in October, but to get ready for that is just, you’re insane, I now need that three weeks and that’s when I’ll have my anxiety attacks, my panic attacks, I’ll get sick I always get sick on vacation because it’s like my body is like, staying well, staying well okay, I’m on vacation whoosh … And then two days before you come back, sleepless nights again thinking, “What’s going to hit me when I come back, what’s it going to be?” (Central site 1: front-line service provider) P2: I’ve been – you get sick, you know, when your child is sick you’re not staying home with her you’re passing her off to grandma to take care of her because you’ve got court to be in, so I just find it’s hard to manage the amount that we have and try to be a good service provider, because that’s what you want to be, right. P5: I don’t love my job. How can you love being – yeah, do you want to be overworked and stressed and seeing what you do every day and the amount that goes on – how can you love that? (School site 2: front-line service providers) P1: It’s like ADHD on wheels [shared laughter]. There’s so many different things – I don’t know …

276  Gary Cameron P2: But when your phone is ringing off the hook, right, and you’re dealing with juggling how many crises in a day … I found it completely impossible to keep caught up. (Central site 5: front-line service provider) P2: There’s 34 hours in a week that we have to do it and there’s in excess of 50–60 hours of work that needs doing. P4: … the higher the expectations your family has on you, unfortunately because of the workload you’re not able to meet those expectations and then the relationship suffers … Personally, I would say that my biggest limitation is engagement with clients. (Central site 4: front-line service providers)

One of the largest demands on these front-line service providers’ time was completing the formal documentation requirements of their job. At all sites, front-line service providers talked about spending 50% to 70% of their time on documentation. A common frustration was that this left little time to provide services adequately. Service providers believed that compliance with the accountability requirements of their work outweighed any other priorities in their jobs. They stated that this reflected a self-protection emphasis for the ministry and child welfare agencies. They also felt that their child protection organization would be assessed by funders in terms of their compliance with these documentation requirements. Service delivery timelines were also built into these documentation requirements, obliging service providers to work on schedules that were sometimes seen as inflexible and unreasonable. Being compliant with these documentation requirements and service timelines was also a way for service providers to protect themselves. If something went wrong, they thought that they needed to be able to show that they had complied with all formal system documentation and timeline expectations. One of the ambitions of the Transformation Agenda was to free up more service time for children and families. With the caveat that these data were gathered early in the process of implementing this Agenda, the impression from these service providers was that, while some recording procedures were more efficient, documentation required for their jobs may have increased overall under these reforms. This increase was linked to the amount of additional documentation required by new mandated procedures (e.g., kinship care, mediation, family group conferencing) and by the new expectation that all contacts relevant to any case be recorded in computerized case notes. Feedback from front-line service providers and supervisors during presentation of the study

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  277

findings at partner agencies one to two years later confirmed all of these initial findings: P5: And we’re measured by our paperwork. Not by our social work, we’re measured by our paperwork and that is so frustrating. (School site 1: frontline service provider) P2: … it’s mostly about the recording and that’s because for the last 10 years, it’s been hammered into our heads about, “It needs to be recorded, it needs to be recorded.” And so people are so anxious about the recording and about documentation and now we have an inquest, so again, and it goes back to, “How good was your recording? How good was your documentation?” (Central site 1: manager) P3: Paperwork is crazy; frustration, you’re never ahead of the game and when you get ahead of the game – two weeks ago I was doing my happy dance because I had no tasks overdue, got three investigations in a 24-hour period, an apprehension in that period as well, next thing I know I’m drowning in paperwork, don’t know where to start and that’s frustrating. (Central site 5: front-line service provider) P1: … Everything is done in a legal context, it’s about us being accountable for what we’re doing with our families and it’s 70% of our job, to report, it’s a huge, huge component … I look at it 70% recording, 10% meetings, 20% with your clients … (Central site 3: front-line service providers)

Two harmful consequences of the above profile were identified by front-line child protection service providers. First, many of the service providers at these research sites implied or stated clearly that it was very hard and perhaps impossible to do good work with children or their parents under these conditions: P3: I think that hinders us in doing a proper, good assessment because you’re always worried “Well, I’ve got this time to do this” or whatever and “I need to get out,” you know, it’s just ridiculous the expectations they have on us in terms of administrative work. (Central site 3: front-line service provider) P4: … you have all these great intentions to work with a family, develop these relationships and get to the heart and soul of what is going on in the family but we don’t have time to do that. (School site 3: front-line service provider)

278  Gary Cameron

The second perceived negative consequence across all of these service models was that front-line service providers leave their jobs. The impression from these narratives was that central front-line child protection service providers simply wear down. Despite providing a more enthusiastic local employment narrative, in the words of one respondent, community- and school-based front-line child protection service providers “speak well [of the program] and leave”: P1: … I have a hard time dealing with all the different service providers and the turnover and if I’m having a hard time dealing with it and I’m a pretty functional person, then how are our clients dealing with it … P3: When I came here they told me that the average turnover for our position is 18 months – that’s short. (Central site 5: front-line service providers) P2: I’m going to guess, I think I lost count at about 12 service providers in that two years, should be six a team, so just people moving, they go to other parts of this agency, this is a difficult job … P1: … we’ve had a lot of turnover. People speak positively about this, yet after so many years seem to go look for other work and they say it’s other challenges, but it might be about the hard work. (Community site 2: frontline service providers)

Employment Survey With the ongoing workload pressures described by central and accessible program model service providers in the previous narrative, it would be reasonable to expect that many would show signs of moderate or high employment “burnout.” One manifestation of burnout would be greater difficulty feeling empathy for service clientele. The Depersonalization Scale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory measures an unfeeling and impersonal response towards recipients of one’s service (scale range 0–24). Between 54% and 75% of front-line child protection service providers scored in the medium and high range of this measure of depersonalization. In all survey samples, at least one-third of direct service providers scored in the high range for depersonalization (11 or higher). There were no clear differences between accessible model and central service providers on this scale.

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  279

The Emotional Exhaustion Scale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory assesses feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one’s work (scale range: 0–54). Only about 25% of front-line service providers in all four samples scored in the low range on this measure of emotionally exhaustion. On average, over 40% scored in the high range (28 or higher). Once again, there were no clear differences between central and accessible model service providers on this measure of emotional exhaustion. Equally important, there is no evidence in two surveys (see previous chapter) that levels of emotional exhaustion have declined between 2001 and 2008 for child protection front-line service providers. Taken together, these depersonalization and emotional exhaustion patterns support the theme from the previous employment narratives about the challenges of sustaining front-line child welfare employment. In these narratives, this difficulty was related to feeling frustrated in being able to do good work with children and parents as well as having more work to do than was thought reasonable. The survey results confirmed that most front-line service providers in all four samples felt that they did not have enough time to do the work they were expected to complete. Between approximately 70% and 80% of front-line child protection service providers in the different surveys said that they did not have enough time to complete their assigned work. There were no differences between accessible and central site respondents in this assessment. These survey results also confirmed that many front-line child protection service providers think a fair bit about leaving their jobs. Between approximately one-third and one-half of front-line service providers in the different samples said that they often think about leaving their jobs. Once again, there were no clear differences between service providers at accessible and central sites on these indicators or evident differences across the various surveys over time. In the employment narratives, besides focusing on the excessive strains of their work, both the central and accessible site service providers also talked a good deal about the rewards of front-line child protection employment at their sites. This duality was confirmed by these survey results. On average, across surveys, 75% or more of front-line service providers derived a moderate or high sense of personal accomplishment from their work based on this scale. Across the samples, over 40% of front-line child protection service providers scored in the high range on the personal accomplishment measure. Both central and

280  Gary Cameron

accessible models in the employment narratives were emphatic that their jobs “were not boring.” Front-line child protection workers at all sites found their jobs interesting and challenging. Almost all child protection service providers in all the survey samples agreed without equivocation that their work was interesting and challenging enough. Concluding Remarks There was a duality in how front-line child protection service providers in this research experienced their employment. This distinction reflected the difference between how they felt about their local service delivery settings and how they saw the formal child welfare system expectations shaping their everyday employment realities. Reflecting this duality, two important child welfare service delivery system implications stem from these findings – one opening possibilities for positive innovations and the other questioning such possibilities. It was clear that there is nothing “written in stone” about how child protection service providers understand their work. What we have come to accept as proper and inevitable in child protective service delivery is in fact a choice – there are other possibilities, some of which may be a better fit with what we want to do. It was very clear from the narratives of front-line child protection service providers at accessible and central sites that there were meaningful differences in how they understood and experienced their roles. The suggestion from these narratives is that, if we want more cooperative relationships with service partners, community partners, and clientele, it can be done. The implication also is that we do not have to compromise the safety of children to make progress in these areas. The evidence is that both the service philosophy guiding our efforts and the physical settings for delivering child protective services matter a lot. It is also important to stress that all of the school- and communitybased models were modest innovations within Ontario’s child protection system. These were all relatively small programs. They received no extra funding and operated under the same mandate and procedural guidelines as the central sites. Yet the differences were evident. What might the consequences be if more substantial structures were created to facilitate service partnerships? What would happen if locally accessible service delivery of child protective services became the expectation? What if we invested in engaging local communities to partner in protecting children and helping families? What if creating cooperative

Child Protection Jobs in Delivery Settings  281

helping relationships with many or most families became a central part of what we were trying to accomplish? There are other possibilities. The central point is that we have choices and these choices matter. They are reflected in our policies as well as in how we strive to engage with children, parents, families, and partners. Yet these service providers described a force pulling in an opposing direction and it may have been the dominant influence over their employment experience. There were underlying currents of central bureaucratic control, risk aversion, and system self-protection substantially shaping the world across all of these research sites. The suggestion was that these forces would reshape any efforts at reform to reflect their priorities. A tangible manifestation of these priorities was the extraordinary amount of time service providers at every site spent in front of their computers documenting their work. It is striking that no front-line service providers in these narratives linked these accountability procedures to better protection of children or to providing needed assistance for families. They were much more likely to believe that these accountability procedures represented obstacles to these service goals. The point here is not that accountability is irrelevant or that formal procedures cannot promote better protection of children and assistance to families. But an appropriate balance is required, and the portrait painted by these service providers is of a radically unbalanced system. When we have endeavoured to improve the child protection system, we’ve tried increasing funding and hiring more service providers. We’ve shifted emphases back and forth from investigation and apprehension to assessments and more diverse service responses. Local jurisdictions have tried innovative service delivery and programming strategies. Yet the core employment realities for front-line child protection service providers seem to have been only marginally affected by these shifts. Our contention is that we have to examine the nature and consequences of the formal centralized bureaucratic organization of child protection services. This is a much more daunting undertaking than proposing specific changes to service delivery strategies. The Transformation Agenda outlines some major changes in how child protection services are to be delivered. Some of the desired outcomes of this Transformation Agenda were reflected in the local employment narratives at the school- and community-based sites in this research. Other Transformation Agenda ambitions include new ways of

282  Gary Cameron

reaching agreement with families, arranging out-of-home placements, and documenting service activities. However, it is important to highlight that there is little evidence in this study that the broader systemic constraints described by these service providers are being changed under the Transformation Agenda. If not, what benefits might reasonably be expected from these reforms may be limited. To go further, we may have to look to other ways to manage risk and to create space for much more of service providers’ time and creative energy to be invested into helping children and families.

Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: Questions and Suggestions gary cameron

The forces of inertia in a system as large and well-established as child welfare in Ontario are very powerful. Attempts at major reforms of Ontario’s child welfare system over the past couple of decades, while they have had notable impacts, have left the core ideology, service delivery structures, and relationships with clientele largely unchanged. Also, from our perspective, the continuing dominant position of the central ministry in this system represents the most intractable barrier to substantive reforms consistent with the principles described in this chapter. Consistent with this bureaucratic culture, elaboration of standard rules, regulations, and documentation procedures and assuring compliance with these requirements are the primary vehicles for system direction, control, and protection. Unfortunately, in our estimation, besides contributing inevitably to rigid and expensive ways of working, these controls are grounded in a deep mistrust of local discretion and judgment. The reform conundrum is how such a central bureaucratic culture provides encouragement and guidance when, if our analysis is correct, greater reliance on local relationships is a key to sustaining frontline employment, and to improving service partnerships and helping relationships. However, without substantial change and a narrowing of the focuses for legitimate central control, this bureaucracy will continue to hamstring any attempts at system reform by superimposing its substantial needs for standardization and self-protection. Inevitably, as suggested by front-line service providers in this program of research, in the interest of making sure nothing goes wrong, the system makes it impossible to do good work with children and parents (Schorr, 1988, 1997).

284  Gary Cameron

The staff complements and budgets of Children’s Aid Societies have expanded tremendously in Ontario since the major Ontario Risk Assessment Model reform (ORAM) in 1990. Indeed, one of the major motivations behind the 2005 Transformation Agenda (TA) reform and the 2010 Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario (SC) was to curtail constantly expanding budgets and chronic deficits at Children’s Aid Societies (CAS). One of the obvious manifestations of the infusion of resources into CAS has been their location in new and often much larger centralized agency premises in many jurisdictions. For example, two of our CAS partners in this ongoing program of research had recently relocated to large new or refurbished buildings in industrial parks. It is evident that such new premises provide more ample and comfortable working space for employees. With the substantial expansion of this child welfare system, increased and better-resourced physical premises became necessary. However, when the preferred solution became large central premises far from many of their clients, images of what child welfare is and should be that are quite different from those articulated in this volume clearly were reinforced. Central locations will not facilitate accessibility for families. They will not make it easier for service providers to know and to be known. They will not make it easier to connect families with resources close to home. It will be difficult to make these buildings places where clients will feel comfortable or where neighbourhood associations might want to host activities. They will not be particularly conducive to flexibility in responses to families or to collaborations with service or community partners. A minority of CAS in Ontario were currently moving in an opposite direction during this program of research – towards more accessible community locations for service providers. But the very large investments in central locations in many areas are not going to make shifts towards accessibility, partnerships, and flexibility easier. The resources, prestige, and power gained by CAS under recent reforms will not be easily relinquished. It is hard to judge the potential for substantial shifts in the priorities and practices of the child protection model in Ontario or in other similar child protection jurisdictions. There will certainly be gaps between what we prefer and what will be feasible. In the following discussion, our focus is on identifying potential niches for innovation. While this chapter does not provide a summary of what has come earlier in this

Questions and Suggestions 285

volume, its conclusions and speculations extrapolate from the findings from this program of research. The opinions and suggestions reflect our conclusions and preferences with which the reader may or may not agree. Our intention is to provoke reflections and discussions about child welfare ideals and possibilities. No Technocratic Solutions There has been an increasing emphasis in recent decades on technocratic solutions to the challenges confronting child protection systems. Emphases upon formal assessment of risks to children, and compliance with service courses of action spelled out in standard rules and regulations, reflect an enduring suspicion of both local service provider discretion and the families involved with child protection services. Similarly, the use of court authority to provide legitimacy for interventions reinforces both these suspicions and the emphasis on protection. More and more information has to be gathered. Compliance becomes the priority dynamic. The possibility that these technocratic procedures may have little to do with helping children or families or, paradoxically, keeping children safe from harm has not been part of considerations for improvements. The possibility that the emphasis on formal procedures has gone too far and has become an obstacle to helping children and families is seldom discussed. In this program of research, front-line service providers did not connect these accountability and documentation procedures to keeping children safe. Indeed, their frustration with formal system expectations was evident, as was their perception that these expectations restricted their capacity to do the work that they believed should be done with children and families. From our perspective, perhaps most disturbing is the observation that, in recent attempts at system reform, even when the stated goals include increasing flexibility in service responses, facilitating service partnerships, and fostering cooperative relationships with families, the emphases on central control and system self-protection carried forward undiminished. For example, under the Transformation Agenda, provisions were made to encourage innovations such as Family Group Conferencing, formal mediation as an alternative to court applications, and placing children within family networks. However, each of these approaches was accompanied by extensive service delivery regulations and documentation requirements. Consequently, findings from this program of research

286  Gary Cameron

suggest that each became quite onerous for service providers to implement. Indeed, in more recent sessions (2010–11) sharing these research findings, service providers at different child welfare agencies suggested that the formal accountability and documentation demands on their time may have increased under the Transformation Agenda. An enticing addition to the reform discussion is the interest in evidencebased practice in child welfare (Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario, 2010). Who could object to understanding what improves our ability to help children and families? However, if this emphasis translates into more documentation demands and more central control over local practice, it is likely to stand in the way of positive innovations. There are certainly ways to share information about promising helping strategies and to test innovations without contributing to system rigidities. However, our experiences raised the concern that the culture of the central bureaucracy is likely to dominate this reform effort, as has been the case with other innovations and reforms. Discussions about the seriousness of this problem are not new (Schorr, 1988). It is much more common for established systems to transform promising programs to fit their expectations than for the innovations to influence everyday ways of working. Morrill (1996) observed that “reformers are continually faced with a never-ending set of issues that forces them back towards the status quo and eventually exhausts them” (p. 192). Lisbeth Schorr (1997) stated that “no one should underestimate how fundamentally discretion in program design and front-line practice goes against the bureaucratic grain” (p. 78). The Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario (2010), citing experiences in Britain, has identified reducing formal documentation demands as a reform priority. It’s hard not to be sceptical. Perhaps it would be possible to set a target – such as on average no more than one-third of front-line service providers’ time being invested in documentation and work towards this end. If we cannot free substantially more service provider time to focus on helping children and families, all of these focuses on broader system reform, from our perspective, might best be characterized as “redecorating a ship whose course is set.” De-centring Legal Authority The primary issue about legal authority emanating from this program of research is not how often children are removed from the home,

Questions and Suggestions 287

although this is an important topic. Nor is it primarily about how often formal applications to the court are made to mandate interventions with families – even if there is a strong case to be made for minimizing such applications. It is about how the requirements of the legal system and, in particular, the gathering of evidence suitable for use in court shape service provider efforts from initial contact to case opening to case closure for all cases that come to the attention of child protection authorities. For example, under the recent Transformation Agenda reforms, service providers now have to formally document all scheduled and impromptu contacts with and on behalf of families using a revised information system. The emphasis on the legal system and evidentiary documentation has increased greatly in recent decades. One of the manifestations has been the creation of much larger legal departments within Children’s Aid Societies. This program of research points to a number of questionable developments. First, service providers are preoccupied with meeting these evidentiary requirements. Second, service providers have little time for creating helpful relationships with children, parents, other service providers, or community representatives. Third, too many children and parents rightfully and regrettably fear and resist involvement with child protection authorities. This emphasis upon collecting legal evidence is not inevitable; it reflects specific values and choices from a broader spectrum of possibilities. For example, when this program of research was undertaken, some western European settings did not rely primarily on legal authority to intervene with families and, when they did, court involvements were often much less formal than in Anglo-American jurisdictions. Concurrently, some rely a good deal more on local community and professional discretion in working with children and parents (Cameron, Freymond, Cornfield, & Palmer, 2007; Cameron, 2006; Freymond & Cameron, 2006). Reversing direction in North American child welfare will not be easy or quick. A major conceptual shift would be to acknowledge that a large majority of families do not need to be involved with courts and, accordingly, the emphasis on collecting evidence in these cases must be greatly reduced. Planning to reduce or to remove in-house legal departments from child welfare agencies would help. Thought needs to be given to developing accountability procedures which produce adequate information for most families and can be shifted over to a more intensive evidentiary focus if this proves necessary. As in some

288  Gary Cameron

international jurisdictions, some families might be referred to specialized units or agencies for these parts of their involvement (Andersson, 2006). Learning from Local Experiences In North American child welfare, there has been a huge investment in substantially constraining local judgment through formal controls. A recent symbiotic emphasis has been formal systems thinking as a guide to reforming child protection services. Evidence of this emphasis can be seen in a background paper produced by UNICEF to guide the development of child protection systems internationally (Wulczyn et al., 2010) and by the Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario (2010). Certainly, there is a need to think about the configuration of broader child welfare systems and the relationships among different components. But there are major risks as well. Fomal systems thinking lends itself too easily to central planning and the elaboration of standard procedures. It typically calls for more and better information to support “rational” service delivery. Yet the links between greater formal system integration and improved service experiences and outcomes for children and families remain unclear (Cameron et al., 2001). Systems rationality does not easily accommodate the centrality of value decisions in creating systems of child and family welfare. This leads to the oxymoron of promoting, for non-Western settings, values, concepts, and procedures that have been created over a long time to be congruent with European and Anglo-American settings. Non-Western settings often have different ideals of childhood, family, and collectivity and confront very different child protection challenges, often with less access to the formal system resources taken for granted in Western contexts (Wulczyn et al., 2010). The work of understanding how child and family welfare can become congruent with various cultural, religious, political, and economic settings has yet to begin. Our program of research suggests that child welfare interventions that do not make sense in the everyday lives of children and parents will be resisted. We have only to look at the impact of incongruent Anglo-American child protection systems on First Nations in different countries to understand that they can do a great deal of damage (Love, 2006; Mandell et al., 2007). Service experiences and outcomes are substantially determined locally. Our program of research indicated that what happened between service providers and families determined not only families’ satisfaction

Questions and Suggestions 289

with service involvements but their willingness to seek help. The time available to service providers to work with children and parents and the resources they can call upon to help will determine their capacity to develop helping relationships and to be useful to children and parents. Service providers’ willingness and capacity to continue in their employment depends on local everyday work environments. A critical missing element in most child welfare reform initiatives is information about local experiences. This is not information that can be gleaned from standard information systems. Two focuses for local investigations are evident. Formal systems cannot substitute for motivated and experienced service providers. If front-line service providers believe that their jobs are not doable or sustainable, the child welfare system cannot improve. Current knowledge about front-line work experiences is critical for developing and assessing reform efforts. It is also true that, if too many parents and children fear and resist child welfare involvement, opportunities for keeping children safe and improving their well-being are reduced. In addition, if families receive little assistance, or if the assistance makes little sense in terms of the everyday world, there is little reason to expect favourable service outcomes or assessments. Knowing more about the everyday lives and service involvement experiences of children and parents is also critical for developing and assessing reform efforts. In this research, parents involved with child protection authorities were assessed and classified based upon standard technologies of risk assessment for children. While such technologies can potentially improve family assessments and contribute to informed decision making (Cameron, 2006), very often they result in overly narrow definitions of relevant information and focuses for intervention. When the assessment focus is expanded, and especially when service locations and helping relationships bring richer and more current information, understandings of family and community life are more realistic and new insights into what is possible and useful begin to emerge. Grounded in Relationships The clearest meta-message from this program of research is that a productive system of child and family welfare needs to be grounded in service provider relationships – with children, parents, and families, with other child welfare staff, with outside service partners, and with neighbourhood associations. Service delivery system configurations

290  Gary Cameron

and controls should be intended to enhance and to provide guidance for these types of relationships. However, in North American child protection systems, from our point of view, enrichment of all of the above types of relationships is not a priority. Greater weight is given to formal controls and to reliance on legal authority. For us, this is an “upsidedown” world, and, unless it is righted, major improvements in service experiences and outcomes for children and parents are not likely. Ontario’s child protection system endured fierce public criticisms and public inquiries in the 1990s and early 2000s around child deaths and system interventions deemed insufficient or inappropriate. Not surprisingly, this created feelings of vulnerability among policy developers, administrators, and service providers. Consequently, new formal procedures for child maltreatment risk assessment and ever more extensive service delivery guidelines and documentation procedures were put into place. The numbers of children brought into state care substantially increased, as did reliance on court applications to enforce family compliance with service plans (Cameron, Freymond, Cornfield, & Palmer, 2007). While the public rationale for these changes was to prevent child maltreatment, service providers and administrators in this program of research saw a clearer link with system and employee self-protection. Compliance with all formal expectations became the way to be safe – whether or not this was in the best interests of children or families. At the same time, language and formal values changed, with a greater focus on children as individuals and less consideration of the centrality of connections with family and collectivities. The link between the well-being of families and the well-being of children received much less attention. Policy and intervention focuses narrowed to uncovering and stopping specific types of maltreatment of children (Cameron & Vanderwoerd, 1997; Cameron et al., 2007). Not surprisingly, these new orientations were soon seen as excessively rigid and expensive. Constant system cost escalations led to multiple forms focused on the system’s sustainability. Interest in more family-friendly approaches, greater service flexibility, and less use of coercive authority began to return. A complementary approach worth exploring, with some potential for reducing reliance on formal rules and procedures for system selfprotection, is sharing responsibility for decision making in everyday child welfare work (Cooper, Hetherington, & Katz, 2003). Creating a team approach within child protection organizations to making service

Questions and Suggestions 291

decisions and, whenever possible, to intervening might be a practical way to improve decisions and to reduce fears of personal liability. Under some circumstances, it might be practical to add service providers and others from outside child protection to such teams. Obviously, without a good deal more service provider time being available than was the case in this program of research, effective team decision making and helping would not be possible. At any rate, from our perspective, it would be worthwhile to articulate how such teams might work and to experiment with them in different child welfare contexts. Keeping children safe from harm requires credible and current information about how they are doing. The primary approach to gathering such information now is through an investigation of third-party reports focused on a formal assessment of factors in the home considered to increase the risk of maltreatment of children. Continuing risk assessments are based primarily upon child protection service provider contacts with the family. This research has confirmed that the time pressures on service providers often allow only for infrequent contacts with family members. In addition, resistance to child protection involvement often led to reluctance to share information with child protection service providers, and, for quite a few parents, there was an aversion to asking child protection agencies for help. Clearly, formal investigations of family circumstances are sometimes necessary in protecting children. There is also a place for the use of a maltreatment risk measure to inform decision making, although in theory at least, most would concede that risk should not be the only focus for information gathering. Similarly, it will always be necessary to use coercive state authority to intervene in some families and to remove children from the home. However, our contention is that these procedures are both unnecessary and ineffectual as the primary ways to know what is happening with children and to engage with families. They close down too many ways of knowing and helping. Ideally, such formal investigative and coercive engagement strategies should be understood as ancillary to ways of knowing and engaging families focused on the development of negotiated relationships. Whether or not formal investigations and risk assessment protocols are used to support decision making, improving access to good information and fostering the development of constructive helping relationships will require both expanded and more diverse opportunities to interact with children and parents.

292  Gary Cameron

In this program of research, there was evidence that service delivery locations allowing everyday visibility and informal communications between service providers and family members increased access to relevant and current information about children and families. For example, if carried out with the right intentions, the presence of child protection service providers in schools allows regular observation and communication with children. Both children and parents are much more likely to approach service providers with questions or to ask for help. Children are safer when they are seen. More help will be given if children and their parents are more familiar with child protection service providers. Help is more likely to be relevant and accepted when service providers have a better understanding of the everyday lives of children and parents. Shifts in service delivery intentions are fundamental to creating more acceptable and appreciated helping relationships in child protection service delivery. The first requirement is a policy and organizational endorsement of the possibility and the desirability of fostering constructive helping relationships. Contrary to popular stereotypes, most mothers and fathers in this program of research, despite their fears of child protection authorities, wanted help and hoped for good relationships with child protection service providers. Despite some cynicism, service providers valued the appreciated helping relationships that they were able to create and hoped to be more engaged with families. A second requirement is making negotiated service agreements between parents and service providers the norm in child welfare. Negotiated agreements fall somewhere between complete consensus and reliance on coercive authority. Useful as they can be in specific circumstances, formal mediation and Family Group Conferencing are likely too complex to be practical as everyday ways of working with most families (Ministry of Children and Family Development, 2006). Applications to court are expensive and slow. Along with imposed agreements, they create unnecessary levels of fear and resistance among children and parents. A simpler and more acceptable way to reach agreements can become the norm. “Negotiated” rather than “voluntary” service agreements is a better descriptor because recourse to legal authority is an option seldom forgotten by children, parents, and child protection service providers. Yet, a conservative estimate from this program of research suggests that the use of coercive authority to remove children from their homes or to impose service conditions on families is not justifiable in more than 10% to 20% of cases opened to these child protection agencies. Indeed,

Questions and Suggestions 293

in some European jurisdictions, a large majority of out-of-home placements have been based upon negotiated agreements with parents (Andersson, 2006; Cameron et al., 2007; Freymond & Cameron, 2007; Hetherington, Cooper, Smith, & Wilford, 1997; Wolff, 1997). However, this presumes a greater diversity in placement options and more varied placement intentions than is common in North American jurisdictions. Front-line service providers should be expected as a normal part of their work to negotiate service agreements with the majority of families with open child protection cases. To do so, they will need substantially more time to talk with family members than they now have. They will also have to be less reliant on bureaucratic procedures and legal authority for self-protection when things go awry, as they must periodically. The realities of service providers’ legal mandate and authority would have to be acknowledged at the beginning of these negotiations without becoming the central considerations. The essential ingredient is engaging with children and parents about the concerns that brought the family to the attention of child protection authorities with the intention of creating mutually acceptable service plans whenever possible. This will require a willingness on the part of service providers, not only to present options, but to modify what they think should be done based upon these discussions. In this program of research, there was very little evidence of negotiated service agreements. For the most part, service providers decided what was to be done. Parents complied or pretended to comply, whether or not they thought the service plan made sense. Many parents described doing what they were told and waiting for the child protection service provider to go away. Neither service providers nor parents believed that this dynamic was particularly useful in keeping kids safe or helping families. In this program of research, several research strategies guided by separate research teams focused upon the nature of front-line child protection helping relationships. Several general patterns were evident in these investigations. First, there was substantial agreement about the value of appreciated helping relationships across these different investigations. Second, service providers and parents basically agreed about the characteristics of appreciated helping relationships and whether these were present in their relationships. Third, overall assessments of these helping relationships were quite mixed, with a minority described as mainly positive, a larger group with a balance of appreciated and lamented experiences, and the largest group providing mostly negative characterizations. When matched, service providers and parents generally made a similar

294  Gary Cameron

assessment of their relationships. Finally, as mentioned, there was a cautious openness to constructive helping relationships shared by most service providers and parents. Many of the analyses in these studies focused on identifying elements of interactions that fostered or impeded constructive helping relationships. However, it would be unfair to propose that front-line service providers should simply go about their work differently based on these findings. Front-line service providers cannot be expected to substantially alter the time available or the focus for helping relationships without significant changes in their mandate and in their everyday employment realities. Forgotten Opportunities It seems incongruous that a system with a mandate to protect children would not emphasize useful and diverse programming for children, but that was clearly the case in this program of research. The finding that child protection interventions focused mainly on mothers and mothering is not new (Swift, 1995a). Referrals to programming for children were overwhelmingly for formal treatment for perceived trauma and youth emotional or behavioural problems. This is too limited a focus. It is inappropriate with disadvantaged children and youth to make a definite distinction between interventions to protect them from immediate harm and interventions to improve their ongoing well-being. It is entirely possible, indeed it was quite common in this program of research, to resolve a particular concern within a child’s home (e.g., parental conflict) without changing much else and offering little additional hope for improved child life outcomes. We favour an expanded child and family welfare mandate that includes a focus on child and family well-being as well as on child safety. There would a recognition that these are complementary components of the same undertaking. One of the best ways to keep children safely at home is to see them frequently. There is a variety of program models for children that allow regular assessments of how they are doing and, in some instances, also may make significant contributions to the children’s development and well-being. These benefits are especially relevant for children from relatively disadvantaged homes and communities (Cameron & Vanderwoerd, 1997; Prilleltensky, Nelson, & Peirson, 2001). The most obvious option for young children is good quality daycare programs. Supervised home-based daycare is another option. There is

Questions and Suggestions 295

clear potential in making subsidized daycare more available as a normal alternative in child and family welfare. Being present in schools and keeping children and youth connected with schools is another approach to keeping children safe while enhancing their quality of life. Homework programs, feeding programs, clubs, discussion groups, and recreational activities are possibilities. Connections with mentors in schools or in the community can help keep children safe. For example, in Sweden, a very popular program allowed youth to have regular contact with a “contact parent” while living at home (Andersson, 2006). Offering non-treatment supports directly to children and youth is a sensible and useful way to keep them safe and helps to improve their lives. Such supports will in many instances reduce the stress on family life and, as a corollary, facilitate conversations and agreements with parents. From our perspective, child and family welfare should not be so exclusively focused on monitoring and modifying the behaviour of parents. It should share responsibilities with families for the safety and care of children by having more to offer to children and youth directly. Fathers in this program of research were frequently excluded when child protection service providers became involved with their families. Besides the constraints of time and resources, service provider and institutional prejudices about these men and fear of what they might do got in the way of connecting with them. Of perhaps even greater concern was how little was known about the lives of these fathers and what they might be willing and able to do for their children. Their profile in child welfare was defined by others – by mothers and by mostly female service providers. As when mothers were defined by others, it was generally not a sympathetic profile. This program of research suggests that a significant portion of dads, if properly approached, would be motivated to try to help their children. It is certainly ethically questionable not to allow them a chance to do so. It should be a routine expectation of front-line child protection service providers that, whenever it is possible to do so, dads should be approached and involved in what is to be done on their children’s behalf. To do this well, service providers will need to learn how to be comfortable and appropriate talking with men. This may involve ways of talking and connecting that differ from those used with mothers. Finally, it is essential both in everyday services and in research that we learn much more about the lives of dads involved with child welfare. As with mothers, we need to know not only about their limitations but also about their strengths and what they can contribute to service success.

296  Gary Cameron

Perhaps the most neglected resource for children and parents in this program of research was the informal help available through community involvements. Previous research suggests that the types of assistance available through informal social connections differ in important ways from formal services. For example, community involvement potentially offers parents and children access to greater support from friends, meaningful activities, and chances to volunteer their time. It also can increase the availability of tangible resources (e.g., food, clothes, child care) as well as advice and information. Support can be available at different times of the day and, sometimes, for longer periods of time than professional supports. It can be accessed with less stigma and allow children and parents to present more than their problems. Informal helping and community involvements can effectively complement but not replace formal helping (Cameron & Vanderwoerd, 1997). In this program of research, the clearest illustration of how community involvement can enrich child and family services was provided by the Shelldale Centre in Guelph, Ontario. Front-line child protection service providers routinely encountered children and parents at the Shelldale Centre involved in different activities. Service providers regularly saw their clients involved in community roles requiring their commitment and abilities. Because resources were close at hand, and because of wellestablished relationships, many front-line service providers accessed community resources not available in other locations. Children and parents dropped by the child welfare office and asked for help more frequently. Members of the local neighbourhood were more likely to bring their concerns about children forward as well as to advocate on behalf of families. However, to our knowledge, the child welfare agency’s involvement in creating and sustaining the Shelldale Centre is a unique undertaking in Canadian child welfare. In addition, our research suggests that this initiative is not immune to being transformed by central bureaucratic pressures and professional priorities. However, at least, the Shelldale experience illustrates that community engagement is not beyond the reach of child welfare agencies. Family-Friendly Placements This program of research did not investigate child placements that involved children becoming long-term wards of the state. Nor did it look at circumstances and outcomes for these children or their families. While undeniably important, children in only a very small proportion

Questions and Suggestions 297

of families with open child protection cases will grow up in state care. A large majority of families involved with child welfare will not have a child placed outside the home by the child protection agency and, for those that do, most of these children will return after a few weeks or months to the care of their families. This was the child placement population included in this program of research. From our perspective, several important implications stem from this well-known profile. First, it is important that child and family welfare systems not become too focused on out-of-home care. While out-of-home care is always an important part of child and family welfare systems, well over 80% of the children in open child protection cases in this program of research, despite difficulties at home, are likely to grow up with their families. Out-of-home care is expensive and consequently draws attention from policy makers and administrators; however, overall, most of attention should be on providing useful assistance to children and parents. Second, whatever our preconceptions, their families remain important to children. They represent fundamental sources of belonging and support that will continue to be important long after child protection services have moved on. The well-being of children and the well-being of their families, in a very large proportion of cases, are intertwined. If families are struggling, there is a need for child and family welfare systems to become much more open to sharing responsibilities for children’s care with parents – perhaps for quite long periods of time. Third, front-line child protection service providers need more helping options to avoid the perceived dilemma of “hurting children by leaving them at home or hurting children by bringing them into care” (voiced to the author recently by a child protection supervisor planning to leave the field). A first requirement is to have access to more diverse resources to offer children living at home and their parents. A second is to create more resources suitable to support families needing long-term assistance (e.g., daycare, contact families, home visitors, parenting mentors, community connections). Finally, a continuum of out-of-home placement options should be available – including more options likely to be acceptable and supportive to parents. In addition, sometimes, it may be preferable to send a helper into the home frequently for a period of time than to remove children (Kufeldt, 2011). Earlier in this program of research, some West European informants indicated that most out-of-home placements in their settings were negotiated with parents rather than imposed by the state (Freymond &

298  Gary Cameron

Cameron, 2006). Several factors made this possible. There was greater emphasis than in North American jurisdictions on maintaining family connections when children were in state care. Parents usually were clear that there was no intention of permanently severing their relationships with their children. There were also more intermediate placement options. In some jurisdictions, some placement settings accepted parents and children together. Some foster parents expected to provide advice to parents as well as temporary care for their children. For example, contact families in Sweden allowed children and youth to stay a few days at a time as needed and kept in touch with them on a regular basis. Contact parents might also get to know and provide counsel to parents (Andersson, 2006). When parents are involved in deciding whether their children should stay elsewhere for a while, know that they will have comfortable access to them while they do, and understand that they will receive assistance to get themselves and their families on an even keel, then it becomes possible for more placement experiences to be acceptable to both parents and their children. More agreements can be negotiated rather than imposed. Of course, some children will always need to be removed immediately without negotiation from harmful homes. However, in most situations, the family situation is more nuanced, and the best interests of children and families may be better served by having access to a range of less coercive alternatives. Service Providers’ Motivation and Retention The investigations of front-line child protection employment in this program of research identified positives that can be built upon to improve workforce motivation and sustainability. It also highlighted pervasive and strong dissatisfaction with the excessive expectations of the central government bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, relatively few front-line service providers had been in their positions for more than a few years. Many were relatively young and, in one survey, about 60% had no children of their own. A modest minority had professional credentials. Using standardized service guidelines and accountability mechanisms in an attempt to compensate for perceived staffing limitations seems to us a poor strategy. Nuanced and timely judgments and actions on behalf of children and families can never be effectively guided by formal rules and procedures. At best central bureaucracy can hope to create some useful general parameters and tools to local judgment and

Questions and Suggestions 299

action. This program of research suggests that progress towards a sustainable and motivated workforce will have to be grounded in a transformation of everyday child welfare work with children and families rather than in better management or improved financial incentives or more comfortable offices. In this program of research, most front-line child protection service providers were quite satisfied with these aspects of their jobs. They simply thought that they could neither complete all of the work expected of them nor do good work with children and families under existing constraints (Cameron, Hazineh, & Frensch, 2010). Clearly front-line service providers in any child and family service regularly encounter some very terrible child and family circumstances. This must exact a toll on their personal well-being and their relationships outside of work. However, this is true in other service sectors as well (e.g., juvenile justice, children’s mental health). It was surprising that more front-line child protection service providers in this program of research did not highlight their direct involvements with children or parents as a major source of emotional stress in their jobs. At least, it is safe to conclude that this was not the first thing that came to mind when they were asked what made their jobs hard. The current staffing frustrations and instability in these child protection systems do not seem to us to be “inevitable” given the nature of the enterprise. From our perspective, what needs to be changed is consistent with what has been talked about so far in this chapter. Children, parents, and communities need to become more positive about asking for help from child and family welfare systems. Service providers need to become less preoccupied with legal liability in carrying out their work. They need access to a much broader array of helping strategies for children, parents, and families. They need substantially more time to do this work. Formal system demands on their time must be greatly reduced. They need to feel respected as professionals within the system and in the community. They need partners in keeping kids safe and in supporting families. Is this too utopian a vision? Certainly it has proven very difficult to move existing child protection systems even marginally in these directions. Yet. To our way of thinking, there is nothing inherent in the mandate to protect children from maltreatment or in the periodic necessity of using coercive legal power that makes shifts in these directions impossible. It all depends on how we believe the enterprise can be best organized. From our perspective, without changes to some of the fundamentals in how we currently “do” child protection work, significant

300  Gary Cameron

progress on building a sustainable, respected, and motivated child protection workforce is very unlikely. Future Directions Our earlier international comparisons highlighted commonalities as well as significant differences in approaches to child and family welfare (Freymond & Cameron, 2006). These comparisons suggested that the development of child and family welfare systems could profitably be conceived of as a series of choices about different design dimensions. Several important implications flow from this emphasis. First, communal values and intentions are always central to policy and service delivery in child and family welfare. There are no neutral templates. Second, there is little that is inevitable or universal in how any setting has organized or should organize its approach to child and family welfare. This insight is particularly important for North American jurisdictions, which seldom look elsewhere for insights and have been very assertive in exporting their ideas around the globe (Wulczyn et al., 2010; Save the Children, 2010). Obviously, we envision a child and family welfare system that would be very different from the approach investigated in this program of research. However, the North American model of child protection has been remarkably impervious to change in its core principles and operating procedures for a very long time (Cameron et al., 2007). While a major reshaping of this child protection model does not seem imminent, there remains useful space for movement. This research has also demonstrated that worthwhile innovations such as accessible service delivery locations and co-location with other services and community partners are within the reach of individual child welfare agencies. It is also imaginable that local initiatives could increase positive programming initiatives. It has been clear in this program of research that local leadership matters. These types of innovations grew in agencies where senior managers initiated and consistently supported them; they were absent elsewhere. It is also true that local leaders influence leaders in other jurisdictions. But clearly there are limits to what can be accomplished with existing formal system parameters. While numerous reviews have concluded that the current child protection model is “not sustainable,” these processes have not progressed so far to any deep questioning of the established child protection model’s values or its basic service delivery

Questions and Suggestions 301

procedures. As we’ve argued, unless these intentions and ways of working are substantially modified, these child protection jurisdictions are unlikely to produce more satisfactory results. None of these modifications would be easy to design and they would be even harder to implement. A much richer, more nuanced, and more inclusive statement of values and intentions is needed to guide our system of child and family welfare. Our focus on the protection of children has become too narrow. It obstructs our view of what is going on in the lives of children, families, and neighbourhoods. It fosters “formulaic” and often incongruent interventions with children and parents. It is not sensible to talk about protecting children without consideration of their need to be embedded in capable families and communities. It is untoward to concentrate on preventing the “maltreatment” of children while substantially ignoring what they need to improve their life chances. It is unfair to hold disadvantaged parents accountable for the care of their children without being willing to share responsibility with them. There is no need to view so many parents as potentially culpable; we should strive to create productive helping relationships whenever possible. Child protection services should value partnerships of many kinds and strive to create them. We need a richer portrait of the diverse ways that children can be kept safer from harm. There is a need for a new narrative about the purposes and nature of the child and family welfare enterprise. Hopefully, it will be more respectful and congruent with the lives of children, families, and neighbourhoods. The biggest challenge will be to lessen the grip of formal government bureaucracy and the legal profession upon this narrative. If we dare to extend this story, it might even protect space for the voices and the capabilities of children and parents in determining how they should be understood and what they need in their lives.

This page intentionally left blank

Bibliography

Alpert, L.T. (2005). Research review: Parents’ service experience – a missing element in research on foster care case outcomes. Child & Family Social Work, 10(4), 361–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2005.00387.x Alvesson, M., & Skoldberg, K. (2000). Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research. London: Sage. Andersen, M., & Gobeil, S. (2002). Recruitment and retention in child welfare services: A survey of Child Welfare League of Canada member agencies. Ottawa: Child Welfare League of Canada. Also available at www.cecw-cepb.ca Anderson, K. (1998). A Canadian child welfare agency for urban Natives: The clients speak. Child Welfare, 70, 441–60. Andersson, G. (2006). Child and family welfare in Sweden. In N. Freymond & G. Cameron (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service, and community caring systems (pp. 171–90). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Appleton, C., & Weld, N. (2005). The journey of strengths-based practice and integration of the Signs of Safety tool within the Learning Lab at Tauranga service delivery site for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services, New Zealand. Presented at the Signs of Safety Gathering, Gateshead, England, August 2005. Arendell, T. (1999). Hegemonic motherhood: Deviancy discourses and employed mothers’ accounts of out-of-school time issues. Berkeley: Center for Working Families, University of California. Badgett, M.V.L., & Folbre, N. (2001). Assigning care: gender norms and economic outcomes. In M. Fetherolf Loutfi (Ed.), Women, gender and work: What is equality and how do we get there? (pp. 327–5). Geneva: International Labour Organization.

304  Bibliography Baines, C. (1998). Women’s professions and an ethic of care. In C. Baines, P. Evans, & S.N. Neysmith (Eds.), Women’s caring: Feminist perspectives on social welfare (pp. 23–46). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Baines, C., Evans, P., & Neysmith, S. (Eds.). (1991). Women’s caring: Feminist perspectives on social welfare. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Bala, N. (2004). Child welfare law in Canada: An introduction. In N. Bala, M.K. Zapf, R.J. Williams, R Vogel, & J.P. Hornick (Eds.), Canadian child welfare law: Children, families and the state (pp. 1–25). Toronto: Thompson. Barbee, A.P., Antle, B., Sullivan, D.J., Huebner, R., Fox, S., & Hall, J.C. (2009). Recruiting and retaining child welfare workers: Is preparing social work students enough for sustained commitment to the field? Child Welfare, 88(5), 69–86. Medline:20187563 Bellamy, J.L. (2009). A national study of male involvement among families in contact with the child welfare system. Child Maltreatment, 14(3), 255–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077559508326288 Medline:18984807 Black, T., Trocmé, N., Fallon, B., & MacLaurin, B. (2008, March). The Canadian child welfare system response to exposure to domestic violence investigations. Child Abuse & Neglect, 32(3), 393–404. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j .chiabu.2007.10.002 Medline:18377986 Blackstock, C., Trocmé, N., & Bennett, M. (2004, August). Child maltreatment investigations among aboriginal and non-aboriginal families in Canada. Violence against Women, 10(8), 901–16. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1077801204266312 Bradley, G., Engelbrecht, L., & Hojer, S. (2010). Supervision: A force for change: Three stories told. International Social Work, 53(6), 773–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020872809358401 Brown, D. (2006). Working the system: Re-thinking the institutionally organized role of mothers and the reduction of “risk” in child protection work. Social Problems, 53(3), 352–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/sp.2006.53.3.352 Burford, G., Pennell, J., & Edwards, M. (2011). Family team meetings as principled advocacy. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 5(2–3), 318–44. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/15548732.2011.566786 Butler, A., Ford, D., & Tregaskis, C. (2007). Who do we think we are? Self and reflexivity in social work practice. Qualitative Social Work, 6(3), 281–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1473325007080402 Cahalane, H., & Sites, E.W. (2008). The climate of child welfare employee retention. Child Welfare, 87(1), 91–114. Medline:18575259 Callahan, M. (1985). Public apathy and government parsimony: A review of child welfare in Canada. In K.L. Levitt & B. Wharf (Eds.), The challenge of child welfare (pp. 1–27). Vancouver: University of British Columbia.

Bibliography 305 Callahan, M. (1993). Feminist approaches: Women recreate child welfare. In B. Wharf (Ed.), Rethinking child welfare in canada (pp. 172–209). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Callahan, M., & Lumb, C. (1995, May–June). My cheque and my children: The long road to empowerment in child welfare. Child Welfare, 74(3), 795–819. Medline:7729174 Cameron, G. (2006). Basic choices in child and family welfare: Lessons from child protection, family service, and community caring systems (Kinderschutz gameinsam gestalten: § 8a SGB VIII – Schutzauftrag der Kinder- und Jugenhilfe) (Vol. 58). Berlin: Beitrage zur Kinder- und Jugendhilfe. Cameron, G., Coady, N., & Adams, G. (2007). Moving towards positive systems of child and family welfare: Current issues and future directions. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Cameron, G., & Freymond, N. (2006). Understanding international comparisons of child protection, family service, and community caring systems of child and family welfare. In N. Freymond & G. Cameron (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service, and community caring systems (pp. 3–26). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cameron, G., Freymond, N., Cornfield, D., & Palmer, S. (2007). Positive possibilities for child and family welfare: Options for expanding the AngloAmerican child protection paradigm. In G. Cameron, N. Coady, & G. Adams (Eds.), Moving towards positive systems of child and family welfare: Current issues and future directions (pp. 1–78). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Cameron, G., Hazineh, L., & Frensch, K. (2010). Transforming front line child protection practice: Synthesis report. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University, Faculty of Social Work, Partnerships for Children and Families Project. Retrieved from: http://www.wlu.ca/docsnpubs_detail.php?grp_ id=1288&doc_id=41201 Cameron, G., & Hoy, S. (2003). Summary: Stories of mothers and child welfare. Unpublished manuscript. Cameron, G., Karabanow, J., Peirson, L., Laurendeau, M.C., & Chamberland, C. (2001). Program implementation and replication. In I. Prilleltensky, G. Nelson, & L. Peirson (Eds.), Promoting family wellness and preventing child maltreatment: Fundamentals for thinking and action (pp. 318–46). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cameron, G., O’Reilly, J., Laurendeau, M.C., & Chamberland, C. (2001). Programming for distressed and disadvantaged adolescents. In I. Prilleltensky, G. Nelson, & L. Peirson (Eds.), Promoting family wellness and preventing child maltreatment: Fundamentals for thinking and action (pp. 289–338). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

306  Bibliography Cameron, G., & Vanderwoerd, J. (1997). Protecting children and supporting families. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Chahine, Z., van Straaten, J., & Williams-Isom, A. (2005, March–April). The New York City neighborhood-based services strategy. Child Welfare, 84(2), 141–52. Medline:15828405 Chapman, M.V., Gibbons, C.B., Barth, R.P., McCrae, J.S., & NSCAW Research Group. (2003, September–October). Parental views of in-home services: what predicts satisfaction with child welfare workers? Child Welfare, 82(5), 571–596. Medline:14524426 Charmaz, K. (2000). Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 509–35). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Charmaz, K. (2007). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sage. Chen, S., & Scannapieco, M. (2010). The influence of job satisfaction on child welfare workers’ desire to stay: An examination of the interaction effect of self-efficacy and supportive supervision. Children and Youth Services Review, 32(4), 482–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.10.014 Child Welfare Secretariat. (2005). Child welfare transformation 2005. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services. Child Welfare Secretariat. (2006). Linking child welfare and the children’s service system in Ontario: A policy framework for communities. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services. Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect (2010). Community partnerships: Improving the response to child maltreatment. Retrieved from http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/partners/ chapter1.cfm Clapton, G. (2009). How and why social work fails fathers: Redessing an imbalance, social work’s role and responsibility. Practice: Social Work in Action, 21(1), 17–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503150902745989 Coady, N., & de Boer, C. (2006). Good helping relationships in child welfare: Learning from stories of success. Child & Family Social Work, 12(1), 32–42. Coleman, H., Unrau, Y., & Manyfingers, B. (2001). Revamping family preservation services for native families. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 10(1), 49–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J051v10n01_03 Coley, R.L. (1998, February). Children’s socialization experiences and functioning in single-mother households: The importance of fathers and other men. Child Development, 69(1), 219–30. Medline:9499568 Collins-Camargo, C., Sullivan, D.J., Washeck, B., Adams, J., & Sundet, P. (2009). One state’s effort to improve recruitment, retention, and practice

Bibliography 307 through multifaceted clinical supervision interventions. Child Welfare, 88(5), 87–107. Medline:20187564 Combrinck-Graham, L. (2006). Preface. In L. Combrinck-Graham (Ed.), Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment (pp. ix–xi). New York: The Guilford Press. Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare (2010, May). Reducing administrative burden in child welfare, working paper 1. Toronto: Author. Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare. (2010, June). Towards sustainable child welfare in Ontario, first report. Toronto: Author. Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare (2010, July). Jurisdictional comparisons of child welfare system design, working paper 2. Toronto: Author. Conley, A., & Duerr Berrick, J. (2010, November). Community-based child abuse prevention: Outcomes associated with a differential response program in California. Child Maltreatment, 15(4), 282–92. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1077559510376236 Medline:20647255 Connor, M. (2002). Counseling African-American fathers: A program for active involvement. In T. Parham (Ed.), Counseling persons of African descent: Raising the bar of practical competence (pp. 119–40). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452229119.n8 Cooper, A., Hetherington, R., & Katz, I. (2003). Risk-aversion in social work leads to a more extreme intervention later, not a less extreme intervention sooner. London: Demos. Cooper Altman, J. (2008a). Engaging families in child welfare services: worker versus client perspectives. Child Welfare, 87(3), 41–61. Medline:19189804 Cooper Altman, J. (2008b). A study of engagement in neighborhood-based child welfare services. Research on Social Work Practice, 18(6), 555–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731507309825 Dale, P. (2004). “Like a fish in a bowl”: Parents’ perceptions of child protection services. Child Abuse Review, 13(2), 137–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ car.837 Davidson Arad, B. (2001, January). Parental features and quality of life in the decision to remove children at risk from home. Child Abuse & Neglect, 25(1), 47–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0145-2134(00)00229-5 Medline:11214812 Davies, E., Seymour, F., & Read, J. (2001). Children’s and primary caretakers’ perceptions of the sexual abuse investigation process: A New Zealand example. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 9(2), 41–56. http://dx.doi. org/10.1300/J070v09n02_03 Davies, L., & Krane, J. (1996). Shaking the legacy of mother blaming: No easy task for child welfare. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 7(2), 3–23.

308  Bibliography Davies, P. (2011). The impact of a child protection investigation: A personal reflective account. Child & Family Social Work, 16(2), 201–9. http://dx.doi .org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2010.00732.x de Boer, C., & Coady, N. (2003). Good helping relationships in child welfare: Co-authored stories of success. Partnerships for Children and Families Project, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University. http://www.wlu.ca/ docsnpubs_detail.php?grp_id=1288&doc_id=7214 de Boer, C., & Coady, N. (2007). Good helping relationships in child welfare: Learning from stories of success. Child & Family Social Work, 12(1), 32–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00438.x DePanfilis, D., & Zlotnik, J.L. (2008). Retention of front-line staff in child welfare: A systemic review of research. Children and Youth Services Review, 30(9), 995–1008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2007.12.017 de Paúl, J., & Domenech, L. (2000, May). Childhood history of abuse and child abuse potential in adolescent mothers: A longitudinal study. Child Abuse & Neglect, 24(5), 701–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0145-2134(00)00124-1 Medline:10819101 Deutsch, F.M. (2001). Equally shared parenting. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(1), 25–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00107 Devault, A., & Gratton, S. (2003). Unemployed fathers: The importance of supporting them according to their needs. Pratiques Psychologiques, 5(2), 79–88. Devault, A., Lacharite, C., Ouellet, F., & Forget, G. (2003). Fathers in a situation of economic and social exclusion: Rejoining and adequately supporting them. Nouvelles Pratiques Sociales, 16(1), 45–58. Dickinson, N.S., & Perry, R.E. (2003). Factors influencing the retention of specially educated public child welfare workers. Journal of Health and Social Policy, 15(3–4), 89–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J045v15n03_07 Medline:12705466 Dienhart, A. (2001). Engaging men in family therapy: Does the gender of the therapist make a difference? Journal of Family Therapy, 23(1), 21–45. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.00167 Differential Response Sub-Committee of Ontario Children’s Aid Society Directors of Service. (2004). A differential service response for child welfare in Ontario. Toronto: Author. DiLeonardi, J. (1993). Families in poverty and chronic neglect of children. Families in Society, 74(9), 557–62. Dominelli, L., Strega, S., Walmsley, C., Callahan, M., & Brown, L. (2011). Here’s my story: Fathers of “looked after” children recount their experience

Bibliography 309 in the Canadian child welfare system. British Journal of Social Work, 41(2), 351–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcq099 Dore, M.M., & Alexander, L.B. (1996, April). Preserving families at risk of child abuse and neglect: The role of the helping alliance. Child Abuse & Neglect, 20(4), 349–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0145-2134(96)00004-X Medline:8730771 Drake, B. (1994, September). Relationship competencies in child welfare services. Social Work, 39(5), 595–602. Medline:7939871 Drake, B. (1996). Consumer and worker perceptions of key child welfare competencies. Children and Youth Services Review, 18(3), 261–79. http://dx. doi.org/10.1016/0190-7409(96)00004-7 Dubowitz, H., Newton, R.R., Litrownik, A.J., Lewis, T., Briggs, E.C., Thompson, R., English, D., Lee, L., & Feerick, M.M. (2005, May). Examination of a conceptual model of child neglect. Child Maltreatment, 10(2), 173–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077559505275014 Medline:15798011 Duhig, A.M., Phares, V., & Birkeland, R.W. (2002). Involvement of fathers in therapy: A survey of clinicians. Professional Psychology, Research and Practice, 33(4), 389–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.33.4.389 Dumbrill, G.C. (2006, January). Parental experience of child protection intervention: A qualitative study. Child Abuse & Neglect, 30(1), 27–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2005.08.012 Medline:16412505 Dumbrill, G.C., & Maiter, S. (2003). Child protection clients designing the services they receive: An idea from practice. Child and Family: A Journal of the Notre Dame Child and Family Institute, 7, 5–10. The Early Help Project (2012). Becoming the help that families need: Why early help makes sense for child welfare in Ontario: Retrieved from http://positivesystems.ca/publications/. Eggebeen, D. (2002). The changing course of fatherhood: Men’s experiences with children in demographic perspective. Journal of Family Issues, 23(4), 486–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192513X02023004002 Ellett, A.J. (2009). Intentions to remain employed in child welfare: The role of human caring, self-efficacy beliefs, and professional organizational culture. Children and Youth Services Review, 31(1), 78–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j .childyouth.2008.07.002 Ellett, A.J., Ellis, J.I., Westbrook, T.M., & Dews, D. (2007). A qualitative study of 369 child welfare professionals’ perspectives about factors contributing to employee retention and turnover. Children and Youth Services Review, 29(2), 264–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.childyouth.2006.07.005

310  Bibliography Ethier, L.S., Lacharité, C., & Couture, G. (1995, May). Childhood adversity, parental stress, and depression of negligent mothers. Child Abuse & Neglect, 19(5), 619–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0145-2134(95)00020-9 Medline:7664141 Evans, T., & Harris, J. (2004). Citizenship, social inclusion and confidentiality. British Journal of Social Work, 34(1), 69–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/ bch006 Faller, K.C., Grabarek, M., & Ortega, R.M. (2010). Commitment to child welfare work: What predicts leaving and staying? Children and Youth Services Review, 32(6), 840–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.02.003 Farmer, E. (1993). The impact of child protection interventions: The experiences of parents and children. In L. Waterhouse (Ed.), Child abuse and child abusers: Protection and prevention, research highlights in social work, 24 (pp. 38–57). London: Jessica Kingsley (Gage Publishers). Farmer, E., & Owen, M. (1998). Gender and the child protection process. British Journal of Social Work, 28(4), 545–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ oxfordjournals.bjsw.a011366 Featherstone, B. (1999). Taking mothering seriously: The implications for child protection. Child & Family Social Work, 4(1), 43–53. http://dx.doi .org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.1999.00099.x Featherstone, B. (2001, May). Putting fathers on the child welfare agenda. Child & Family Social Work, 6(2), 179–86. http://dx.doi. org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.2001.00195.x Featherstone, B. (2003). Taking fathers seriously. British Journal of Social Work, 33(2), 239–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/33.2.239 Fernandez, E. (1996). Significant harm: Unravelling child protection decisions and substitute care carers of children: Perspectives of child welfare workers and biological parents. Aldershot: Avebury. Fetterman, D. (1989). Ethnography: Step-by step. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Fine, M., & Mandell, D. (2003) Family talk. Parents and children involved with the child welfare and children’s mental health systems. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University. Available at: http://www.wlu.ca/pcfproject/ Fine, M., Palmer, S., & Coady, N. (2003). Listening to the voices of service participants in child protective services, children’s mental health and psychotherapy. In W. Shera (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on anti-oppressive practice (pp. 279–98). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Fine, M., Palmer, S., & Coady, N. (2007). Service participant voices in child welfare, children’s mental health, and psychotherapy. In G. Cameron, N. Coady, & G. Adams (Eds.), Moving toward positive systems of child

Bibliography 311 and family welfare: Current issues and future directions (pp. 187–247). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Fook, J., & Gardner, F. (2007). Practising critical reflection: A resource handbook. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Springer-Verlag. Franck, E.J. (2001, May–June). Outreach to birthfathers of children in out-of-home care. Child Welfare, 80(3), 381–99. Medline:11380047 Frensch, K., & Cameron, G. (2003). Bridging or maintaining distance. A matched comparison of parent and service provider realities in child welfare. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University. Available at: http:// www.wlu.ca/pcfproject/. Frensch, K.M., Cameron, G., & Hazineh, L. (2005). A study of three community and school based models of child welfare service delivery in Ontario: An exploration of parents’, service providers’, and community experiences. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University, Partnerships for Children and Families Project. Freymond, N. (2003). Child placement and mothering ideologies: Images of mothers in child welfare. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University, Partnerships for Children and Families Project. Freymond, N. (2007). Using intermediary structures to support families: An international comparison of practice in child protection. In G. Cameron, N. Coady, & G. Adams (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: Current issues and future directions (pp. 161–86). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Freymond, N. & Cameron, G. (Eds.). (2006). Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service, and community care models. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Freymond, N., & Cameron, G. (2007). Mothers and child welfare child placements. In G. Cameron, N. Coady, & G.R. Adams (Eds.), Moving toward positive systems of child and family welfare: Current issues and future directions (pp. 79–114). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Freymond, N., & Cameron, G. (2011). Child welfare interventions that make sense to mothers. In K. Kufeldt & B. McKenzie (Eds.), Child welfare: Connecting research, policy and practice (2nd ed., pp. 131–43) Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Garbarino, J., & Sherman, D. (1980). Identifying high-risk neighbourhoods. In J. Garbarino, S.H. Stocking, & Associates (Eds.), Protecting children from abuse and neglect: Developing and maintaining effective support systems for families (pp. 94–108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

312  Bibliography Gitterman, A. (1989). Building mutual support in groups. Social Work with Groups, 12(2), 5–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J009v12n02_02 Gladstone, J., & Brown, R.A. (2007). Grandparents’ and social workers’ experiences with the child welfare system: A case for mutual resources. Children and Youth Services Review, 29(11), 1439–53. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2007.07.002 Gladstone, J., Dumbrill, G., Leslie, B., Koster, A., Young, M., & Ismaila, A. (2012). Looking at engagement and outcome from the perspectives of child protection workers and parents. Children and Youth Services Review, 34(1), 112–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.09.003 Glisson, C. (2007). Assessing and changing organizational culture and climate for effective services. Research on Social Work Practice, 17(6), 736–47. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731507301659 Gockel, A., Russell, M., & Harris, B. (2008). Recreating family: parents identify worker-client relationships as paramount in family preservation programs. Child Welfare, 87(6), 91–113. Medline:19534355 Gomez, R., Travis, D., Ayers-Lopez, S., & Schwab, A. (2010). In search of innovation: Anational qualitative analysis of child welfare recruitment and retention efforts. Children and Youth Services Review, 32(5), 664–71. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.01.001 Gonzalez, R.P., Faller, K.C., Ortega, R.M., & Tropman, J. (2009). Exit interviews with departed child welfare workers: Preliminary findings. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 3(1), 40–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15548730802690833 Gordon, D.M., Iwamoto, D., Watkins, N.D., Kershaw, T., Mason, D., & Judkins, A. (2011). Promoting responsible fatherhood programming: Factors affecting low-income fathers’ involvement in child protection services and court-restricted access to their children. Journal of Poverty, 15(2), 184–205. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2011.563173 Gordon, L. (1985, May–June). Child abuse, gender, and the myth of family independence: A historical critique. Child Welfare, 64(3), 213–24. Medline:3893926 Greaves, L., Varcoe, C., Poole, N., Morrow, M., Johnson, J., Pederson, A. (2002). A motherhood issue: Discourses on mothering under duress. Ottawa: Status of Women Canada. Hare-Mustin, R.T., & Marecek, J. (1988). The meaning of difference: Gender theory, postmodernism and psychology. American Psychologist, 43(6), 455–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.43.6.455 Harvey, C., & Stalker, C. (2007). Understanding and preventing employee turnover. In G. Cameron, N. Coady, & G. Adams (Eds.), Moving towards

Bibliography 313 positive systems of child and family welfare: Current issues and future directions (pp. 273–320). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Healy, K. (2001). Reinventing critical social work practice: Challenges from practice, context and postmodernism. Critical Social Work, 2(1). E-journal. Helfer, M.E. (1997). Communication in the therapeutic relationship: Concepts, strategies, and skills. In M.E. Helfer, R.S. Kempe, & R.D. Krugman (Eds.), The battered child (5th ed., pp. 107–19). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hetherington, R., Cooper, A., Smith, P., & Wilford, G. (1997). Protecting children: Messages from Europe. Lyme Regis: Russell House. Hicks, S. (2006). Social work in Canada: An introduction (2nd ed.). Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing. Hiilamo, H., & Saarikallio-Torp, M. (2011). Child custody placement outcomes for mothers. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(9), 1489–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.03.010 Holland, S. (2000). The assessment relationship: Interactions between social workers and parents in child welfare assessments. British Journal of Social Work, 30, 149–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/30.2.149 Hopkins, K.M., Cohen-Callow, A., Kim, H.J., & Hwang, J. (2010). Beyond intent to leave: Using multiple outcomes measures for assessing turnover in child welfare. Children and Youth Services Review, 32(10), 1380–7. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.06.006 Horvath, A.O., & Symonds, B.D. (1991). Relation between working alliance and outcome in psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 38(2), 139–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.38.2.139 Howe, D. (2010). The safety of children and the parent-worker relationship in cases of child abuse and neglect. Child Abuse Review, 19(5), 330–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/car.1136 Hubbell, R. (1981). Foster care and families: Conflicting values and policies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hudspeth, C. (2003). Does class matter in father-child interaction? Dissertation Abstracts International: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 63(10). Hughes, J., Chau, S., & Poff, D.C. (2011). “They’re not my favourite people”: What mothers who have experienced intimate partner violence say about involvement in the child protection system. Child and Youth Services, 33(7), 1084–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.01.015 Hughes, L., & Pengelly, P. (1997). Staff supervision in a turbulent environment: Managing process and task in frontline services. London: Jessica Kingsley.

314  Bibliography Itzkowitz, A. (2006). Children in placement: A place for family therapy. In L. Combrinck-Graham (Ed.), Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment (pp. 382–407). New York: The Guilford Press. Jenney, A. (2011). Doing the right thing: Negotiating risk and safety in child protection work with domestic violence cases (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (No. NR77949). Jenkins, S. (1981). The tie that bonds. In A.N. Maluccio & P.A. Sinanoglu (Eds.), The challenge of partnership: Working with parents of children in foster care (pp. 39–51). New York: Child Welfare League of America. Jenson, C.E., Pine, B.A., Spath, R., & Kerman, B. (2009). Developing strong helping alliances in family reunification. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 3(4), 331–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15548730903347812 Kapp, S.A., & Propp, J. (2002). Client satisfaction methods: Input from parents with children in foster care. Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal, 19(3), 227–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1015580015223 Keegan Eamon, M., & Kopels, S. (2004). “For reasons of poverty”: Court challenges to child welfare practices and mandated programs. Children and Youth Services Review, 26(9), 821–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.childyouth.2004.02.023 Kline, M. (1995). Complicating the ideology of motherhood: Child welfare law and first nation women. In M.A. Fineman & I. Karpin (Eds.), Mothers in law: Feminist theory and the legal regulation of motherhood. (pp. 118–41).New York: Columbia University Press. Koeske, G.F., & Koeske, R.D. (1989). Work load and burnout: Can social support and perceived accomplishment help? Social Work, 34, 243–8. Kost, K. (2001). The function of fathers: What poor men say about fatherhood. Families in Society, 82(5), 499–508. Kovalesky, A., & Flagler, S. (1997, September–October). Child placement issues of women with addictions. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing, 26(5), 585–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1552-6909.1997 .tb02162.x Medline:9313189 Krane, J. (2003). What’s mother got to do with it? Protecting children from sexual abuse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Kufeldt, K. (2011). Foster care: An essential part of the continuum of care. In K. Kufeldt & B. McKenzie (Eds.), Child welfare: Connecting research, policy and practice (2nd ed., pp. 157–72). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Lamb, M. (2000). The history of research on father involvement: An overview. Marriage & Family Review, 29(2–3), 23–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/ J002v29n02_03

Bibliography 315 Lambert, M.J., & Ogles, B.M. (2004). The efficacy and effectiveness of psychotherapy. In M.J. Lambert (Ed.), Bergin and Garfield’s handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change (5th ed., pp. 139–93). New York: Wiley. Landsman, M. (2001). Commitment in public child welfare. Social Service Review, 75(3), 386–419. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/322857 Lazar, A., Sagi, A., & Fraser, M. (1991). Involving fathers in social services. Children and Youth Services Review, 13(4), 287–300. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/0190-7409(91)90065-P Leddy, M.J. (2011). The other face of God: When the stranger calls us home. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Lee, B.J., & Goerge, R.M. (1999). Poverty, early childbearing, and child maltreatment: A multinomial analysis. Children and Youth Services Review, 21(9–10), 755–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0190-7409(99)00053-5 Lee, C.D., & Ayón, C. (2004). Is the client-worker relationship associated with better outcomes in mandated child abuse cases? Research on Social Work Practice, 14(5), 351–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731504265833 Lee, J., Forster, M., & Rehner, T. (2011). The retention of public child welfare workers: The roles of professional organizational culture and coping strategies. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(1), 102–9. http://dx.doi .org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.08.019 Lee, R.T., & Ashforth, B.E. (1996, April). A meta-analytic examination of the correlates of the three dimensions of job burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(2), 123–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.81.2.123 Medline:8603909 Lee, T.W., Mitchell, T.R., Holtom, B.C., McDaniel, L.S., & Hill, J.W. (1999). The unfolding model of voluntary turnover: A replication and extension. Academy of Management Journal, 42(4), 450–62. Leigh, S., & Miller, C. (2004). Is the third way the best way? Social work intervention with children and families. Journal of Social Work, 4(3), 245–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468017304047744 Leiter, M., & Durup, M. (1996). Work, home and in-between: A longitudinal study of spillover. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 32(1), 29–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021886396321002 Leschied, A.W., Chiodo, D., Whitehead, P.C., & Hurley, D. (2005). The relationship between maternal depression and child outcomes in a child welfare sample: Implications for treatment and policy. Child & Family Social Work, 10(4), 281–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2005.00365.x Leschied, A., Whitehead, P.C., Hurley, D., & Chiodo, D. (2004). Protecting children is everybody’s business. OACAS Journal, 47(3), 10–15.

316  Bibliography Leslie, B., Callahan, M., Strega, S., Walmsley, C., & Dominelli, L. (2011). Manufacturing ghost fathers: The paradox of father presence and absence in child welfare. Child & Family Social Work, 14(1), 25–34. Lietz, C.A. (2009). Critical theory as a framework for child welfare decisionmaking: Some possibilities. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 3(2), 190–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15548730902855062 Lincoln, Y.S., & Guba, E.G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Lindsey, D. (1994). The welfare of children. New York: Oxford University Press. Lipchik, E., Derks, J., Lacourt, M., & Nunnally, E. (2012). The evolution of solution-focused brief therapy. In C. Franklin, T.S. Trepper, W.J. Gingerich, & E.E. McCollum (Eds.), Solution-focused brief therapy: A handbook of evidencebased practice. (pp. 3–19). New York: Oxford University Press. Littell, J.H. (2001). Client participation and outcomes of intensive family preservation services. Social Work Research, 25(2), 103–13. http://dx.doi. org/10.1093/swr/25.2.103 Love, C. (2006). Maori perspectives on collaboration and colonization in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand child and family welfare policies and practices. In N. Freymond & G. Cameron (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service, and community caring systems (pp. 237–68). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lupton, D., & Barclay, L. (1997). Constructing fatherhood. London: Sage. MacLaurin, B., Trocmé, N., & Fallon, B. (2003). Characteristics of investigated children and families referred for out-of-home placements. In K. Kufeldt & B. McKenzie (Eds.), Child welfare: Connecting research, policy, and practice (pp. 27–40). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Madsen, W.C. (2007). Collaborative therapy with multi-stressed families. London: The Guilford Press. Maiter, S., Palmer, S., & Manji, S. (2006). Strengthening social worker–client relationships in child protective services addressing power imbalances and “ruptured” relationships. Qualitative Social Work, 5(2), 161–86. http://dx .doi.org/10.1177/1473325006064255 Maluccio, A. (1979). Learning from clients. New York: Free Press. Mandell, D. (2007). Use of self: Contexts and dimensions. In D. Mandell (Ed.), Revisiting the use of self: Questioning professional identities (pp. 1–19). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Mandell, D. (2008). Power, care and vulnerability: Considering use of self in child welfare work. Journal of Social Work Practice, 22(2), 235–48. http://dx .doi.org/10.1080/02650530802099916

Bibliography 317 Mandell, D., Blackstock, C., Clouston Carlson, J., & Fine, M. (2006). From child welfare to child, family and community welfare: The agenda of Canada’s aboriginal peoples. In N. Freymond & G. Cameron (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service and community caring systems (pp. 211–36). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mandell, D., Clouston Carlson, J., Fine, M., & Blackstock, C. (2007). Aboriginal child welfare. In G. Cameron, N. Coady, & G. Adams (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: Current issues and future directions (pp. 115–59). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Mandell, D., Stalker, C., Wright, M., Frensch, K., & Harvey, C. (forthcoming). Sinking, swimming and sailing: Experiences of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in child welfare employees. Child & Family Welfare. Manji, S., Maiter, S., & Palmer, S. (2005). Community and informal social support for recipients of child protective services. Children and Youth Services Review, 27(3), 291–308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2004.10.006 Mansell, J., Ota, R., Erasmus, R., & Marks, K. (2011). Reframing child protection: A response to a constant crisis of confidence in child protection. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(11), 2076–86. http://dx.doi .org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.04.019 Marcenko, M.O., Lyons, S.J., & Courtney, M. (2011). Mothers’ experiences, resources and needs: The context for reunification. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(3), 431–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.childyouth.2010.06.020 Margolin, L. (1997). Under the cover of kindness: The invention of social work. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Marshall, D.B., English, D.J., & Stewart, A.J. (2001). The effect of fathers or father figures on child behavioural problems in families referred to child protective services. Child Maltreatment, 6(4), 290–9. http://dx.doi .org/10.1177/1077559501006004002 Maslach, C., Jackson, S., & Leiter, M. (1996). Maslach Burnout Inventory manual. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press. Mayer, M., Dufour, S., Lavergne, C., Girard, M., & Trocmé, N. (2003). Comparing parental characteristics regarding child neglect: An analysis of cases retained by child protection services in Quebec. Montreal: Center of Excellence for Child Welfare. McBride, B.A., Schoppe-Sullivan, S.J., & Ho, M. (2005). The mediating role of fathers’ school involvement on student achievement. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26(2), 201–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j .appdev.2004.12.007

318  Bibliography McCurdy, K., & Jones, E. (2000). Supporting families: Lessons from the field. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McGowan, B.G., Auerbach, C., & Strolin-Goltzman, J.S. (2009). Turnover in the child welfare workforce: A different perspective. Journal of Social Service Research, 35(3), 228–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01488370902900782 McMahon, T., & Giannini, F. (2003). Substance-abusing fathers in family court: Moving from popular stereotypes to therapeutic jurisprudence. Family Court Review, 41(3), 337–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1531244503041003006 Mennen, F.E., & O’Keefe, M. (2005). Informed decisions in child welfare: The use of attachment theory. Children and Youth Services Review, 27(6), 577–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2004.11.011 Mills, J., Bonner, A., & Francis, K. (2006, February). Adopting a constructivist approach to grounded theory: Implications for research design. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 12(1), 8–13. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1440-172X.2006.00543.x Medline:16403191 Ministry of Children and Family Development. (2006). Family group conference reference guide. Victoria, BC: Author. Minuchin, P., Colapinto, J., & Minuchin, S. (2007). Working with families of the poor (2nd ed.). New York: The Guilford Press. Morrill, W.A. (1996). Getting beyond the micro “Gee Whiz”: Can innovative service change the service system? In A. Kahn & S. Kammerman (Eds.), Children and their families in big cities (pp. 186–210). New York: Cross-National Studies Research Program Columbia University School of Social Work. Mulcahy, M. (2010). Mothering on the margins: Exploring how mothers make meaning of an encounter with child protection services. Retrieved from ProQuest Information and Learning, Ann Arbor, MI (No. AAIMR61631). Mullins, J.L. (2011). A framework for cultivating and increasing child welfare workers’ empathy toward parents. Journal of Social Service Research, 37(3), 242–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2011.564030 Myers, S. (2005). A signs of safety approach to assessing children with sexually concerning or harmful behaviour. Child Abuse Review, 14(2), 97–112. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1002/car.887 National Child Welfare Resource Centre for Family-Centered Practice. Services. Retrieved 25 October 2004 from www.cwresource.org/services_moreServices .htm National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice. (2001). Services. Retrieved 25 October 2004 from http://www.uiowa.edu/~nrcfcp/ publications/completed_repts_pre_2000.shtml Nelson, G., Laurendeau, M.C., Chamberland, C., & Peirson, L. (2001). A review and analysis of programs to promote family wellness and prevent

Bibliography 319 the maltreatment of pre-school and elementary school-aged children. In I. Prilleltensky, G. Nelson, & L. Peirson (Eds.), Promoting family wellness and preventing child maltreatment: Fundamentals for thinking and action (pp. 221–88). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nichols, M.P. (2011). The essentials of family therapy (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Nissly, J.A., Barak, M.E.M., & Levin, A. (2005). Stress, support and workers’ intentions to leave their jobs in public child welfare. Administration in Social Work, 29(1), 79–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J147v29n01_06 O’Donnell, J. (2001). Paternal involvement in kinship foster care services in one father and multiple father families. Child Welfare, 80(4), 453–77. O’Hagan, K. (1997). The problem of engaging men in child protection work. British Journal of Social Work, 27(1), 25–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ oxfordjournals.bjsw.a011194 Okiishi, J., Lambert, M.J., Nielsen, S.L., & Ogles, B.M. (2003). Waiting for supershrink: An empirical analysis of therapist effects. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 10(6), 361–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpp.383 Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth. (2005). Child welfare transformation 2005: A strategic plan for a flexible structural and outcome oriented service delivery model. Toronto: Author. Orlinsky, D.E., Ronnestad, M.H., & Willutzki, U. (2004). Fifty years of psychotherapy process-outcome research: Continuity and change. In M.J. Lambert (Ed.), Bergin and Garfield’s handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change (5th ed., pp. 307–89). New York: Wiley. Palmer, S., Maiter, S., & Manji, S. (2006). Effective intervention is child protective services: Learning from parents. Children and Youth Services Review, 28(7), 812–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.08.010 Papadaki, E., & Papadaki, V. (2008). Ethically difficult experiences related to organizational conditions: Workers’ experiences in Crete, Greece. Journal of Social Work, 8(2), 163–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468017307088497 Partnerships for Children and Families Project. (2003). Finding a fit: Family realities and service responses. Waterloo, ON: Author, Wilfrid Laurier University. Parton, N., Thorpe, D., & Wattam, C. (Eds.). (1997). Child protection: Risk and the moral order. London: Macmillan Press. Pecora, P.J. (1989, July–August). Improving the quality of child welfare services: Needs assessment for staff training. Child Welfare, 68(4), 403–19. Medline:2752847 Peled, E. (2000). Parenting by men who abuse women: Issues and dilemmas. British Journal of Social Work, 30(1), 25–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ bjsw/30.1.25

320  Bibliography Perlman, H.H. (1979). Relationship: The heart of helping people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Perloff, J.N., & Buckner, J.C. (1996, October). Fathers of children on welfare: Their impact on child well-being. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 66(4), 557–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0080205 Medline:8911622 Peters, C.J. (2011). Mother-led families with multiple stressors: A qualitative study about mothers’ and social workers’ perspectives of the social service experience. Doctoral Dissertation retrieved from ProQuest Information and Learning, Ann Arbor MI, (No. AAINR64312). Pirog-Good, M. (1995). The family background and attitudes of teen fathers. Youth & Society, 26(3), 351–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044118X95026003004 Plummer, K. (2001). Documents of life 2: An invitation to critical humanism. London: Sage. Postmus, J.L., & Merritt, D.H. (2010). When child abuse overlaps with domestic violence: The factors that influence child protection workers’ beliefs. Children and Youth Services Review, 32(3), 309–17. http://dx.doi .org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.09.011 Prilleltensky, I., Nelson, G., & Peirson, L. (2001). Promoting family wellness and preventing child maltreatment: Fundamentals for thinking and action. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Quinn, R.P., & Staines, G.L. (1979). The 1977 Quality of Employment survey: Descriptive statistics, with comparison data from the 1969–70 and the 1972–73 surveys. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Rasheed, J. (1998). The adult life cycle of poor African American fathers. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 1(2–3), 265–80. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/10911359.1998.10530796 Regehr, C., Leslie, B., Howe, P., & Chau, S. (2000). Stressors in child welfare practice: Toronto. Toronto: Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto and Children’s Aid Society. Renner, L.M., Porter, R.L., & Preister, S. (2009). Improving the retention of child welfare workers by strengthening skills and increasing support for supervisors. Child Welfare, 88(5), 109–27. Medline:20187565 Ribner, D.S., & Knei-Paz, C. (2002, October). Client’s view of a successful helping relationship. Social Work, 47(4), 379–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ sw/47.4.379 Medline:12450009 Richards, L. (1999). Using NVivo in qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Roberts, D.E. (1999). Mothers who fail to protect their children: Accounting for private and public responsibility. In J.E. Hanigsberg & S. Ruddick (Eds.), Mother troubles (pp. 31–49). Boston: Beacon Press.

Bibliography 321 Robson, K. (2005). “Canada’s most notorious bad mother”: The newspaper coverage of the Jordon Heikamp inquest. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. La Revue Canadienne de Sociologie et d'Anthropologie, 42(2), 217–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2005.tb02462.x Rossiter, A. (2001). Innocence lost and suspicion found: Do we educate for or against social work? Critical Social Work, 2(1). E-journal. Rossiter, A. (2007). Self as subjectivity: Toward a use of self as respectful relations of recognition. In D. Mandell (Ed.), Revisiting the use of self: Questioning professional identities (pp. 21–34). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Ruch, G. (2005). Relationship-based practice and reflective practice: Holistic approaches to contemporary child care social work. Child & Family Social Work, 10(2), 111–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2005.00359.x Rutman, D., Strega, S., Callahan, M., & Dominelli, L. (2002). “Undeserving” mothers? Practitioners’ experiences working with young mothers in/from care. Child & Family Social Work, 7(3), 149–59. http://dx.doi. org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.2002.00244.x Sarkadi, A., Kristiansson, R., Oberklaid, F., & Bremberg, S. (2008, February). Fathers’ involvement and children’s developmental outcomes: A systematic review of longitudinal studies. Acta Paediatrica (Oslo, Norway: 1992), 97(2), 153–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2007.00572.x Medline:18052995 Save the Children Sweden. (2010). Building rights-based national child protection systems: A concept paper to support Save the Children’s work. Stockholm: Author. Retrieved from: www.savethechildren.se. Schaufeli, W.B., Enzmann, D., & Girault, N. (1993). Measurement of burnout: A review. In W. Schaufeli, C. Maslach, & T. Marek (Eds.), Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and research (pp. 199–215). Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Schene, P.A. (2001, Spring). Meeting each family’s needs: Using differential response in reports of child abuse and neglect. Best Practice, Next Practice. Retrieved from: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/nrcfcpp/downloads/ newsletter/BPNPSpring01.pdf Schene, P.A. (2005). The emergence of differential response. Protecting Children, 20(2&3), 4–8. Retrieved from: http://www.americanhumane.org/assets/ pdfs/children/protecting-children-journal/pc-20-2-3.pdf Schene, P.A. (2006). Forming and sustaining partnerships. In N. Freymond & G. Cameron (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service, and community care models. (pp. 84–117). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

322  Bibliography Schorr, L.B. (1988). Within our reach: Breaking the cycle of disadvantage. New York: Anchor Books. Schorr, L.B. (1997). Common purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday. Scourfield, J. (2001). Constructing men in child protection work. Men and Masculinities, 4(1), 70–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1097184X01004001004 Shapiro, A.F., & Krysik, J. (2010). Finding fathers in social work research and practice. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 7(1). Shulman, L. (1978). A study of practice skills. Social Work, 23, 274–81. Shusterman, G.R., Hollinshead, D., Fluke, J.D., & Yuan, Y.T. (2005) Alternative responses to child maltreatment: Findings from NCANDS. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Retrieved from: http://aspe.hhs. gov/hsp/05/child-maltreat-resp/report.pdf Siegel, G.L., & Loman, L.A. (2000). The Missouri family assessment and response demonstration impact evaluation: Findings and conclusions. St Louis, MO: The Institute of Applied Research. Smith, B. (2005). Job retention in child welfare: Effects of perceived organizational support, supervisor support, and intrinsic job value. Children and Youth Services Review, 27(2), 153–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.childyouth.2004.08.013 Smith, L. (1988). Black adolescent fathers: Issues for service provision. Social Work, 33(3), 269–71. Solomon, B. (2002). A social constructionist approach to theorizing child welfare: Considering attachment theory and ways to reconstruct practice. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 22(1–2), 131–49. http://dx.doi. org/10.1300/J067v22n01_09 Sonenstein, F., Malm, K., & Billing, A. (2002). Study of fathers’ involvement in permanency planning and child welfare casework (Literature Review for U.S Department of Health and Human Services). Retrieved 17 March 2005 from http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/cw-dads02/ Sorensen, E., & Zibman, C. (2001, September). Getting to know poor fathers who do not pay child support. Social Service Review, 75(3), 420–34. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1086/322221 Stalker, C., Mandell, D., Frensch, K., Harvey, C., & Wright, M. (2007). Child welfare workers who are exhausted yet satisfied with their jobs: How do they do it? Child & Family Social Work, 12(2), 182–91. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00472.x Storhaug, A.S., & Øien, K. (2012). Fathers’ encounters with the child welfare service. Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 296–303.

Bibliography 323 Strand, V.C., Spath, R., & Bosco-Ruggiero, S. (2010). So you have a stable child welfare workforce – What’s next? Children and Youth Services Review, 32(3), 338–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.10.002 Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Strega, S. (2005). The view from the poststructural margins: Epistemology and methodology reconsidered. In L. Brown & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (pp. 199–235). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Strega, S., Brown, L., Callahan, M., Dominelli, L., & Walmsley, C. (2009). Working with me, working at me: Fathers’ narratives of child welfare. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 20(1), 72–91. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/10428230902871207 Strega, S., Fleet, C., Brown, L., Dominelli, L., Callahan, M., & Walmsley, C. (2008). Connecting father absence and mother blame in child welfare policies and practice. Children and Youth Services Review, 30(7), 705–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2007.11.012 Sue, W.S., & Sue, D. (2003). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Sundman, P. (2002 July). How to get an evaluation process going in social work. Presented at the Fourth International Conference Evaluation for Practice, Tampere, Finland. Swift, K.J. (1995a). Manufacturing “bad mothers”: A critical perspective on child neglect. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Swift, K.J. (1995b, January–February). An outrage to common decency: Historical perspectives on child neglect. Child Welfare, 74(1), 71–91. Medline:7859540 Swift, K.J. (1998). Contradictions in child welfare: Neglect and responsibility. In C.T. Baines, P.M. Evans, & S. Neysmith (Eds.), Women’s caring: Feminist perspectives on social welfare (pp. 160–90). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Swift, K., & Callahan, M. (2006). Problems and potential of Canadian child welfare. In N. Freymond & G. Cameron (Eds.), Towards positive systems of child and family welfare: International comparisons of child protection, family service, and community caring systems (pp. 118–47). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Sykes, J. (2011). Negotiating stigma: Understanding mothers’ responses to accusations of child neglect. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(3), 448–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.06.015 Taylor, A., Janzen, R., Murtha, S., Powell, B., & Majstorovic, N. (2001). Creating a climate of safety: An evaluation of the school based child welfare social service provider program in Huron and Renfrew counties. Kitchener, ON: Centre for

324  Bibliography Research & Education in Human Services. Retrieved from: http://cwrp.ca/ sites/default/files/publications/en/CASFullReport.pdf Tham, P., & Meagher, G. (2009). Working in human services: How do experiences and working conditions in child welfare social work compare? British Journal of Social Work, 39(5), 807–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ bjsw/bcm170 Thomas, P. (2003). Charter implications for proactive child welfare services. In K. Kufeldt & B. McKenzie (Eds.), Child welfare: Connecting research, policy, and practice (pp. 355–66). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Trotter, C. (2002). Worker skill and client outcome in child protection. Child Abuse Review, 11(1), 38–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/car.719 Turnell, A. (2006). Constructive child protection practice: An oxymoron or news of difference? Journal of Systemic Therapies, 25(2), 3–12. http://dx.doi .org/10.1521/jsyt.2006.25.2.3 Turnell, A., & Edwards, S. (1997). Aspiring to partnership: The signs of safety approach to child protection. Child Abuse Review, 6(3), 179–90. http://dx .doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0852(199708)6:33.0.CO;2-J Turnell, A., & Edwards, S. (1999). Signs of Safety: A solution and safety oriented approach to child protection casework. New York: Norton and Company. Turner, J., & Fine, M. (1995). Postmodern evaluation in family therapy supervision. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 14(2), 57–69. Tuttle, A.R., Knudson-Martin, C., Levin, S., Taylor, B., & Andrews, J. (2007, September). Parents’ experiences in Child Protective Services: Analysis of a dialogical group process. Family Process, 46(3), 367–80. http://dx.doi .org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2007.00217.x Medline:17899859 Urek, M. (2005). Making a case in social work: The construction of an unsuitable mother. Qualitative Social Work, 4(4), 451–67. http://qsw.sagepub.com/ content/4/4/451 Vinokur-Kaplan, D., & Hartman, A. (1986, July–August). A national profile of child welfare workers and supervisors. Child Welfare, 65(4), 323–35. Medline:3731931 Wagner, R., Van Reyk, P., & Spence, N. (2001). Improving the working environment for workers in children’s welfare agencies. Child & Family Social Work, 6(2), 161–78. http://dx.doi. org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.2001.00199.x Walker, L. (2010). “My son gave birth to me”: Offending fathers – generative, reflexive and risky? British Journal of Social Work, 40(5), 1402–18. http://dx .doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcp063 Walsh, F. (2006a). Strengthening family resilience (2nd ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.

Bibliography 325 Walsh, T. (2006b). Two sides of the same coin: Ambiguity and complexity in child protection work. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 25(2), 38–49. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1521/jsyt.2006.25.2.38 Weaver, D., Chang, J., Clark, S., & Rhee, S. (2007). Keeping public child welfare workers on the job. Administration in Social Work, 31(2), 5–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J147v31n02_02 Weinberg, M. (2005). A case for an expanded framework of ethics in practice. Ethics & Behavior, 15(4), 327–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/ s15327019eb1504_4 Wells, K. (2011). A narrative analysis of one mother’s story of child custody loss and regain. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(3), 439–47. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.06.019 Westbrock, S. (2006). Utilizing the Signs of Safety framework to create effective relationships with child protection service recipients. St Paul, MN: MSW Clinical Research, University of St. Thomas. Westbrook, T.M., Ellis, J., & Ellett, A.J. (2006). Improving retention among public child welfare workers: What can we learn from the insights and experiences of committed survivors? Administration in Social Work, 30(4), 37–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J147v30n04_04 Willig, C. (2008). Introducing qualitative research in psychology (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill/ Open University Press. Wilson, S.L., Kuebli, J.E., & Hughes, H.M. (2005, September). Patterns of maternal behavior among neglectful families: Implications for research and intervention. Child Abuse & Neglect, 29(9), 985–1001. http://dx.doi .org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2005.03.007 Medline:16165211 Winefield, H.R., & Barlow, J.A. (1995, August). Client and worker satisfaction in a child protection agency. Child Abuse & Neglect, 19(8), 897–905. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/0145-2134(95)00052-A Medline:7583749 Wolff, R. (1997). Germany: A nonpunitive model. In N. Gilbert (Ed.), Combatting child abuse: International perspectives and trends (pp. 212–31). New York: Oxford University Press. Woodward, L.J., & Fergusson, D.M. (2002). Parent, child, and contextual predictors of childhood physical punishment. Infant and Child Development, 11(3), 213–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/icd.252 Wulczyn, F., Daro, D., Fluke, J., Feldman, S., Glodek, C., & Lifanda, K. (2010). Adapting a systems approach to child protection: Key concepts and considerations. New York: UNICEF. Yatchmenoff, D.K. (2005). Measuring client engagement from the client’s perspective in nonvoluntary child protective services. Research on Social Work Practice, 15(2), 84–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731504271605

326  Bibliography Zell, M.C. (2006, January–February). Child welfare workers: Who they are and how they view the child welfare system. Child Welfare, 85(1), 83–103. Medline:16596828 Zimmerman, T.S., Aberle, J.T., Krafchick, J.L., & Harvey, A.M. (2008). Deconstructing the “mommy wars”: The battle over the best mom. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 20(3), 203–19. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/08952830802264524

Index

abuse. See domestic abuse; substance abuse accessible service delivery sites: and access to collegial support, 272–3, 274; advantages over central service delivery sites, 19, 234–6, 262, 264, 292; and community perceptions of child welfare services, 220–1, 235, 263; and first contact, 224–6; jobs in accessible vs central settings, 20, 262–82; and level of contact, 226–9; parent– service provider relationships in accessible vs central settings, 19, 220–36; parents’ positive assessment of relationships in, 229–34; and the Transformation Agenda, 169, 263, 284 Alpert, L.T., 96 Alvesson, M., and K. Skoldberg, 98 Andersen, M., and S. Gobeil, 238, 255–6, 257, 259 Anderson, K., 140 Andersson, G., 287–8, 293, 295, 298 Appleton, C., and N. Weld, 197 Arendell, T., 97

Badgett, M.V.L., and N. Folbre, 255 Baines, C., 255 Baines, C., P. Evans, and S. Neysmith, 255 Bala, N., 133 Barbee, A.P., et al., 256, 258 Black, T., et al., 96 Bradley, G., L. Engelbrecht, and S. Hojer, 260 broken mirror research design. See under research methods Brown, D., 44 Burford, G., J. Pennell, and M. Edwards, 216 burnout. See Maslach Burnout Inventory; service providers: stress and emotional exhaustion Butler, A., D. Ford, and C. Tregaskis, 70 Callahan, M., 96, 136, 255 Callahan, M., and C. Lumb, 140 Cameron, G., 287, 289 Cameron, G., N. Coady, and G. Adams, 4

328  Index Cameron, G., N. Freymond, D. Cornfield, and S. Palmer, 3, 45, 287, 290, 293, 300 Cameron, G., L. Hazineh, and K. Frensch, 299 Cameron, G., and S. Hoy, 67, 98 Cameron, G., J. O’Reilly, M.C. Laurendeau, and C. Chamberland, 65, 288 Cameron, G., and J. Vanderwoerd, 290, 294, 296 Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, 14 central service delivery sites: and first contact, 224–6; as insular or disconnected, 267; jobs in accessible vs central settings, 20, 262–82; and level of contact, 226–9; parent–service provider relationships in accessible vs central settings, 19, 219–36; and the Transformation Agenda, 284 Chahine, Z., J. van Straaten, and A. Williams-Isom, 264 Chapman, M.V., et al., 220 Charmaz, K., 68, 174 Chatham-Kent Children’s Services, 14 Chen, S., and M. Scannapieco, 260 Child and Family Services Act, 239 child protective services: in accessible vs central settings, 19, 20, 220–36, 262–82; accountability procedures, 3, 5, 6, 236, 239, 276, 281, 285–8; child protection vs family support, 18, 134–6, 301; and child protection legislation, 132, 135, 136–7, 208; computerized service documentation, 3, 6, 8, 197, 276–7, 281; core elements of the system, 3, 5; costs

and financing of, 3, 73, 169, 284; criticism of, 3, 4–5, 84, 225, 290; differential or flexible response models, 5, 65, 166, 196, 236, 263, 264, 285; and formal mediation, 196, 276, 285, 292; impediments to equitable service delivery, 72–5, 77–80; international comparisons, 4, 5–6, 13, 257, 260, 287, 288, 292–3, 297–8, 300; intrusive or coercive interventions, 134, 185–6, 207–10, 213, 292; kinship placement of children, 5, 137, 196, 276, 285; and learning from local experiences, 288–9; and missions impossible, 73–4, 89; need for follow-up, 73, 74–5; negotiation of service agreements, 196–7, 292–3; out-of-home placement, 94–114, 296–8; parents’ negative experiences with, 36, 38–41, 58–9, 71–2, 76–7, 106–8, 112, 125–9, 132–3, 183, 201; parents’ positive experiences with, 36–8, 57–8, 129–30, 131–2, 183–4, 201; prevention-oriented, 73, 74, 83, 114, 134, 243; recommendations concerning, 83–9, 136–8, 165–7, 196–7, 259–61, 283–301; reforms to, 45, 64–5, 196, 237, 239–40, 248, 281–2, 283–9; reliance on legal authority, 3, 5, 189, 286–8, 290, 292, 301; and revictimization, 73, 75–6; and systems engineering, 4–6, 288. See also children; families; fathers; mothers; parent–service provider relationships; risk assessment; service providers; Transformation Agenda Child Welfare League of Canada, 238, 256

Index 329 children: apprehension of, 38, 62, 106, 108, 110, 111, 128–9, 146, 177; child protection vs family support, 18, 134–6, 301; deaths of, 239, 290; with developmental disabilities, 123–4, 134; difficult, 29, 56, 101, 103–4, 110–11, 122–3, 131, 134, 178–80; and effects of maltreatment, 124–5; fathers’ commitment to, 27–8, 88, 295; fathers as a danger to, 29; fathers on doing things with, 28–9; fathers on the pain of losing, 27; fathers on relations with, 25–9; fathers on rescuing, 26–7; and housing, 116; as individuals, 3, 290; kinship placement of, 5, 137, 196, 276, 285; mental health of, 13, 29, 127, 134, 137, 299; mothers’ emotional connectedness to, 110–12; mothers on relations with partners and, 53–7; perspective of, 211–12; programming for, 294–6; risk factors for maltreatment of, 94–6, 112, 181, 291; as wards of state, 5, 26, 137, 290, 296–7, 298. See also child protective services Children’s Aid Society (CAS): and child deaths, 239, 244, 290; comparison of parent and service provider perceptions (study), 168–97; fathers and child welfare (study), 15, 21–43; legal departments within, 287; mothers’ accounts of, 51–2, 54, 55, 57–9, 61, 62–4; and the ORAM reform agenda, 239–40, 248, 284; parents’ accounts of, 71–2, 82, 87; and residential programs, 13–14; workplace study, 19–20, 237–61. See also

child protective services; names of individual societies; parent–service provider relationships; service providers Children’s Aid Society of Halton, 14 Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, 14 Clapton, G., 21 Coley, R.L., 21 Collins-Camargo, C., et al., 260 Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare in Ontario, 6, 169, 197, 237, 284, 286, 288 community: community-based service providers, 243–4; perceptions of child welfare services, 220–1, 235, 244, 263; role in child welfare, 9, 10, 13, 16, 65, 113, 296. See also accessible service delivery sites Community Mental Health Clinic (Guelph), 14 Conley, A., and J. Duerr Berrick, 166 Connor, M., 23 Cooper, A., R. Hetherington, and I. Katz, 290 Cooper Altman, J., 220 Craigwood Youth Services, 14 Dale, P., 212 Davidson Arad, B., 95 Davies, E., F. Seymour, and J. Read, 212, 213 Davies, L., and J. Krane, 95, 96 Davies, P., 50, 67, 213, 215 de Boer, C., and N. Coady, 144 DePanfilis, D., and J.L. Zlotnik, 238, 255–6, 257 Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS), 169 DePaúl, J., and L. Domenech, 96

330  Index depersonalization. See under service providers Deutsch, F.M., 90, 91 Devault, A., and S. Gratton, 22 Devault, A., et al., 21–2 developmental disabilities, 123–4, 134 Dickinson, N.S., and R.E. Perry, 255–6 Dienhart, A., 88 direct service workers (DSW). See service providers domestic abuse, 51, 53–4, 55, 61, 213; childhood abuse of parents, 17, 32, 48, 52, 60–1, 104, 120–1; comparison of parent and service provider perceptions, 80–2, 89; effects of child maltreatment, 124–5; and fathers, 21, 23, 26, 30–1, 40, 80–2, 101; of mothers, 103, 118, 119–20, 121–2; sexual, 26, 31, 60–1, 101, 105, 120–1, 124, 131, 213, 239; risk factors for child maltreatment, 94–6, 112, 181, 291; and substance abuse, 30, 51 Dominelli, L., et al., 21 Dore, M.M., and L.B. Alexander, 139, 141 Drake, B., 139, 140, 141, 164, 166, 171, 212, 213, 220 Dubowitz, H., et al., 113 Duhig, A.M., V. Phares, and R.W. Birkeland, 82, 88, 91 Dumbrill, G.C., 113, 171 Dumbrill, G.C., and S. Maiter, 97 education: challenges facing parents, 175–6; fathers on work, education, and money, 32–4; mothers on work, education, and money, 46–50, 99–100; need to enhance

educational and career opportunities, 65; and training of service providers, 165–6, 167, 203, 251, 253, 254, 256, 261 Eggebeen, D., 21, 22 Ellett, A.J., 255, 263 Ellett, A.J., et al., 264 employment: child investigation rates by household source of income, 116; fathers on work, education, and money, 32–4; impact of child protection system on jobs of service providers, 274–8, 283, 299; job satisfaction of service providers, 19–20, 242–3, 249–52, 255, 256, 257, 258–9, 263–4, 299; job sustaining narratives of service providers, 265–74; jobs in accessible and central service delivery settings, 20, 262–82; mothers on work, education, and money, 46–50, 99–100; need to enhance educational and career opportunities, 65; parents’ job struggles, 118, 122; service providers’ employment survey, 278–80; unemployment, 22, 33, 98, 133; working fathers, 77. See also service providers Ethier, L.S., C. Lacharité, and G. Couture, 96 Evans, T., and J. Harris, 216 Extended Care and Maintenance (ECM) monies, 145, 157, 158 Faller, K.C., M. Grabarek, and R.M. Ortega, 263 families: child protection vs family support, 18, 134–6; “dysfunctional,” 53; family experiences of family and child services, 198–219;

Index 331 family group conferencing, 196, 276, 285, 292; grandparents, 172; and the intervention / coercion stage, 207–10, 213; and the investigation stage, 205–7, 212–13; kinship placement of children, 5, 137, 196, 276, 285; in a non-supportive society, 133–4; and the report / accusation stage, 204–5, 213; role of, 18, 53, 56–7, 65, 297; and the surveillance stage, 210–11, 213. See also child protective services; children; fathers; mothers; parents Family and Children’s Services of Guelph and Wellington County, 14 Family and Children’s Services of Kitchener-Waterloo, 14 Family Functioning and Service Satisfaction questionnaire, 19 Farmer, E., 213 Farmer, E., and M. Owen, 90 fathers: absent, 51, 56; age of, 77–8, 92; and child welfare, 15, 21–43, 76–83; child welfare perspectives on, 21–3; childhoods of, 31–2, 88; commitment to their children, 27– 8, 88, 295; comparison of mother and father participants, 89–92, 212; and criminal or delinquent activities, 29, 34; as a danger to their children, 29; and difficult children, 29; on doing things with their children, 28–9; and domestic abuse, 21, 23, 26, 30–1, 40, 80–2, 101; engaging, 86–9, 91–2, 295; exclusion of, 15, 16, 21, 22–3, 82–3, 295; on the importance of being, 25–6; negative experiences with child protection, 36, 38–41, 76–7;

on the pain of losing a child, 27; positive experiences with child protection, 36–8; perceptions of child welfare services, 35–41; personal challenges and supports, 34–5; as pragmatic and outcomeoriented, 88–9; prejudice against, 26, 40; on rescuing their children, 26–7; on relations with children, 25–9; on relations with partners, 29–31; service providers’ fear of, 78–9, 295; and service providers’ heavy client loads, 78; and service providers’ gender biases, 40, 79– 80, 83; single, 27–8, 29, 116; and substance abuse, 22, 26, 34, 56; on turning their lives around, 26; and unsubstantiated accusations of abuse, 26, 31; verbal conflict with partners, 29; and work, education, and money, 22, 32–4, 77. See also parents fear: of fathers, 78–9, 295; of service providers, 58, 63, 106, 129, 146, 193 Featherstone, B., 21, 22, 23, 113 Fernandez, E., 96 Fetterman, D., 117 Fine, M., S. Palmer, and N. Coady, 67, 115, 212, 215 First Nations, 288 flexible response models. See child protective services: differential or flexible response models Fook, J., and F. Gardner, 218 Foucault, M., 210 Franck, E.J., 22, 23 Frensch, K., and G. Cameron, 220 Frensch, K., G. Cameron, and L. Hazineh, 224, 265

332  Index Freymond, N., 44, 65–6, 216, 217 Freymond, N., and G. Cameron, 4, 10, 13, 70, 114, 197, 220, 287, 293, 297–8, 300 Garbarino, J., and D. Sherman, 133 gender: biases held by service providers, 40, 79–80, 83; and oppression, 96; power imbalances between the genders, 80–1; women’s roles in the helping ­professions, 255 Gitterman, A., 164 Gladstone, J., and R.A. Brown, 171, 172 Gladstone, J., et al., 86, 169, 170, 212 Glisson, C., 264 Gockel, A., M. Russell, and B. Harris, 220 Gomez, R., et al., 260 Gonzalez, R.P., et al., 214 Gordon, D.M., et al., 22 Gordon, L., 96 grandparents, 172 Greaves, L., et al., 113 grounded theory. See under research methods Hare-Mustin, R.T, and J. Marecek, 215 Harvey, C., and C. Stalker, 238, 241, 242, 245, 246 Hays, S., 97 Healy, K., 216 Helfer, M.E., 140, 165 helping relationships. See parent– service provider relationships Hetherington, R., et al., 6, 293 Hicks, S., 116 Hiilamo, H., and M. Saarikallio-Torp, 96

Holland, S., 170 Hopkins, K.M., et al., 238, 256 Horvath, A.O., and B.D. Symonds, 169 housing: and child placement rates, 116; frequent moves, 17, 118, 119, 124–5, 130–1; and lesser privilege, 98; struggle to secure, 108, 192; subsidized, 138 Howe, D., 140 Hubbell, R., 96 Hudspeth, C., 22 Hughes, J., S. Chau, and D.C. Poff, 80, 90 Hughes, L., and P. Pengelly, 140 image violation. See under service providers Jenkins, S., 96 Jenney, A., 169 Jenson, C.E., et al., 216 Kapp, S.A., and J. Propp, 96–7 Keegan Eamon, M., and S. Kopels, 22 kidsLINK, 14 Kline, M., 96, 97 Koeske, G.F., and R.D. Koeske, 139 Kovalesky, A., and S. Flagler, 96 Krane, J., 96 Kufeldt, K., 297 Lamb, M., 21–2 Lambert, M.J., and B.M. Ogles, 139, 166 Landsman, M., 255–6 Lazar, A., A. Sagi, and M. Fraser, 22, 23 Leddy, M.J., 42–3, 45, 66 Lee, B.J., and R.M. Goerge, 96

Index 333 Lee, C.D., and C. Ayón, 139, 140–1, 169–70, 220, 221 Lee, R.T., and B.E. Ashforth, 256 Lee, T.W., et al., (1999), 253 legal authority. See child protective services: reliance on legal authority legislation (child protection), 132, 135, 136–7, 208 Leigh, S., and C. Miller, 170–1, 221 Leiter, M., and M. Durup, 246 Leschied, A.W., et al., 96, 133–4, 135 Leslie, B., et al., 21 Lietz, C.A., 213 life story research. See under research methods Lindsey, D., 133, 134, 135, 136 Lipchik, E., et al., 195 Littell, J.H., 139 Love, C., 288 Lupton, D., and L. Barclay, 21 Lutherwood, 14 MacLaurin, B., N. Trocmé, and B. Fallon, 116, 133 Madame Vanier Children’s Services, 14 Madsen, W.C., 71 Maiter, S., S. Palmer, and S. Manji, 118, 221 Maluccio, A., 139 Mandell, D., 216, 218 Mandell, D., et al., 240, 255, 259, 288 Manji, S., S. Maiter, and S. Palmer, 118 Marcenko, M.O., S.J. Lyons, and M. Courtney, 44, 91, 95 Margolin, L., 216, 217, 255 Mansell, J., et al., 73 Marshall, D.B., D.J. English, and A.J. Stewart, 23

Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), 245–6, 248, 249, 278–9 Mayer, M., et al., 95, 96 McBride, B.A., S.J. Schoppe-Sullivan, and M. Ho, 91–2 McCurdy, K., and E. Jones, 140 McGowan, B.G., C. Auerbach, and J.S. Strolin-Goltzman, 264 McMahon, T., and F. Giannini, 22 Mennen, F.E., and M. O’Keefe, 96 mental health: of children, 13, 29, 127, 134, 137, 299; of parents, 32, 34, 94, 96, 101 Mills, J., A. Bonner, and K. Francis, 174 Morrill, W.A., 286 mothers: abuse of, 103, 118, 119–20, 121–2; accountability of, 181–2, 194; adolescent, 95–6; blaming of, 4, 16–17, 91; and child welfare, 15–16, 44–66, 71–6; childhoods of, 16, 47, 48, 50–3, 60–1; of children in placement, 16–17, 94–114; comparison of mother and father participants, 89–92, 212; and demonstrating compliance, 107, 109–10, 113; and difficult children, 56, 101, 103–4, 110–11, 134; dominant professional discourses about, 70–1, 89–90; emotional connectedness to their children, 110–12; as gatekeepers, 23; as heroines/survivors, 16, 59–62; and isolation, 94, 96; literature on, 95–7; lives of lesser privilege, 16, 17, 46–50, 63, 64, 65, 98–103, 110, 112, 113; motherhood ideology, 95, 97–8; negative experiences with child protection, 58–9, 71–2, 106–8, 112; negative images of, 95, 96, 97,

334  Index 113, 114; positive experiences with child protection, 57–8; reasons for listening to, 44–6; on relations with partners and children, 53–7; and respectful working relationships, 83–5; service providers on, 62–4, 70–1, 89; single, 49, 95, 116, 175; and substance abuse, 56, 61, 102, 103, 109, 180–1; support for, 65, 85, 113; voiceless, 106, 107–8; on work, education, and money, 46–50, 99–100. See also parents Mulcahy, M., 44–5 Mullins, J.L., 166 Myers, S., 166 Nelson, G., et al., 65 Nichols, M.P., 90, 91 Nissly, J.A., M.E.M. Barak, and A. Levin, 246 NVivo. See under research methods O’Donnell, J., 21 O’Hagan, K., 22, 23 Okiishi, J., et al., 214 Ontario Ministry of Children and Family Development, 292 Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, 198, 219, 239 Ontario Risk Assessment Model (ORAM), 168–9, 237, 239–40, 248, 284 Onward Willow Better Beginnings, Better Futures (Guelph), 14 Orlinsky, D.E., M.H. Ronnestad, and U. Willutzki, 139 Palmer, S., S. Maiter, and S. Manji, 118 Papadaki, E., and V. Papadaki, 73

parent–service provider relationships: in accessible and central service delivery settings, 19, 220–36; accounting for exemplary relationships, 162–3, 214; attributes of good relationships, 139, 145–61, 171–2, 215; barriers to forming good relationships, 139–40, 147, 186, 194, 197, 212, 221, 222, 247–8; and collaboration and power, 215–17; engaging fathers, 86–9, 91–2, 295; first contact in different settings, 224–6; and focus on strengths, 84, 195, 239; and frames of reference, 191–6; good relationships (study), 17–18, 139–67; and honesty, 148, 155–7; how to improve, 83–9, 136–8, 164–7, 196–7, 213, 290–1, 292–4; and humanistic attitudes, 84, 149–53, 167, 203–4, 205–6, 213; importance of good relationships, 12, 17–18, 139, 140–1, 144–5, 166–7, 169–70, 212, 219, 220, 221, 222, 289–94; importance of seeing the parent as a whole person, 69–70, 89, 92; level of contact in different settings, 226–9; literature on, 139–41, 169–72; and mothers rendered voiceless, 106, 107–8; and mutual liking, 153–5; overview of relationships in different settings, 229–34; and parental authority, 84–5; patterns of engagement, 187–90; and “playing the game,” 109–10, 113, 171; and power imbalances, 70, 138, 139, 145–9, 171, 213; and respect, 83–5, 155, 213, 215; and service providers who go the extra mile, 160–1, 164, 167,

Index 335 190, 258; and trust, 157–60, 234. See also child protective services; parents; service providers parents: authority of, 84–5; challenges facing, 17, 118–25, 174–6, 192, 193; childhood abuse of, 17, 32, 48, 52, 60–1, 104, 118, 120–1; comparison of parent and service provider perceptions, 6–8, 11–12, 16, 18, 62– 4, 65, 168–97; and developmental challenges, 123–4, 134; on feeling criminalized, 202–5, 207, 209–11, 212, 213, 216, 217; foster, 23, 137, 298; and guilt, 147; job struggles of, 118, 122; mental health of, 32, 34, 94, 96, 101; and missions impossible, 73–4; negative experiences with child protection, 36, 38–41, 58–9, 71–2, 76–7, 106–8, 112, 125–9, 132–3, 183, 201; negative image of parents involved with child welfare, 45; parenting courses, 37–8, 41, 59, 107, 109; positive experiences with child protection, 36–8, 57–8, 129–30, 131–2, 183–4, 201; relations between, 29–31, 53–7, 118–19, 121–2; service providers as, 151, 152, 244–5, 298; single, 27–8, 29, 49, 95, 116, 150, 175, 232; and socially toxic environments, 118, 121; study of 61 parents receiving CPS, 17, 115–38; traumatized by sudden apprehension, 128–9. See also families; fathers; mothers; parent–service provider relationships Partnerships for Children and Families Project (PCFP), 4, 14, 115, 172, 224, 240, 265 Pecora, P.J., 139, 140, 165

Peled, E., 23 Perlman, H.H., 165 Perloff, J.N., and J.C. Buckner, 22 Plummer, K., 98 Postmus, J.L., and D.H. Merritt, 80 poverty, 4, 118, 119, 124–5, 130–1, 136, 199; and fathers, 21–2; and intervention rates, 116; as risk factor for child maltreatment, 94–5, 112, 133–4, 135; and socially toxic environments, 121. See also mothers: lives of lesser privilege Prilleltensky, I., G. Nelson, and L. Peirson, 294 religion and spirituality, 35, 111, 153 research methods, 117, 141–4, 172–4, 200–1, 222–3, 240–2, 264–5; broken mirror research design, 10–14; grounded theory, 68, 174, 200; interviews with fathers, 21, 23–5; interviews with mothers, 15–16, 46, 98–9; life story research, 11–12, 13, 68–9, 83, 89, 92; NVivo qualitative data management software, 24, 68, 200, 223, 265 revictimization, 73, 75–6 Ribner, D.S., and C. Knei-Paz, 164, 166, 221 Richards, L., 24, 68, 200, 223, 265 risk assessment, 3, 244, 285, 289, 290; and parent–service provider relationships, 166, 178, 188–9, 193–4, 196–7, 202, 208; risk factors for child maltreatment, 94–6, 112, 181, 291. See also Ontario Risk Assessment Model; Signs of Safety Roberts, D.E., 96 Robson, K., 113 Romero House, 45

336  Index Rossiter, A., 70, 213, 255 Ruch, G., 139, 141 Rutman, D., et al., 96 Sarkadi, A., et al., 92 Schaufeli, W.B., D. Enzmann, and N. Girault, 245–6 Schene, P.A., 236, 264 Schorr, L.B., 283, 286 Scourfield, J., 22, 23, 95, 96 service providers: administrative burdens of, 169, 197, 243, 248–9, 263, 276–7, 281, 285–6; and belief and integration, 265–6, 270–4; community-based, 243–4; comparison of parent and service provider perceptions, 6–8, 11–12, 16, 18, 62–4, 65, 168–97; concern for parents, 153; and depersonalization, 208–11, 242, 248, 255, 257–8, 259, 260–1, 278, 279; education and training of, 165–6, 167, 203, 251, 253, 254, 256, 261; employment survey, 278–80; experiences of (CAS workplace study), 19–20, 237–61; fear of fathers, 78–9, 295; female, 255; gender biases held by, 40, 79–80, 83; “good” workers, 214; heavy workloads of, 78, 139, 186, 244, 263; hiring of, 165; and image violation, 20, 242, 253, 259; informal style of, 18, 144, 162, 164; and job impacts of child protection system, 274–8, 283, 299; and job impacts of Transformation Agenda (TA), 237, 248, 276–7, 281–2, 285–6, 287; job satisfaction of, 19–20, 242–3, 249–52, 255, 256, 257, 258–9, 263–4, 299; job sustaining narratives, 265–74; jobs in accessible and central service

delivery settings, 20, 262–82; and listening, 138, 147, 149, 162; literature on front-line, 263–4; on mothers, 62–4, 70–1, 89; motivation and retention of, 298–300; as parents, 151, 152, 244–5, 298; parents’ fear of, 58, 63, 106, 129, 146, 193; and pride and endurance, 265–70; and pushing professional boundaries, 18, 160–1, 164; referrals by, 129, 131, 137; resources available to, 72–3, 243, 252, 253–4; and role conflict, 62, 242, 246, 256; salaries and benefits for, 3, 243, 252, 257; stress and emotional exhaustion (EE), 3, 5, 19–20, 214, 241, 245–7, 249–50, 255, 256–7, 258–9, 261, 278–9, 299; supervision of, 161, 166, 252, 254, 255–6, 258, 260–1, 270; and time management, 162–3, 245; transferring of cases across multiple, 75, 184–5; and turnover, 3, 5, 97, 238–9, 241, 242–5, 256, 258, 263, 276; use of power, 18, 85, 145–9, 165, 171, 203–4, 206–7, 208, 213, 215–17; use of self, 204, 215, 218; and work-family conflict, 244–5, 246, 247. See also parent– service provider relationships sexual abuse. See under domestic abuse Shelldale Centre (Guelph), 14, 296 Shireman, J., 22 Shulman, L., 139, 141 Shusterman, G.R., et al., 264 Siegel, G.L., and L.A. Loman, 236 Signs of Safety, 166, 196–7, 236 Smith, B., 257, 264 social workers. See service providers Solomon, B., 217, 218

Index 337 solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), 195 Sonenstein, F., K. Malm, and A. Billing, 21, 22–3 Stalker, C., et al., 214 Storhaug. A.S., and K. Øien, 22, 91 Strand, V.C., R. Spath, and S. BoscoRuggiero, 264 Strauss, A., and J. Corbin, 117, 200 Strega, S., 67 Strega, S., et al., 21, 50 substance abuse: alcohol and drug testing, 26, 39, 59, 107, 109; and child welfare, 34, 94, 96; and fathers, 22, 26, 34, 56; and mothers, 56, 61, 102, 103, 109, 180–1; and physical violence, 30, 51; relapses, 157 Sue, W.S., and D. Sue, 153–4 Sundman, P., 197 Swift, K.J., 96, 116, 294 Swift, K., and M. Callahan, 22–3, 50, 89, 216, 217 Sykes, J., 44, 45, 96, 114 Taylor, A., et al., 264 Tham, P., and G. Meagher, 263 Thomas, P., 135, 136–7 Transformation Agenda (TA), 8, 168–9, 178, 219, 236, 263, 284; impact on jobs of service pro­ viders, 237, 248, 276–7, 281–2, 285–6, 287 Transforming Front-Line Child Protection Practice Project, 14, 262 Trotter, C., 221 Turnell, A., 90, 217 Turnell, A., and S. Edwards, 166, 196–7, 236 Turner, J., and M. Fine, 210 turnover. See under service providers

Tuttle, A.R., et al., 97 unemployment. See under employment Urek, M., 91 use-of-self practices, 204, 215, 218 Vinokur-Kaplan, D., and A. Hartman, 139–40 violence. See domestic abuse Wagner, R., P. van Reyk, and N. Spence, 263 Walker, L., 82 Walsh, F., 71, 84, 217 Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council, 14 Weinberg, M., 218 Wells, K., 112 Westbrock, S., 197 Westbrook, T.M., J. Ellis, and A.J. Ellett, 263, 264 Wilfrid Laurier University: Partnerships for Children and Families Project (PCFP), 4, 14, 115, 172, 224, 240, 265 Willig, C., 200 Wilson, S.L., J.E., Kuebli, and H.M. Hughes, 96 Winefield, H.R., and J.A. Barlow, 140, 141 Wolff, R., 293 Woodward, L.J., and D.M. Fergusson, 96 worker-client relationships. See parent–service provider relationships Wulczyn, F., et al., 6, 288, 300 Yatchmenoff, D.K., 139, 140, 170 Zell, M.C., 263, 264 Zimmerman, T.S., et al., 90