The organisational and professional context of the first acpc conference

The theme of today's conference “Partnership in a Changing Environment” is highly significant and could be adopted for almost any major conference in the health and personal social services field. “Partnership” is an “in” word, and like quality and other euphemisms it has become part of our rhetoric. Its definition and translation into practice at different points in our organisations, is however more problematic. For example in the area of child protection there has been a tendency to think of partnership as based around case conferences, but that is too far into the process to be of value to families or professionals. Partnership starts at policy making and today's conference is an attempt at bringing together the principal partners who should influence policy, as well as what happens further into the system when parents and children become engaged. The second part of today's theme “a changing environment” also applies throughout the public service. In recent years we have become accustomed to rolling organisational change. The most recent manifestations of this in Northern Ireland have been the introduction of general management throughout the services, the separation and redefinition of purchaser and provider functions, and more recently, the establishment of HPSS trusts. But change to the environment within which partnership in child protection takes place is influenced by forces other than organisational development. Research in child care over the last 15 years, the introduction of the Children Act 1989 in Great Britain and the prospect of similar legislation here within the next year or two, the impact of major reports, sometimes focusing on tragic events and the publication by the Inspectorate of the investigation into the case of Martin Huston have served to perpetuate change.     

Child protection and anti-oppressive practice: The dynamics of partnership with parents explored

The paper begins by outlining briefly the impact of legislative changes in England and Wales following the implementation of the Children Act 1989 on the 14th October 1991. The Act was described by our Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay as “the most comprehensive and far reaching reform of child law which has come before Parliament in living memory.” (Hansard, H.L. Vol. 502, col 488) The notion of parttnership is central to the Act; it is the intention that it should permeate all aspects of practice. This paper focuses on preventive practice and partnership with parents in cases involving child protection, issues of anti-oppresive practice are applied to the notion of partnership, and the balance between partnership on the one hand and collusive or oppresive practice on the other is explored. The implications of such an analysis for child prevention is then discussed with reference to a case example, and conclusions drawn.     

Conference report the children (ni) order - challenges ahead

The long awaited new Children (NI) Order has yet to be implemented but there is no doubt about the significance in relation to providing an important watershed for the future development of Child Care Services in Northern Ireland. The recent conference organised by BASW (NI) in association with the Children (NI) Order Group provided a forum for the dissemination of information of the experiences of local authorities and judiciary in England since the Children Act 1989- This unique blend of the social work/legal context coupled with the keynote presentation and overview by Baroness Faithful offered the first major conference in the Province to address the main issues posed by the legislation. The conference attracted over 250 delegates from a multidisciplinary background and key Department of Health and Social Services personnel. The programme content included conference speakers from England and Northern Ireland and reflected the key roles played by the judiciary, social services management and the social services inspectorate. Baroness Faithful is well known in child care circles and recognised as a major contributor to the development of the Children Act. Her services for families and children in Northern Ireland and the potential strengths to be gained from its implementation set the tone for the conference. She also indicated the necessity of extending training to three years would be raised agin for debate. This was by An Overview of the English Experience of the Children Act 1989 with speaker Kay Birch from the Lord Chancellor's office, Mary Barnard J.P., Chairman of the Family Proceedings Committee and Judge Nigel Fricker Q.C., Designated Family Judge. They highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary training and partnership, the development of good information systems, the significant change in culture required by such aspects as the “non intervention” policy and the role of lay magistrates and the changes in court procedures.     

Education and young people in care

The Oxford Dictionary defines Education as the, “systematic instruction, development of character and mental powers”. To “Educate” is referred to as, “to train or to instruct intellectually”. Teachers and Tutors use education to pass on their own acquired knowledge, knowledge which will either be interesting or useful for those entering into the workplace. This article will look at the issues surrounding a young person in care and their education, it will also examine why other sections of society also tend to neglect their schooling. “Good practice” will also be highlighted and recommendations put forward for both discussion and implementation in the workplace.     

One child's journey

It is not news that the Children (N.I.) Order, has, as its central principle, the paramountcy of the welfare of the child. Article 3 (1) clearly states that: “Where a court determines any question with respect to”     

The use of observation in court & assessment work

Over the last decade, across the UK, there has been a change in Legislation in relation to children. The Children Act 1989 came into effect in 1991 in England & Wales. The Children (Scotland) Act followed and the Children Order in Northern Ireland. These are consolidating pieces of legislation bringing together previous Acts in relation to children, but they also introduced a profound shift in society's view of children. The best interests of the child was to be taken as paramount, parents were seen as responsible, rather than having rights, and the whole child was to be considered. Hence, a change in the way children were to be seen and their needs assessed. Children were seen as having physical, emotional and educational needs (Part 1 (1) Children Act 1989) and harm was defined as ill-treatment or impairment of health or development. Development meant physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development and health meant physical or mental health (Children Act 1989 Part IV(9)). The changes inevitably demanded increased and more sophisticated skills and would be required from those professionals undertaking assessment and giving evidence in Court. In this paper, one method of developing and enhancing die skills of these professionals is considered, its use explored and illustrated and preliminary comments on the outcome of this method presented.     

The criminal justice (children) (northern ireland) order: A long time coming; was it worth the wait?

The Report of the Children and Young Persons Review Group (the Black Report) was published in 1979. It was commissioned in 1976 by the then Labour government. Over 20 years later the new Labour government will pass the Criminal Justice (Children) (NI) Order through an order in council. Between these two events a radical and reforming Conservative government has changed the political and economic landscape. The new legislation has been a long time coming. Harold MacMillan is said to have remarked, when faced with a major policy decision “die best thing to do is do nothing and do it for as long as possible.” Given the constant changes in the criminal justice system the government has imposed in England and Wales without any tangible benefits, this might not have been a bad plan. However, is the legislation based upon outmoded 70's thinking or is it relevant to today's problems and solutions?     

Conference report

On the 1st October 1999 I enrolled at Queen's University as an undifferentiated student undertaking a study that will, hopefully, lead to a Ph.D. My enrolment was made possible by a Research Fellowship from the Research and Development Office, Northern Ireland and by secondment from the Northern Ireland Guardian Ad Litem Agency where I held the post of Deputy Director. The title of my study is “The changing face of care under the Children (Nl) Order 1995, a prospective study of decision-making and outcomes for looking after children”.     

The Education Welfare Service -A Naswe Perspective

NASWE members have a professional Code of Principles and Practice and work to protect the rights of children and young people in education. This is more simply expressed by the NASWE motto “For every child a chance”. In this submission “The Education Welfare Service” we, as members of Executive Committee of NASWE have presented an overview of the EWS giving its historical background and ongoing development including adapting to changes in Child Care legislation. The submission provides a policy statement containing aims and objectives and examines the role of die EWS and the duties undertaken by it. It gives the legal framework from which die service operates. The impact of die recent implementation of the Children (M) Order 1995 has been reviewed under the headings of legislation, partnership and initiatives.

It is hoped that this submission will help in some way to promote the EWS and raise awareness of its function in die wider field of Child Care practice generally     

Rebalanced and Refocused Social Work Practice?

The 1970s heralded the beginnings of a major shift in focus within child care social work in the United Kingdom, and the preventive, family support approach that had characterised practice since the 1940s was gradually, but decisively, replaced by a central concern with child abuse. This paper outlines the rise and dominance of child protection work in the United Kingdom before moving on to consider the legislative attempt, via the Children Act 1989 in England and Wales and the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, to address this situation. The “refocusing debate” of the 1990s is then discussed and consideration given to local research that has called the central premise underpinning this debate into question. The paper concludes by suggesting that social workers in Northern Ireland are still struggling to shift away from a preoccupation with the identification and management of risk and poses some questions regarding the future of social work with children and families.     

Children's Ways of Experiencing Peer Interaction

Educational practice in age integrated child groups rests on the assumption that children learn from their peers. The benefits of age integrated teaching is to enhance the value of heterogeneity in child groups. The fact that children are different from each other with different experiences is seen as an asset, which both children and teachers can benefit from. 22 children in a school class with children of mixed age; ranging from 7-9 years, were interviewed about their conceptions of peer interaction. How do children conceive peer collaboration, and what does it mean to children to teach someone something? A phenomenographic research approach is being used to discern the variation in ways of thinking about how children do when they teach someone something, and how they conceive peer collaboration at school. Children are conscious about the fact that they are able to teach their peers, and they can express this in different ways. Children also shift in their roles as “teacher” and “learner”. In some examples it is the “teacher” who plays the active role, in others it is the “learner” who has to be active by imitating the model/teacher.     

Helping infants cope with change

An attempt will be made here to set forth in non-technical language, some practical suggestions on how teachers, students and child-care workers can help infants cope with change as may occur with adoption and foster care at various ages.

John Dewey once said, “Such happiness as life is capable of, comes from full participation of all of our powers in the endeavor to rest from each changing situation of experience, its own full unique meaning.”     

Towards a unified approach to teaching and learning mathematics

The National Curriculum presents mathematics as a fragmented collection of unrelated topics. Children should experience mathematics as a coherent subject. This can be achieved by viewing Mathematics as a set of systems in which exist relations and operations on data in the systems. Every system has a structure which manifests itself through pattern. The study of mathematics involves a consideration of such patterns.

Children should develop a consistent approach to learning mathematics. Such an approach involves them constructing their own data for a system. The data they produce is recorded in a “dynamic” form enabling them to move each item of data from place to place assisting mathematical thinking and decision making. Relationships between data are explored using the “Operational Processes” of Sorting and Ordering. Children apply these processes to many of the topics in the Programme of Study developing a unified approach to learning mathematics.     

The effect of sudden paternal death on young people and their family relationships: Some implications for practice

The importance for children and young people to be able to communicate openly about the death of a parent is evident from the literature. This small-scale investigation uses a case-study approach to illustrate the impact on siblings of the sudden death of a father. The abundance of comments from the young people in the study such as “talking is the only thing that helps” and “everybody has to get it out” emphasise the important role of communication within the family. Children tend to take their emotional cues from other family members and, paradoxically, restrict communication of their own grief in an attempt to protect others. Even if painful in the short term, certain lines of communication may need to be established if family members are to be able to support each other in dealing with the distressing experience of the death in a healthy manner. The study suggests that those who work with young people in such circumstances should take cognisance of these issues.     

Children's conceptions of their own play

This paper described a research project, Play and Learning, to investigate the mental processes that underlie children's activities in “free play” and “structured learning” situations in preschool. Interviews of children about “what they did” were used to investigate children's own views of play and learning.     

Creative playgrounds for the pre-school children

Why are there easels for painting on the playground? Children will just make a mess if they are allowed to play in water and sand! Those crates and boards are such an “eye-sore” and aren't they dangerous for young children? Why do they need all of those old dishes and pots to put dirt in?     

Forms of knowledge, the curriculum and the young child

Children need to learn many matters, but not all their learning is of the same epistemological kind.There are something like eight fundamental and fundamentally different ways in which human beings encounter the world: Knowledge of Mathematics and Logic, Empiricist Knowledge, Scientific Knowledge, Knowledge of Persons and their Minds, Moral Knowledge, Knowledge and Experience in the Aesthetic Domain, Religion, Philosophy. These Forms structure children's learning, understanding, and experience both formal and informal, at all ages.Moreover they structure not just “scholarly knowledge and experience”, but also, “commonsense knowledge and experience”.

A suitable curriculum will be one which in one way or another provides diverse experiences of these Forms. Because there is no “transfer of training” between Forms as such, children need to be introduced to them all and to be shown how they differ. To say this is not to beg any questions about the best way in which to teach young children: no matter how we decide to organize a curriculum,we are still able to use a range of modern methods.

Although much learning in pre-school and early elementary school ought not to be directly concerned for the deliberate acquisition of the Forms as such, much of the casual learning in schools (and outside them) does indeed involve the Forms-with examples drawn from the child world.

In introducing children to the Forms, those who care for and who teach young children have an enormous responsibility.     

The Contextuality of Children's Communication Difficulties in Specialist Practice: A Sociological Account

This paper reports findings from fieldwork in situations that brought young children and child welfare practitioners together with the aim of diagnosing and treating children's communication difficulties. The findings suggest that communication difficulties tend to be treated as a property of the individual child rather than as an emergent, contextual property of interaction. The attention will be steered from clinical definitions of “impairment” and “disability” to dynamics of social interaction, where understandings of “good” and “normal” communication play a central role. The findings have implications for current recommendations for good practice, which derive from needs-led, rights-led and skills-led approaches.     

Developing mathematical power: A case study

Current reform for mathematics education calls for the development of each child's “mathematical power” (NCTM, 1989, p.5), which we contend can be developed in very young children. From an ongoing case study of Jaclyn's early mathematics learning at home, we (i) share one child's early mathematical attitudes and strategies, and (ii) discuss how one mother's interactions with her daughter influence and guide “teacher-student” interactions. Bedtime story reading and everyday game-like activity are shown to be sources of natural mathematics, in this particular home, where the mother is aware of and acts to encourage the child's mathematical thinking. It is evident that mathematical power, problem solving, and sense making are strongly related for this preschooler. It is also evident that this parent's mediation -- informed by multiple perspectives of mother, classroom teacher and mathematics researcher -- plays an important part in such development.     

Feinstein and study design

Dr. Alvan Feinstein saw himself as the father of “clinical epidemiology” in the modern meaning of this term, of this “new intellectual domain of modern medical science.” In this role, he saw himself as drawing from his “clinical sophistication” and from “the rigorous scientific demands” to which “clinicians are accustomed,” while “public health” epidemiologists “often use a more arbitrary set of standards.” His conception of the scope of clinical epidemiology was remarkably Catholic and the same was the case in respect to cause-effect research in it. In the latter, he was firmly committed to the randomized-trial paradigm, including in his teachings on study design in etiologic research. Characteristically original, many of Dr. Feinstein's study-design ideas remain controversial.