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Stay Safe Conference. The Impact of Social Policy on Families Today. THE RESEARCH. STAGE ONE - A year-long ethnographic case study in a large Children’s Centre focused on the workers perceptions of inter-agency working.
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Stay Safe Conference The Impact of Social Policy on Families Today
THE RESEARCH • STAGE ONE - A year-long ethnographic case study in a large Children’s Centre focused on the workers perceptions of inter-agency working. • STAGE TWO – The focus on the importance of relationships between individual workers and parents and the way workers construct ‘good-enough parent’.
EMERGENT THEMES • Co-locating teams does not necessarily lead to collaboration. • Policy and Practice guidelines are negotiated through the interpretation of managers and individual workers • Relationships are key to engaging families
What is good enough? ....who decides? “The main thing is that the child is not at risk” “If a parent is living in poverty they can only do their best” “Sometimes their best is not ‘good enough’” “’Good enough’ is loving them…no matter what”
QUESTIONS... • What voices are being heard / silenced? • How do workers negotiate between what policy dictates and their preferred practice? • How do the individual constructions of parenting impact on the family support ‘relationship’? • How can the services reach the families ‘most excluded’?
The Big Questions.... • Is the ECM agenda disempowering families and communities? • Are the changes in social policy more about surveillance leading to increased state intervention in family lives? • Is the construction of the ‘Good Parent’ within social policy based on middle class values?
