PhD Research
Louise was awarded an LSE PhD Scholarship to undertake her PhD research and worked under the academic supervision of Professor Eileen Munro.
BACKGROUND: According to the guidance to the
Children Act (1989 and 2004), ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ (2010;
2013), all organisations that work with children have a responsibility to
protect children from maltreatment. However, previous research on child contact
centres raises questions about how well this service is meeting the
responsibility. This study seeks to explore in more detail how well contact
centres manage their responsibility to protect children and what factors may
influence them in this task. Research in the area of safety management has shown
the limits of top-down guidance in achieving the desired level of practice. It
provides a systems framework for studying how guidance is being implemented on
the ground, including how it is interpreted by different actors in the system,
and how they interact to produce the observed level of practice.
METHODS: Mixed methods were used to undertake a systems approach to
studying the management of child protection responsibilities in contact centres.
This approach aims to provide an in-depth understanding of what is happening in
child contact centres, in terms of child protection, and why.
FINDINGS: Despite the introduction of reforms which aimed to improve
safety in child contact centres, problematic child protection practice has
persisted. It is argued that this is because common weaknesses in voluntary
sector provision of human services have not been fully addressed. These
weaknesses are insufficient funding, inadequate professionalization and narrow
organisational focus. The findings suggest that these issues informed how actors
in the system experienced and understood the practice of protecting children.
The findings suggest that the safety of children in contact centres is also
affected by the persistence of problematic inter-professional working. It is
argued that the tools which have been introduced to address this have not been
effective because they do not in themselves address the difficulties actors face
in working together. There remains a lack of capacity amongst some centres and
referrers who do not necessarily have the skills required to safely make and
accept referrals. In addition, actors in the system experience role ambiguity.
Finally, the thesis suggests that although
organisations that work with children are encouraged to take account of
children’s wishes and feelings in order to protect them, workers in child
contact centres engaged with children in diverse ways. A typology of engagement,
which was developed from the data, suggests that engagement can be
conceptualised as ranging from ‘coercive’ to ‘limited’ to ‘meaningful’. The
findings suggest that workers’ engagement with children was influenced not just
by factors within contact centres but by individuals’ personal values and the
wider family justice system, which contact centres operate in.
IMPLICATIONS: This research suggests that in the empirical context of child
contact centres, the ‘Working Together’ guidance to organisations working with
children does not in itself produce predictable effects which will fulfil the
guidance aims. Rather, when the guidance combines with local factors it produces
unexpected effects. The meaning that actors attributed to their actions was not
static. Instead, socially constructed, local rationalities influenced how actors
understood and experienced the process of protecting children. The findings
contribute to the growing body of research which argues that policy makers need
to focus, not simply on telling organisations what do, but on enabling them to
do it. In addition, the findings contribute to the systems approach literature,
which suggests that safety needs to be understood within the socio-technical
system that actors inhabit.
Research Interests
Systems approach; child protection; child contact; domestic violence, Voice of the Child; voluntary sector-state relations; inter-professional working; risk management; New Public Management (NPM)
Educational Background
Scholarships/Awards/Grants
Teaching
Conference Papers
Caffrey, L (2013) "Hearing the Voice of the Child? A systems approach to understanding practice in child contact centres in England", Presentation at International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) European Regional Conference, Dublin, September 15-18, 2013
Caffrey, L (2013) "Hearing the Voice of the Child? A systems approach to understanding practice in child contact centres in England", Presentation at Department of Social Policy (London School of Economics) PhD Research Day, London, May 30th, 2013.
Caffrey, L (2013), "Situating child contact centres as Complex Adaptive Systems: implications for research design and public management" Presentation at International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM), Prague, April 10-12, 2013
Caffrey, L (2013) "Hearing the Voice of the Child? The role of child contact centres in the family justice system", Presentation at Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Annual Conference, York, 26-28 March, 2013
Caffrey, L (2012) "Situating Child Contact Centres as Complex Adaptive Systems Implications of a “systems approach” for research design and public management", Poster Presentation at Department of Social Policy 100th Anniversary Colloquium (London School of Economics), 17 December, 2012