Why Belonging?
Most people know of me as the principal co-creator of the Signs of Safety (video link to Once Upon a Time in the West) and might wonder, what’s all this belonging business about?
I began the Signs of Safety development in 1988, when I began collaborating with Steve Edwards here in Western Australia. Creating, evolving and publishing the approach and then taking the Signs of Safety beyond Australia’s shores has been at the centre of my life’s work for 35 years.
I continue to be committed to developing and promoting the Signs of Safety. The approach offers real world grounding of what participatory, just statutory child protection services can look like in practice.
The Culture Problem
Working in many international children’s services agencies around the world over more than 30 years has taught me that participatory practice models, don’t tend to lead to lasting change. This lesson can be summed up in the adage that:
Undoubtedly when organisations choose to implement the Signs of Safety approach their practitioners, managers and leaders committed to using the approach to transform their practice. What I have seen time and again however is that while our efforts most often achieve short to medium term success, usually the bureaucratic culture and the unrelenting pressures of statutory child protection tends to hollow out and procedualise the Signs of Safety approach and methods.
Between 2014 to 2017 Professor Eileen Munro used action research methods to follow the successes and struggles of eleven English local authorities seeking to implement the Signs of Safety. Eileen gave both reports the title, ‘You can’t grow roses in concrete’. This metaphor eloquently names the culture challenge of transforming child protection services in one succinct phrase.
Managerialism as the culture that eats social work for breakfast
During the same period I have been developing the Signs of Safety, managerialism driven by a philosophy of neoliberalism has become a dominant force within Western politics and most government and private organizational activity (link using the words invisible doctrine; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/748745/invisible-doctrine-by-george-monbiot-and-peter-hutchison/). This has significantly impacted children’s services leading to practice and organization becoming increasingly risk averse, dominated by procedures, compliance measures and form filling. (See Resources page for references).
Managerialism is dispiriting for practitioners, managers and leaders. Professor Nigel Parton describes it ‘hollowing out’ of social work. Many academics have described the problem and I want to use just one quote I find to be most poignant.
Professor Megan Davis, Cobble Cobble woman of the Barunggam Nation in Australia, is an international constitutional lawyer and public law expert. Over the past thirty five years Australia has seen the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in care rise from less than 25% to a current rate of 45% while indigenous people make up only 6% of the Australian population. Seeking to address this problem Professor Davis review the experience of aboriginal children in care and their families in New South Wales child protection system. In her report titled ‘Family is Culture’ ( Download Here ) following a review of the cases of 1144 Aboriginal children-in-care Davis wrote:
"Child Protection bureaucracy is steeped in ‘the comfort of ritualism’. Caseworkers were guided by a desire to be compliant regardless of whether what they were doing made sense to them."
Purpose: The Antidote for Proceduralism
Proceduralisation is an intimidating and unbeautiful word. At its simplest and in the name of risk management, proceduralisation means people find themselves doing something as an end in itself, rather than undertaking that activity as part of achieving a purpose they are committed to.
A managerialist system prioritises process and tends to erase purpose. In this way a risk averse, compliance driven child protection culture easily becomes focused on organisational rather than child safety.
In this light, I've learned that in a system driven by procedures the concept of ‘safety’ can be too easily become a technical procedure. I often say the tools and methods of Signs of Safety are both its greatest strength and greatest vulnerability.
Within a proceduralised system, the Signs of Safety methods such as a three columns mapping, a My Three Houses, a network meeting, or a Safety Plan can become disconnected from a clear understanding how that activity might make life better for the child and their family.
My journey of developing the Signs of Safety and sister approaches Signs of Well-being and Signs of Success and working in many jurisdictions around the world has led me to the view that we need to be clearer about purpose. Belonging I believe, is the central core purpose of all child protection organization and practice.
In children’s services all our work from case commencement to closure should be undertaken in the service of belonging.
Belonging:
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Speaks to our hearts and goes to the heart of our work
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Immediately challenges the taken-for-granted ‘child rescue’ myth has animated child protection since its commencement in the late 1800s
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Is an every-person issue since to experience safety, wellbeing and success that lasts we all need a foundation of belonging to purpose, place, culture, community, family, self and identity
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Provides a grounded means to reclaim purpose within child protection culture, organization, procedure and practice
Why Belonging?
Because we are all Born to Belong*
Click on the sound icon (bottom/right) to listen to the video below
