Probation officers and child protection work
| Author | Maria Ansbro |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550514548254 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Probation officers and
2014, Vol. 61(4) 381–396
ª The Author(s) 2014
child protection work:
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550514548254
What does ’think
prb.sagepub.com
family’ look like
in practice?
Maria Ansbro
Bucks New University, United Kingdom
Abstract
This research was an examination of 31 probation service cases that required some level of
child protection work. The work was undertaken for a large metropolitan probation trust to
establish the characteristics of child protection cases, and evaluate standards of practice.
The sample was found to be predominantly low or medium risk. It was characterized by
widespread domestic violence, and mothers struggling to parent on their own. Substance
misuse was a very common feature, and to a lesser extent poor mental health. A great deal
of impressive practice, as well as some poor practice was encountered, and the cases
provide much instruction as to just what a ‘think family’ approach means. Probation
officers were excluded from multi-agency work in a worrying number of cases.
Keywords
child protection, multi-agency, probation, safeguarding children, think family
Introduction
It can be difficult to articulate precisely what best practice is when it comes to the
probation officer’s role in safeguarding children. The search for guidance in this
matter could start with the recent history of the probation service. Probation officers
who have qualified over the last 13 years probably feel that they have little in common
Corresponding Author:
Maria Ansbro, Senior Lecturer, Social Work Department, Bucks New University, High Wycombe, Bucks
HP11 2JZ, United Kingdom.
Email: maria.ansbro@bucks.ac.uk
382
Probation Journal 61(4)
with social workers, but for 25 years, until 1996, trainee social workers and pro-
bation officers undertook the same university based courses at undergraduate or
masters level, differing only in some of the options they chose to study. During this era
the trainee probation officer studied topics such as child development and social work
law; indeed the author’s personal recollection upon qualification in 1986 is of having
a fuller knowledge of the adoption and fostering system than of criminal law. With the
separation of social work and probation officer training, perhaps the safeguarding of
children became a more alien agenda to probation officers.
Certainly the move from welfare oriented practice to a preoccupation with risk is
well documented, starting sometime around the 1990s (Oldfield, 2002). Strict
enforcement of conditions, codified risk assessment and management, and rigid
implementation of cognitive behavioural, offence focused programmes were the
paramount themes. Through the 1990s into the new century the probation service
evolved from an essentially welfare orientated organization into a firmly correc-
tional one. Importantly the focus was firmly trained on the offence and criminogenic
factors
not on the offender’s early life (no sob stories, please), and not on other
aspects of the offender’s life (parenting? children? was that criminogenic?). An
article in a 2010 edition of Probation Journal endorsed this view:
This correctional drift has been particularly pernicious not only because it has
absorbed and in turn reflected the emphasis on punishment and control but because
it has encouraged probation withdrawal, on a day-to-day basis from offenders’ fami-
lies, their communities and until recently those partnership arrangements in commu-
nities at the local level. (Burke and Collett, 2010: 243)
Somewhat surprisingly though, the last few years have seen yet another change of
climate. National Standards (MoJ/NOMS, 2011) has had bariatric surgery and
probation officers are encouraged to use their professional judgement in the inter-
ests of successful completion. The dogmatic grip of cognitive behaviourism has
loosened, making some space for desistance theory (e.g. Farrall and Calverley,
2006) which has nurtured a more hopeful, strengths-based approach in the place
of an obsession with deficits (Ward and Maruna, 2007). A renewed interest in
clients’ relationships
both with their own family and friends, and with their super-
visor in the probation service
has sprung up (Ansbro, 2008; Burnett and
McNeill, 2005), to the extent that Skills for Effective Engagement, Development
and Supervision or ‘SEEDS’ training (Rex and Hosking, 2013) is now increasingly
popular.
The search for guidance in defining best practice could also be conducted
through the prism of law and national policy. A key reference point is the 2004
Children Act, which articulated in law for the first time what the probation service’s
duties are regarding safeguarding children. Section 10.4 of the Act lists the orga-
nizations that are ’relevant partners’ to children’s services, and they include the
various parts of the NHS, the police, probation, youth offending teams, prisons, and
the learning and skills council. Section 11 then articulates the duties of those
agencies, namely to ensure that:
Ansbro
383
. . . their functions are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote
the welfare of children. (Children Act 2004, S.11 2(a))
It is short and unelaborated. However of note is that it refers firstly to safeguarding
children. By that it is clear that probation has a role with children who are at risk of
serious harm under section 47 of the 1989 Children Act. It is also clearly stating that
probation has a role in promoting the welfare of children, presumably referring here
to children who may not be at risk of harm through neglect or abuse, but who are in
need of support. This concept of being ‘in need’ of support had been described in
section 17 of the 1989 Children Act, requiring that services were provided to those
children who were ‘unlikely to achieve or maintain . . . a reasonable standard of
health or development’. Nevertheless section 11 2(a) was still playing its cards
close to its chest when it came to specifying just what probation officers were meant
to do; was it sufficient to pass on all concerns to children’s services, or were they to
attend every child protection conference and be a key player within a core group?
Three years later some guidance arrived to help interpret the Act. In 2007 the
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) published a document called Statutory
Guidance on Making Arrangements to Safeguard and Promote the Welfare of
Children under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 (Department for Education and
Skills, 2007). The probation service was one of a range of agencies with a chapter
devoted to their contribution to safeguarding. Section 8.2 is where the chapter gets
to the point, and it sets out six bullet points that sum up how this should happen. The
first contribution the probation service makes is through:
. . . the management of adult offenders in ways that will reduce the risk of harm they
may present to children through skilful assessment, the delivery of well targeted and
quality interventions and risk management planning. (DfES, 2007: 57)
The second contribution is to be made through:
. . . the delivery of services to adult offenders, who may be parents or carers, that
addresses the factors that influenced their reasons to offend, for example, poor thinking
skills, poor moral reasoning, drug/alcohol dependency. (DfES, 2007: 57)
Pondering on the wording of policy for too long can be a mistake, as it reduces the
reader to a state where all meaning blurs. The two points could be interpreted as being
nearly identical (i.e. identify causes of offending and address them), but the first point
probably had in mind a child sexual offender, and the second one a case where the
offending might be of any type, but where the factors driving the offending are also
impacting on parenting. The third bullet point refers to participation in multi-agency col-
laborations, and the fourth to the secondment of staff to youth offending teams. The fifth
bul et points refers to the provision of ’a service to child victims of serious sexual or vio-
lent offences’ (DfES, 2007: 58), and this presumably refers to victim liaison officers’
work under Section 69 of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act, 2000. The last
bul et point refers to work with female victims of domestic violence offenders on
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Probation Journal 61(4)
Integrated Domestic Abuse Programmes (i.e. the work of women’s safety officers).
Overall, then, a little flesh has been put on the bones, but just a little.
In 2009 a policy arrived that took quite a surprising turn; the Ministry of Justice
(MoJ) and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) put out
Reducing Reoffending, Supporting Families, Creating Better Futures: A Framework
for Improving the Local Delivery of Support for the Families of Offenders (MoJ/
DCSF, 2009). The paper pitched the probation service’s role in safeguarding
children at a qualitatively different level. It set out how the families of offenders are
disadvantaged, economically, emotionally, educationally and socially. It is a
heartfelt plea for all agencies inside the criminal justice system and outside to col-
laborate to fight the poor life outcomes that offenders’ families’ experience. It cites
dismal statistics, for example that 63 per cent of offenders’ children will go on to
become criminally convicted themselves. It then sets the probation service the task of
assessing the wel -being of children in...
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