Signs of Safety: lessons learnt from evaluations
| Published date | 06 June 2019 |
| Pages | 107-123 |
| Date | 06 June 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCS-11-2018-0028 |
| Author | Mary Baginsky,Jo Moriarty,Jill Manthorpe |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Signs of Safety: lessons learnt from
evaluations
Mary Baginsky, Jo Moriarty and Jill Manthorpe
Abstract
Purpose –Signs of Safety (SoS) is a strengths-based approach to child protection casework that has been
widely adopted in countries across the world. The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that aimed to
synthesise the many evaluations of SoS that have been conducted to assess their strengths and limitations.
The intention is to identify the aspects which should be explored further and those that remain unexamined to
inform future evaluations.
Design/methodology/approach –The study collated and then examined many of the evaluations that are
in the public domain as well as some of those that were conducted within agencies and have not been made
publicly available.
Findings –At the present time (earl y 2019), the evidence base fo r SoS is limited. Indepe ndent, robust
research needs to be underta ken over time to build on the st udies that have been conducte d. New
research must be designed to fill gaps and be capable of producing the evidence required and it must
address its own limitations.
Originality/value –This study is the most comprehensive contemporary review of the evaluations of SoS
that have been conducted to the best of the authors’knowledge.
Keywords Child protection, Evaluations, Social work, Evidence, Signs of Safety, Strength-based approach
Paper type Research paper
Background
Signs of Safety (SoS) is a strengths-based approach to child protection casework that was
developed in Australia by Dr Andrew Turnell and Steve Edwards and is now used in parts of the
North America, Europe and Asia. In the USA, for example, where SoS is viewed as a risk
assessment tool according to Casey Family Programs (2011) structured decision making (SDM)
and ACTION/NRCCPS are more frequently used than SoS, but at the time of their survey SoS
was being used in 11 States.
The founders’intention was that SoS should be implemented within a cultu re of appreciative
inquiry (AI) (Cooperrrider and Whitney, 1999) around frontline practice. In this context, AI “is a
process of asking q uestions and focusing on successf ul behaviours and practice. Its ai m is to
enhance practice depth amongst practitioners to deliver safer outcomes for vulnerable
children”(Government of Western Australia, 2014, p. 1). (For a full description of SoS see
Turnell, 2017.) The format for undertaking a risk assessment –assessing for both danger and
strengths/safety –within the one-page SoS assessment protocol –is known as a mapping. It
focuses on three elements: what is working well, what we (child protective services) are worried
about and what needs to happen. Other v arious tools may be used.
Andrew Turnell was a Fo under Member of Res olutions, a consul tancy set up to suppor t SoS
practice. He was joined by Terry Murphy previously Director-General of the Department of
Child Protection and Family Support in Western Australia. In 2014 together with Professor
Eileen Munro from Engla nd they established Mun ro, Turnell and Murphy ( MTM) Child
Protection Consultancy. This provides support to child protection agencies, based on SoS
practice, that are implementing whole system reforms “that deliver better outcomes for
Received 4 November 2018
Revised 19 February 2019
Accepted 15 March 2019
This review is underpinning the
evaluation of Signs of Safety pilots
which was funded by the
Department for Education as part
of the Children’s Social Care
English Innovation Programme.
The views expressed are solely
those of the authors.
Mary Baginsky, Jo Moriarty and
Jill Manthorpe are all based at
Health and Social Care
Workforce Research Unit,
King’s College London,
London, UK.
DOI 10.1108/JCS-11-2018-0028 VOL. 14 NO. 2 2019, pp. 107-123, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1746-6660
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vulnerable children and their families”(see www.signso fsafety.net/munro-turne ll-murphy-child-
protection-consulting/).
The government funded Children’s Social Care English Innovation Programme (EIP) started in
2013 and will end in 2020. It offered three rounds of competitive funding to local authorities with
the aim of supporting projects to “innovate and re-design service delivery to achieve higher
quality, improved outcomes and better value for money”(see https://innovationcsc.co.uk/
innovation-programme/). One funded project was the implementation and development of
MTM’s SoS project in ten local authorities in England. We were commissioned to evaluate the
project in round 1 and are currently evaluating the round 2 phase. Both studies received ethical
approval from the Research Ethics Committee at King’s College London. Taken together, they
comprise one of the largest studies of SoS and this paper explores where it sits in the history of
evaluations of the approach, as well as the current study’s strengths and limitations.
Evaluating Signs of Safety
Despite SoS being used to some extent in over three-fifths of local authoritie s in England
(Baginsky et al., 2017), as well as in many jurisdictions around the world, the published
evidence base for the approach is limited. Barlow et al. (2012) conducted a systematic review of
models of analysing significant harm and concluded that, while there was evidence of positive
feedback from practitioners, SoS “did not appear to have been evaluated in terms of reliability,
validity or impact”(p. 65).
Many evaluations of SoS have been based on small samples of parents or social workers (Bunn,
2013). None has involved a control or comparison group, although Bunn (2013) reported that one
control study did take place; on further investigation by Bunn and ourselves this was not the case
and the study referenced had not been published.
As a result, support for SoS has tended to rest heavily on practice wisdom rather than
research-based evidence. A recent edition of the SoS Comprehensive Briefing Paper (Turnell,
2017) claims that SoS has emerged from what works best in practice for practitioners and as
such “this locates the SoS eviden ce and theory base within the traditions of action research,
collaborative and AI, practice-based evidence, and critical best practice”(p. 24). Increasing
demand for practice to be evidence based and for evaluations to meet stricter criteria may
mean this will no longer be sufficient for service commissioners. In this respect, a concern
raised by both Oliver (2014) and Gillingham (2018), as well as during interviews conducted for
the EIP evaluation (authors), is the direct involvement of those who have developed SoS in
some of the studies and p ublished articles. This contribu ted to but was not the sole reason for
the decision to exclude MTM’s own action research report from this review (Munro et al., 2016).
While the report contains feedback from social workers as well as data that were collected from
families by the local authorities concerned, it does not constitute an independent evaluation.
Table I summarises the most significant evaluations re ferred to in this pa per.
Reports on small scale evaluations of SoS, usually undertaken in local authorities, were found to
be brief, not always independent and not peer-reviewed. In some instances, the data presented
do not substantiate the claims and conclusions. It also proved difficult to source some articles
that were listed as s upportive references. So, for ex ample, one study that is widely refer enced
has never been publi shed (see section above). In additio n, we found descriptions of and
feedback on the approach referenced variously as evidence, research or evaluation. There are
further articles where claims are made for a list of positive outcomes, followed by a list of
references which make it difficult to test the validity of the claims. All of this indicates the need for
research that is both independent and capable of producing strong evidence. The aim of this
paper is to contribute to shaping futur e evaluations of So S, by reporting and commenting on
previous studies a nd their methods. It does not aim to be a comprehensiv e review of evaluation
outcomes. A mixed methods systematic review, conducted by the What Works Centre for
Children’s Social Care (2018), considered if the use of SoS led to a reduction “in the number of
children entering and re-entering care, and/or to increase the number of children re-unified with
their family”(p. 4). While their authors attempted to appraise the quality of the studies, it is not,
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