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Looking under the bonnet: probation officers' practice with child protection cases
Author(s) -
Ansbro Maria
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
child and family social work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.912
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-2206
pISSN - 1356-7500
DOI - 10.1111/cfs.12231
Subject(s) - child protection , agency (philosophy) , harm , officer , social work , criminology , restructuring , work (physics) , psychology , public relations , political science , service (business) , social psychology , law , sociology , business , engineering , social science , mechanical engineering , marketing
This research examined 31 Probation Service cases in E ngland and W ales that required some child protection work. It examined three areas: key characteristics of the case, inter‐agency communication and evidence for a ‘think family’ approach. Key findings were that domestic violence and substance misuse were widespread. The majority of the cases were assessed as low or medium risk of harm, and so after the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ restructuring will be supervised by a C ommunity R ehabilitation C ompany, rather than the N ational P robation S ervice. The majority of cases featured effective inter‐agency communication, and were characterized by the ‘think family’ principle. Where this was not achieved, two types of cases stood out. The first was where the probation officer was distracted from offenders' children because of public protection issues. The second was where probation officers made efforts to be included in multi‐agency work, but were shut out.