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Advocacy for parents and carers involved with children's services: making a difference to working in partnership?
Author(s) -
Featherstone Brid,
Fraser Claire,
Ashley Cathy,
Ledward Pam
Publication year - 2011
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/j.1365-2206.2010.00738.x
Subject(s) - general partnership , child protection , social work , service (business) , politics , scheme (mathematics) , public relations , nursing , psychology , medicine , political science , law , business , mathematical analysis , mathematics , marketing
This paper explores findings from the evaluation of a scheme providing direct advocacy to parents where there were concerns about their ability to provide safe care for their children. The evaluation explored the views of service users, social workers and conference chairpersons and found general agreement that the advocacy scheme contributed positively to the process of working in partnership. This is of interest given research findings which suggest that working in partnership is particularly difficult in cases involving child protection issues. However, it is noted that there appears to be little political will to develop advocacy schemes for parents in the UK, and this is of concern given the lack of supports available to them to navigate a complex and often intimidating system.