Safeguarding, Social Work, and Multi-Agency Collaboration with Steve Myers

[00:00:00] Welcome everybody back to The Social World Podcast. I'm Dave Niven and as always it's a pleasure to have your company. Now today I'm going to be talking with somebody who's been steeped in child protection and safeguarding now for many years and is the Vice Chair of the Association of Child Protection Professionals. It's Steve Myers. Welcome Stephen to the programme.

[00:00:26] Hi David. Great to see you and thanks for inviting me today. Okay, good. Now look, let's set the scene a little bit here. Maybe you could just say a little bit about your own background first and then we'll just get into the conversation. How's that? That sounds good to me and thanks. I'm a registered and qualified social worker stretching back to the 1980s when I did my course.

[00:00:54] I was a social worker in child protection and youth justice and developed a specialism in working with children with sexual behaviour problems, children who committed sexual offences. I did quite a lot of direct practice work but also thinking about how we respond to these young people and some initial research about that.

[00:01:16] I then moved into higher education as a social worker lecturer and eventually ended up in a leadership role at a university in the north of England. I then retired and in my retirement in a voluntary capacity, I am currently the Vice Chair of the Association. Right. Well, let's then move on to perhaps a brief description of the Association of Child Protection Professionals.

[00:01:47] Can you give us just a little bit of a rundown, maybe starting with what the kind of membership is like in terms of the people in it and the professions that they have? Sure, Dave. The Association is a multidisciplinary non-profit making organisation and it's membership led. And the members reflect that multidisciplinary professional approach to safeguarding children.

[00:02:16] So our members are from, as you would imagine, the social work profession, but also education, mental health, health generally, including, for example, nurses and paediatricians, criminal justice, including the police and lawyers, and a big representation from the academic world as well. That's a wide range of people, isn't it?

[00:02:44] Yeah, and that's fantastic. And it's been like that since the inception of the association, which in a previous iteration started in 1979. So we've been going strong since then and developing and trying to respond to safeguarding as it changes over that time as well. You've obviously got staying power.

[00:03:07] I mean, you know, many groups come and go, but you've actually been consistently part of the safeguarding fabric for quite considerable time. I mean, tell us a little bit more about the policies within the association, the sort of things that you're looking at.

[00:03:27] I mean, I will get into all the changes as we go as well, but maybe talking a little bit about multi-agency work, which I think is absolutely core to your philosophy.

[00:03:40] It absolutely is. I think it might be helpful just to share with you our mission statement, which is our mission is to improve the lives and safety of children and vulnerable adults by working with those in the sector to provide research, representation, training and support. And that's what we do. And that's how we do it. So I can talk in a bit more detail about how we go about doing that, if that helps. No, I think that's a good idea. Let's take it in sequence then.

[00:04:10] I mean, we've got, you mentioned there was academia mentioned, you mentioned there was operational support mentioned, and you also mentioned there was policy. I mean, you take them in any order you like. Maybe give us a little bit of an insight into all the different sort of arms of the association.

[00:04:26] Sure. Yeah. Our key offer to the members and the way we work with members is through a system of special interest groups that we've set up that have been member driven out of member interest. So this has proved to be really, really helpful for people. So I'll give you some examples if that's okay, Dave. Yeah, go ahead.

[00:04:52] Interesting. So we have, we have one on child sexual abuse. We've got another on domestic violence. We've got a really interesting one on digital safeguarding, which is trying to engage with, as we know, I mean, forgive me, David, but given my age, you know, like trying to keep up with the digital world is a challenge. And that seems to be one that we need to be constantly thinking about.

[00:05:21] So having the opportunity in the space to discuss the implications in safeguarding is really important. So that's one that we just set up a new one on neurodiversity as well, and Gypsy Roma Traveller Group, and one on gender dysphoria, which of course is very sort of taxing people's safeguarding at the moment. So a whole sort of flavour there, the sort of special interest group range that we have.

[00:05:50] What a range of things, actually. Incredibly difficult. I mean, it just highlights, doesn't it, just how diverse and non-generic, you know, one has to be in order to address some of the safeguarding challenges that are around.

[00:06:07] Absolutely. I mean, there's a whole range of different aspects to safeguarding that require quite detailed thought, because these are often quite complex in the way they're constructed, but also in the way we want to respond to them as well.

[00:06:27] So having the space and the special interest group events generally take the form of, they're chaired by usually an academic and practitioner in that field. And they will invite a presenter to come and talk about usually contemporary research in the field, and then provide the space for a multi-professional discussion about the implications of that research for the practice.

[00:06:55] So absolutely practice-driven, absolutely about informing and developing practice. Okay. I mean, over the years, things have changed. We know that. And in terms of the priorities that we have to address, but there's always basic safeguarding issues, aren't there?

[00:07:16] So whether it's in the general public or whether it's in schools or education or whether it's in health or whether it's legal issues or whatever, there's a, if you like, a kind of a core, steady kind of understanding of what's needed. But I imagine what you were just saying there, take some of the special interest groups you mentioned superimposed on that. They wouldn't have existed 10 years ago. So, I mean, for example, the digital issues or the neurodiversity issues.

[00:07:46] I mean, these are all being added. So it sounds very much like the association is doing well and keeping up with the times. Is that fair? That's kind of you to say, David. I think we would be proud to say that. Yeah. So I think we, and that's entirely driven by members. You know, we listen to members. You know, what are your needs at the moment?

[00:08:13] What are these areas that are coming forward that needs further thought and more interrogation? And we then set up the appropriate structures to enable people to access this, the discussion, the research and the discussion. So, you know, we do pride ourselves on being contemporary and we don't shy away from tackling some difficult issues as well.

[00:08:39] You know, because we can't be precious in safeguarding. We need to be able to take a professional perspective on these issues and have a proper informed discussion about them and how we need to respond in terms of an informed professional response.

[00:08:59] Well, look, I mean, just at this point, I think I ought to say, too, that all links to your association and to issues involved, events involved or the special interest groups or whatever, I'm going to make sure that are on the front page of this podcast, you know, the written page so that links will be available to all the sort of things that we talk about. So hopefully people aren't sort of recording away, scribbling away in the background.

[00:09:27] They will be there and there will be an opportunity for people to digest them a bit fuller as time goes by when the podcast is published. So please remember that, everybody. Steve, I want to ask you a couple of more specific things, if I might, just as a as a professional yourself, because as you said, your whole working life has been involved in protecting children and vulnerable adults.

[00:09:52] But the world has changed quite a bit in terms of how it's done, if you want to put it crudely. But at the same time, some things haven't changed. I just want to get your opinion on some things, if that's all right with you. Yeah. If we put a pin in the calendar today and actually sort of said, well, look, today, let's just I have to just take take England, for example. I know we can talk about the four home nations and that's fine.

[00:10:21] But just as a statistical thing, take England first. Any one day, there are at least 50,000 children considered to be at risk of abuse from their people looking after them in England. And that's not changed in the last 10 and sometimes 20 years in terms of numbers. Now, some people say, well, yes, because, you know, we're investigating far more. We're looking after far more.

[00:10:50] But in your view, does that suggest that there's still not enough being done or that it's just a question of we're taking a long time to flush out the system? Very difficult question, isn't it? Because it raises then questions about, well, is the identification of vulnerable children in the system?

[00:11:14] There's also, are our systems sensitive enough to pick up children who are vulnerable or who are actually being abused? And is that around a focus on abuse within the family or are we looking at abuse external to the family? And is that landscape changing? And I think these are real challenges to us.

[00:11:43] I think what we have to acknowledge is the UK, statistically, we're actually quite good at recognising and supporting children who are at risk of abuse. And our rates of child death, for example, tend to be lower than equivalent of other societies.

[00:12:10] And I think whatever it is we're doing, we're doing some things right. And we are managing to support children and their families effectively. Nonetheless, there are tragic exceptions to that. Well, that is certainly something that I think we're all very acutely aware of.

[00:12:35] The fact that, if you like, many, many occasions, and we've got to be honest about this, on many occasions, a child death, usually at the hand of parents or carers, hits the headlines. And the statutory authorities of which social work is one, police is another, health, education, whatever, are blamed, certainly in the media.

[00:13:01] And therefore, the general public will get most of their information these days from the media, whether it's written or broadcast or social media, whatever, actually get almost like a warped view of professionals looking after children. Whereas 499,999 children every day are being very well protected. Yes. Yes. It's a dilemma. It's a conundrum.

[00:13:30] It's something that never, to be honest with you, all my working life, it's never really changed to just how fast the public opinion can sway. And it takes a long time to rebuild that trust. Yes. I think you're right, David, if I might come back. I mean, there are huge implications of that as well.

[00:13:51] I know one of our trustees, Dr. Kieran Murphy, he's done work on the impact of child death and media response on the recruitment and practice of social workers. And social workers, it does impact on, you know, that sort of, on how people view themselves, how people view their practice.

[00:14:14] When they look out there and see such a media hysteria response, you know, it does have a real impact. I wonder what you think about, there have been certain initiatives that I've tried to actually kind of, if you know, level the playing fields for want of a word, you know.

[00:14:32] But, for example, getting social workers into, to teach and lecture on journalism courses for people when they come out and actually represent the media. And for journalists to come and give opinion about what journalists are looking for on social work courses. That sounds quite an interesting idea, actually. Yeah, I think that would.

[00:14:59] I mean, I've given lectures myself, a post-grad journalist course in Cardiff in the past. And it went down very well. I mean, that's not to sort of praise me, but just the idea was good. And I think, you know, we've got to have, we've really got to look at that and about how we deal with it.

[00:15:21] And I wonder what your thoughts are about more local issues, such as social workers generally don't talk to the media. Whereas representatives of lots of other professions do. And therefore, it is still a bit of a mystery sometimes when something happens that's needed to be corrected.

[00:15:46] And a lot of time spent on explaining the process of child protection. Yeah, it's interesting, David. I think there's some evidence that when people are given, when the public's given the space to think about, you know, the complexities of child protection, they actually get, they can understand the difficulties that are faced by social workers and other child protection professionals.

[00:16:14] And actually acknowledge that it's not, it's not an easy job. Yeah. And so there's some, there's some evidence around that, that, that of course requires people to be engaging with the public in that sort of complexity. And I think there's something there around leadership. Yeah. Which is one of your special, that was one of your special areas of work, wasn't it? Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:16:39] And I think it's around, you know, taking those opportunities as leaders in child protection and or social work to look for opportunities to engage with, with the media wherever possible to try and, and actually we've, we, we do that as an association.

[00:16:56] We, we, we put forward members to be on, on, on, on news programs and so on to, to try and give that perspective around child protection and the complexes of it. And that's always been met very positively. What do you think? What do you think of the idea, Steve? I mean, all right, let me, let me put a scenario to you if I may and see what you think.

[00:17:21] Um, if only some of the free local newspapers and, and the local commercial radio stations, if social workers were allowed to talk to them, obviously those that wanted to, and explain a little bit about it and actually what they do, what they don't do and so on.

[00:17:38] Tomorrow morning, when a new case came in, in that area and a social worker had to go and visit, say, a family where there was concerns, there would be just that little bit extra trust to get across the threshold if there had been a lot of public discussion about the social work task.

[00:17:58] As opposed to people who actually believe a lot of the theatrics that they hear about social workers and some of the misinformation that's given out about social workers snatching your children, which of course is not allowed and can't be possible. Or social workers getting into your house without permission and so on, which again is not legally possible.

[00:18:20] I mean, I think the actual information that the informing of the community, to my mind would really, you know, produce sort of good value. Would you both think about that? I absolutely agree. I think it's, it's difficult to imagine how that might work, except because we sort of moved away from community-based work to a great extent.

[00:18:51] But how do we engage with local communities around the fact that, you know, social work and child protective, child safeguarding services are there to support people? You know, how do we get that message over? What, what, where's the, where's the, where the, what's the forum to do that? Now, local media might, might be one way. I think that sounds great. And I think it's clearly, David, it's not going to be a one-off. It's going to have to be on a, on an engaged and regular basis, isn't it?

[00:19:19] To make that sort of, to get that relationship going with people. So, and I think local, local political leaders have a responsibility there. I think that would be, you know, people need to be taking this forward and engaging with people. Because these are, these are services that are there for people, for families and their children. Okay, well, let's take it another step further then.

[00:19:48] Because one of the things that your association is actually known for is research. And also you've got a very, a publication that's kind of really been around for quite some time. And it's very well respected, Child Abuse Review. How about the early days of a child's life in terms of the impact that work can have on that family?

[00:20:18] I mean, I did a lot of work in the past with, and ran conferences on when it used to be something called Sure Start was around. Yeah. Which was looking, for example, certainly at the first thousand days of a child's life, you know, from conception right through to age two. And the impact of, say, there was family mental health issues or family criminal issues or just general dysfunction.

[00:20:47] And how that impacted on the rest of the life of that child. And so if a bit more impact could be made, a bit more money could be spent, a bit more time could be invested, and a bit more people could be employed to actually work with families in that sort of dysfunctional state. Then down the line, there would be huge savings, both in terms of human savings and financial savings.

[00:21:16] Is that something that would resonate with you? It certainly is, David. I think, you know, one of the things that the discussions we've had with members, because we canvass members' opinions when any new policy appears, and we're asked to, you know, for our opinion on that by government. And we canvass members' opinions.

[00:21:40] And what comes forward every time is this is great or this needs work, but it's underpinned by resources. You know, people are stretched. People are stretched, and that is across every discipline that forms that sort of child protection professionals. All of them are saying to us, and I've been consistently for a number of years, yeah, there's some good work to be done. We simply haven't got the resources to deliver that.

[00:22:07] And that puts enormous stresses on the professionals themselves who are trying to do a great job for people, particularly in that early intervention approach, you know, where people need those resources to develop. And you're right, it's an investment in children and families at an early age for a return later on when things, you know, to prevent problems developing.

[00:22:33] Well, they mentioned something like, are you familiar with the phrase the toxic trio, which essentially is of what it found in these families that we were talking about? So whether it's substance abuse or whether it's domestic violence or whether it's mental health issues, the three big issues within that family, there are causing all the disruption and causing the dysfunction.

[00:23:00] I mean, like you just said, the massive resource issues at a time. And let's tie the two things together that you talked about before, which is actually the knowledge within the community of social work. Because of the way that the media, I'm going to add a question to you, because of the way that the media portrays social work sometimes, especially in child protection, recruitment has been a bit of a problem.

[00:23:26] And there still are some significant vacancies up and down the country because of it. And therefore, dealing with the second question that we talked about in terms of resource issues makes that even more difficult. Would you go along with that? I would absolutely agree. And it's interesting that, I mean, the association partners and supports research projects into a wide variety of child safeguarding issues.

[00:23:54] But we've recently partnered with Buckinghamshire New University to support a study on supporting social workers in recruitment and retention in coastal communities. Now, as you'll know, David, our coastal communities are blighted by poverty and deprivation.

[00:24:19] And as you've spotted drugs as well, a major, major problem there. And this has an impact on raising children and child welfare. So we're partnered with a big study to explore how those challenges to social work recruitment and practice can be met.

[00:24:40] So it's just an example of how we're working in partnership with universities and other organizations to deliver some really important contemporary research and understanding of current issues. Well, that's a key word, partnership, isn't it? I mean, to be fair, my memory and knowledge of the association in all its forms over the years has been one of promoting partnership.

[00:25:09] And more recently, I think the structural alterations within local authorities and teams, for example, have actually drifted more towards that where, you know, police, social workers, health education are working much more closely together to actually come up with solutions and support. Whereas before it used to be a bit more like what they call the silo.

[00:25:37] You know, the age profession was in its own lane and they did good work, but it wasn't as effective as all people working together. And of course, there was a cost benefit analysis now to that as well.

[00:25:49] So would you say that your association actually not only possibly was a forerunner in terms of actually partnership support or partnership advocacy, but absolutely sees it as a key role now as a key way forward? It absolutely is, David. I mean, in terms of practice on the ground, partnership working across different professions is key.

[00:26:17] I mean, there's research study after research study to support that, yeah, in terms of delivering good quality child protection practice. So we absolutely support that. I like to think we've played a part in the recognition of the importance of partnership working, professional partnership working. And we remain committed to that in terms of policy development as well as direct practice. So, yeah, we're keen for that.

[00:26:45] I'll just give you another couple of examples, if I may, about partnership, about the importance that we see partnership. We were working on a conference with the University of Durham at the moment around contextual safeguarding, which is absolutely really interesting contemporary way of thinking about safeguarding children outside the home from harms. So we're working closely with them on that.

[00:27:15] And hopefully that conference will be delivered in the autumn of this year. We're working with the University of Kent as well around intersectionality. So how we work together with differences, differences within families and children.

[00:27:33] So we're really keen to embrace partnership working with organizations, again, with the aim at the end of it of a better delivery of practice for children and families. Well, let's make sure that the Durham University and the Kent University, the contextual one in Durham and the families and children one in Kent information about that is on our front page as well.

[00:27:57] And if you can provide me links, I'll make sure that that's up there for people to look at and see if they want to attend. Thank you, David. I absolutely will. We're really interested to take any comments that people have as well. If people want to get in touch with us as an association with any queries, we're more than open to having engagement with people. Now, let's just be very practical for a minute.

[00:28:23] Do you, the Association of Child Protection Professors, does it cover all four home countries in the UK? It does. Because we are traditionally being UK-based. And when we were first, our first iteration back in 1979, there wasn't as much focus on the four nations. But now we have representation across the four nations. And we're proud of that.

[00:28:53] And we're looking to develop that further, particularly as you'll know, and people may know, listening to this podcast, that the policies and the legal structure around safeguarding is slightly different across the four nations. So we need to take that into account in terms of our training and support for members. But more than that, we've always had an international perspective as an association.

[00:29:21] And that's reflected, I think, perhaps more in our journal, Child Abuse Review, which you kindly mentioned earlier. Child Abuse Review is a well-respected international journal. And it's the association's journal. We're really proud of it. We've supported it since its inception 30-odd years ago. And I think it welcomes.

[00:29:48] We've got a lot to learn from international perspectives. When I used to teach social work in the university, one of my areas was teaching around international perspectives to try and enable students to understand that just because we did it this way in England wasn't necessarily the only way to think about safeguarding children. And that was really productive and really thoughtful.

[00:30:16] It allowed people to stand back and think about why we did things the way we did them. So those international perspectives are really important. And we were open to learning from other countries. At the moment, we're looking to partner with an organization in Cambodia, which is interesting. Hmm. Well, listen, I mean, you're talking to the converted here.

[00:30:43] I mean, because unashamedly, I will make a plug. I'm on the International Advisory Board of the Global Institute of Social Work. And I'm not sure if lots of social workers in the UK are aware of that. And I would ask, you know, suggest that they look it up, GISW.org. Because there's a lot to be learned from the neighbors, as in anything. And that sort of fits in a lot with what you were saying as well.

[00:31:12] Yeah, that's good to hear. Good organization there. All right. Now, look, I think we've come to virtually come to the end of our time, unfortunately. I just raced by, but that was a good 30 minutes worth. Can I just say thank you to you, Steve, for being a guest on the program? And as I said, everything to do with the Association of Child Protection Professionals will be put on the front page of this podcast.

[00:31:37] And I do encourage people to check out both membership and the child abuse review and the events that we've talked about coming up. So, Vice Chair of the Association, Steve Myers, thank you very much indeed for your time. Thank you, David, for inviting me.