It is accepted as good practice that if working with a parent
with mental health problems, the safety and care of the parent's
children should be assessed, writes Dorit Braun.
In this case, however, the mental health difficulties of Louise
Jones were not properly diagnosed. The contract with NCH Action for
Children, while recognising the importance of a non-statutory
service for this family, tied the staff into accepting her
challenging and risky behaviour without further assessment of her
needs.
Looking at this case from the outside, it is noteworthy that NCH
Action for Children staff saw that Louise behaved in a childlike
manner. If a child or adolescent shows very angry and abusive
behaviour, workers might be expected to consider whether the
behaviour is a way of seeking help. In this case, the contract with
social services made it difficult to step outside the boundaries of
agreed work, to ask what was really going on for the parent.
Moreover, as Louise had refused a full mental health assessment in
the past, it would not have been easy to insist on this.
Social workers, whether working for a statutory or voluntary
agency, need support and supervision to enable them to stand back
from the client, to look for new explanations for their behaviours,
and options for the family. Without this, there is a danger that
the social worker becomes as stuck as the parent.
Social workers also need access to support and information from
other disciplines to gain insights and understanding about ways of
working with particular issues.
Part of the difficulty is an ambiguity about whether the child
or their parent is the client. And yet, children love their
parents, and need their parents' needs to be met as well as their
own.
Given the ongoing potential risk to the children if Louise stops
taking medication, there does seem a need for a multi-disciplinary
approach to continued work with this family, which takes account of
the mental health needs of Louise, and the welfare of her
children.
Dorit Braun is chief executive,
Parentlineplus