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Has the revival of the concept of dangerous families had a damaging effect on our ability to improve the quality of children's lives, asks Jane Wiffin

The concept of dangerous families has now re-emerged despite the principles of the Children Act 1989, which encouraged us to work in partnership with families even in the difficult circumstances of child protection.

But the concept of dangerous families is not a useful one. It has a negative impact on the social worker's ability to work together with families.

Dangerousness has been part of the language of law and psychiatry for many years.¬ It was adopted by Dale and others in their work on dangerous families and was used as the basis for Protecting Children: A Guide For Social Workers Undertaking A Comprehensive Assessment.­ ,® Parton remarked on its renaissance in 1991.¯ It is a concept with staying power.

At a recent conference, the Bridge Child Care Services Consultancy discussed their project on how to identify dangerous carers focusing on assessment tools for social workers. The Bridge, concerned that social work treats all families the same, believes there is a need to distinguish which families need what type of help.

This is important, as it is clear some families do represent risks to children, who will be in need of protection. It is also true we do not often distinguish between those families and the many others who come to social services asking for help.

Messages From Research reinforces the necessity of clarity on who needs investigating and who needs specific services.° The concern that too many families are caught up in investigations has forced social work to rethink its approach. It has not always been a comfortable process, and has left some feeling that the message from Messages... is dangerous. Given what families and practitioners are telling us, we should see this time as an opportunity to disentangle the issues.

But here is the key to why we are again talking about dangerous families and why it is unhelpful. The concept does not enable us to distinguish between their varying needs and forces initial contact with families to be at the point of assessment and investigation.

There is a view that social workers are influenced too much by the 'rule of optimism': seeing families in too positive a light, which is potentially harmful to children and influences the social worker's abilities.

Having acknowledged the risks, we also have to acknowledge that for most children the best place for them is with their family. This is the message of the Children Act, supported by Department of Health research, demonstrating that the majority of children involved in the child protection system remain with their families.

Yet it is clear from Family Rights Group's advice and advocacy service and DoH research, parents still fear that involvement with social workers will lead to losing their children.

The term dangerous families is problematic as it does not limit itself just to dangerous families but seeps outwards to encompass all those families involved in child protection.

This results in resources being targeted at assessing actual and potential danger, differentiating between families which require monitoring and intervention and those who can be left alone. We are in danger of focusing our attention on those few families and not providing an effective service to others.

This natural broadening of the concept, meant to be used sparingly, puts social workers under pressure. If, as a profession, we believe there are one or two families who represent great risk, but that we do not have the assessment tool necessary to identify them, then we will have to treat all families involved in the child protection process in the same adversarial way, making it more difficult to achieve a partnership approach.

It may encourage social workers to behave in what Harris calls a defensive way.± It may also make it difficult to improve the quality of children's lives.

The focus on assessment, encouraged by the concept of dangerousness, is at the expense of outcomes. We need to be clear what the impact on families is over time and link the three elements of assessment, service provision and outcome. This has benefits for parents and professionals alike, and means children are provided with a more comprehensive service.

The dangerous families concept also puts parents and children under pressure. Families already have a fear their children will be taken into care and they will lose contact with them if they seek help. This prevents families seeking the help they need at the earliest stage possible. It can add to their lack of confidence and diminishing self-esteem. But parents who feel empowered, and feel they have a part to play in protecting their children, will be better able to provide for them.

Families become involved in the system through section 47 investigations and it can be hard to allay their fears. The Cleaver and Freeman research on parental attitudes points out the level of fear engendered by parents can make if difficult to carry out the investigation or do an assessment of need.²

At the risk of being accused of demonstrating the 'rule of optimism', can social work not take a more positive approach to providing services to families? We need a model of service provision which is not dominated by child protection. At the moment, we have a separation of child protection services and family support. Family rights groups would argue we need an integration of these services with other specialist services, including child protection, provided where necessary.

The French child care system appears to have used a similar framework to good effect for many years. The evidence is that families are less afraid of social workers and social workers are more confident in dealing with parents.

This is what is needed to work in partnership with parents. The professional and legal debate about partnership in the context of child protection has expressed concern that this could be dangerous. But DoH research demonstrates partnership is more effective in achieving the good results. The DoH's practice guide on working in partnership with families also points to the importance of co-operative working relationships for parents and children.³

We need to acknowledge that families are key and unique sources of information and expertise. They have vital information acquired by virtue of their involvement with and responsibilities towards their family members. We have to take seriously the information they give us, rather than engage in a struggle to assert the primacy of one perspective.

Professionals also have vital information acquired through their training and practice in the field. Both are needed to protect children.

We do not have to view parents with suspicion. Most care about their children and are concerned with providing for them. We must acknowledge that their capacity to do this is limited by a number of factors, such as poverty. It is not helpful to further label them as dangerous, even if we hope that we only mean some of them, not all. The concept separates and alienates, and does not enable any of us, parents or professionals, to protect.

Instead of focusing our energies on the development of sophisticated assessment tools, which create barriers and do not increase our ability to protect children, we should instead concentrate on providing a service with family support at its heart, with a clear focus on the impact and results of services on the lives of families and children.

Jane Wiffen is social work advisor at the Family Rights Group

¬ M Foucault, 'About the concept of the "Dangerous Individual" in 19th Century legal psychiatry', Vol 1 pp1-18, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 1978

­ Dale et al, Dangerous Families; Assessment and Treatment of Child Abuse, Tavistock, 1986

® Department of Health, Protecting Children: A Guide for Social Workers Undertaking a Comprehensive Assessment, HMSO, 1988

¯ N Parton, Governing the Family: Child Care, Child Protection and the State, Macmillan, 1991

° DoH, Child Protection Messages from Research: Studies in Child Protection, HMSO, 1995

± N Harris, 'Defensive social work', British Journal of Social Work Vol 17, 1987

² H Cleaver and P Freeman, Parental Perspectives in Cases of Suspected Child Abuse, HMSO, 1995

³ DoH, The Challenge of Partnership in Child Protection: Practice Guide, HMSO/SSI, 1995