Home » Research Projects » Error, Blame and Responsibility in Child Welfare: Problematics of Governance in an Invisible Trade
Saving the children
How have mistakes affecting child safety been understood and dealt with by those charged with their care?
The social care of children involves inherently difficult issues of risk management, which are thrown up by every tragedy in which non-intervention or failure of monitoring by child care professionals leads to avoidable deaths of children. Accordingly, fears of media witch-hunts and professional infamy can lead to a heavy stress on blame avoidance, with every step taken with a glance over the shoulder and a finger firmly lodged in the rule book. At the same time, resources tend to be stretched – some inner London boroughs have 40% vacancy rates for child care professionals and managers are under pressure to deliver according to importunate targets and indicators. How can we improve understanding of how to handle the risks in this crucial domain of public services?
This study will look at how errors affecting child safety can be used as practical examples for improving practice and learning from mistakes, to better serve child safety, public services and interorganisational co-operation.
What the research means for policy-makers and the wider community
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This study will provide researchers with a new methodology consisting of a micro-world simulator that can be used as a generic tool for other applications.
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Social workers, managers and other key welfare professionals will benefit from the practical simulations of cases from which to establish better practice. They will also be able to more confidently assess cases based on similar examples from the study.
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The media will benefit from an understanding of the perceptions held of them by welfare professionals and the ways in which these affect how errors are disclosed and blame applied.
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Children and young adults will be able to engage with relevant findings from this study in a way which will enable them to take part in informing local policy and practice through their personal experiences.
Research Methods
The central method of the study is to develop a ‘micro-world’ simulation, like a flight simulator for managers that will allow them to run experiments and test strategies from past cases to improve their understanding of outcomes. The scenarios built into the simulator will be designed from ethnographic fieldwork, but in general the experiment will involve the first line and middle manager role, in making choices over resourcing on the front-line of social services.
Data will be analysed and case material generated in three ways, comprising interviews, detailed field notes and recordings of meetings, and qualitative data. The data analysis will be supplemented by relevant theoretical notions from cognitive engineering and human reliability analysis, to provide realistic scenarios with which public service organisations can interact and learn from.
