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Guide: using strengths-based practice in child protection services
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Guide: using strengths-based practice in child protection services

Last updated: 11 February 2025

Gives advice on how to use strengths-based practice in child protection services

Why is hearing the child’s voice in child protection processes important?

  • Legislation makes it clear that children should be involved in decision-making when they’re subject to statutory processes.
  • Where children are unseen, and their voices are unheard, there’s more likelihood of unsafe practices.
  • Involving children and young people allows practitioners to develop a better understanding of their needs as early as possible.
  • When they’re involved in their plans, children and young people are more likely to be feel they’re a part of the positive changes happening in their families.
  • Children and young people who are included in decision-making report more positive experiences in child protection processes.

What do children and young people value in child protection services?

  • The opportunity to build a trusting relationship with their worker.
  • Getting clear, accessible and timely information about processes, meetings and plans.
  • Being able to decide whether to attend meetings, and being supported to contribute if they do; or being involved in decision-making in other age-appropriate ways.

Watch social worker Ian use the ‘drama triangle’ to describe how children can view formal interventions from services:

Why collaborate with parents and carers in child protection services?

  • Better engagement with families helps practitioners to get a fuller picture of the child’s well-being.
  • Parents’ morale can improve and be motivated to change when practitioners recognise a parent’s strengths.
  • Involving parents when developing child protection plans can lead to a higher chance of better outcomes.
  • Engaging well and supporting parents – particularly younger parents – whose children are removed may mean they have a better chance of coping as a parent in the future, and prevent further children from being removed.
  • Families’ experiences and views are a valuable way of making systems and processes better. We can learn from existing practice about what works well to engage parents who may, at first, have been hostile.

What parents and carers value in child protection services

There’s a relatively small body of research evidence about the views and experiences of parents and carers in child protection processes.

But when they were asked, they consistently said they wanted to be more involved when their children were subject to statutory child protection services.

Specifically, parents and carers say they value or would like:

  • clear, jargon-free information about the processes, and time and support to take in the information at their own pace
  • the opportunity to build a relationship with a social worker (ideally one person), who gets to know the family, spends time with their children and acts ‘like a human’
  • hands-on support, not just monitoring
  • a balanced approach, where workers and their reports acknowledge parents’ strengths and positive intentions, but are also frank and specific about concerns and risks
  • conferences that don’t involve too many people or too many surprises, and are as informal and inclusive as possible
  • workers who ask parents for their ideas about solutions in their own families, and also ask for their feedback about how to make the wider system and processes better
  • plans that set out clearly what’s expected of them, focusing on outcomes and not just outputs, and are followed without ‘moving the goalposts’
  • workers who are non-judgemental, reliable and trustworthy
  • workers who really listen and recognise how stressful and traumatic these processes can be for families.

Listen to a parent talk about how people working with her in an outcome-focused, strengths-based way supported her to make changes for herself and her children:

Listen to Keri talk about how she encouraged a culture change in children’s services by collaborating with families and front-line staff: