Parents and carers may respond in different ways when they are informed of initial checks and evaluation. Those initial responses may continue throughout the assessment. Practitioners encountering hostility and aggression should consider how they themselves are responding to this as their response may distort the enquiries and deflect attention away from the child and their needs.
There are several different responses that practitioners make when encountering resistance and confrontation which include:
Colluding with the carer who is an abuser by avoiding conflict.
- avoiding contact in person (home visits);
- using remote contact methods (e.g. telephone and email contact instead of visits seeing the child at school rather than home);
- accepting the parent's version of events unquestioningly in the absence of objective evidence;
- focusing on less contentious issues such as benefits / housing;
- focusing on the parent's needs, not the child at risk;
- not asking to see the child alone;
Changing behaviour to avoid conflict;
- filtering out or minimising negative information;
- placing undue weight on positive information (the 'rule of optimism') and only looking for positive information;
- not confronting family members about concerns;
- keeping quiet about worries and not sharing information about risks and assessment with others or with managers
All practitioners involved in these types of assessments should ask themselves whether they:
- are relieved when there is no answer at the door;
- are relieved when they get back out of the door;
- put off/delay visiting;
- keep visit as brief as possible and/or find an excuse to cut it short;
- say, ask and do what they would usually say, ask and do when making a visit or assessment;
- have identified and seen the key people;
- have observed evidence of others who could be living in the house
Practitioners and their supervisors should keep asking themselves the question: what might the adult at risk have been feeling as the door closes behind a practitioner leaving the family home?
Further information:
Littlechild B et al., (2016) The Effects of Violence and Aggression from Parents on Child Protection Workers’ Personal, Family, and Professional Lives, (accessed 8/8/2019)