Child protection case conferences made strange

This paper is an attempt to explore how to approach archival material without incorporating the mindset of our current time and to explore how to make strange the familiar in order to question apparent assumptions in written... [ view full abstract ]

This paper is an attempt to explore how to approach archival material without incorporating the mindset of our current time and to explore how to make strange the familiar in order to question apparent assumptions in written records and oral accounts of the past.

In 1989 we carried out detailed interviews with social workers and child-welfare involved parents in child protection procedures (Waterhouse et al 1993). We also collected minutes of the associated case conferences. We think it is worth poring over these old records to piece together reports of the same concerns to different people. The conference minutes appear to document maternal and/or paternal accounts as they were given to the professionals and may be contrasted with maternal and/or paternal accounts given to the researchers.

This study was carried out in an interesting period sitting between the early studies of broader child care decision-making (Packman 1986, Vernon and Fruin, Marsh 1986, Rowe et al 1989) and the major programme of research which resulted in the publication of Child Protection: Messages from Research (DoH 1995). This period was preceded by several major inquiries into apparent state failures in the protection of children (London Borough of Brent 1986, HMSO 1987) and well before the transformative case of baby Peter Connelly (leading to 3 enquiries and a national review of child protection following his death in 2007).

The archival material represents roots that lie at the foundation of modern child protection systems in the UK. By returning to the case conference minutes and interview transcripts we hope to bring a fresh reading of these separate accounts and examine the enduring question of the exercise of control in the lives of child welfare-involved parents (Waterhouse and McGhee 2013).