Child-Centred Practice: Principles and Challenges in Social Work

This report delves into the concept of child-centred practice, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing the needs, interests, and feelings of children in social work interventions. It examines the principles and values that underpin this approach, highlighting the significance of attachment theory in understanding child development and well-being. The report discusses the challenges faced by social workers, including working with uncertainty, bureaucratic pressures, and ethical dilemmas. It explores debates around the balance between professional responsibilities and children's rights, emphasizing the need for child participation and the complexities of safeguarding processes. The report references key literature and research, including the 'Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families,' to provide a comprehensive overview of child-centred practice and its implications for social work.

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Psychology

Bowl attachment theory
Attachment is said to be the enduring and deep emotion bond that connects one
person with the other person across space and time. John Bowlby in this theory has also
observed the experience of children distress when they get separated from mothers. In the
attachment theory, it is also stated that the quality of attachment relationship differs
depending on the quality of care given to the child. This theory also suggests that there is
critical period for the development of attachment (Khantzian, 2018).
Debate and challenges presented in research
The first challenge is working with uncertainty that states that there are parallel
between the challenges or issues of the professional responsibilities at the time of performing
the role of carers or parents. Parents tend to guide their child toward the right path but they do
not have control over the child life and decisions. Similar to this, child professionals also
have lack of prediction power. However, it has been argued that whatever is best for children
or child is often speculative and indeterminate which requires the individual choice between
the alternatives (Smith, Cameron & Reimer, 2017).
The second challenge is working with bureaucracy. Bureaucratisation of social work
has described the significance of accountable practice in the increasing public scrutiny area. It
is seen that the adherence to procedure has increased the pressure on the social workers to
priotise the bureaucratic task over the direct contact with families and children. Praton has
examined the concern who has stated the system of UK child protection system as the
conflict and defensive ridden (Smith, Cameron & Reimer, 2017). It has also been argued that
the emphasis on increasing guidelines have reduced the risk and uncertainty involved in the
childcare cases. However, the concern of Munro has presented the challenge to the concerns.
Munro states that the under weight has been given to those activities that is quite easy to
measure (Parton, 2012). For bureaucratic approach, it stated that when work becomes
dominant, heart of work tends to lost (Coyne, Hallström & Söderbäck, 2016).
Children’s right director has also undertaken the event with around 150 children who
have social work experience. From this event, it has been found that half of the children felt
that their social workers never or rarely took the notice of their feelings. In addition to this,
Thomas and O’Kane’s also done the research which states that professionals who are

working with children put significant impact on the children on the way that promote their
participation and rights (Thomas & O'kane, 1998).
In this way, the debate in this literature has given the emphasis on some challenges of
social practice, pressure, complexities, and ethical dilemmas that might lead some
practitioner to adopt cynical and bureaucratic stance. For the best child care, it is stated that
sharing is the appropriate age manner and working together in the best interest of child.

References
Coyne, I., Hallström, I., & Söderbäck, M. (2016). Reframing the focus from a family-centred
to a child-centred care approach for children’s healthcare. Journal of Child Health
Care, 20(4), 494-502.
Ford, K., Dickinson, A., Water, T., Campbell, S., Bray, L., & Carter, B. (2018). Child centred
care: challenging assumptions and repositioning children and young people. Journal of
pediatric nursing, 43, e39-e43.
Khantzian, E. J. (2018). The Self-Medication Hypothesis and attachment theory: pathways
for understanding and ameliorating addictive suffering: The twentieth John Bowlby
Memorial Lecture. In Addictions from an Attachment Perspective (pp. 33-56). Routledge.
Parton, N. (2012). The Munro review of child protection: An appraisal. Children & Society, 26(2), 150-
162.
Thomas, N., & O'kane, C. (1998). The ethics of participatory research with children. Children &
society, 12(5), 336-348.
Smith, M., Cameron, C., & Reimer, D. (2017). From attachment to recognition for children in
care. The British Journal of Social Work, 47(6), 1606-1623.