Introduction

In the previous chapter, professional narratives demonstrated how information relationships and inter-personal relationships are central in professionals’ work of safeguarding children. The very nature of child protection work means that it is relationship-based, reinforced by the mandate of ‘working together’ in which epistemologies of welfare, health, education, and law converge. However, there is an emotional dimension to child protection work that is highlighted very clearly in the opening quote from a senior social worker in Haringey, taken from the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié in February 2000. The social worker discusses a ‘niggling’ feeling about Victoria's situation and her potential return to the family home where Victoria lived with her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend, Carl Manning. Quite clearly we can infer that the senior practitioner was working from an emotional response that was difficult to define and set down in terms of ‘evidence’. Despite important ‘emotional signals’ such as those highlighted here, the emotional and relational aspects of social work practice have become increasingly marginalised (Morrison, 2007), with emotions only discussed in theoretical terms within the field of social work (Taylor and White, 2001 ;Cooper, 2005; Ferguson, 2007; Morrison, 2007). Arguably, a drive towards evidence-based practice has meant that feelings are not considered sufficient grounds on which to act, despite feelings being both an important source of information for the worker, and a trigger for action, as indicated in the Laming report (Laming, 2003) and the Munro review (Munro, 2011).

Information at the level of ‘feeling’, and what people do as a result of feelings, is increasingly lost through ‘technical-rational’ responses (Schon, 1983) that favour notions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘reason’. Wastell and colleagues (2010) point out that this can have unintended effects where practice becomes habitualised in meeting performance targets rather than the ‘proper’ work of social work.