Introduction

In the previous chapter I explored children's and young people's views of CiC reviews and discussed the barriers that they felt affected their participation. I then went on to discuss what children and young people felt could help them to participate more meaningfully in their review meetings. This chapter builds on that foundational base by considering data drawn from the eight interviews with IROs and eleven interviews with SWs regarding young peoples’ participation in reviews and more broadly about decisions that were made about their lives. It will examine whether similar themes emerge from the IROs’ and SWs’ perspectives or whether their views differ from those held by the children and young people.

During my analysis, I identified a number of themes and – when the data were further refined – a number of further sub-themes. Subthemes ‘can be useful for giving structure to a particularly large and complex theme, and also for demonstrating the hierarchy of meaning within the data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p 84). The themes and subthemes identified were as follows:

1. Barriers to effective participation:

• a) SWs’ and IROs’ high caseloads and ensuing time pressures;

• b) the high turnover of SWs and inexperienced staff;

• c) lack of understanding and training of professionals in ‘participation’;

• d) children's and young people's negative experiences in reviews and ensuing reticence about attending;

• e) balancing parents’ rights and child's needs;

• f) structure and focus of the review not being child-centred.

2. Factors which assist participation:

• a) quality of the relationship between the child and the professionals;

• b) the child/young person chairing their own review meeting.

These key themes and sub-themes will be explored in relation to the interview data and their correspondence with previous research.

Barriers to effective participation

A common theme that emerged during the interviews with the IROs and SWs – and to an extent with the young participants also – was the feeling that IROs and SWs were under a great deal of pressure and that they were struggling to carry out their role in the manner that they would wish to, or indeed as statutory guidance such as the IRO Handbook (DfES, 2010) determines that they should. ‘Barriers to effective participation’ covered a range of different aspects in the working life and practices of IROs and SWs and they will be considered in turn in the following sections.