Children's, Young People's and Parents' Perspectives on Contact: Findings from the Evaluation of Social Work Practices

This paper reports children's, young people's and parents' perspectives on birth family contact from interviews conducted across eleven local authorities in England between 2009 and 2012 as part of the national evaluation of Social Work Practice (SWP) pilots: independent organisations providing social work support for looked after children and care leavers. The matched control evaluation, reported fully elsewhere ( Stanley et al., 2013), showed most children and young people interviewed in both SWP and comparison sites felt they had the ‘right’ amount of contact with the ‘right’ members of their birth families. Factors found to be key to child and parental satisfaction with contact include: involvement in decision making; speed of social work response; resolution of practical problems; provision of information and emotional support; and investment in building relationships. Evaluation of the SWPs demonstrated progress over time in increasing satisfaction with contact for some young people and some parents also reported improvements, but progress was not uniform and good practice was also evident in comparison sites. Regardless of the organisational model adopted, social work which increases children's, young people's and families' satisfaction with contact arrangements requires an ethic of care, a rights-based approach and access to resources, such as worker time and transport.