Principles of the “Partnering for Safety” approach
- All of our work is organised around creating enduring safety for children. The focus of every interaction and intervention in PFS is on the creation of enduring safety for the child in the places they live, learn and play. This is achieved through partnering with the families and professionals who know the child best and working together to create meaningful and sustainable long term safety.
- The importance of good working relationships. Research suggests that the development of good working relationships between families and workers and between workers and other helping professionals may be the single biggest predictors of positive outcomes in child protection. “Partnering for Safety” is grounded in a spirit of respect, empathy, curiosity and a belief that change is possible. Whatever our view about the behaviour or actions of a person, PFS aspires to relate with people in ways that preserve their dignity and that inspires a sense of hope and possibility for the future.
- Children’s and families’ voices are always at the centre of the work. PFS recognises that families are experts on their own lives and that our interventions will be more likely to lead to meaningful and lasting change if the voices of children, parents and their networks are at the heart of our assessment and safety planning processes.
- Starting from a rigorous and balanced assessment. A balanced and comprehensive assessment includes a detailed exploration of past maltreatment and current challenges in the family’s life, as well as a detailed search for the actions of protection and strengths within the family. PFS operates from the assumption that even when families are facing serious challenges, there will still be times, however small, when the problems are overcome in some way. Paying attention to these actions of protection does not minimize the maltreatment, but creates a platform for change and a foundation for working together to enhance safety going forward.
- It takes a village to raise a child. Enhancing and developing the presence of a community of safety and support is a critical part of the work. PFS involves explicitly identifying a network of people who know the child (family members, friends, professionals who regularly see the child), ensuring they are fully aware of the concerns, and working with them to create plans to increase child safety over time.
- Meaningful and sustained change requires a vision of what is possible. Child protection work is often focused on problems and what needs to change. While the issues we are striving to address are serious and potentially life-threatening, focusing on problems in the absence of a vision for the future can leave families feeling overwhelmed and without hope or energy to make changes in their lives. PFS organises the work with families around a vision of future safety (safety goals) focused on addressing the identified dangers, that is developed collaboratively with parents, children and other significant people in the children’s lives.
- Child protection workers are agents of change. For many years child protection workers have been described as ‘case managers’. PFS explicitly sees child protection workers as change agents with a specific skill set in partnering with families and networks to enhance safety for children. This approach brings back much of the spirit of social work to child protection.
- Practising from a spirit of inquiry. Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolisian originally coined the phrase “not knowing” as a purposeful stance in working with others. It was meant as a call to be humble, to recognize that everyone has unique skills, knowledge, wisdom and an ability to contribute to solutions. In particular, it is also a call to recognize the knowledge, traditions and skills present within all cultural traditions and to ensure that those are seen as a deliberate and important part of the work.
- People are seen as being in relationship with problems rather than ‘being’ a problem. The ways in which we think about problems profoundly shapes our work with children, families and other helping professionals. Drawing on traditions associated with Narrative Therapy, PFS operates from an assumption that people are not their problems and instead are in an ongoing and changeable relationship with those problems. Operating from this assumption helps families and workers experience a greater sense of hope and partnership when working together, even while we rigorously address the important dangers present in children’s lives.
- All of this lands in an organisational atmosphere based in reflection, appreciation and ongoing learning. Operationalising these values and principles requires that organisations put them into action in every aspect of the work. Supervision, management and policy formation should be built on a foundation of deep reflection about the work, appreciation for those who do it and a commitment to ongoing learning for all involved.