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Making networks work: social work action and children ‘at risk’
- Authors:
- STANLEY Tony, DU PLESSIS Rosemary, AUSTRIN Terry
- Journal article citation:
- Qualitative Social Work, 10(1), March 2011, pp.49-65.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This article examines how child protection social work is organised through a serious of networks and how these networks are used in the assessment of risk. Drawing on the work of Actor Network theorists, the article argues that child protection work can conceptualised as a series of partially connected networks of hierarchical occupational groups, organised through human and non-human associations. Case recording and documentation have become increasingly required in social work practice. It is the circulation, prioritisation and hierarchical ordering of professional reports, case notes, court reports and assessment documents that organise particular sets of action by social workers. The article examines child protection social work as sets of associations between human and non-human actants with significant outcomes for individuals and families. The study comprised detailed interviews with child protection social workers throughout New Zealand who spoke about their experience of particular cases, their interactions with other human service professionals and the documents they accessed, analysed and created as they assessed whether children were ‘at risk’. It demonstrates how families and children were left out of significant decision making when social workers were not aware of the way actants, such as professional documents and reports, actually set up and organise sets of social work responses.