Summary of Action and Thinking –an investigation of how social workers influence school professionals regarding vulnerable children’s issues Jóhannes Miðskarð, midskard@gmail.com In the PhD thesis1 I investigate the interprofessional work initiative of consulting sessions between Danish social workers {‘socialrådgivere’} and school professionals (teachers {‘lærere’} & reception class teachers {‘børnehaveklasse-ledere’}). During the last decade several Danish municipalities2 have started up such consulting sessions, in which the social services department’s social workers give school professionals advice on how to understand and deal with issues in vulnerable children’s lifeworlds following a prevention and early intervention line of thinking. Furthermore the social workers inform school professionals about when and how to notify a concern for a child to the social services department in order to increase the number and the quality of received referrals. Typically these consulting sessions are available on a fortnightly basis. Furthermore some municipalities have recently started to offer these consulting sessions to kindergartens as well. From previous research I conclude that on an overall such level interprofessional work conversations are highly complex in nature. The focus of my research is to investigate extensively what insights the complicated dynamics of the conversations in the sessions bring to the school professionals’ intentions with their further pedagogical work with vulnerable children in accordance with the following research question: How do consulting sessions with social workers influence school professionals’ further perspectives on how to deal with issues in vulnerable children’s lifeworlds? In the thesis I conclude that the consulting sessions have implied that the school professionals seem to be better able to deal with the issues in the vulnerable children’s lifeworlds when they return to their work with the vulnerable children in their class. Furthermore, I conclude that the school professionals have an increased awareness of how to include the parents, which often have severe difficulties, in their intentions on how to deal with the issues in the vulnerable children’s lifeworlds. But I also conclude that the influence is limited compared to the potential of the sessions. In my research I demonstrate that the limited influence is due to the great complexity in the interpersonal dynamics in the consulting sessions creating disturbances in the parties’ sharing of their perspectives with one another. I identify six reasons for these disturbances: 1. The school professionals’ lack of crucial information about: referrals, Section 50 investigations, and social workers’ work routines. 2. Incidents where the social workers are not sufficiently aware that they are using concepts unfamiliar to the school professionals (furthermore I argue that this probably also applies the other way round). 3. Simplified discourses about each others’ professions and institutions. Miðskarð, J. (2012). Action and thinking. An investigation of how social workers influence school professionals regarding vulnerable children’s issues. Ph.d.-afhandling ved Institut for Psykologi og Uddannelsesforskning, Roskilde Universitet. 2 A Danish municipality is in many ways similar to an English “local authority”. However compared to an English “local authority” a Danish municipality has more control over finances and the ways it carries out its work. 1
4. The professionals’ high sensitivity to each others’ personal approaches as the issues and the stress in the vulnerable children’s strained lifeworlds evoke deep personal feelings. 5. Difficulties in encompassing all the different aspects of the issues in some of the vulnerable children’s lifeworlds in a consulting session lasting only 45 minutes (in particular for school professionals who receive a consulting session for the first time). 6. A situation where a school professional is asked by someone else to send in a referral on a vulnerable child. From an English contrast with a scenario from my Danish fieldwork I conclude that the Danish consulting sessions do not seem to be excessively steered by standardised procedures and methods compared to the English setting of interprofessional work initiatives for dealing with school professionals’ concerns on vulnerable children. In England there are many standardised procedures and methods which probably help in serious cases but according to my Hannah Arendt existential-phenomenological framework such standardised procedures and methods also tend to limit the influence of interpersonal activities on less serious cases. Hence following Hannah Arendt’s argumentation the identified six reasons for disturbances in the Danish consulting sessions cannot be remedied by imposing standardised procedures and methods. Rather the disturbances can be reduced by training the professionals to navigate in complex conversations on complex issues concerning vulnerable children. Thus following this line of thinking I make some recommendations for municipalities that want to further develop their consulting sessions or want to embark on giving school professionals the opportunity to receive consulting sessions from social workers on their concerns for vulnerable children. I have arranged my recommendations in three phases: An introduction for school professionals to consulting sessions with social workers, training in interprofessional work and how to conduct the consulting sessions. An introduction for school professionals to consulting sessions with social workers It is crucial that school professionals are given a proper introduction to the purpose of having a social worker regularly visit their school. In this introduction it is important to inform the school professionals of their obligation to notify if they have a concern on a child’s well-being, and also enlighten them on confidentiality rules, referrals, Section 50 investigations and social workers’ work routines. This introduction needs to be based on the acknowledgement that social workers and school professionals have very different lines of thinking and work procedures for dealing with issues in vulnerable children’s lifeworlds. Furthermore, school professionals need to be introduced to the prevention and early intervention line of thinking which often is referred to as the foundation for such consulting sessions on vulnerable children. The school professionals need to be informed about the strength of this approach in dealing with vulnerable children’s issues at an early stage so that the issues do not hinder the children’s future social and psychological development. However, they also need to be informed about the weaknesses of the approach in its tendency not to include the children and the parents themselves at the early stage and in that it sometimes identifies small issues as large problems which preferably should solve themselves over time without any intervention. Training in interprofessional work It is important that school professionals and social workers in a common setting receive training in how to carry out sound interprofessional work. It is also advisable to include school
nurses, educational psychologists, speech therapists and other interprofessional workers in the training. In the training the professionals need to be informed that research has consistently demonstrated that interprofessional work is often more complicated than legislators and they themselves initially anticipate and hence for interprofessional work conversations they need to be solidly trained to navigate within complex dynamics. Furthermore it is crucial that the professionals must be brought to acknowledge that interprofessional work alone cannot completely solve all problems in all vulnerable children’s lifeworlds as these problems will often be deeply entrenched, e.g. a parent’s drinking issue may reach back several generations or a parent may have deep-seated psychiatric problems. However they must also be educated about the fact that research has demonstrated that interprofessional work compared to mono-professional work can improve the quality of the efforts for vulnerable children and their families. How to conduct the consulting sessions In order to conduct the consulting sessions effectively the social workers and the school professionals need to be trained to speak carefully and listen properly to each other. In their speech they need to be keen on speaking from their own point of view but also to be aware that the professional concepts they use may be unfamiliar to their interlocutor. Furthermore they always need to be fervent about focusing on the children’s issues when they speak, based on how these issues are playing out in the lifeworlds of the specific vulnerable children. This will prevent a smothering of the children’s issues under an over-focusing on other issues like professional group interests, organisational structures and legal frameworks. These latter issues however need to be addressed in other arenas. With regard to their listening they need to be attentive to how their interlocutor uniquely chooses to speak about the issues in the vulnerable children’s lifeworlds. Their listening should also involve an awareness of how their perception of the interlocutor’s remarks is being shaped by their own past experiences, feelings and possibly simplified discourses about the others’ profession and institutional setting. After the consulting sessions the school professionals need to be given some time to perform some Arendtian thinking. Following Arendt’s definition the school professionals must in their thinking try from their own point of view to represent the perspectives demonstrated by the social workers during the sessions to enable them to carry out on-going conversations with themselves during their further pedagogical work with the specific vulnerable children. My final recommendation is that in complex cases and when it is the first time a school professional is given a consulting session it will often need more time than a typical Danish school lesson slot of 45 minutes in order to extract the maximum benefit.