@article{ref1,
title="Enacting firm, fair and friendly practice: a model for strengths-based child protection relationships?",
journal="British journal of social work",
year="2016",
author="Oliver, Carolyn and Charles, Grant",
volume="46",
number="4",
pages="1009-1026",
abstract="Strengths-based solution-focused approaches are gaining ground in statutory child protection work, but few studies have asked front line practitioners how they navigate the complex worker-client relationships such approaches require. This paper describes one component of a mixed-methods study in a large Canadian statutory child protection agency in which 225 workers described how they applied the ideas of strengths-based practice in their daily work. Interviews with twenty-four practitioners were analysed using an interpretive description approach. Only four interviewees appeared to successfully enact a version of strengths-based practice that closely mirrored those described by key strengths-based child protection theorists and was fully congruent with their mandated role. They described navigating a shifting balance of collaboration and authority in worker-client relationships based on transparency, impartial judgement, attentiveness to the worker-client interaction and the value that clients were fellow human beings. Their accounts extend current conceptualisations of the worker-client relationship in strengths-based child protection work and are congruent with current understandings of effective mandated relationships. They provide what may be a useful model to help workers understand and navigate relationships in which they must reconcile their own authority and expertise with genuine support for the authority and expertise of their clients.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0045-3102",
doi="10.1093/bjsw/bcv015",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcv015"
}