Social Action with Children and Families: A Community Development Approach to Child and Family Welfare (The State of Welfare)

240 Pages·1997·0.82 MB·English

by  Crescy Cannan

Social Action with Children and
Families
Meeting the needs of children at the same time as promoting family life is
more than a question of resources: it needs a cultural change in social
services—a rediscovery and a modernisation of the social action and
community development traditions in social work. In Social Action with
Children and Families the authors argue that ways must be found to work
together to promote environments in which children can flourish, and to
develop forms of public life which are friendly to children, young people
and their parents.
Focusing on the theory and practice of social practitioners and drawing
on examples at home and abroad, Social Action with Children and
Families contributes to current debates regarding the ways in which
professionals can balance expertise with openness and accountability
in communities. Recent changes in child care systems have put pressures
on those working in the field and social workers have become more
open to public scrutiny. They are expected to respond to problems rooted
in the social and economic contexts of their clients’ or services users’
lives and to work in partnership with parents and with other professionals,
and with community groups.
The central aim of the book is to help those working in these fields to find
a new, more positive sense of direction and purpose.
Crescy Cannan and Chris Warren are lecturers at the School of Cultural
and Community Studies, University of Sussex.
The State of Welfare
Edited by Mary Langan
Nearly half a century after its post-war consolidation, the British welfare
state is once again at the centre of political controversy. After a decade in
which the role of the state in the provision of welfare was steadily reduced
in favour of the private, voluntary and informal sectors, with relatively little
public debate or resistance, the further extension of the new mixed economy
of welfare in the spheres of health and education became a major political
issue in the early 1990s. At the same time the impact of deepening recession
has begun to expose some of the deficiencies of market forces in areas,
such as housing and income maintenance, where their role had expanded
dramatically during the 1980s. The State of Welfare provides a forum for
continuing the debate about the services we need in the 1990s.
Titles of related interest also in The State of Welfare series
The Dynamics of British Health Policy
Stephen Harrison, David Hunter and Christopher Pollitt
Radical Social Work Today
Edited by Mary Langan and Phil Lee
Taking Child Abuse Seriously
The Violence Against Children Study Group
Ideologies of Welfare: From Dreams to Disillusion
John Clarke, Allan Cochrane and Carol Smart
Women, Oppression and Social Work
Edited by Mary Langan and Lesley Day
Managing Poverty: The Limits of Social Assistance
Carol Walker
The Eclipse of Council Housing
Ian Cole and Robert Furbey
Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State
Roger Burrows and Brian Loader
Working with Men: Feminism and Social Work
Edited by Kate Cavanagh and Viviene E.Cree
Social Theory, Social Change and Social Work
Edited by Nigel Parton
Working for Equality in Health
Edited by Paul Bywaters and Eileen McLeod

Social Action with
Children and Families
A community development
approach to child and family
welfare
Edited by Crescy Cannan and
Chris Warren
London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1997 Crescy Cannan and Chris Warren, selection and
editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Social Action with Children and Families: A community
development approach to child and family welfare/edited by
Crescy Cannan and Chris Warren.
(The State of Welfare)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social work with children. 2. Family social work.
3. Child welfare. I. Cannan, Crescy. II. Warren, Chris.
III. Series.
HV713.S615 1996
362.7–dc20 96–7490

ISBN 0-203-43523-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-74347-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-13150-2 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-13151-0 (pbk)
Contents
Contributors ix
Series editor’s preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
Part I New strategies in social action
1 Community development and children: a contemporary
agenda 23
Paul Henderson
2 Rethinking practice through a children’s rights perspective 43
Jenny Clifton and David Hodgson
3 Mapping the future? A contribution from community social
work in the community care field 66
Peter Durrant
4 Social development with children and families in France 85
Crescy Cannon
5 Family support and the journey to empowerment 103
Chris Warren
Part II New practices with children and families
6 New social networks for families and children in Germany 127
Annemarie Gerzer-Sass and Rudolph Pettinger
vii
viii Contents
7 The role of the centre in family support 143
Eva Lloyd
8 Mechanisms for empowerment: family group conferences
and local family advocacy schemes 162
Jo Tunnard
9 Long-term development: neighbourhood community
development work on estates 182
Barry Hulyer
10 Think global, act local: towards residents’ control of their
life, health and environment—tools and skills in social
development in France 200
Marie-Renée Bourget-Daitch and Chris Warren
Index 219
Contributors
Marie-Renée Bourget-Daitch is Director of the Mouvement pour le
Développement Social, a French organisation which promotes social
development. She has worked in MDSL-Formation, which works on the
ground with practitioners and local inhabitants to promote their
participation in social development projects.
Crescy Cannan is a senior lecturer in social policy at the University of
Sussex. She has a long-standing interest in French and German social
welfare policy, and has built on her research on family centres to look at
innovative community development approaches to promoting children’s
and young people’s participation in society.
Jenny Clifton is a lecturer in social work at the University of Sussex. Her
background is in social work and voluntary community action. Her
involvement with children’s rights started with the awareness that a lack
of respect for children impoverishes the whole community—and a strong
memory of adults who wouldn’t listen.
Peter Durrant qualified as a social worker in his early thirties via a second-
chance college course. Disappointed by mainstream social work’s search
for a professional identity and its bureaucracy, he moved into community
social work. He is Co-ordinator of BASW’s Special Interest Group on
Community Social Work.
Annemarie Gerzer-Sass was born in 1948, and is married with two
children. She is Senior Researcher at the Deutsches Jugendinstitut (German
Youth Institute) in Munich, working in the field of family policy. She has
a particular interest in social innovation in the welfare state.
Paul Henderson is Director of Practice Development at the Community
Development Foundation. It was as a result of observing approaches to
ix