There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. Some of us need to go further upstream and find out why they are falling in.
Desmond Tutu
This quote by Desmond Tutu perfectly sums up the feelings of frustration that we often carry when we are in the caring or helping professions. We are continuously facing challenges, and we may sometimes feel powerless.
The responsibility to protect children and vulnerable adults from harm is a collective duty. But if we do not tread lightly, our efforts can lead to rupture as well as repair.
Throughout history, the drive to ‘prevent’ has become a force that indigenous and minoritised people have had to fight or flee from.
Painful examples of this are the residential schools that were set up in British Columbia as part of the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857. It took 166 years for the extent of the abuse and suffering endured by indigenous children to be fully acknowledged. A class action lawsuit of 2.8 billion Canadian dollars was settled by Canada in 2023. The final residential school was not closed until 1996.
Colonial legacies closer to home
White supremacists often ignore our colonial history of oppressing white children in the name of early intervention. In 1839, children under 12 made up nearly half of the UK workhouse population, 43,000 out of 98,000 inmates. There is evidence that these children endured extreme emotional and physical harm. This is an important and often overlooked part of our British cultural landscape.
Today there is evidence of a strong relationship between poverty, neglect and abuse. One in three children in the UK are now living in poverty. It is important that we push back on narratives which conflate poverty with lack of parental responsibility and instead organise against the systems and structures that keep them in deeply entrenched poverty.
Of course, there is an effect on those of us who do this work too. Over time, we engage in increasing amounts of masking and code switching. We do not always feel able to speak up when during a character, resilience or toxic masculinity intervention, we feel that our own humanity, or that of our community is being questioned.
Normality and the role of research
When we discuss decolonisation, we often overlook our recent past. For example, the segregation of Black children categorised as educationally subnormal in England in the 1960’s. Here too, racist, classist and ableist norms intersect and are underpinned by the saviour complex. In attempts to simplify and control outcomes, we create norms that are ‘othering’ and deterministic.
A really clear example of this is the way we use adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in targeting. Even though advice by Foundations (formerly the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care) in 2020 suggested that ACEs should not be relied upon to guide individual care, we still often use them. Some of the reasoning behind these recommendations being that:
- ACE questionnaires often rely on recall of traumatic experiences and completing the questionnaire can be retraumatising.
- The severity of the different ACEs is not equal, and yet some services still target according to the number of ACEs an individual has experienced.
- Generalisations about the ‘ideal family structure’ sometimes lead to data inaccuracies.
Assessments like the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) are widely used in schools, youth projects and care settings, outside of clinical practice, to categorise children as ‘abnormal’. One study noted that researchers ‘should be cautious when using the SDQ Total Difficulties sum score or the subscale scores as they may be substantially biased, and practitioners should desist from using the SDQ as a screening tool in its current form’. There is also considerable critique of the validity and usefulness of conduct disorder diagnosis.
Supporting the circuit breakers
When we work with children and families, we have a unique opportunity to become the circuit breakers of trauma. Not just within individuals but at every level of the system. Below are a set of principles for moving away from the deficit model in preventative work:
- To be effective, preventative work needs to be reparative. This may require you to acknowledge mistrust in professionals and the system when you see it.
- Focus on healing rather than preventing. Not just for the people you work with but separately, safely, we also need to make time to heal ourselves.
- Plan for rupture in your relational work. Some conflict is normal and can be healthy, but it is important to prioritise repair.
- In your public facing work, try to only use words to describe children that we were happy to use to describe our own children, ourselves or our communities.
- In your confidential work, when dealing with hidden and visible harms and abuse, recognise and record the full complexity of people’s lives.
- Make enough space and resource in our programme to check on each other’s for assumptions, through formal and informal supervision.
- When writing about children and young people, create formats that you can share with them and co-create when you can.
- Carefully consider how a survey result or report can shape relationships with individuals and communities over a life course or even across generations.
It is hard to confront painful realities without also becoming deterministic and unwittingly removing people's humanity and motivation to make change. Remember that you are also part of the community you work in, you are not alone. It will require all of our efforts to build equity and justice in what is currently a highly unequal society.
Supporting preventative approaches in social care
A preventative approach in social care is critical to supporting children and adults to lead the lives they want to live. Three new blogs reflect on learning from the 2025 Research in Practice Leaders' Forum that explored how leaders in social care can enable preventative ways of working.
Prevention as a paradigm shift
Dyfrig Williams, Learning Design Manager for Research in Practice, reflects on the event, highlighting key messages from research and practice.
Enabling prevention and strengthening leadership in Brent Council
Omar Mohamed and Palvinder Kudhail explore how leaders at Brent Council are implementing learning from Leaders’ Forum in practice with colleagues, partners, families and young people.