Developments

In order to determine whether either or both carers might be deemed “safe enough“ we take into account a number of factors:

1. The parents must acknowledge that professionals have legitimate concerns, even if they do not agree with them. While denying that they have injured their child, parents often say that they can understand why professionals are concerned, given the medical evidence before the Court.
2. Parents must be willing to work in partnership with professionals in an open and honest manner.
3. They must be willing to examine the way they care for their child and be willing to make changes to care routines in order to help ensure their child’s safety.
4. They must be willing to accept a high level of professional support and monitoring of their child’s welfare.
5. It is also helpful to have a wider support network composed of safe extended family members or friends, who are willing and able to be involved in helping to ensure the child’s future safety.

We are also interested in a number of factors from the parents’ and the wider family’s past. This includes their experience of childhood and ability to make secure attachments, any evidence of mental health difficulties, any evidence of drug or alcohol misuse, any evidence of previous abusive behaviour to children, adults or animals From a careful assessment of all of these factors we are able to make a recommendation regarding the suitability of the Resolutions approach to a particular situation.

Over the years, with others, we have written articles about working with families who deny responsibility for injuries to their children. These have been published in both legal and social work journals.

In our first article published in 1996 “Resolutions: Working with families where responsibility for abuse is denied” we described situations where we were able to work with families after determining a “safer carer”. Although it often never became completely clear which parent might have caused a specific injury to the child concerned, after a broader assessment we frequently found ourselves much more worried about one carer as compared to the other. For example, one of the carers may have had a previous Schedule I offence or behaved violently in the past. In working with the family we would help co-construct additional safety for children around this “safer” carer.

Over the last 7 – 8 years, however, we have worked successfully with a number of families where it was unclear which parent posed the greater risk. Typically in these cases a Finding has been made that a child has been injured in the care of its parents, but it is not possible to indicate which parent, or both, is responsible on the evidence available. In these cases we are particularly interested in what other adults are available to help monitor the children’s welfare and support the parents. We have worked with a number of cases where there were few, if any, concerns regarding either carer prior to the injuries to the child that led to our involvement. We no longer stipulate therefore that one parent must be identified to be the safer carer or less safe carer. This does not mean, however, that we would always work with such cases. We have conducted assessments in such circumstances where we have deemed neither carer to be safe enough to consider rehabilitation.