A social worker with over 20 years’ experience reflects on a case where her empathy for a struggling parent got in the way of her focus on the children and her professional curiosity.
This is the 16th instalment in Sophie Baker’s ‘What I wish I had known…’ series, where she reflects on her approach to practice when she started out – and what she would tell her younger self now.
As a newly qualified social worker, I met Lucy and her three young children, who had recently fled domestic abuse.
Lucy was deeply traumatised by her early childhood experiences and the abuse she had suffered in the relationship with the children’s father. She was also seriously misusing alcohol.
Her vulnerability was immediately visible. She looked slim and physical fragile, with a tiny stature. Whenever we met, she looked exhausted and tearful.
I prided myself for being child-centred, but I suddenly became in danger of allowing my empathy with Lucy’s hardship and the distress she was experiencing overshadow the needs of the children.
Decades later, I still ruminate over what this case taught me about the dangers of over-empathising with a parent.
How over-empathising can happen
I think part of it was down to how childlike Lucy was.
She was a victim in her own right and was hugely overwhelmed, which made it hard for me to hold her accountable for the care she was providing to her children.
What is probably harder to admit is that I over-identified with her because she was always nice to me. She was always home for my visits, never shouted or swore at me and seemed generally pleased to have me around.
In contrast, during that time, I was working with many families where challenge and conflict were primary features in our relationship.
I found myself explaining away concerns, such as the children not attending school regularly, having no clean clothes, wearing ill-fitting shoes and frequently telling adults they were hungry; all because I was so convinced that Lucy was doing her best.
I got caught up in my concern for her difficulties. My need to ensure Lucy didn’t feel judged or blamed meant I didn’t properly challenge the care she was providing and was in danger of lowering my expectations of what was good enough for her children.
Practitioners need to understand that being professionally curious and child-centred doesn’t mean being punitive or blaming.
Instead, I could have asked both Lucy and myself questions such as: “What are the children experiencing day to day?” “What impact does not knowing when they will next eat have on the children?” and “How do the children experience your use of alcohol?”
Optimism bias
Whenever I raised any concerns, Lucy tended to be accepting, often agreeing with me.
Her quick acceptance of my views around what needed to improve created a false sense of optimism about her ability to make the changes for the children.
Even when there were several incidents of neighbours contacting me to tell me she was under the influence of alcohol, I stayed optimistic.
I found myself paying greater attention to information that supported a positive view – usually Lucy’s accounts – and gave less weight to evidence that challenged it. I lacked professional curiosity.
Disguised compliance
At the time I worked with Lucy, I was aware of the concept of ‘disguised compliance’ (also referred to as disguised non-compliance), where parents appear co-operative with practitioners in order to reduce concerns and professional involvement.
Because Lucy was not minimising my concerns, consistently engaged with me and said she wanted to change, I failed to recognise that she may have been, consciously or unconsciously, misleading me.
At times, my thinking was that she was trying her best, but her trauma and daily difficulties rendered her overwhelmed. While likely true, I can now see that this way of thinking contributed to me over-empathising with her circumstances and focusing on her vulnerabilities.
In hindsight, I recognise that Lucy often said the ‘right things’ and made only short-term improvements. I should have asked myself: “What evidence was there that Lucy was making and keeping the changes she’d said she would?”
The importance of an evidence-based assessment
When I eventually completed an evidence-based child and family assessment, about a month after I met the family, I had a clearer understanding of what life was like for the children.
Bringing together multiple sources of evidence – others’ direct observations of the children with their mother, independent conversations with the children about their experiences, school reports and attendance records, health information, police and domestic abuse checks – helped me to distinguish between what Lucy was reporting and what was happening.
Completing a chronology to identify patterns over time also helped me identify repeated concerns and confirm Lucy’s unsustained short-term improvements.
By focusing on reliable sources of information, professional decisions can be more accurately guided and any over-optimism challenged. As a result, my practice began being driven by what was actually happening for the children.
Practitioners need more opportunities for reflection
I wish Harry Ferguson’s 2017 research into how children become invisible in child protection work existed long ago.
His study explored how children can be overlooked even when professionals are physically present in their home for reasons such as organisational culture and time limitations, over-identification, optimism and lack of curiosity (as happened in my case) and insufficient focus on historical patterns of risk.
When I read this research later in my career, I was helped to reflect on how easily my practice focus drifted away from the risks posed to Lucy’s children because of me becoming too absorbed in Lucy’s issues.
One of the takeaways from the research is how this can be rebuffed by organisations providing practitioners with frequent opportunities to critically reflect on their experiences.
Ferguson suggests that “workers need to be supported in every case to enter a state of mind and readiness to engage intimately with children and parents and assisted afterwards to make sense of what they have just experienced” (p1021).
Making use of supervision
As Ferguson suggested, supervision was a great safeguard against me continuing to over-identify with Lucy’s difficulties.
My manager helped me to notice that I was focusing too heavily on her trauma and stress, and brought my practice back to the safety and wellbeing of the children. She asked me questions like: “What evidence do you have that things are improving for the children? and “What might we be minimising because Lucy is seemingly engaging well?”
Our conversations also helped me explore my own emotional responses to Lucy. I was worried about her and I wanted her to be able to care for her children safely. But I was also allowing these feelings to cloud my professional judgment.
This did not mean I had to lose empathy for Lucy, but reflecting helped me ensure that my decision making was bought back to being more child-centred.
Maintaining relationships when the going gets tough
I continued to work with Lucy and her children for several months after recognising that my practice had become too adult-focused.
I refocused the work on the children’s lived experiences and spoke openly with Lucy. I explained that, while understanding her difficulties remained important, I needed to place greater emphasis on understanding what life was like for the children and whether she could meet their needs consistently and safely.
Being honest and transparent helped Lucy understand that the primary focus of my role was to ensure the children’s needs were being met, first and foremost.
Looking back, I learnt that being compassionate towards parents and remaining firmly child-centred are not opposing parts of social work practice, but understanding a parent’s struggles should never mean losing sight of the child.
