ABSTRACT
• The child's voice is difficult to define but can be captured from many sources. • Investment in relationships between practitioner and child is fundamental. • Ideas offered for capturing the child's voice were varied. • There are challenges in balancing the voice of the child with statutory obligations. • The emotional impact of this challenge is clear across participant accounts. Child protection policy, legislation and frameworks in England are informed by the need to consider the child's voice in any decision-making forum. However, defining the child's voice and applying these legislative requirements to practice is largely interpretative. There is a lack of practice guidance when it comes to conceptualising, capturing, and interpreting the child's voice to inform decision-making. This study was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and begins to explore social workers' experiences of how the child's voice is understood and interpreted in child protection practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five practitioners from a long-term, child protection team, and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Three super-ordinate themes were identified relating to (1) the ubiquity and ambiguity of the child's voice, (2) the importance of relationships, and (3) the weight of the voices. Implications for practice include the need for more investment in practitioner-child relationships, and greater representation of the child's voice in the final stages of needs assessments.
ABSTRACT
Objective: Amid COVID-19 disruptions, e-therapy has become even more essential and has rapidly expanded across statutory, private and third sectors to meet growing demands for digital mental health support. A challenge in digital therapeutic care is how to develop and maintain a supportive, collaborative therapeutic relationship, built upon mutual trust and respect; intrinsic values of relationships that are often implied through complex non-verbal cues. Online practitioners are eager to learn how to adapt to online delivery, although platform-specific training is limited. The aim of the current study was to focus upon the therapist experience of online therapeutic relationships with young people, exploring a range of factors through their perspectives, including the impact of anonymity. Methods: Eight e-therapy practitioners were recruited from Kooth, an online mental health service. Narrative interviews undertaken via Skype facilitated reflective conversational one-to-one discussions, based upon the practitioners' individual experiences, led by the interviewee. Following transcription and anonymisation, a narrative analysis was undertaken to explore participants' experiences, perspectives and reflections. Results: Four analytic layers arose from the narratives, which explored the challenging learning experience of translating existing therapeutic skills to online working, rapidly building therapeutic relationships, managing risk in the online therapeutic relationship, and techniques for maintaining a digital therapeutic relationship. Conclusion: The study provides novel insights into the flexibility and adjustments therapists can make to improve online interventions and delivery through the development and maintenance of positive therapeutic relationships. Recommendations are also made in relation to platform-specific training, communicative adaptations, risk management and practitioner support.