Family experiences of children’s social care involvement following a social work change programme

Social work change programmes rooted in a particular practice theory are increasingly a fixture of UK local authority social work and the focus of a small but developing body of research. However, in this research to date, there has been a lack of engagement with the perspectives of families. In this article, we detail findings from 23 family interviews undertaken as part of an independent evaluation of a social work change programme in a single local authority. These findings afford insight into the positive influence change programmes can have on engaging families and re-routing practitioners to work in a relationship-based way, as well as the limitations for reshaping practice in the context of rising levels of need, a scarcity of supportive provision and administrative burdens remaining the same as before a change programme was introduced. As part of the article, we also offer some reflections on issues surrounding the recruitment of families for evaluative study to assist other researchers or local authority professionals who may be involved with comparable evaluations in future. Keywords: child and family social work, family experiences, qualitative evaluation, social work change programmes