Pointers for Practice: Managing Initial Parental Response to a Report

Parents’ immediate reaction to enquiries, following a report to social services may well be negative, particularly if the police are involved. For carers the experience is stressful, frightening and raises anxiety levels. Moreover, families may struggle emotionally accepting the situation and the potential consequences. Consequently, practitioners may encounter disbelief, minimisation, confusion, shock and resistance as the families are likely to be wary of practitioners and the questions they are being asked. When this occurs, the parents may respond by taking one of the following approaches:

Fight mode. The response is to resist what is happening by being verbally or physically aggressive and hostile to enquires, for example physically preventing the practitioner from entering the home or being verbally abusive.

Flight mode. This response is to deny what is happening by distancing oneself by, for example, lying -‘I did not do this’; avoiding practitioners by physically running away; not keeping appointments and non-engagement.

Freeze mode. This response is to block out what is happening because there is an awareness that one is not powerful enough to fight this and the parent is too scared to run away. This can result in blanking out ‘I don’t know/Ican’t remember’ or clamming up and saying nothing.

Alternatively, the parent may be:

• relieved that their problems are being recognised;
• resigned or accepting of the process because, for example, they have experienced it so many times before.

The report-taker can reduce anxiety levels by:

• paying attention as to how parent/s are informed, where and by whom;
• being honest and sensitive to the parent/s situation;
• recognising them as people not ‘problems’;
• acknowledging the power dynamic;
• listening to what he parents have to say;
• recognising their emotions and anxieties;
• try and differentiate between realistic and unrealistic fears.

The way in which the initial engagement is managed has a direct impact on the quality of the subsequent worker-family relationship.

Further information:

Laird, S. E. (2013) Child Protection: Managing conflict, hostility and aggression. Bristol: Policy Press.

Ruch, G., Turney, D. and Ward, A. (eds) (2018) 2nd ed Relationship-based Social Work: Getting to the Heart of Practice London: Jessica Kingsley

Taylor, B. (Ed.) (2011) Working with Aggression and Resistance in Social Work. London: Sage.

Tuck, V. (2013) Resistant parents and child protection: Knowledge base, pointers for practice and implications for policy Child Abuse Review, 22(1), pp. 5–19.