The Signs of Safety In Detail

The Signs of Safety Approach to Child Protection Casework

The Signs of Safety approach to child protection casework was developed through the 1990’s in Western Australia. The approach was created by Andrew Turnell and Steve Edwards in collaboration with over 140 West Australian child protection workers (CPW’s) and is now being utilized in jurisdictions in the U.S.A., Canada, U.K., Sweden, Finland, Holland, New Zealand and Japan. This approach focuses on the question, “How can the worker actually build partnerships with parents and children in situations of suspected or substantiated child abuse and still deal rigorously with the maltreatment issues?” This is a partnership and collaboration grounded, strengths-based, safety-organised approach to child protection work, expanding the investigation of risk to encompass strengths and Signs of Safety that can be built upon to stabilize and strengthen the child’s and family’s situation. A format for undertaking comprehensive risk assessment - assessing for both danger and strengths/safety – is incorporated within the one-page Signs of Safety assessment protocol (this one page form is the only formal protocol used in the model). The approach is designed to be used from commencement through to case closure and to assist professionals at all stages of the child protection process, whether they be in statutory, hospital, residential or treatment settings

The impetus to create the Signs of Safety approach arose from Steve’s experience of 16 years as a frontline child protection practitioner (eight of these working primarily with Aboriginal communities). Steve was very dissatisfied with most of the models and theory regarding child protection practice that he had encountered. Despite 16 years of frontline practice, Steve felt that most of the policy, guidance and books he read and most of what he learnt at university and in training situations (the theory) was very distant from his experience of actually doing child protection work (undertaking investigations, deciding when and how to remove children, dealing with angry parents etc.). Because of this, throughout his child protection career, Steve always sought out new ideas that might better describe his experience of practice. In 1989 Steve and Andrew began to collaborate after Steve became interested in the brief therapy work Andrew was doing with families experiencing problems with their teenagers. Each week, over the next three years, Steve would observe the brief therapy work from behind a one-way mirror and then began to apply brief therapy ideas and techniques into his practice as a child protection worker. The result of this collaboration between 1989 and 1993 was the beginnings of the Signs of Safety approach.

In 1993, Steve and Andrew began the process of working with other child protection practitioners, training them in what they had learnt from the previous three years of collaboration. Between 1994 and 2000, Steve and Andrew undertook 8 six-month projects with over 140 West Australian in which the Signs of Safety approach to child protection practice was evolved and refined. During the first month of each six-month project, Andrew and Steve would provide 5 days training to the CPW’s (usually groups of about 15 to 20 workers) in the Signs of Safety approach, as they understood it at the time. This training was always grounded in practice and would always involve other workers who had used the approach describing their experiences to the current group of trainees. Following this, Steve and Andrew would spend at least one day a month with the workers, focusing on where the workers had been using the approach and what had been useful for them as well as exploring situations in which they were stuck. By focusing on where workers were using the approach and making progress, Andrew and Steve learnt directly from the CPW’s themselves about where, when and how the practitioners were actually able to use the Signs of Safety approach. Steve had always said that only the ideas, skills and guidance that the workers actually used would be included as part of the Signs of Safety model. This collaborative learning process used in all the follow-up sessions formed the action research/appreciative inquiry method that created and evolved the Signs of Safety approach. (For more information about action research and appreciative inquiry, see Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987; Watkins, J.M. and Mohr, 2001).

The Signs of Safety approach should not be regarded as a fixed product (like say a box of cornflakes) rather it continues to evolve. The same collaborative inquiry process that generated the approach in Australia is continuing to be used in ongoing Signs of Safety projects that are occurring in various places around the world (e.g., Olmsted and Carver Counties in Minnesota, Gateshead, England, Nagoya, Japan, Drenthe, Holland, Stockholm and Trollhatten, Sweden) and thus the model continues to develop based on what the practitioners who are using the approach actually do. This action research/appreciative inquiry method closes the usual child protection theory-practice gap and is a very different way of theorizing child protection practice. In August 2005, almost 50 practitioners who use the Signs of Safety model in their child protection work gathered from 8 different countries and presented their experiences of using the approach. This was an energizing and unique experience for all involved (international professional gatherings and conferences rarely directly focus on, or involve front-line practitioners) and built direct connections and a sense of community amongst practitioners and organizations utilizing the approach.

Signs of Safety Gathering August 2005, Gateshead England

Child protection workers know that usually they are told from various experts how they should do their work and they also know that they usually only receive attention when their work is seen to be flawed or that they got it wrong (child death inquiries are the epitome of this activity). The first instinct of almost anyone talking about child protection services, whether they are talking in parliament or in a pub, is to relate their version of a horror story, describing poor mistake-ridden and oppressive practice by child protection workers and their organisations. The regular retelling of these sorts of stories at all levels of our communities constantly problematises statutory child protection practice, escalating the defensiveness of front-line workers and thereby contributing to a professional context where vulnerable children are made less, rather than more, safe.

By contrast the Signs of Safety was developed by Steve and Andrew approaching CPW’s from a spirit of appreciative inquiry, asking them to describe self-defined, successful use of the Signs of Safety with difficult cases or situations. We believe that worker-defined, good practice with ‘difficult’ cases (whether using the Signs of Safety approach or not) is an invaluable and almost entirely overlooked resource for improving child protection services. The local knowledge of worker defined good practice is a potent strategy for building service deliverer-guided, organisational change, particularly radical in times of rampant managerialism.

One of the things Steve and Andrew feel proudest of in writing about the Signs of Safety approach is that written descriptions are full of many examples of CPW’s doing good work with difficult cases (see Turnell and Edwards, 1997 and 1999). Andrew has taken the good practice, collaborative inquiry process further in recent years and now makes a habit of writing up case examples jointly with the practitioner and then wherever possible, taking the written story to the parents and children to make the descriptions richer and to deepen their authenticity. (This process and various case examples documented in this way are described more fully in Teoh et.al. 2003, Turnell 2004 and two further papers which are in press, one written by Andrew alone the other written with Sharon Elliot and Viv Hogg from Gateshead, England as listed below).

The heart of the Signs of Safety process revolves around a risk assessment and case planning format that is meaningful for all the professionals and the parents and children. One of the greatest problems to bedevil child protection practice is that assessment and planning processes privilege the professional voice and erase the perspectives of children, parents and other family members. The Signs of Safety risk assessment process integrates professional knowledge alongside local family and cultural knowledge and balances a rigorous exploration of danger/harm alongside indicators of strengths and safety. The Signs of Safety format offers a simple yet rigorous assessment format that the practitioner can use to elicit, in common language, the professional and family members’ views regarding concerns or dangers, existing strengths and safety and envisioned safety. The Signs of Safety framework integrates risk assessment with case planning and risk management by incorporating a future focus within the assessment. This format deepens and balances the usual problem saturation of most risk assessment. The Signs of Safety framework has subsequently been utilised as a template to integrate a strengths and safety focus within two Australian statutory risk assessment frameworks (Department of Community Development, 1999; Department of Human Services, 2001).

This is a potted introduction to the Signs of Safety approach but hopefully gives you a flavour of the approach and how it was created. As already mentioned, the Signs of Safety approach continues to evolve. The Signs of Safety model began because of the questions Steve and Andrew asked each other, namely: "Is there a better way of describing how to do child protection casework and how could the ideas and thinking of brief therapy apply to child protection case work?" We have learnt that there are no final answers to these questions.

There is no one prescribed right way to apply the approach. Each time a child protection worker uses the Signs of Safety model in the field and then describes their endeavours, the approach continues to evolve.

Further Resources

An interview with Andrew Turnell focused primarily around the relationship between the Signs of Safety approach and the task of child protection risk assessment can be found at www.solution-focused.nl/tools/turnell.htm

Extensive references to the Signs of Safety approach and supporting ideas are provided in the two following texts:

Healy, K. (2005). Social work theories in context; creating frameworks for practice, London: Palgrave.

Parton, N., & O'Byrne, P. (2000). Constructive social work: towards a new practice. London: MacMillan.

The following paper provides a description of the Signs of Safety approach applied to situations involving sexual abuse perpetrated by young people. This approach was developed at ŒThe Junction¹, a Barnardos project in Northern England.

Myers S. (2005). A signs of safety approach to assessing children with sexually concerning or harmful behaviour. Child Abuse Review 14: 97-112.

References

Cooperrider, D. L., & Srivastva, S. (1987). Appreciative inquiry in organizational life. In W. Pasmore & R. Woodman (Eds.), Research In Organization Change and Development (Vol. 1, pp. 129-169). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Department for Community Development, (2001). Risk analysis and risk management framework. Perth, Australia.

Department of Human Services, (1999). Victorian Risk Framework, Version 2.0. Protection and Care Branch, Victoria, Australia.

Teoh, A.H., Jim Laffer, J., Parton, N. and Turnell, A. (2003). Trafficking in Meaning: Constructive Social Work in Child Protection Practice. In Hall, C., Juhila, K., Parton, N. and Pösö, T. (Editors), Client as practice. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Turnell, A. (2004). Relationship-grounded, safety-organised child protection practice: Dreamtime or real-time option for child welfare? Protecting Children, 16(3): 14-25

Turnell, A. (2006). Solution-focused brief therapy; thinking and practicing beyond the therapy room. In F. Thomas and T. Nelson (Eds.). Solution-focused brief therapy: A handbook, Harworth Press, Binghamton.

Turnell, A. (In press for 2006). Constructive Child Protection Practice: An Oxymoron or News of Difference? Journal of Systemic Therapy.

Turnell, A & Edwards, S. (1997). Aspiring to partnership: the Signs of Safety approach to child protection. Child Abuse Review, 6: 179-190.

Turnell, A. and Edwards, S. (1999). Signs of Safety: A solution and safety-oriented approach to child protection casework, New York: Norton.

Turnell A., Elliott S. and Hogg, V. (In Press).Compassionate, safe and rigorous child protection practice with biological parents of adopted children, Child Abuse Review.

Watkins, J.M. and Mohr, B.J. (2001), Appreciative inquiry: change at the speed of imagination, New York: Jossey-Bass.