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Managing conflict in child protection

How to overcome confrontation, resistance, and denial so you can feel confident balancing authority with compassion in forming collaborative relationships with parents

Part of BASW's Child Protection Social Work Practice Masterclass Series - click here to view the full programme

Back by popular demand, new dates for the Child Protection Masterclass series have been released for 2024! Get inspired with highly practical, research-based training that will equip you with ideas to implement in your social work practice. These focused sessions will be jam-packed with knowledge, practical ideas, and research. Delivered by Richard Devine, who draws on his wealth of experience and expertise. You will leave feeling more confident and re-energised in the work you do with children and families.

Suitable for all social workers nationwide with an interest in child protection.

Course overview:

The session will explore how social workers can effectively manage conflict. Conflict is an ever-present and unavoidable feature of child protection social work. Parents are often fearful, frightened, or angry about social work involvement and/or may be unwilling or resistant to change. This makes relationships tense and difficult.

Most agree that improving the lives of children and families depends on building and maintaining effective relationships. Yet, there is surprisingly little guidance on how to achieve this in such a difficult context. Social workers can be left feeling inadequate or ineffective when their attempts to support are thwarted.

In this focused masterclass, Rich Devine, drawing on his twelve years of front-line practice, will explore how conflict is unavoidable in child protection. He will share ideas and methods that facilitate the development of effective and meaningful relationships, so that you can feel confident in managing complex and challenging relationships and improve outcomes for children.

Learning outcomes:

  • Learn about why conflict is a necessary part of child protection work
  • Understand the various reasons why a parent might be angry, resistant or in denial
  • Learn about the different approaches to social work, and the advantages and disadvantages of each when dealing with conflict or resistance
  • Get practical ideas to manage challenging relationships, reduce resistance, and increase the chances that a parent will change, and the live of their children improve
  • Be more confident working with challenging, uncooperative parents

The trainer:

Rich Devine (Twitter @RichardDevineSW) is a Consultant Social Worker, with over 12 years’ experience working with children and families in a child protection context.

He has a Masters in Attachment Studies from Roehampton University, London (2018) and is trained in several attachment procedures. Currently, he is a Visiting Researcher at Cambridge University. He writes one of the UK’s most popular social work blogs, exploring topics such direct work with children, assessment, and relationship-based practice.

In 2022, he co-facilitated a series of webinars on co-design and co-production with Tim Fisher, one of the leading UK experts on participatory approaches and he undertook research on parental advocacy with Dr Clive Diaz from Cardiff University (to be published in 2023).

Delivered online using MS Teams.

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