Building trust with marginalised families

Introduction

Most registered social care workers in Wales (63 per cent) said they were motivated to join the sector because they wanted a job that would make a difference to people’s lives (Social Care Wales, 2023). This number is even higher for social workers, 76 per cent of whom stated this as a motivation (Social Care Wales, 2023). Despite this positive motivation, however, relationships between people accessing social care and those providing it can be difficult. This is particularly true around supporting families. Families who are in contact with social workers often report feeling powerless, stressed, shamed and mistrustful (Nissen and Engen, 2021; Bilson et al. 2017).

Research in the UK has also suggested that social workers working with families tend to use confrontational communication styles, focusing on the negative aspects of what families are telling them instead of engaging with families in a more empathetic and positive way (Forrester et al., 2008). This research is discussed in more detail in our evidence summary on communicating with families in difficult situations.

When we asked social care workers what topics they’d like to understand more about, they wanted more information on how to work positively with families and support them to develop problem-solving skills. They also asked for information on how to work with families in ways that encouraged them to engage and to take control over their own lives. Social care workers also wanted to know what the evidence says about how to balance their own knowledge and experience with making sure families’ rights to exercise control over their own lives are respected.

This evidence summary looks at how social care workers can improve relationships with the families they support. It looks specifically at supporting families who’ve been marginalised because they belong to an ethnic minority or are struggling financially. The summary also presents research that explores the experiences of marginalised social groups who’ve been in contact with social care services and highlights lessons for those looking to improve their relationships with families. This evidence summary is best read together with our evidence summary on communicating with families in difficult situations. There we explore research on the benefits of giving social workers space to reflect on their work to help them stay present in difficult situations, such as where people are in danger of being harmed. It looks at how better communication skills and approaches can help build stronger more honest relationships with families.

Supporting families in Welsh legislation and guidance

There are several pieces of legislation in Wales that support the goal of improving relationships between practitioners and families.

Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act (2014)

The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 sets out the legal framework for supporting the well-being of everyone who needs care and support in Wales. The Act follows four main principles:

• voice and control – putting the individual and their needs at the centre of their care and giving them a voice in, and control over, reaching the outcomes that help them achieve well-being
• prevention and early intervention – increasing preventative services within the community to minimise the escalation of critical need
• well-being – supporting people to achieve their own well-being and measuring the success of care and support
• co-production – encouraging individuals to become more involved in the design and delivery of services.

The Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act (2014) also provides guidance on how the needs of adults and children should be assessed so everyone in Wales can access equitable support. This evidence summary will support social workers and other social care staff to work in accordance with the core principles of the Act by presenting evidence on how they can build stronger relationships with the families they support.

Child Poverty Strategy for Wales 2024

The Child Poverty Strategy for Wales (2024) lays out Welsh Government’s plans to reduce child poverty in Wales. Within this strategy, there’s a commitment to working together with families to reduce costs and maximise incomes by making parents aware of any material support they are entitled to.

Poverty plays a large part in making families vulnerable to different kinds of harm. In this evidence summary, we present some research on how to work with economically disadvantaged families in a way that promotes dignity and control.

Anti-racist Wales Action Plan

The Welsh Government’s Anti-racist Wales Action Plan (2022) states the government’s intention to incorporate anti-racist principles into policies. The plan takes a rights-based approach based on the lived experiences of people in Wales.

The Action Plan outlines a number of goals specific to social care, including increasing ethnic diversity in leadership and the social care workforce. It also states a commitment to breaking down the barriers that people from ethnic minority backgrounds face in accessing care and support.

This evidence summary outlines what the research says about how to build trust and improve communication with families from marginalised communities and how to avoid accidentally contributing to discrimination.

Responding to different kinds of marginalisation

Families in Wales face complex challenges. Many families face different types of marginalisation. In this evidence summary we focus specifically on families that experience marginalisation due to racism and poverty. It’s important to note that these are not distinct categories. Many people will experience more than one kind of marginalisation at the same time. However, by summarising research that looks at these two categories specifically, we’re able to explore how relationships with all marginalised families might be improved.

Ethnic minority families

Ethnic minority families have reported difficulties with accessing the support they need or want (Waddell et al., 2022). Certain groups are also more likely to come into contact with social care services. For example, across the UK, there are higher rates of care experienced Black children than white children, while there are lower rates of care experienced children from Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin than white children (Bywaters et al., 2020). It’s not known whether these differences reflect the distinct needs of different communities or if they indicate that some communities’ needs aren’t being met (Bywaters et al., 2020).

There’s evidence that some families with marginalised identities are more likely to experience oppressive forms of control from social care workers (Featherstone et al., 2014). For example, in a paper on the experiences of Nigerian parents in the UK, Okpokiri (2021) suggests that discussions of parenting in Western countries often frame African parents as lacking knowledge about ‘proper parenting’ techniques. Some parents Okpokiri interviewed reported feeling like they needed to make their children ‘perform’ so that their behaviour might be considered more acceptable by social workers. Some parents also reported telling their children that social services might take them away if they didn’t behave in these ‘acceptable’ ways. Parents described feeling constantly afraid that their children might be removed from the family and that children may be harmed by social services. Okpokiri (2021) suggests that, in order to reduce this kind of fear and avoid adversarial relationships developing, social workers should react to situations where parents aren’t wilfully harming their children by building partnerships with parents.

As mentioned previously, researchers have emphasised the need for social care workers to reflect on their own beliefs and assumptions about what a ‘good family’ looks like (Featherstone, 2006). It’s particularly important to note that, in Wales, people’s ideas about good family forms, just like those about good parenting, might be based on Eurocentric ideals. This means that people’s assumptions might be based on traditional (and outdated) European values (for example, that the ideal family unit is a nuclear one, consisting of a mother, a father and their biological children). The potential effect of these ideas can be seen in research from non-Western countries, where Western values are still sometimes seen as superior to other ways of life. These ideas don’t just affect people working in social care – they also affect families themselves. In a study carried out in a youth detention facility in Trinidad and Tobago, Mendez (2019) found that the boys and young men she talked to often partly blamed their incarceration on being raised in an ‘atypical’ family. In particular, the poor relationships they had with their fathers. Mendez notes that this self-assessment stood in contrast to traditional family forms in Trinidad and Tobago, which were historically female centred. She argued that the boys and young men saw their own families as inferior because they’d absorbed Western ideals about how a good family should look.

It’s important for people working in social care to show an understanding of cultural influences on family dynamics. This is known as cultural sensitivity (Waddell et al., 2022). Researchers warn of the dangers of running evidence-based interventions among diverse populations if they’ve been developed according to Western cultural norms and expectations (Waddell et al., 2022).

Strengths-based approaches can prevent marginalised families from feelings of inferiority around how their family is formed. Featherstone’s (2006) idea of a ‘bottom up’ understanding can be helpful here. Social care workers can support families to understand where their strengths lie, rather than focusing on how the family set-up might differ from their own ideas about the ‘good family’. Abdullah (2015) notes that one of the reasons that strengths-based practices emerged was due to the limitations of traditional approaches in working with people from ethnic minority backgrounds. In Abdullah’s research on Muslim families, social care workers were able to treat families holistically by focusing on people’s strengths.

There are a number of other measures that can make social care more culturally appropriate and inclusive. For example, van Mourik et al. (2017) found that parent training programmes that were specifically adapted for ethnic minority families improved parenting behaviour, child outcomes, and parental perspectives. The changes made to the programmes included:

• translation into other languages
• matching the group leader to the participants’ characteristics
• altering images and videos to include families from a variety of ethnic backgrounds
• more inclusion of cultural or contextual issues on parenting (van Mourik et al. 2017).

Economically disadvantaged families

There’s a strong link between the level of deprivation in an area and the proportion of children who are looked after or under child protection. In the UK, children living in areas that are amongst the 10 per cent most deprived are over 10 times more likely to be subject to an intervention than children living in the 10 per cent of least deprived areas (Bywaters et al., 2020). There’s a strong correlation between areas in Wales where children are most likely to be removed from families and those which have high levels of deprivation. Hodges (2020) suggests that almost half (47 per cent) of the variation in the rates of care experienced children between local authorities can be explained by differences in their levels of deprivation.

As well as financial pressures on services, families are currently facing increased challenges because of the impact of austerity and the cost of living crisis (Broadbent et al., 2023). Featherstone et al. (2014) draw on the work of Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) to argue that the link between poverty and social problems is strongest not when poverty is most widespread in a society but when wealth inequality is most prevalent. Shame, low trust in the system and feelings of unfairness become pronounced when people see others around them doing better than themselves, especially when the messages they receive through media and politics is that financial success is mainly down to individual hard work (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).

When it comes to poverty, it’s important to acknowledge that many people who are struggling financially feel shame for their situation. Jo (2013) argues that poverty isn’t just about material deprivation, it’s also a ‘shameful social relation’ which doesn’t allow people to live with dignity and flourish. Shame comes together with feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy, which can lead to feelings of low self esteem and self-worth. Gupta (2015) invited families living in poverty to workshops to discuss their lives. In one workshop that explored the topic of poverty and shame, people reported feeling that media representations of people living in poverty were extremely stigmatising. Many of the participants also reported feeling a lot of shame and stigma about being in contact with child protection services. They reported feeling pre-judged by social workers, as well as feeling that social workers didn’t believe them, treated them as liars, and blamed them for their poverty. Parents in the workshop also felt shame related to their lack of control over decisions being made about their children’s lives. They described being subjected to unrealistic expectations and said that there were ‘goalposts changing’ in relation to these expectations (Gupta, 2015).

Despite the participants in Gupta’s (2015) workshops describing many negative experiences, there were also some positive findings. Some spoke highly of social workers who spent time with them to get to know them better and who didn’t treat them like a ‘tick box’ exercise. They also talked about feelings of relief when realising, for example, that social workers didn’t have unrealistic expectations of them. This included small things like social workers accepting that children’s bedrooms were sometimes messy, without this being a sign of bad parenting.

While strengths-based practices have the potential to improve relationships and build the confidence of people accessing social care, it’s important not to focus only on personal responsibility in situations where material support would be more beneficial. Wood et al.’s (2022) review of research on interventions, which either positively or negatively affected families’ economic situations, looked at the effects of material support on families. They found that directly improving the financial situation of families tended to have a positive effect on the likelihood that children could remain or be reunited with their families. Interventions that negatively affected families’ financial situations made it less likely that children would remain with their families. They also found that improving the financial situation of families meant that they were more likely to engage positively with social workers and any measures that were put in place (Wood et al., 2022). A summary of Wood et al.’s (2022) review of research on the links between family finances and the likelihood that a child will be placed into care can be found in the Insight Collective blog (Krause and Deerfield, 2024).