Child Abuse: Social Work Perspective

REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Introduction

This is a reflection of a research carried out by a group within the class on 'investigating information sharing between professionals and how it impacts child abuse: social work perspective '. This theme was the basis for the research and published research articles were used to analyse the research question. The reporting of child abuse is a complex issue that generates lots of controversies but recently, social policy has been focused on improving the way child abuse is reported. The Nursing Standard (2013) reports on how child abuse and the risk of it should be reported by professionals that deal with children. These professionals include health practitioners, social workers and teachers. Child abuse,
The research question was derived through discussions made by members of the group. As students of social work and policy, the title appealed to us because of the recent history relating to the research question. Getting the title was not straight forward as different suggestions were made by members of the group. The other areas for research consideration were, 'looked after children ' and 'social policy and housing '. The research topic we eventually chose was appealing to most of us as it is a contemporary issue in social work and policy. Furthermore, the issues surrounding child abuse have been covered in a module and the members of the group saw this as an area that will enable maximum contribution from every
Problematisation is defined by Alvesson and Sandberg (2011) as generating research questions by identifying and challenging the assumptions underlying existing theories. In this case, it is not just child abuse that is being investigated but the way it is reported through information sharing amongst professional from a social work perspective. The existing theories on information sharing with regards to child abuse are definitely not water-tight for two main cases leading to death to occur in the same London Borough of Haringey within a decade. So problematisation constructs research questions from existing literature and for the group, even though we knew the direction we had to go with the research question, we had to check with publications made in this area of study before fine tuning the research question. Using EBSCO Host, the group checked for relevance, availability of research publication and applicability to the wider issues of social work and policy. The research question emerged from this process and since communication remains a vital tool in social work and given that the profession involves provision of holistic service by different agencies working together, the group agreed to investigate information sharing between professionals and how this impacts on child