What are the Experiences of Practitioners Involved in Children Coming into Our Care (CCIOC) Multi-disciplinary Meetings?

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Timariu, Dan; Hatton, Tom; McCook, Keisha; Rohmann, Anna and Tobierre, Cynthia. 2024. 'What are the Experiences of Practitioners Involved in Children Coming into Our Care (CCIOC) Multi-disciplinary Meetings?'. In: 13th European Conference for Social Work Research. Vilnius, Lithuania 17 - 19 April 2024. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Official URL: https://www.ecswr2024.eu/

Abstract or Description

In recent years, there has been a steep increase in the children looked after (CLA) rates in England, with the highest level recorded in 2022. Evidence shows CLA tend to have poorer outcomes in several areas, like educational attainment, social relationships, health and wellbeing. It is acknowledged that every child’s journey into care is inevitably emotionally difficult and potentially traumatic. There is, therefore, an important question about how practitioners could work together to reduce the trauma children suffer at the point of separation from their parents/carers. Currently, the multi-agency statutory guidance is focused on child protection. There is a gap relating to how the multi-agency network should collaborate to support a child’s transition into care. There is limited research evidence relating to this area of practice and a clear need to provide guidance to practitioners, so they are enabled to provide the best support to children when they enter care.

The Child Coming Into Our Care (CCIOC) is a practitioner-researcher collaborative project, which aims to develop good practice guidelines and training to reduce the trauma children suffer at the point of entry into care. The project introduced a new approach to multi-disciplinary work (CCIOC meetings), based on the principles of trauma-informed practice. A key objective was to help practitioners to prepare sensitively and compassionately for a child’s entry into the care system.

The current study aimed to evaluate the CCIOC approach by answering three key questions:

What are the experiences of practitioners involved in CCIOC multi-disciplinary meetings?

What are the potential benefits for children, families and the professional network?

What are the strengths of this approach and what could be improved?

The study is based on collaborative thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 17 professionals involved in CCIOC meetings.

Preliminary analyses show that CCIOC meetings may contribute to several positive outcomes, including: better emotional and practical support for children; partnership working with parents and carers; improved interprofessional working and information sharing; mutual respect. Practitioners also reported feeling more confident, better supported and prepared as a result of participating in these meetings.

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Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)