Child Protection and social distancing: Improving the capacity of social workers to keep children safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

这项研究将探讨新冠肺炎疫情对儿童保护做法和服务使用者的影响，并提高社会工作者和其他专业人员在制度化社会疏远时期保护儿童安全的能力。在我们关于日常生活中使用数字技术的现有研究(Pink等人，2015；Pink等人，2017)和有效的儿童保护，特别是社会工作者在家中接近儿童的中心地位(弗格森，2014、2016、2017、2020)的基础上，我们将确定关注的领域，并就有效应对提出建议。这项研究将在四个匿名地点使用数字人种学方法，产生并迅速传播针对新冠肺炎而形成的新挑战和社会工作做法的深入知识，例如数字技术的新使用，及其对服务使用者、社会工作者和社会工作组织的影响。将使用定性访谈、视觉和数字方法从社会工作人员和服务用户那里收集关于面对面访问和虚拟家访的数据。这些见解将被用来迅速向全国儿童保护实践提供信息。与参与者和我们的合作者英国社会工作者和实践研究协会的参与将形成实践建议和共同制作的指导，并确保在全国范围内传播和影响。这将提高全国社会工作者在新的和可能增加的风险，包括虐待儿童的时候保护儿童安全的能力，并将在未来的研究中使用，例如为将数字技术嵌入社会工作实践提供信息。

This research will explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on child protection practice and service users and improve the capacity of social workers and other professionals to keep children safe in a period of institutionalised social distancing. Building on our existing research on the use of digital technology in everyday life (Pink et al, 2015; Pink et al, 2017) and effective child protection, especially the centrality of social workers getting close to children in their homes (Ferguson, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2020), we will identify areas of concern and advise on effective responses. Using digital ethnographic methods at four anonymised sites, the study will generate and rapidly disseminate in-depth knowledge of new challenges and social work practices developed in response to COVID-19, such as the novel use of digital technologies, and their impact on service users, social workers and social work organisations. Qualitative - interview, visual and digital - methods will be used to gather data from social work staff and service users about in-person and 'virtual home visits'. These insights will be used to rapidly inform child protection practice nationally. Engagement with participants and our collaborators the British Association of Social Workers and Research in Practice will shape recommendations for practice and coproduced guidance, and ensure national dissemination and impact. This will enhance the capacity of social workers nationally to keep children safe at a time of new and potentially increased risk, including of dometic abuse, and will also have future research use, such as informing the embedding of digital technologies into social work practice.