Using knowledge exchange to bring about culture change in children and families social work departments

近几十年来，英语世界各地的儿童保护制度一直受到严厉批评，以至于一些评论人士得出结论，这些制度可能弊大于利。艾琳·门罗教授最近进行了一项由英国政府赞助的审查，主张从根本上改变儿童保护做法和文化。具体地说，门罗认为，“地方当局及其合作伙伴应该启动一个持续的进程，审查和重新设计提供儿童和家庭社会工作的方式，借鉴适当的帮助方法的有效性的证据，并支持能够实施基于证据的儿童和家庭工作方式的做法”(2011年，第13页)。门罗指出，需要“帮助专业人员从合规文化转向学习文化”(2011，第6页)。门罗的建议构成了这项建议的核心目标：帮助两个地方当局的儿童和家庭社会工作者根据已知有效的证据审查和重新设计其服务，并在学习文化的背景下这样做。该计划的合作伙伴包括爱丁堡大学的社会工作及知识交流学者，以及邻近的两个地方当局--爱丁堡市和东洛锡安的主要管理人员和从业员。这项建议建基於先前一个成功的计划，该计划涉及来自六个地方当局的学者和社会工作从业员，共同就与非自愿社工服务使用者合作的有效做法进行从业员研究，而非自愿社工则被理解为与社会工作接触的人士获授权接触社会工作。其中三个项目的重点是儿童和家庭社会工作。这项新提案将这一项目的发现向前推进，将聚光灯投射到广泛的儿童和家庭社会工作实践中。从历史上看，社会工作机构一直投资于培训活动和倡议，希望从参与者那里学习这些活动和倡议，并将其转化为更广泛的组织结构。这种学习迁移的证据并不充分。相反，人们知道，很少有培训活动会给实践带来积极的变化。其中一个原因是，培训经常作为一项独立的活动进行，与组织目标或实践目标没有明确的联系。知识交流模式，通过承认从业者为某一学科带来的先前知识、技能和价值，被认为在将知识付诸实践方面比传统的培训举措更有效。在这个项目中，我们将利用特定的知识交流活动，这些活动源于文献，并在我们以前的项目中被证明是有效的，以帮助合作伙伴地方当局实现文化变革。我们的建议由三个部分组成，一个是横向的，将在各个组织中运作，讨论与当前关于儿童保护的讨论有关的关键主题；一个垂直的部分，旨在支持实践者制定已知的有效做法的范例；以及第三个部分，将与管理人员合作，进行有效的学习转移。总之，这些不同的线索符合Nutley等人(2007)的知识交流组织卓越模式，根据该模式，组织与大学合作，成为当地实验、评估和实践发展的场所。我们的项目将提供关于如何更广泛地带来儿童保护方面的文化变化的指针和模型。因此，它将引起英国各地地方当局和政府机构的兴趣，并因此有可能证明社会政策和实践的好处。

Child protection systems across the English-speaking world have been subject to damning critique in recent decades, to the extent that some commentators conclude that they may be doing more harm than good. A recent UK government-sponsored review conducted by Professor Eileen Munro argues for fundamental change in child protection practice and culture. Specifically, Munro argues that 'Local authorities and their partners should start an ongoing process to review and redesign the ways in which child and family social work is delivered, drawing on evidence of effectiveness of helping methods where appropriate and supporting practice that can implement evidence based ways of working with children and families' (2011, p.13)' Munro identifies the need to 'help professionals move from a compliance culture to a learning culture' (2011, p.6). Munro's recommendation forms the central objective in this proposal: to help children and families social workers in two local authorities review and redesign their services in line with evidence of what is known to be effective and to do so in the context of a learning culture. The project partners include social work and knowledge exchange (KE) academics at the University of Edinburgh and key managers and practitioners in two neighbouring local authorities, The City of Edinburgh and East Lothian.The proposal builds upon a previous successful project, which involved academics and social work practitioners from six local authorities working together on small pieces of practitioner research around effective practice in working with involuntary social work service users, involuntary being understood as those whose contact with social work was mandated. The focus of three of these projects was on children and families social work. This new proposal takes the findings of this project forward, casting the spotlight across a wide spectrum of social work practice with children and families. Historically, social work agencies have invested in training events and initiatives in the hope that learning on these might be cascaded from participants into wider organisational structures. The evidence for this sort of transfer of learning is not strong. On the contrary, it is known that very little training activity results in positive changes to practice. One of the reasons for this is that training often occurs as a free-standing activity that is not clearly linked to organisational or practice objectives. Models of knowledge exchange, through recognising the prior knowledge, skills and values that practitioners bring to a subject, are considered to be more effective than traditional training initiatives in getting knowledge into practice. In this project we will utilise specific knowledge exchange activities, derived from the literature and shown to be effective in our previous project, to help bring about cultural change in the partner local authorities. Our proposal consists of three strands, a horizontal one that will operate across organisations to discuss key themes relating to the current discourse on child protection; a vertical strand, which will aim to support practitioners develop examples of what is known to be effective practice and a third strand, which will work with managers around effective learning transfer. Together, the various strands are in line with Nutley et al's (2007) organizational excellence model of knowledge exchange whereby organisations, working in partnership with universities, become the locus for local experimentation, evaluation and practice development.Our project will offer pointers and models about how cultural change in child protection might be brought about more widely. As such, it will be of interest to local authorities and to Government bodies across the UK and thus holds out the potential to evidence demonstrable social policy and practice benefits.