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New Directions
in Children’s
Welfare

Professionals,
Policy and
Practice

Sharon Pinkney
New Directions in Children’s Welfare
Sharon Pinkney

New Directions in
Children’s Welfare
Professionals, Policy and Practice
Sharon Pinkney
Carnegie School of Education
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds, UK

ISBN 978-1-137-54538-1    ISBN 978-1-137-54539-8 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54539-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963795

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018


The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover design by Thomas Howey

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature


The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
For Mary Pinkney who was bold and strong. Also for Alicia who brings joy
Acknowledgements

This book has been such a long time in the thinking and making. So many
friends and colleagues have inspired me to continue to think about children and
social welfare. In particular I would like to say a huge thank you to both Esther
Saraga and John Clarke who supervised my PhD and were patient, supportive,
constructive and insightful throughout. More widely I would like to thank the
excellent colleagues I have worked and undertaken research with at the Open
University and more recently at Leeds Beckett University.
In earlier years the play work and social work teams I worked with provided
me with much to reflect on further about the importance of listening to children
and putting them at the centre of our practice. The children and young people I
have been fortunate enough to work with and know have been generous in shar-
ing their stories about their lives and the challenges. They have also told me
about the people and things that inspire and give them hope. Without their
energy and input none of this was possible and I wish to thank them sincerely.
Thanks to all colleagues and friends who have provided critical feedback and
guidance throughout the process of writing drafts. Thanks in particular to Dot
Moss who encouraged me throughout the writing process. I also wish to say
thank you to all those who asked thoughtful questions at conferences and semi-
nar presentations—each helped me to develop my thinking.
Lastly, I would like to say thank you to my long-suffering family and friends
who never stopped encouraging, listening or simply accompanying me on long
mountain walks and swims: In particular Thomas, Louis, Rob, Trish, Viv, Avril,
Judy, Jane, Helen, Ali, Gordon and Angharad.

vii
Contents

1 New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals,


Policy and Practice   1

2 An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child


Welfare  23

3 Competing Understandings of Children’s Services  51

4 The Emotional and Sensory Dimensions of Child Welfare  83

5 Serious Case Reviews and Inquiry Reports: Investigating


the Emotional, Sensory and Relational Dimensions of
Child Protection 113

6 Understanding Child Welfare as a Dynamic


Hyper-Mobile Practice 145

7 Trust in Relations Between Children and Social


Welfare Professionals 167

ix
x Contents

8 Conclusion 193

References 207

Index 231
1
New Directions in Children’s Welfare:
Professionals, Policy and Practice

Introduction
In 1985, as a newly qualified social worker, I was allocated work with a
family with three young children under five years old who were all on the
child protection ‘at risk’ register as a result of concerns from health visi-
tors about the children being neglected. The family included mother,
father, a baby boy aged almost one year, a toddler aged two years and a
girl almost five years old. On my first home visit I was anxious that they
might be angry to have a new social worker telling them that there were
still ongoing concerns about the care of their children. Social Services had
been involved with the family for around three years since concerns first
emerged about the care of their first child. During that time they had a
number of different social workers. I climbed the four flights of stairs, as
I knew the lifts in that building were often foul smelling with urine and
excrement, as well as sometimes having rubbish and drug parapherna-
lia—including used syringes—in them. In addition, they fairly frequently
broke down. As I climbed the stairwell I thought about how the visit
might go and what kind of reception I would receive from the family. I
knocked on the door of their council-owned flat and knew someone was
home as I could hear a baby crying. When the father answered the door

© The Author(s) 2018 1


S. Pinkney, New Directions in Children’s Welfare,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54539-8_1
2 S. Pinkney

I introduced myself, asked if I could come in and explained why I was


there. They were more sad than angry and I recall feeling a sense of relief,
as I imagined I would be safe visiting them in their home on my own. It
seems odd now, reflecting that as a newly qualified social worker I already
had a feeling for the inherent and potential risk on home visits usually
carried out alone. I met the children and their mother and could see that
both parents had a close bond with their three children, although they
seemed at a loss in terms of how to cope with the competing demands of
their three children. They seemed exhausted and worn down trying to
manage with their young family in a flat that was crowded and small for
five of them.
Their flat had a strong smell of dirty nappies and the carpet was sticky.
The air felt stale and oppressive. Glancing around, it seemed to be a cha-
otic and untidy house. The baby was crawling around on the floor with-
out a nappy on; there were two cats in the room and it smelled as though
they had also peed on the carpets. Being honest now, on reflection, my
overwhelming sense was of wanting to leave the home and get out into
the fresh air. As a newly qualified social worker still on probation (and
hence a permanent contract was not yet confirmed), I was conscious of
also being diligent and keen to do a good job and support them in what
seemed like a desperately sad situation of social inequality and poverty.
Being at the early stages of my social work career, this case was considered
suitable as it was less high risk than some of the other cases I eventually
moved into working on. Over those first few weeks I talked with them
about how I could be supportive and ways that we could work together
to improve their family situation so that ultimately the concerns about
their children’s welfare would be lowered and their children’s names could
be removed from the child protection register.
I worked with the family for almost two years and in that time I
approached various charities to assist them with material goods, such as a
new washing machine and some furniture for the children’s bedroom,
and toys and clothes for the children. Eventually the family was re-housed
into a less damp property, on the grounds of the ongoing and persistent
respiratory ill health of the children. The parents were poor and unskilled,
and after working with them a while and going through various form-­
filling for benefits, I realised that they both had limited literacy and
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 3

numeracy skills. As a result of this they had difficulty with the process of
claiming benefits that they were entitled to. Despite the concerns about
the children I developed a strong sense that they were doing the best they
could in difficult circumstances, without any wider family support to
look after their three children. The referrals, with concerns being expressed
by health visitors and school, continued to come in, usually escalating
just before school holiday times, when the children would be at home
more and professional anxieties increased.
I gradually built up a relationship with the parents, to the point where
they were less cautious about talking with me about their difficulties and
I was able to offer some practical help to the situation they were in, which
was basically one of social inequality and poverty, together with the pres-
sure of caring for three young children on benefits. I tried to build a
relationship with the children, but reflecting on it now I realise that the
parents’ needs were so overwhelming that it was easy to get sucked into
working with them rather than directly with the children. I think at the
time I believed that if I helped and supported them I would indirectly be
supporting the children. I always tried to see the children and I knew
from social work training that this was important. After a few weeks of
visiting I realised that the middle child rarely demanded anything or
cried. The baby cried and usually had his needs met. The older daughter
was shy and quiet but would ask if she needed something and would
gradually be engaged in play or conversation. The middle son was with-
drawn and seemed to expect not to get his needs met. I made a note of
this in my case notes, recording that he was usually withdrawn and sub-
dued during my visits. I read about learned helplessness, where a child
learns not to expect or demand attention from a process of continual
neglect. I thought about whether this was the situation for this child, but
I also pondered over whether there was some other explanation. I dis-
cussed this with the parents and they seemed undecided on whether they
felt there was any problem with their son. I talked with my supervisor
about my concerns about the children’s welfare and wellbeing, and the
family situation more generally. In particular I discussed the middle child.
After further discussion with the parents, health visitor and family doc-
tor, the child was referred for further tests in terms of his development.
He was eventually assessed as having a developmental delay. He was
4 S. Pinkney

referred to a nursery and had some speech therapy input, which helped
him to catch up on his language and communication skills, and gradually
he began talking. The child psychologists and speech therapist assessment
confirmed that he was delayed in talking and this was probably due to
him receiving low levels of stimulation and attention.
Eventually, after almost two years, the concerns for the family reduced
enough for a multi- professional case conference to agree to take the chil-
dren’s names off the child protection register, although there continued to
be some low level concerns about them. I had done all I could to form
relationships of trust with the parents and the children, and to some
extent I had managed this because they always let me into their home and
usually talked frankly and openly with me about how they were coping
or not, and the frustrations of their situation, family life and any difficul-
ties, some of which I was able to offer some advice on. Gradually they
agreed to let Social Services and the children’s centre help and advise
them on various aspects of parenting and child rearing. I helped them fill
out forms for additional benefits and supported the father with referrals
for training and job-seeking. In addition, both parents attended some
parenting classes at the local family centre and started to be able to pro-
vide their children with stimulation, reading books and playing games
with them.
Much of the work I carried out with this family would not now be
undertaken by a social worker but more likely would be by a family sup-
port role worker. This practice example comes from the era when social
work was generic and community based. It took place within a London
Borough which had a particularly strong ethos relating to inter-agency-
and neighbourhood-based social work practice. I worked within a
neighbourhood-­based office, which included housing, environmental
health and welfare benefits advisors. It was effectively a one stop shop for
all local services within the estate I worked on. This co-location of ser-
vices made it easy for me to liaise with the housing and estate services
staff about the problems relating to the family housing conditions and
the damp in their flat.
Afterwards, when I sometimes thought about their tiny overcrowded
flat with damp walls, I wondered how I would cope bringing up children
in that context. One thing I can still recall vividly is the smell of practice
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 5

(Ferguson 2004), or more accurately in this particular case, the smell of


damp, poverty and social inequality. It is something that has stayed with
me ever since from those years of social work practice. It is this powerful
but less theorised aspect of the way the sensory dimension of smell, fear
of contamination, and emotional atmospheres of practice—including
shame and guilt—are present within many aspects of social welfare work
with children and families. I will explore further the discomfort in
acknowledging unease in home visits to sometimes smelly, dirty homes. I
will return to this within the book in Chap. 4 to explore further the emo-
tional and sensory aspects related to what I, following Ferguson (2004),
will refer to as this smell of poverty and inequality.
With twenty years experience of working with children and young
people in a range of settings, including play and youth work, children’s
residential settings and social work with children and young people, I
have thought deeply about the lived experiences, child protection, safe-
guarding, and the dilemmas faced by professionals working with children
and families similar to the one above. I have also thought about the dif-
ficulty for some families who are living in intolerable and shameful con-
ditions. Bearing witness to poverty, social inequality, neglect and abuse as
a professional leaves its stain.
As an academic for the last twenty-four years I have taught students
about the social policy contexts in which professional work with children
and families is carried out. I have reviewed the literatures and policy
frameworks that inform policy and practice in working with children and
young people. As part of my research I have interviewed professionals
working with children and young people in a variety of settings, includ-
ing social work, children’s rights work, and counselling roles with chil-
dren. I have also interviewed and consulted with a wide range of children
and young people who are either in care or at risk of significant harm.
Some of these children were disabled, or had impairments which made it
difficult for them to gain independence. Some of the children had experi-
ences beyond their young years of fleeing violence and war in their home
countries and being displaced into a country where they had to learn the
language and find new friends and family. Their stories have inspired the
passion and commitment to continue to work and think about this
important area of social and welfare work with children and young
6 S. Pinkney

­ eople. This book stems from reflections on those diverse and wide-rang-
p
ing experiences, and reflects upon possible new directions for children’s
welfare for professionals, policy and practice.

Reflective Writing and Practice


As a researcher, academic and former practitioner, I am conscious that
my reflections are partial, subjective and incomplete. They are situated
within my own personal experiences, as well as being affected by my own
upbringing and background within a loving Northern working class and
often (particularly in the early years) poor family. I remember being poor
as a child and the stigma attached to relying on charitable assistance,
including clothes and shoes, from a church-based organisation which
offered parcels for poor families. This experiential and situated knowl-
edge helps me to untangle the complex relationship between poverty,
social inequality and child neglect, and the importance of not making
essentialist assumptions that one necessarily leads to the other. As a result
of my own experiences growing up, as well as my social work training and
practice and work with children in a variety of settings, I am determined
to avoid pathologising the poor. By this I mean blaming the poor and
making assumptions that all poor people will have difficulty raising their
children. I am clear that this is not the case and I know that many chil-
dren raised within poor families are loved, cherished and nurtured. Often
this love and care is provided within an environment that most families
would find difficult, including living in poor quality housing stock, hav-
ing to rely on benefits or earning the minimum wage in unstable employ-
ment. Conversely, I have also worked professionally with families from
wealthier, materially comfortable backgrounds, who have suffered from
abuse of various kinds, so I know implicitly that child abuse is a cross-­
cutting wider endemic issue within all societies, cultures, social classes
and diverse family formations. Given that the focus of so much social
work is with poor families, this context is important to remember as we
reflect deeply on social work theory, policy, and practice.
I wish to acknowledge, situate and manage my own emotionality as
the practitioner, academic and researcher. Gunaratnam and Lewis (2001)
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 7

discuss how, during their research into ‘race’ and social work, they simi-
larly had to manage their own emotions as ‘black’ women researchers.
This involved some identification with, as well as distancing from, the
accounts which they were given. For me, the process of bearing witness
to children growing up within a context of poor living conditions was a
reminder of my own background. Carrying out interviews, leading focus
groups and consultations with various children and young people as well
as social welfare professionals over the years has similarly involved the
management of my own emotionality. In places, during some interviews,
my own emotional response to the narratives became visible. One exam-
ple was during a particular interview where distressing ‘adoption stories’
were produced (Pinkney 2005). The Children’s Rights advocate was tell-
ing me about her work with a young woman whose child was due to be
adopted. The emotionality involved in the situation where one could
imagine the young woman losing her child was intense. The professional
involved in supporting the young woman described the way professionals
talked in a coded way that avoided telling the young woman in words she
could understand what was about to happen. The emotional labour
involved in these encounters between professionals and children or young
people is explored within the book.
On other occasions I found myself agreeing with and empathising
with research participants, for example, when professionals discussed
issues of staffing, austerity, and resource shortfalls. I felt it was necessary
to manage my own emotionality for several reasons. Firstly, it was because
of the nature of the material that I was listening to and reading and the
ways in which these narratives would seep into my own life. I explored
how my own experiences of work with children in a variety of settings, as
well as my perspectives on inequality and social justice, affected my own
emotional response and interpretation of the research data. Secondly, my
previous experience as a social worker meant that I was trained to be able
to listen without adding my own experience or distress. Alongside this
was something about the idea of being a ‘proper’ researcher conducting
‘serious’ research interviews, which required a distancing from the
research participants. It was the interaction between these factors that
made me want to try to manage my own emotionality within the research
process.
8 S. Pinkney

Mindful of what Rose (1997) referred to within feminist geography—


that reflexivity itself is always a complex, challenging and incomplete
process—I offer here some partial and unfinished reflections on the com-
plexities involved in professional work with children and their families.
The case studies I draw on are gleaned from the ongoing reflections on
experiences of either directly working with children and young people
and their families or from talking with and interviewing professionals,
social workers, children’s rights workers, nursery, youth and play workers:
for example, about working with children and young people and the
issues that concern them. They are inevitably snapshots and glimpses into
the lives of children and families who often live in desperate situations,
frequently living in material poverty and in poor quality housing.
Schön (1983) suggested that there are two parts to the reflective pro-
cess. Firstly there is reflection-in-action, which is what is going through
your mind while something is happening. The second part is what Schön
referred to as reflection-on-action, which involves us thinking about what
happened after the event or experience–and thinking further about what
you could do differently in that situation. The case study I described at
the start of this introduction is a good example of Schön’s reflection-in-­
action, as well as illustrating the way that I have reflected on it since then.
This process of thinking at the time of undertaking practice, as well as
having an opportunity to reflect on it after, is an important one. In that
particular case, the fact that I still remember the smell and the feelings of
the practice over thirty years later is evidence of the powerful feeling and
sensory dimension of social work practice.
Davies (2012) outlines a number of benefits of reflective practice.
Although she was writing for healthcare practitioners, the benefits she
suggests could apply to many types of work settings or contexts, and I
offer her work up here as one of the useful ways of reflecting on profes-
sional practice that is relevant when thinking about social work training,
for example. She argued that reflective practice increases learning from an
experience or situation and promotes deep rather than superficial learn-
ing. It identifies personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, as
well as educational needs. It results in the acquisition of new knowledge
and skills. It facilitates practitioners in further understanding new beliefs,
attitudes and values. It encourages self-motivated and self-directed
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 9

l­ earning and acts as a source of feedback. Lastly, it improves personal (and


clinical) confidence. In my work with students it is this examination of
their own beliefs, attitudes and values, as well as the ways they can become
aware of the consequences of their actions when they work with children
and young people, that is important.
Flanagan (1954) describes how the critical incident technique was first
developed from observations of US Air Force crews during World War
Two. The use of critical incident technique as a way of reflecting on social
work practice is sometimes used within social work supervision. It enables
a stepping back from the description of the incident towards an encour-
agement to think about the processes involved and the professional
responses to the situation. It can also be a useful technique to use within
a team meeting; for example, to discuss the issues raised by a particularly
challenging incident or situation that is being worked with within the
team. I have sometimes used this technique within a team meeting to
facilitate reflection and dialogue about different approaches to the work
and to enable the team to reflect further on our responses and whether we
could think about it differently. Reflection can be challenging, and many
practitioners, as well as academics and students, find it a difficult
process.
In my teaching I often have students asking me questions such as ‘what
do I reflect on?’ and ‘how do I reflect?’ I ask them to write an essay where
they reflect on their placement experiences in working in a vocational
setting with children and young people. It reminds me that reflective
writing is not something that comes easily to most of us. We have to be
provided with models for reflection, but we also need to be encouraged
to keep a reflective journal to record our reflections immediately and then
return to them later (Bain et al. 1999). Again, using models such as Schön
(1983), outlined earlier, or Johns (2009), who provides a structured ques-
tion with a prompts-based approach to reflecting on nursing and clinical
practice, is useful in reflecting on practice in vocational work with chil-
dren and young people.
Finlay (2008) argues that there are different and sometimes contradic-
tory understandings of what is meant by reflective practice within differ-
ent disciplines. I would also argue that different professional groupings
often have different understandings of what reflective practice means and
10 S. Pinkney

how to supervise reflectively. The cultures of supervision are different and


this can sometimes create difficulty within a multi-professional context
where different groups of professionals work closely together, such as in
child protection. Ghaye argues that ‘reflective practices offer us a way of
trying to make sense of the uncertainty in our workplaces and the cour-
age to work competently and ethically at the edge of order and chaos’
(2000, p. 7). This idea of working competently and ethically is an inter-
esting one. Also, the sense of uncertainty and chaos would seem relevant
to some social work practice environments.
Reflective practice has its critics, and it is argued that it can lead to
organisations divesting themselves of responsibility for their employees
(Quinn 2000). The growth in popularity of wellbeing and mindfulness
can also be viewed as part of the way that an individualising of responsi-
bility has taken hold. The need for developing resilience on the part of
professionals working in highly stressful roles such as social work child
protection has become an important part of social work training. There
are considerations relating to retention within the profession, given the
level of turnover of staff and the difficulties of recruitment into the pro-
fession. This is significant in relation to both the wellbeing and support
for staff in these difficult, complex, and often fraught frontline roles.
Importantly for this book, it is also significant in relation to the continu-
ity of support for children and young people who are in care, or in need
of protection and support because of safeguarding concerns. A further
criticism is that at its worst, reflective practice can lead to naval-gazing
and individual professionals becoming self-absorbed (Finlay 2008). I
acknowledge that at the individual level there may be issues with respon-
sibilisation, where individual professionals are held responsible for situa-
tions that are sometimes best understood by reference to much wider
sociocultural and political approaches, including gender, race and class-­
based social inequality in society. Having acknowledged this, it is also
important to say that there are clear benefits in individuals acknowledg-
ing their feelings and emotional responses to work within a difficult and
stressful area of work with children and families. Also, individuals are
sometimes responsible for great injustices or abuse of children, as evi-
denced in several child abuse cases, some of which are discussed further
within Chap. 5. I argue, however, that when applied at an institutional
level, reflective practice may allow Children’s Services organisations
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 11

greater insight into the effect of professional policy and practice, and also
the grim realities of the consequences for individual children, families,
and communities when things go wrong.

 hild Welfare, Safeguarding


C
and Protecting Children
This book provides a contribution to thinking about both the challenges
and future possibilities for child welfare services. The Children’s Services
workforce faces great challenges at a time of austerity and severe cuts in
public expenditure on welfare, at a time of rising demand. It aims to keep
children and young people at the centre of this re-thinking project. The
children who are either ‘Looked After’ in residential or foster care are
referred to throughout the book, as they are an important group of chil-
dren who the State has responsibility for providing support and safe-
guarding to. The other group of children who the book has at the centre
is the group containing children who are abused and neglected. Child
abuse, whether it is physical, emotional, sexual, or neglect, or a combina-
tion of these, is something which too many children experience in their
childhood, sadly. Thinking about their feelings and hearing their voices is
often painful for professionals. For academics who teach, research, and
write about their stories it can also be harrowing. For you, the reader, it is
also sometimes difficult to imagine how the child feels when they are in
care or abused. Staying with them and not turning away is part of the
work of the professionals who support them. In my career I have moved
from professional practice to academic work, but I have always tried to
stay with these groups of children and young people. This book provides
reflections on those experiences and some suggestions on the way for-
ward. The book includes examples of good and developing practice in
this work. In discussing these it offers a contribution to thinking through
policy and practice. The passion and excitement of being able to make a
contribution and maybe even make a small difference is a rationale that
has provided the impetus for research and for writing the book. The
­generosity of the children and young people I have worked with over the
years is truly humbling. In a situation where they have experiences which
could make them embittered, I am often impressed by their strength and
12 S. Pinkney

courage. In my current research I am interviewing young people about


their care experiences and journeys into higher education. One early
finding is the emerging theme of them wanting to give something back
to the system that has supported them, stimulated by their desire to help
others who are going through similar experiences in growing up to the
ones they had. Another is the importance of having positive role models
and special helpers who demonstrate love, care, and support, to show that
there is a way through and that it is possible to be able to enjoy life and
make a valuable contribution. Some of them have experiences of being
abused and neglected, yet they are impressive in their resolve to make
good lives for themselves and also to use their experience to offer to help
others. Some of the children and young people who I have had the privi-
lege of working with throughout my career have powerful stories that are
told throughout the book.
I have also worked with professionals within a variety of teams and set-
tings. In the earlier stages of my career they supervised me and offered
informal support and friendship as I developed the necessary skills to be
able to work in play, community, and social work settings. Later, I super-
vised a team of social workers, including newly qualified and experienced
social workers who had worked in social work for decades. As an aca-
demic I have been fortunate to have good colleagues to inspire, challenge,
discuss and laugh with throughout my career. Although I left social work
practice, my friendships from those years have sustained me throughout.
It means I have always had conversations and ongoing discussions with
people who care and continue to make a difference to children’s and
young people’s lives. Throughout the years we have shared the frustrations
as well as the joys of the work. This book is therefore the culmination of
the years in which I worked directly with children and young people, as
well as the academic and research work I have undertaken since.

The Chapters
This theoretical framework discussed in detail in Chap. 2 provides the
basis for the analysis within the rest of the book. It is aiming to add new
insights into the contemporary debates about safeguarding and child
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 13

protection within social welfare arenas. The emphasis is on an interdisci-


plinary approach, combining sociological, children’s rights, anthropo-
logical and social policy with the psychosocial in order to provide a fresh
theoretical framework in which to think about and reflect on this chal-
lenging area of child welfare. The theoretical basis of the book is the
children’s rights literatures that have been developed over the last twenty-
five years. It takes as its starting point the established body of work that
has been extensively developed, mainly in relation to what was referred to
as ‘the new sociology of childhood’ (James and Prout 1997; Alanen 1998;
Qvortrup 1994, Montgomery and Woodhead 2003).
During the 1990s, some psychologists took a critical approach to
developmentalism inherent within traditional psychology (Walkerdine
1993; Burman 1994) and began a more radical engagement of social
psychology with childhood studies. My approach combines this critical
psychosocial approach to seek to further understand the emotional and
sensory terrain involved in child welfare (Hochschild 1983; Pithouse
1996; Hoggett 2000; Pinkney 2011a). The sociology of emotion is
applied to the child welfare context to explore these under-theorised
aspects of protecting children.
The second chapter also revisits Mary Douglas’s (1966, 1970) anthro-
pological work on dirt as a matter out of place, which, she argues, sym-
bolically links us to notions of purity. I am particularly interested in this
book in the way she theorised issues around fear of contamination and
pollution beliefs. I assess how this theorising helps us to further under-
stand some of the issues within contemporary social work practice in
child protection work with families, particularly in relation to cases where
child neglect is the main concern. The chapter also considers the way that
class and racialisation are played out within a child protection context,
where most children receiving welfare services are poor and where there
is an over-representation of ‘black’ and minority ethnic families, particu-
larly within inner city and urban contexts.
This theoretical framework in Chap. 2 provides the basis for the analy-
sis within the rest of the book. It aims to add new insights into the con-
temporary debates about child protection and children’s participation in
decision-making within social welfare arenas. The emphasis is on an
interdisciplinary approach, combining sociological, children’s rights,
14 S. Pinkney

anthropological and social policy with the psychosocial in order to pro-


vide a new theoretical framework to think about and reflect on this chal-
lenging area of child welfare.
Within Chap. 3 the dominant discourses of children’s participation are
explored, including protectionism, children’s rights and managerialism,
which help us to further understand the theoretical and discursive terrain
in which child welfare work is carried out (Pinkney 2011b). This focus on
discourse allows us to assess the way that competing understandings of
child welfare are played out in policy and practice.
The main argument in the chapter is that protectionism and a quest
for protecting children from harm has led to a form of defensive practice
that seeks to eradicate all risk. This aim to protect from harm has some-
times meant that children and young people themselves are denied an
opportunity to be part of their own protection plan, and instead it is
adults and professionals who are entrusted with the responsibility for
protecting children and young people. This leads to children and young
people being constructed as passive recipients of welfare services and
child protection. This idea of protecting children has sometimes been
interpreted as protecting them from upset or not burdening them with
adult responsibilities, which can lead to a kind of practice where children
and young people are denied participation in decision making because of
professional concern. The argument in this book does not seek to deny
adult and professional responsibility for protecting children but chal-
lenges the idea that adults always know better than children and young
people concerning what is best for them. I make an alternative argu-
ment—that children and young people’s best interests are better served if
they are supported to be able to co-produce their own protection plan,
building on their understanding of the problem and working collabora-
tively with trusted professionals and adults/carers.
Children’s rights perspectives have sometimes challenged this idea of
protectionism, where some children are deemed to need protection from
themselves, each other and their families. The argument I make is subtly
different and involves an acknowledgement that welfare professionals
cannot protect children from something that has already happened. This
acknowledgement fundamentally changes the way that child protection
is constructed and thought about, as well as the ways in which policy and
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 15

practice is developed. Most importantly, it constructs the child or young


person themselves as active participants within their own future
protection.
Managerialism has been understood to be the way that the magic of
management is viewed as the way to improve child protection services.
This may, in part, be a response to the discourse of failure that developed
after decades of inquiries into child abuse, where services were accused of
failing to protect children. In this book, analysis of social policy and prac-
tice shows an increased focus on management, efficiency, customers, best
value, accountability, and performance. I argue that it is clear that mana-
gerialism forces the procedural and customer version of rights, but it
remains doubtful whether this particular version of rights within the cus-
tomer discourse enhances children’s rights. This may also be viewed as
evidence to support the argument that civil and political rights agendas
are more easily appropriated, whereas social and economic rights have
always been less visible. What is relevant here is the way that managerial-
ist imperatives vie with commitment to rights-based work in social work
with children and young people.
Chap. 4 follows on from the anthropological work outlined in Chap. 2.
It begins with a review of the important contribution of Ferguson (2004),
who explored the ‘smell of practice’ and the way the experience of child
protection work within social work is an embodied experience. He theo-
rised the process of protecting children as a late modern social practice.
For Ferguson, understanding child protection means moving beyond the
administrative domain of social-legal powers into the aesthetic dimen-
sion of time and space, as well as into emotional and expressive aspects of
child protection.
The argument within this chapter is that it is timely to turn to the
sensory and emotional realms, in particular to understand further the
dynamics of child protection, as this aspect of child welfare has often
been neglected in favour of systems, procedural and managerial
approaches to protecting children. In this chapter I present a view of the
way that organisational systems of welfare have sometimes created emo-
tional distance (Hoggett 2000) and developed socially structured defense
mechanisms for professionals within a highly charged, pressurized and
emotive arena of work.
16 S. Pinkney

Within Chap. 5 I argue that the Inquiry Reports into child abuse dur-
ing the 1970s and 1980s were testimonies to the need to apportion blame
to an individual, institution, or organisation. Consequently, the discourse
of risk dominated the development of UK childcare policies during the
1980s and 1990s (Tunstill 1999).
Three child abuse inquiry and Serious Case Review reports are exam-
ined in some detail within this chapter. These are Victoria Climbié
(Laming 2003), Hamza Khan (Frost 2013) and the Jay Report (2014)
into child sexual exploitation. They are reviewed from within the context
of the critical interdisciplinary perspective developed earlier, to under-
stand how part of the often-neglected context for understanding these
tragedies has to be about the sensory and emotional aspects of child
neglect and protection. I explore the issue of how to understand resis-
tance to child protection from service users, including parents and
carers.
The material context of child welfare is explored to understand the
framework in which this important work of protecting and supporting
children and young people operates within. There is an ongoing dilemma
in not being reductionist, and viewing all problems as being related to
resources shortfalls, but at the same time acknowledging that opportuni-
ties for good practice in building trust with children and young people is
compromised by material and resource shortfalls within a political and
economic climate of austerity and cuts to public services (Rapoport 1960;
Satyamurti 1981; Pithouse 1996). Although acknowledging that mate-
rial conditions within which social work is practiced is important, it is
also crucial to consider the way that some service users and adults are able
to avoid and manipulate professionals. Ferguson (2011) argues that we
have to move beyond current thinking about child welfare by acknowl-
edging that some service users will always find ways of avoiding social
work intervention and gaze. Hence, despite their best efforts, child wel-
fare professionals cannot ensure that all children are always kept safe. He
argues that these illusions of professional infallibility, and that social
workers can always somehow know what needs to be known, need to be
challenged.
The issues about risk are considered within the chapter to understand
the way that risk and the blame culture produces an outlook that is both
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 17

defensive and negative (Beck 1992), and has dominated social work
inquiry reports and serious case reviews over the last four decades.
Bauman (2000) shows how the belief that human affairs are transpar-
ent—and that we can know all we need to know about people and situa-
tions—is pervasive. For Douglas (1992), refined blaming systems are part
of the ‘risk society’, where nothing goes wrong without it being attrib-
uted to someone and him/her being held to account. I explore and
develop these arguments further within a practice and policy arena of
child welfare.
I argue that further attention needs to be paid to the emotional and
sensory aspects of working with children and families. Simply focusing
on the administrative and managerial aspects of child protection and the
continuous re-organisations of practice does not address the problems
being experienced within this important area of child welfare. This pres-
ents a challenge to a public and media imagination about child protec-
tion, which is that failure can be reduced to problems of systems and
operator failure (Giddens 1990), and as such can be eradicated by imple-
menting further organisation or staffing changes. The long history of
inquiry reports tells us that this approach and belief in systems changes
and re-organisation is problematic and needs to be re-examined.
In Chap. 6 I explore the ways that child protection can be viewed both
as a solid and a dynamic practice. It is solid because it has been acknowl-
edged for decades that children are sometimes abused and harmed by
adults who are entrusted with caring for them. Solidity also conveys the
way that child protection has remained a central concern of successive
government and policy agendas. Urry (2000, 2007) discusses how mobil-
ities refer to movement-driven social science with a focus on dynamic
processes. Ferguson (2010) and Urry have both insisted that we view
child protection in less fixed ways in order to capture the more fluid
aspects of the practice. I use this to aid our understanding about child
protection as an embodied experience and practice, with the emphasis on
the process of child protection over time and space. I use examples of
social work on the move, such as important conversations taking place in
the social worker’s car on the way to court, or a child protection review.
In this chapter I explore this notion of dynamic social work and the
potential implications of these mobile forms of social work, both on the
18 S. Pinkney

children and young people themselves as well as on child welfare profes-


sionals. Ferguson (2004, 2010) applied liquidity to social work and was
interested in developing further understanding of how walks, driving,
social workers ‘thinking on their feet’ during home visits, as well as the
smell and atmospheres of practice aid the practitioner. I apply this theo-
rizing to develop what it means to understand child protection as a
dynamic mobile process.
The other dimension to this liquidity is the way that technologies are
developing to provide instantaneous contact between people. Children
are often described as being ‘lost’ in systems or that they sometimes ‘slip
through the net’ and between regional boundaries, authorities or coun-
tries. This spatial dimension of social work child protection has been
theorised in policy as needing to ensure that agencies coordinate and
work together (Laming 2003; Department of Health 2003), and that
systems are developed with the aim of ensuring that children are tracked
rather than lost. What is less theorised is the way this liquidity is experi-
enced by children and by professionals themselves. I argue that this points
us to the need for a continual rethinking of the way ‘public’ and ‘private’
are mobilised and transformed within child protection work and in the
lives of children and professionals.
The Munro Review (2011a, b) promotes the exercise of professional
judgement within child protection, which requires multi-agency profes-
sionals charged with protecting children to become better at reflecting
upon and learning from their practice. I argue that this welcome empha-
sis on reflective practice will need to be supported by changes within
professional training and development, as well as development of super-
vision practice to include more time for reflection and feedback. This in
turn has implications for the resourcing of the institutions of child wel-
fare and continued professional practice. The theoretical framework
­outlined in this book is intended to make a contribution to support the
argument that protecting and supporting vulnerable children should be a
priority for government funding and resources.
Chap. 7 explores the relationship between Looked After children and
young people and those deemed to be at risk of significant harm, and the
professionals who protect, advise, and support them; the relationship is
explored in order to unravel the delicate dynamics of trust within these
New Directions in Children’s Welfare: Professionals, Policy… 19

professional and service user relations. My argument is that this often-­


neglected relational aspect of child welfare needs to be unravelled further
to ensure that professionals are appropriately resourced, trained, and sup-
ported in this difficult and demanding arena of work.
The aesthetic dimension of space and time referred to earlier is returned
to in this chapter, with examples from social work practice with children.
One practical example of this is the difficulty in providing a continuity of
relationship between a child in care and their social worker. This continu-
ous disruption of relations means that trust is difficult to establish for the
child or young person. This crucial aspect of protecting children is some-
times overlooked within a context where children often have frequent
moves of placement and have to change social worker or experience a gap
in support, as they are on a waiting list until their case can be allocated.
Time is another important dimension under consideration within this
chapter. Time to work directly with children and the competing demands
of administration and procedure are considered in relation to questions
about whether the balance is appropriate.

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2
An Interdisciplinary Framework
for Understanding Child Welfare

Within this book the theoretical framework is an interdisciplinary one,


which seeks to explore children’s rights, sociology, feminism, anthropol-
ogy and social psychology as a foundation for understanding contempo-
rary child welfare and child protection policy and practices. Issues of
social inequality, poverty and ‘race’ and ethnicity are explored in relation
to social work practice and child protection. Lastly, the book also makes
use of some of the literatures that have been developed around children’s
geographies and mobilities, and these are developed further within
Chap. 6. The book has child-centred practice at its core. As Maggie
Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner for England in 2011, said in her
foreword to What Next After Munro:

I was heartened by the Professor’s insistence that the child’s concerns, time-
frames, voice and views should be at the heart of work done to safeguard and
protect them. Central to all our concerns must be the wellbeing and life chances
of the children on whose circumstances our work focuses. We do them, and in
the end ourselves, a disservice if we put our professional concerns, administra-
tive, regulatory or bureaucratic demands before the paramount requirement
that we meet children’s needs, wishes and aspirations. (Blyth and Solomon
2012, p. x)

© The Author(s) 2018 23


S. Pinkney, New Directions in Children’s Welfare,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54539-8_2
24 S. Pinkney

The reforms proposed by Munro (2011a, b) were aiming to ensure that


those working in child protection were able to stay child-centred. Close
attention was, however, paid to the organisational context involved in
supporting and protecting children, and this will be discussed in further
detail in Chap. 4.
It is, however, children at risk and in need of protection who are at the
heart of this book. In aiming to discover more about protecting children,
the professional practices of those who work with children either at risk
or suffering neglect are explored in detail, particularly within Chap. 5.
These professionals include, for example, social workers, child care work-
ers, health visitors and other health-related professionals, the police and
education professionals. It is within this multi-agency professional frame-
work that vulnerable children and families are provided with support and
intervention in their lives when the risks to the child/ren are deemed to
be unacceptably high. The professional dilemmas involved in this com-
plex, fraught and often tense area of social welfare is considered through-
out the book, but the aim is to maintain a child-centred focus
throughout.
The first theoretical foundation of the book is the children’s rights lit-
eratures that have been comprehensively developed over the last twenty-­
five years. Secondly, the book combines this with insights developed
within a feminist approach to the study of child abuse (see Saraga 1993
for a fuller discussion of this). The third theoretical perspective is that of
the psychosocial, which considers the way that children’s interior worlds
and lived experiences can be understood further within this framework.
This level of analysis also helps us to understand some of the emotional
dynamics involved in protecting children. The fourth theoretical approach
is provided by delving into anthropology, and in particular, returning to
the work of Mary Douglas, whose pioneering work on concepts such as
purity and contamination beliefs can assist us in understanding public,
media and professional perceptions of children who are neglected. The
fifth theoretical perspective is to look at the ways that social inequality,
and in particular, poverty, gender, social class, race and disability, for
example, are experienced first-hand by children and young people, who
are at the centre of this book. In addition, I am interested in how these
dimensions of social inequality are mediated and negotiated within child
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 25

welfare practice and policy. The sixth and final area of research and theory
is that area that is provided and developed mainly within the children’s
geographies and mobilities fields. These are particularly important theo-
ries to help untangle the issues around places and spaces of child protec-
tion. They also enable us to understand the dynamic and transient nature
of some of the spaces within which social work, for example, is practiced.
Additionally, the ways in which children and young people who are
Looked After are highly mobile in terms of their placements with foster or
residential carers, school placements, and travel to visit family or siblings,
are ways that often involve long journeys. The high number of changes in
placements for these children continues to be a concern for policy and
practice. In this context, literatures developed within the mobilities para-
digm are enlightening when applied to child welfare practices.
I aim to develop and use this interdisciplinary theoretical framework
and apply it to child welfare settings throughout the book in order to
provide fresh insights into the challenging and complex issues and dilem-
mas raised throughout the book in relation to child protection, abuse,
and neglect policy and practice.

Sociology of Childhood
An appreciation of young people’s rights within contemporary society
must include a review of the theoretical changes that have taken place
within the discourse of childhood. It takes as its starting point the estab-
lished body of work that has been developed mainly in relation to what
was referred to as ‘The new sociology of childhood’ (James and Prout
1997; Alanen 1988; Qvortrup 1994; Montgomery and Woodhead
2003). It is this exploration of social cultural understandings of child-
hood that we are interested in here. Prout (2005) argues that there is a
‘new wave’ of childhood studies that is aiming to understand the entan-
glement between biology and society, in both shaping and understanding
what Prout has termed ‘hybrid childhoods’. This points us towards an
interdisciplinary approach that starts from the discursive construction of
childhood but also acknowledges the material dimensions of space, place,
technologies, and also of children’s bodies.
26 S. Pinkney

Tisdall (2012) discusses the changes in theoretical thinking about


childhood that have occurred within the academic disciplines of sociol-
ogy, anthropology and social psychology since the 1980s and 1990s. At
this time, fundamental assumptions about the nature of childhood,
agency and rights to citizenship were questioned. This resulted in a move
towards a more progressive paradigm of childhood and youth, which cri-
tiqued the traditional social construction of childhood in which children
were viewed as having limited agency due to cognitive development that
required protectionism from adults. In contrast, the progressive thinking
that emerged out of this growing debate saw children as social actors with
agency and rights, rather than as dependents within the private family.
This pivotal transition in thinking about children and their rights trans-
ferred into them having a voice, through to their inclusion as participants
in research about their lived experience.
Child protection is arguably one of the most demanding, conflict-­
ridden, controversial and high-profile public services (Cooper et al. 2003).
At the core is the relationship between the family and the state. Martin
(1987) argues that the welfare state in particular represents ‘two streams
of chronic social anxiety and moral ambiguity’ (Martin, p. 129 in Warner,
p. 5). Social work in particular is tasked with performing at the boundar-
ies of state and family, and in doing so runs the risk of public outcry and
outrage when it is viewed as either failing children or as intervening too
soon and treading on the territory and rights of the family. Chap. 5 exam-
ines this delicate boundary work in more detail in relation to several high-
profile cases, where it is argued that social workers and other professionals
tasked with protecting children got it wrong in relation to either indi-
vidual children or groups of children and young people.
The participation of children and young people in decision making about
their lives has been one of the areas of focus for activism in practice in rela-
tion to advancing children’s rights. The Children Act, (Department of
Health 1989) and the United Nations (1989) Convention on the Rights of
the Child both significantly advanced the idea that it is essential that chil-
dren participate in decision making about their own lives, and increasing
their participation has been the focus of legislation, guidance and policy.
Developments within children’s participation in decision making about their
lives is one area of practice where there has been an intense focus on policy
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 27

and practice within children’s services. I will explore further the complexities
involved in this, as well as some of the gains in practice arising from cam-
paigns by children, young people, professionals and their organisations.
The complex dynamics involved in negotiating, understanding, engag-
ing, interpreting and implementing strategies of participation into both
policies and practice were explored in my earlier work (Pinkney 2005).
The lived experience and ‘felt’ dimension are part of what structures the
interpersonal dynamics between staff and service users, in this case chil-
dren and families. Additionally, in this book I explore further the lived
experiences, feelings and emotions involved for staff and professionals
from different organisations who work together with children and their
families on issues relating to child welfare and protection. Fineman
(1993) termed this the ‘emotional architecture’ of organisations. This
emotional and sensory dimension of child protection will be explored
and developed further within Chap. 4.
Within child welfare contexts, the participation of children and young
people within decision making about their lives has been a key focus of
political activism. Issues of voice, agency and competence have been
highly contested, and the gains in children and young people’s increased
participation within social work decision making, such as child protec-
tion case conferences and Looked After Reviews, have been marked.
While this has to be welcomed, I have earlier cautioned about the way
that participation can often be reduced to a bureaucratic or procedural
tickbox exercise: something that has to be seen to be done (Pinkney
2011b). It has to be welcomed that the quality of the participation expe-
rience for the child has increasingly become the focus of attention, rather
than participation being reduced to attending a particular meeting such
as a child protection conference or a consultation about particular ser-
vices, such as those for Looked After Children. In addition, it is increas-
ingly acknowledged that different children will experience participation
differentially according to age, ethnicity or ‘race’, gender, disability, con-
fidence level, and so on. The outcomes of participation or consultation
with children are therefore affected by the child’s own personality, social
position, their confidence and unique circumstances, their level of pre-
paredness for the process of participation, and the skills of the adults and
professionals around them who provide support to the process.
28 S. Pinkney

In some studies it has been shown that non-participation is negative


and provokes anxiety in children (Tisdall et al. 2006). I myself have been
part of the argument for increasing the quality of participation of chil-
dren and young people in decision making in their lives, and this was
important from the 1990s on in developing a critique of the way that
children had earlier been largely excluded from decision-making pro-
cesses (Pinkney 2005, 2011a, b). The gains in participation being estab-
lished firmly as a necessary part of the process of safeguarding children
and young people is the outcome of campaigning by children and young
people, child care and welfare professionals, children’s rights organisa-
tions and academics/researchers who have supported them. These devel-
opments in child welfare policies and practices are a welcome and positive
outcome from earlier struggles and contestations. In Chap. 4 I discuss
some of the ways this enhanced focus on voice has sometimes had the
unintended consequence of producing a limited or constrained model of
participation.
Within the sociology of childhood literatures it is broadly understood
that children and young people’s participation in decision making is part
of a relational process (Prout and Tisdall 2006; Prout and James 1997;
Jupp Kina 2012). It is also recognised that the role of adults within the
participation process is crucial to the development of children and young
people’s participation (Percy-Smith and Thomas 2010). Mannion (2010)
argued that children’s participation should be viewed as a partial, situated
work in progress. It is the interdependence of children with their wider
social, community and family networks that is being increasingly
acknowledged in research. Children do not exist and develop as individu-
als, but as social beings who live within families and communities.

Children are not simply ‘individuals’ in a neoliberal fantasy of unfettered mar-


ket actors. Across a range of disciplines from psychology to philosophy to the
sciences, the recognition has emerged of our profound interdependence as human
beings. (Featherstone et al. 2014, p. 32)

In earlier doctoral work I was interested to explore this aspect of the


relationship between adults and children within participatory profes-
sional frameworks, and I resisted the occasional drift towards viewing
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 29

children in isolation rather than within their network of relations with


siblings, parents, friends, adults, carers, professionals, and so on (Pinkney
2005).
I argue that it is important to move beyond the binary of participation
equals good practice and non-participation as being always negative, and
progress towards the important work of evaluating the quality of partici-
pation experiences. Within this I wish to focus attention in particular on
the emotional impact of participation on children, young people, carers
and professionals, as an ongoing shared project. I aim to contribute posi-
tively to this debate within this book and propose that a focus on the
emotional and sensory arena will assist with enhancing the quality of the
experience of participation within the everyday practices of social and
welfare work with children and their families.

F eminist Approaches to the Study


of Childhood and Child Protection
Feminists have long campaigned on the effects of violence on the lived
experiences of women and children within families. They have focused
on survivors of child sexual abuse, and violence against women. Power—
and gender inequalities in particular—have been the focus of under-
standing patterns of violence and abuse within families and in
relationships, particularly between men and women, but also in consider-
ing violence in same-sex partnerships and adult abuse of children. Sexual
violence and abuse has been seen as an abuse of (usually male) power. The
focus was shifted from an individualistic level of analysis towards locating
the discussion at the wider societal level, with a particular focus on gen-
der inequality.
Within this book, feminism is viewed as a key intellectual current,
providing a critique of ‘the natural’ and innate biological imperatives. It
also provides a lens for problematising and understanding inequalities
within families. For children, inequality within families has often been a
lived experience. Feminism gave credibility to the personal stories and
narratives of women and children within families, insisting that the per-
sonal was political. Significantly, feminism has also challenged unequal
30 S. Pinkney

power relations within families. Within social welfare work, feminism


challenged ‘victim blaming’ within family therapy interventions: for
example, where it was often assumed that mothers were complicit in
child sexual abuse and that they failed to protect their children. Feminists
pointed out that gender inequality within families meant that women
and children were more likely to be victims of domestic violence and
sexual abuse.
In relation to child sexual abuse, feminists asserted that work with the
non-abusing parent (usually the mother) was the way to ensure protec-
tion for the child (Saraga 1993; Kelly et al. 1991; MacLeod and Saraga
1988). One important challenge that is relevant here is the contestation
around the idea of blaming mothers by viewing them as colluding with
the sexual abuse of children (Saraga 1993). These challenges and contes-
tations have been important in shaping intervention, policy and proce-
dures in work with families since the 1980s.
Of particular relevance in the context of this book is the way that gen-
der inequality and a gendered understanding of power and abuse of
power remains relevant when we discuss child sexual exploitation, for
example, within Chap. 5. The victims in Rotherham were almost over-
whelmingly girls and their abusers were men (Casey 2015).
In terms of social policy, feminists have highlighted the way that fami-
lies still represent the main form of care for children and for elders.
Furthermore, within families it is largely women who provide this care.
Within this perspective, the family has been both a site of consumption
and production of welfare, with women in particular being implicated
within this ideology of the idealised family. Within feminist theorising,
the idea of the family as always being a haven and a refuge from the harsh
world of work is challenged (Lister 2006). Criticism emerged of the femi-
nist approach as ethnocentric and the argument that the family has some-
times been a site of resistance for black and minority ethnic communities
led to a development of a more nuanced and complex understanding of
the inter-relationship between family, gender, race and social policy (see
Mirza 1997, for example).
For some children, and in particular for the children who are the
focus of much of this book, the family can be a site of abuse and fear,
rather than protection, love and care. The child abuse cases that are
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 31

examined in more detail in Chap. 5 reveal the ways that sometimes


the family operates as a site of abuse. The Victoria Climbié and
Hamzah Khan cases are unravelled as examples of children who were
abused, neglected and killed by the people who should have been car-
ing for them.

Psychosocial Approaches
Freud’s work on the unconscious and the conscious is an important part
of psychoanalytic theory (a useful overview is provided in Frosh 2012).
The unconscious and the conscious are often referred to as the split sub-
ject or ‘splitting’. The unconscious is fundamental to psychoanalytic the-
ory and implies that humans can never be fully aware of what they do
and explains why they act in certain ways. Melanie Klein (1975) devel-
oped this further within object relations theory, which focuses on early
relations between the mother and child. She argues that infants (and
adults) strive to relate to their inner world and psyche. From infancy
onwards, projection is viewed as an unconscious defence mechanism that
helps protect against anxiety. Fear and anxiety that cannot be defended is
projected onto the ‘other’, which then becomes a container for these
unwanted feelings and emotions. Klein’s work on defence against anxiety
and emotion is particularly relevant when reflecting on the social work
and child protection processes.
Bion (1962) developed Klein’s work further, in particular the way ‘the
other’ can create anxiety. For Bion, the concept of ‘dead containers’ refers
to the repository for hatred and hostility. Hoggett (2000) described this
further: as a process where the vulnerabilities of a person can be projected
to ‘the other’ and in doing so create a world that is ‘safe in its fearfulness’
(Hoggett, p. 68). Hoggett also raises the idea that humans have the ability
to deny what is unthinkable, which is useful when thinking about the
public and media outcry following child abuse cases that have been
reported. Shoesmith (2016) uses this analysis to reflect further on the
Baby P case. Steiner similarly suggests that ‘turning a blind eye’ (Steiner
1993, p. 92) is an idea that helps us to understand the way in which
humans have the capacity to avoid knowing unpalatable truths. Cohen
32 S. Pinkney

(2001) has used this idea of knowing and not knowing in relation to
analysis of human rights abuses. Seu (2013) has suggested a retreat to a
‘twilight zone of simultaneously knowing and not knowing’ (2013, p. 21).
During the 1980s and 1990s, some psychologists took a critical
approach to the developmentalism that was inherent within traditional
psychology (Walkerdine 1993; Burman 1994), and in doing so began a
more radical engagement of social psychology with childhood studies.
Fendler argued that ‘normalisation operates through the discourse of
developmentality when the generalizations that stipulate normal devel-
opment are held to be defined and desirable … (and serve) as the norm
and the lives of individual children are evaluated with reference to that
norm’ (Fendler 2001, p. 128). Children, in other words, are governed
through the normalising effects of psychological classifications. Rose
(1985) linked the rise of experts to techniques of individualisation and
the new scientific ‘gaze’ on children in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth century. Developmental scales were not just ways of assessing chil-
dren but also provided new ways of thinking about childhood. ‘With the
rise of a normative expertise of childhood, family life and subjectivity
could be governed in a new way’ (Rose 1991, p. 150).
Expert guidance on child development became an area of training for
professionals (Bowlby 1944; Winnicott 1975). ‘The Psy complex’ has
been used to refer to this network of ideas about human beings, their
perfectibility or corrigibility, the reasons for their behaviour as well as the
ways they can be classified, compared and controlled. Developmental
psychology became a technology of normalisation and governance
(Walkerdine 1984; Burman 1994).
Mayall (2000) argued that the child development industry cornered
the market in relation to knowledge about children. Child development
discourse tends to construct young children as immature, incomplete
human beings at the beginning of a process of biologically determined
development, which consists of a universal series of stages leading them
through to adulthood. Riley, in her study of nurseries, showed how this
measuring of stages and milestones was problematic because ‘the indi-
vidual is always already social, always there’ and that separating socialisa-
tion from development is a marker of the priority of the biological (Riley
1983, p. 33).
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 33

My approach here seeks to combine a critical psychosocial approach to


further understand the emotional and sensory terrain involved in child
welfare (Hochschild 1983; Pithouse 1996; Hoggett 2000). The sociology
of emotion is applied here to the child welfare context in order to explore
these under-theorised aspects of protecting children (Pinkney 2011a).
Hochschild (1983) asked: ‘What is emotional labour and what we do
when we manage emotion in private and public work?’ The suggestion is
that most of us have jobs that require some handling of emotions and
other people’s feelings. Social and child welfare workers, more than most,
deal with emotion in their everyday professional experience. In an impor-
tant study, Hochschild focused on flight attendants in the US airline
industry. For Hochschild, emotion locates the position of the viewer in
that it uncovers a sometimes unconscious perspective or ‘from where I
am’ (p. 31).
Using the analogy of a stage actor, Hochschild argued that surface act-
ing is when we separate our face (public) from our feelings (private),
which, she argued, was potentially estranging. This was viewed in con-
trast to everyday deep acting of emotion, where we give the sense of this
being true—and to sometimes evoke empathy. The institutional manage-
ment of emotion involves a different set of mechanisms than the indi-
vidual uses, and moves the analysis up a level. Hochschild suggested that
some institutions have gone beyond surface acting for individuals and
moved into deep acting terrain. By way of illustration she provides a grip-
ping illustration of medical students performing their first autopsy. In
relation to child welfare, the evidence brought forward by Hochschild is
important in helping us to understand the way that emotions are man-
aged within child welfare organisations. In her case, the analysis was of
relations within industry, and private organisations such as airlines.
Within child welfare, however, I would argue that the arguments are pos-
sible to port across to understand how work with children who have been
abused or are in care also involves a level of management of emotions by
the professionals who work with children and young people.
Feeling rules guide emotional work by establishing a sense of entitle-
ment and obligation, which in turn governs emotional exchanges. These
feeling rules can be viewed as what may be expected of our heart and
emotions in given situations. In the post 9/11 era, after the attack on the
34 S. Pinkney

World Trade Centre in the US, Hochschild (2002) further reflected on


the feeling rules relating to grief:

This emotional regime includes a set of taken-for-granted feeling rules (rules


about how we imagine we should feel) and framing rules (rules about the way
we should see and think). Together, these rules shape how we see and feel about
everyday reality. (Hochschild 2002, p. 118)

Warner (2015) pointed out that following the death of Princess Diana
in the UK, Tony Blair, the Labour Prime Minister at the time, made a
speech which acknowledged this emotional dimension. Richards (2007 in
Warner 2015, p. 11) termed this as the ‘emotionalisation’ of politics and
political leadership. Richards has talked about the importance of emo-
tional governance and politicians’ and media’s role in actively managing
anxiety over threats such as terrorism. This is relevant when we come to
further examine the way that politicians and the press have reacted to
child deaths in Chap. 5.
Psychiatrists have often medically treated ‘inappropriate affect’, where
someone has broken the feeling rules and is considered to be behaving
inappropriately or reacting in an inappropriate way. The assumption is
that there are rules and norms governing our responses to events. Pain
avoidance and seeking advantage are examples of principles that organise
our social life, and together they explain patterns of emotional manage-
ment within a context of feeling rules. The example of grieving and the
emotional expression of sadness are used to illustrate how we express grief
and shock. What is interesting is the way that it is possible to offend if we
are viewed as grieving either too much or too little. Grieving can be
viewed as a profoundly social affair, sometimes with ceremonial permis-
sion to grieve and express feelings, particularly for males who, it is argued,
may need ceremonies more than women in order to express feelings of
grief.

The ways in which people think they have grieved poorly suggest what a remark-
able achievement it is to grieve well – without violating the astonishingly exact
standards we draw from culture to impose on feeling. (Hochschild 1983,
p. 68)
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 35

The argument Hochschild made is that the family is often a ‘relief


zone’ and refuge away from the pressures of work in terms of emotional
management work, but it also imposes its own emotional values on us.
Within Children’s Services, I argue that it is also possible to view how
emotional management takes its roll on the professionals. I will return to
this idea in Chap. 4 in terms of how this may be relevant to children and
young people who have problematic family lives or where they live away
from their families. Interestingly, feeling management in a public organ-
isation, institutional or commercial setting often takes place in a context
where workers have fewer rights to courtesy than customers do, and
where warmth becomes part of service work. Enlightened management
realize that a separation of display and feeling is hard to sustain and that
when emotive dissonance is at work it can lead to strain.

Where the customer is king, unequal exchanges are normal, and from the
beginning, customer and client assume different rights to feelings and display.
(Hochschild 1983, p. 86)

The arguments made by Hochschild effectively aid our understanding


of the complex dynamics involved in managing feelings and emotion in
public, as well as in private lives. It is this management of emotion that I
am interested in, in relation to child welfare professionals working with
children and their families. In the case study that I offered, in the intro-
duction I reflected on the way that reacting to smell and the strong emo-
tions of being in a family home with dirt, smell and leaky bodies (dirty
nappies, snotty noses) was not something that was easy to put into words
in either case recording or supervision discussions about my work with
the family. I, like all social workers, had been trained to record facts and
not opinions. This training meant that the feelings and emotions aroused
tended to be restrained and unrepresented within the recording. It is only
many years later that I can more honestly and clearly reflect upon—and
still record vividly—the emotional and sensory impact of the work with
this particular family. This lack of visibility of the sensory aspect in the
case recording and management is something I now reflect on more than
I did back then. It was as if it would have been impolite or judgemental
36 S. Pinkney

to pass comment or make a recording note on these aspects at the time. I


do remember conversations about these dimensions of the work within
the team, but usually just in passing, not recorded or part of a case record,
team meeting or supervision discussion. It seems therefore that the infor-
mal spaces of social work lent themselves slightly more to an acknowl-
edgement of this visceral aspect of the work, but not the formal recording
or supervision contexts.
Burman (2015) has contributed vastly to the development of a critical
psychology that has informed much of the rethinking about the uses of
critical feminist psychology in ways that avoid pathologising and
individualising.

The evaluation of women’s lives through professional and state practices around
children and families, and the ways developmental psychological ideas function
or are mobilized within these, make developmental psychology a particular
object of feminist critical scrutiny. (Phoenix 1990; Phoenix et al. 1991;
Walkerdine and Lucey 1989 in Burman 2015 p. 410).

In particular, it is the connections between developmental psychology


and child development that have come under the fiercest criticism (Rose
1985). Morss (1990) has been critical of the biologising of childhood,
particularly in relation to child development. These stages are then used
to pathologise or problematise those who do not reach the milestone
within the defined stages. Health visiting is one profession that has been
developed with this normative idea of child development embedded
within it. Burman reflects critically on how her mature professional stu-
dents studying developmental psychology have helped her to rethink the
ways that children’s lives in particular are inextricably bound up with
those of their parents, but especially their mothers, as well as their family
and community (Burman 2015).
The psychosocial perspective provides an opportunity to explore the
affective aspects of welfare organisations. I have used it in my earlier
research (Pinkney 2011a) to help understand the ways that social care
professionals suppress, avoid, manage or negotiate a variety of complex
emotions within participation work with children. I argue that there are
various mechanisms involved in this negotiation relating to the different
An Interdisciplinary Framework for Understanding Child Welfare 37

organisational and occupational structures, as well as differences in the


way individual professionals negotiate the emotional aspects of their
work with children and families. This is part of a move away from what
has been described as the over-socialised view of the subject within social
constructionism, and towards recognition of affective as well as cognitive
aspects of discourse (Hoggett 2000; Froggett 2002; Shilling 1997).
The next section moves on to consider the way that anthropological
work such as that of Mary Douglas can help us to think through the ways
that the experience of dirt and being poor can permeate our everyday
lives, thinking, policies and professional practices in work with children
and families who are poor.

 nthropology: Mary Douglas on Dirt


A
and Contamination
The idea that poor people can somehow be polluting is resonant within
the work on poverty discussed above. In developing the theoretical frame-
work for this book it is timely to revisit Mary Douglas’s (1966, 1970)
earlier anthropological work—on dirt as matter out of place. Douglas
argued that dirt symbolically links us to notions of purity. I am particu-
larly interested in bringing this context into play here because of the way
it helps us theorise issues around fear of contamination and pollution
beliefs.
In her preface to the 2002 edition of her book ‘Purity and Danger’,
Douglas tells us that the book ‘is a treatise on the idea of dirt and conta-
gion’ (2002, p. x), although she acknowledges that when she originally
wrote the book she had little idea that the fear of pollution would come
to dominate the political landscape in the way it has since then. It was in
this idea of pollution beliefs that Douglas explored the way that these
ideas are played out at an instrumental and expressive level. Drawing
extensively on her anthropological work, Douglas argued that pollution
beliefs tended to support moral values. Furthermore, she pointed out
that rituals of purification can aim to annul, fumigate or erase pollution.
Here we have an important expression of the idea of pollution beliefs
38 S. Pinkney

structuring the behaviour of individuals and societies. The idea of cleanli-


ness and its link to moral and religious order is one which is a prominent
feature across many societies. The implication for those deemed to be
‘unclean’ is clear. The pursuit of purity is a deeply held goal for many
societies and religions.
For Douglas, though, the idea of dirt is deeply symbolic and linked to
these firmly-held pollution beliefs and systems of purity. Uncleanness is
viewed as matter out of place and has to be approached by imposing
order on it. It is this idea of dirt as matter out of place, however, which
has the most relevance here in relation to contemporary theorising in
relation to child protection, and in particular in relation to child poverty
and neglect.
The continued significance of Mary Douglas’s work, forty years on, is
testament to her importance as an anthropologist, but also as a fascinat-
ing study in an aspect of society that illuminates our thinking on dirt and
polluting ideas. In this book I wish to use and develop the insights she
provided us with in order to rethink contemporary child protection poli-
cies and practices. In Chap. 5 I will continue to develop this further and
assess how this important theorising helps us understand some of the
issues within contemporary social work practice in child protection work
with families, particularly in relation to cases where child neglect is the
main concern. Developing the work of Douglas, Ferguson (2007) high-
lighted the way that Looked After and abused children in particular are
often viewed as moral dirt and constructed as ‘other’ to our own
children.

Social Inequality and Child Poverty


This leads me into thinking again about issues of poverty in work with
children and their families, particularly when social work is often a class-­
based practice where poor families represent most of the case work. This
relates back to the case study and reflections I offered within the intro-
duction on the family I worked with as a newly qualified social worker.
Some of the public outcry following the deaths of children such as Baby
P (Haringey Local Safeguarding Children’s Board 2009) and Hamzah
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The normal wastage, and the deduction for drafts sent to France
in May are more difficult to calculate, but I think we shall not be far
out in taking 3,000 as an outside allowance for the latter—which
affects only the Armies of Portugal and the Centre, since we have a
May 29th Return for Gazan’s Army, which of course sent nothing
away after that date. And in healthy months, such as May and early
June, the deficit from extra sick would not be large—indeed as many
men may have rejoined as convalescents as went into hospital,
since (except Villatte at Salamanca) the troops had never been
pressed or overmarched. It would be generous to allow 5,000 for
‘wastage’.
If so, the French had 63,000 men at Vittoria, but deducting non-
combatants (train, artificers, &c.) there would be 9,000 horse, over
46,000 men in the infantry divisions, and about 1,300 gunners with
the field and horse batteries not included in the infantry divisions,
also 1,000 sappers. This makes over 57,000 fighting men actually
available. There must also be a small addition for stray units of the
Army of the North known to have been present—not less than 500
nor more than 1,000. All attempts to bring down the French force
present to 45,000 men (Victoires et Conquêtes, vol. xxii) or 39,000
infantry and 8,000 horse (Jourdan) or ‘barely 50,000 men’ (Picard)
are inadmissible.
XI
BRITISH AND PORTUGUESE LOSSES AT
VITTORIA

I. BRITISH LOSSES
Killed. Wounded. Missing.
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
1st Division, General Howard:
Stopford’s Brigade
1st Coldstream
Guards, 1/3rd
Guards No casualties.
Halkett’s Brigade
1st, 2nd, 5th Line
K.G.L. — 1 — 1 — — 2
1st Light K.G.L. — 1 1 7 — — 9
2nd Light K.G.L. — 4 — 39 — — 43
Divisional Total — 6 1 47 — — 54
2nd Division, General Sir W. Stewart:
Cadogan’s Brigade
1/50th Foot — 27 7 70 — — 104
1/71st Foot 3 41 12 260 See below[1071] 316
1/92nd Foot — 4 — 16 — — 20
Byng’s Brigade
1/3rd Foot — 8 7 96 — — 110
1/57th Foot — 5 2 21 — — 28
1st Prov. [1072] Batt. — 3 2 35 — — 40
O’Callaghan’s Brigade
1/28th Foot — 12 17 171 — — 199
2/34th Foot — 10 3 63 — — 76
1/39th Foot — 26 8 181 — — 215
Divisional Total 3 136 58 913 — — 1,110
3rd Division, General Sir Thomas Picton:
Brisbane’s Brigade
1/45th Foot — 4 4 66 — — 74
74th Foot — 13 4 66 — — 83
1/88th Foot — 23 5 187 — — 215
5/60th Foot (3 comp.) — 2 2 47 — — 51
Colville’s Brigade
1/5th Foot 2 22 6 133 — — 163
2/83rd Foot 2 18 4 50 — — 74
2/87th Foot 1 54 12 177 — — 244
94th Foot — 5 6 56 — — 67
Divisional Total 5 141 43 782 — — 972
4th Division, General Sir Lowry Cole:
W. Anson’s Brigade
3/27th Foot — 7 3 32 — — 42
1/40th Foot — 5 3 34 — — 42
1/48th Foot — 1 — 18 — — 19
2nd Provisional[1073] — 4 — 6 — — 10
Skerrett’s Brigade
1/7th Foot — 2 — 2 — — 4
20th Foot — 3 — 1 — — 4
1/23rd Foot — 1 — 3 — — 4
Divisional Total — 23 6 96 — — 125
5th Division, General Oswald:
Hay’s Brigade
3/1st Foot — 8 7 96 — — 111
1/9th Foot 1 9 — 15 — — 25
1/38th Foot — — 1 7 — — 8
Robinson’s Brigade
1/4th Foot 1 12 6 72 — — 91
2/47th Foot 2 18 4 88 — — 112
2/59th Foot — 11 8 130 — — 149
Divisional Total 4 58 26 408 — — 496
7th Division, General Lord Dalhousie:
Barnes’s Brigade No casualties.
Grant’s Brigade
51st Foot 1 10 — 21 — — 32
68th Foot 2 23 9 91 — — 125
1/82nd Foot 1 5 3 22 — — 31
Chasseurs
Britanniques — 29 2 109 — — 140
Light Company
Brunswick-Oels[1074] 1 — — 5 — — 6
Divisional Total 5 67 14 248 — — 384
Light Division, General Charles Alten:
Kempt’s Brigade
1/43rd Foot — 2 2 27 — — 31
1/95th Rifles — 4 4 37 — — 45
3/95th Rifles 1 7 — 16 — — 24
Vandeleur’s Brigade
1/52nd Foot 1 3 1 18 — — 23
2/95th Rifles — — 1 8 — — 9
Divisional Total 2 16 8 106 — — 132

Cavalry.
R. Hill’s Brigade
(Household Cavalry) No casualties.
Ponsonby’s Brigade — — — 2 — — 2
G. Anson’s Brigade
12th Light Dragoons 1 3 — 8 — — 12
16th Light Dragoons — 7 1 13 — — 21
Long’s Brigade — — — 1 — — 1
V. Alten’s Brigade No casualties.
Bock’s Brigade — 1 — — — — 1
Fane’s Brigade
3rd Dragoon Guards — 3 1 4 — — 8
1st Royal Dragoons — — — 1 — — 1
Grant’s Brigade
10th Hussars — 6 — 10 — — 16
15th Hussars — 10 2 47 — — 59
18th Hussars 1 10 2 21 — — 34
Total Cavalry 2 40 6 107 — — 155
— 4 1 35 — — 40
Royal Horse Artillery
Field Artillery — 5 — 18 — — 23
K.G.L. Artillery — 2 — 5 — — 7
Royal Engineers — — 1 — — — 1
General Staff — — 8 — — — 8
General Total 21 498 192 2,764 — — 3,475
N.B.—In addition we have, undistributed under corps, 223 rank
and file missing, of whom all except about 40 of the 1/71st were
stragglers, not prisoners.
II. PORTUGUESE LOSSES
Killed. Wounded. Missing.
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
Ashworth’s Brigade (2nd Division)
6th Line — 1 — 10 — 1 12
18th Line — — — 1 — — 1
6th Caçadores 1 1 — 7 — — 9
Power’s Brigade (3rd Division)
9th Line 3 43 9 157 — — 212
21st Line 3 55 8 115 — 6 187
11th Caçadores — 3 2 7 — — 12
Stubbs’s Brigade (4th Division)
11th Line 1 36 6 109 — 1 153
23rd Line — 20 3 35 — — 58
7th Caçadores — 9 4 21 — — 35
Spry’s Brigade (5th Division)
3rd Line — 2 3 8 — — 13
15th Line — 6 3 19 — — 28
8th Caçadores — 13 2 25 — — 40
Lecor’s Brigade (7th Division)
7th Line — — — — — 6 6
Light Division
1st Caçadores — 2 — 2 — — 4
3rd Caçadores — — — 1 — — 1
17th Line — 7 1 20 — — 28
Silveira’s Division
Da Costa’s Brigade No casualties.
A. Campbell’s Brigade — 2 — 1 — 7 10
Pack’s Brigade
1st Line — 3 — — — — 3
16th Line 1 10 2 24 — — 37
4th Caçadores — 16 1 18 — — 35
Bradford’s Brigade
13th Line — — — 1 — 16 17
24th Line — — — 3 — 3 3
5th Caçadores — 4 — 5 — 2 11
Cavalry: in 6th Regiment — — — 2 — — 2
Artillery No casualties.
Total Portuguese Losses 9 233 44 592 — 43 921
III. SPANISH LOSSES
Killed. Wounded. Missing.
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
All in Morillo’s and Longa’s
Divisions 4 85 10 453 — — 562
TOTAL ALLIED LOSSES
Killed. Wounded. Missing.
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
British 20 489 192 2,749 — 233 3,675
Portuguese 9 223 44 592 — 43 921
Spanish 4 85 10 453 — — 562
Total 33 807 246 3,794 — 266 5,158
XII
FRENCH LOSSES AT VITTORIA: JUNE 21
[From the Official Returns, lent me by Mr. Fortescue.]

ARMY OF THE SOUTH


Killed. Wounded. Prisoners. ‘Disparus.’
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
Leval’s Division 4 98 17 395 4 133 — 108 759
Villatte’s Division — 43 2 212 — 22 — — 291
Conroux’s
Division 5 74 27 712 4 265 — — 1,087
Maransin’s
Brigade 3 80 21 510 4 63 — — 681
Daricau’s
Division 3 89 20 389 1 49 — 280 833
Pierre Soult’s
Cavalry — — 3 — — — — 3 6
Digeon’s
Dragoons — 18 11 69 1 3 — — 102
Tilly’s Dragoons — 2 — 19 1 3 — — 25
Artillery 2 20 — 366 — 100 — — 488
Engineers, &c. 1 2 — 2 — 23 — — 28
Total 18 426 101 2,674 15 661 — 391 4,300
ARMY OF THE CENTRE
‘Prisoners
Killed. Wounded. or missing.’
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
Darmagnac’s Division 9 96 33 414 3 791 1,346
Cassagne’s Division — 9 6 70 — 178 263
Treillard’s Dragoons — 6 1 17 — 56 80
Avy’s Chasseurs — 2 1 3 — 51 57
Artillery: no Returns ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Engineers — — — — — 4 4
Casapalacios’ Spaniards 5 20 12 21 — 300 358
Total 14 133 53 525 3 1,380 2,108
ARMY OF PORTUGAL
‘Prisoners
Killed. Wounded. or missing.’
Off. Men. Off. Men. Off. Men. Total.
Sarrut’s Division 2 51 26 505 4 224 812
Lamartinière’s Division 7 70 30 362 1 116 586
Mermet’s Light Cavalry — 18 8 42 — 29 97
Boyer’s Dragoons 1 16 8 80 — — 105
Artillery, Engineers, &c. ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Total 10 155 72 989 5 369 1,600
General Total
of the Three Armies 42 714 226 4,188 23 2,801 8,008
No return (as usual) from King Joseph’s Royal Guards, who had,
however, as Martinien’s lists show, 11 officers killed and wounded,
probably therefore 150 to 200 casualties in rank and file. Also no
returns from Artillery of Armies of the Centre and Portugal, from
whom Martinien shows 9 officer-casualties, or from the fractions of
the Army of the North present (3rd Line, &c.); the last show 3 officer-
casualties in Martinien. It is obvious that the official total is several
hundreds too small.
XIII
SIR JOHN MURRAY’S ARMY
ON THE TARRAGONA EXPEDITION: JUNE 1813

Advanced Guard Brigade. Colonel Adam:


2/27th, Calabrese Free Corps, 1st Anglo-Italian Levy, one
company Rifles of De Roll.
1st Division. General William Clinton. Brigadiers Honstedt and
Haviland-Smith:
1/58th, 2/67th, 4th Line Battalion K.G.L., Sicilian ‘Estero’ regiment
(2 batts.).
2nd Division. General John Mackenzie. Brigadiers Warren and
Prevost:
1/10th, 1/27th, 1/81st, De Roll-Dillon, 2nd Italian Levy.
Whittingham’s Spanish Infantry:
Guadalajara, Cordova, 2nd of Murcia, Mallorca, 5th Grenadiers.
Cavalry:
Two squadrons 20th Light Dragoons, two squadrons Brunswick
Hussars, one troop Foreign Hussars.
Artillery:
Two British and one Portuguese Field Batteries; one company
British and one Portuguese attached to Battering Train.
STATISTICS OF ABOVE. JUNE 4, 1813
[No regimental totals available.]
Officers. Men.
Infantry:
British, German Legion, De Roll-Dillon, 1st
and 2nd batts. Anglo-Italian Levy,
Calabrese Free Corps 345 8,040
Sicilian Estero Regiment 67 1,041
Whittingham’s Spanish Infantry 228 4,624
Cavalry 37 764 [726 horses]
Artillery 53 767
Engineers and Staff Corps 9 77
Total 739 15,313
XIV
SUCHET’S ARMY AT THE TIME OF SIR JOHN
MURRAY’S TARRAGONA EXPEDITION

I. THE ARMY OF VALENCIA.


MORNING STATE OF JUNE 16, 1813
Officers. Men. Total.
1st Division, General Musnier [at Perello near
Tortosa]: 1st Léger (2 batts.), 114th Line (3
batts.), 121st Line (2 batts.) 100 4,063 4,163
2nd Division, General Harispe [at Xativa]: 7th,
44th, 116th Line (2 batts. each) 97 3,967 4,064
3rd Division, General Habert [at Alcira]: 14th, 16th,
117th Line (2 batts. each) 118 4,002 4,120
3/5th Léger 18 601 619
Brigade detached from Catalonia, General
Lamarque: 3rd Léger, 11th Line (2 batts. each),
20th Line (2 batts.)[1075], 1st Italian Chasseurs (1
squadron) 89 3,240 3,329
Cavalry, General Boussard: 4th Hussars (4
squadrons), 12th Cuirassiers (4 squadrons),
24th Dragoons (3 squadrons), Neapolitan
Chasseurs (2 squadrons) 84 1,895 1,979
Cavalry from the Army of the Centre: 1 squadron
Westphalian Chasseurs 11 163 174
Artillery and Artillery Train 20 1,201 1,221
Sappers 8 366 374
Gendarmerie, Équipages Militaires, &c. 9 681 690
Italian Division Severoli [at Buñol]: 1st Ligne and
1st Léger (2 batts. each), and divisional artillery 57 2,008 2,065
Total 611 22,187 22,798
II. GARRISONS OF ARAGON (GENERAL PARIS)
Officers. Men. Total.
10th Ligne (2 batts.), 81st Ligne (3 batts.), 8th
Neapolitans 87 3,302 3,389
12th Hussars (3 squadrons) 26 370 396
Artillery 6 245 251
Gendarmerie (6 companies) 28 1,105 1,133
Chasseurs des Montagnes 26 658 684
Spanish troops 7 151 158
Total 180 5,831 6,011
III. THE ARMY OF CATALONIA.
MORNING STATE OF JUNE 16
Officers. Men. Total.
Division of Cerdagne, General Quesnel: 102nd
Line (2 batts.), 143rd Line (4 batts.), and details 113 2,961 3,074
Division of Upper Catalonia, General Lamarque:
32nd Léger and 60th Line (1 batt. each), 3rd
Provisional Regiment, and details 60 2,459 2,519
Arrondissement of Gerona, General Nogués: 60th
Line (2 batts.), 115th Line (1 batt.), and details 100 2,964 3,064
Beurmann’s Brigade: 115th Line (2 batts.), 23rd
Léger (2 batts.), and details 62 2,400 2,462
Petit’s Brigade: 23rd Ligne (1 batt.), 67th Line (2
batts.), Wurzburg (1 batt.), and details 87 1,972 2,059
Arrondissement of Barcelona, General Maurice
Mathieu: 5th Line (2 batts.), 79th Line (2 batts.),
18th Léger (2 batts.), 1st of Nassau (2 batts.),
29th Chasseurs (1 squadron), and details 162 6,857 7,019
Garrison of Lerida, General Henriod: 42nd Line (2
batts.), and details 39 1,404 1,443
Garrison of Tarragona: 20th Line (1 batt.), 7th
Italian Line (1 batt.), and details 60 1,456 1,516
Gendarmerie (6 companies) 33 1,015 1,048
Artillery and Train 17 1,152 1,169
Sappers and Miners 5 186 191
Total 738 24,826 25,566
N.B.—The Cavalry (29th Chasseurs, and an odd squadron of 1st
Hussars) was distributed in troops and half-troops all round the
brigades, the only solid bodies being one squadron with Beurmann’s
brigade, and one at Barcelona. The total number of sabres was 670
only.
XV
SPANISH ARMIES ON THE EAST COAST:
JUNE 1, 1813

Officers. Men. Total.


First Army (General Copons).
1st Division (Eroles): 5 batts. and 2 squadrons 202 4,357 4,559
2nd Division (?): 7 batts. and 2 squadrons 309 5,124 5,433
Garrisons: 5 batts. and details 272 5,497 5,769
Total 783 14,978 15,761
Second Army (General Elio).
1st Division (Mijares): 6 batts. 230 4,125 4,355
2nd Division (Villacampa): 4 batts., 2 squadrons 209 4,355 4,564
3rd Division (Sarsfield): 5 batts., 2 squadrons. 206 5,178 5,384
4th Division (Roche), 5 batts. 199 4,237 4,436
5th Division (the Empecinado): 4 batts., 2
squadrons 135 4,113 4,248
6th Division (Duran): 4 batts., 3 squadrons 199 5,264 5,463
Cavalry Brigade: 2 regiments 61 953 1,014
Artillery 41 741 782
Engineers and Sappers 31 228 259
Total 1,311 29,294 30,605
Third Army (Duque Del Parque).
1st Division (Prince of Anglona): 8 batts. 210 4,932 5,142
2nd Division (Marquis de las Cuevas): 7 batts. 187 3,438 3,625
3rd Division (Cruz Murgeon): 7 batts. 118 2,656 2,774
Cavalry Brigade (Sisternes) 42 664 706
Artillery, &c. 21 323 344
578 12,013 12,591
Total
XVI
THE ARMY OF SPAIN AS REORGANIZED BY
SOULT:
JULY 1813
N.B.—Numerals appended to a regiment’s name give the number
of battalions in it, when they exceed one.

Officers
and men
present.
1st Division. Foy.
Brigade Fririon: 6th Léger. Late Foy’s Division Army of Portugal.
69th Line (2). Ditto.
76th Line. Ditto. 5,922
Brigade Berlier: 36th Line (2). Late Sarrut’s Div. A. of P.
39th Line. Late Foy’s Div. A. of P.
65th Line (2). Late Sarrut’s Div. A. of P.

2nd Division. Darmagnac.


Brigade Chassé: 16th Léger. Late Darmagnac’s Div. Army of the
Centre.
8th Line. Ditto.
28th Line (2). Late Cassagne’s Div. A. of C. 6,961
Brigade 51st Line.
Ditto.
Gruardet:
54th Line. Ditto.
75th Line (2). Ditto.

3rd Division. Abbé.


Brigade 27th Léger. Late Villatte’s Div. Army of the 8,030
Rignoux: South.
63rd Line. Ditto.
64th Line[1076] (2). Late garrison of Vittoria A. of
N.
Brigade 5th Léger (2). Late Abbé’s Div. A. of N.
Rémond:
94th Line (2). Late Villatte’s Div. A. of S.
95th Line. Ditto.

4th Division. Conroux.


Brigade Rey: 12th Léger (2). Late Maransin’s Brigade A. of S.
32nd Line (2). Late Conroux’s Div. A. of S.
43rd Line (2). Ditto.
Brigade 45th Line. Late Maransin’s Brigade A. of S. 7,056
Schwitter:
55th Line. Late Conroux’s Div. A. of S.
58th Line. Ditto.

5th Division. Vandermaesen.


Brigade Barbot: 25th Léger. Late Barbot’s Div. A. of P.
1st Line. Late garrison of Burgos, A. of N.[1077]
27th Line. Late Barbot’s Div. A. of P.
Brigade Rouget: 50th Line. Ditto. 4,181
59th Line. Ditto.
130th Line (2). Late Vandermaesen’s Div. A. of
N.

6th Division. Maransin.


Brigade St. Pol: 21st Léger. Late Daricau’s Div. A. of S.
24th Line. Late Leval’s Div. A. of S.
96th Line. Ditto.
Brigade 28th Léger. Late Daricau’s Div. A. of S. 5,966
Mocquery:
101st Line (2). Ditto.
103rd Line. Ditto.

7th Division. Maucune.


Brigade 17th Léger. Late Maucune’s Div. A. of P. 4,186
Pinoteau:
15th Line (2). Ditto.
66th Line. Ditto.
Brigade 34th Léger. Late Vandermaesen’s Div. A. of N.
Montfort:
82nd Line. Late Maucune’s Div. A. of P.
86th Line. Ditto.

8th Division. Taupin.


Brigade 9th Léger (2). Late Leval’s Div. A. of S.
Béchaud:
26th Line. Late Taupin’s Div. A. of P.
47th Line (2). Ditto. 5,981
Brigade 31st Léger.
Ditto.
Lecamus:
70th Line (2). Ditto.
88th Line. Late Leval’s Div. A. of S.

9th Division. Lamartinière.


Brigade Menne: 2nd Léger. Late Sarrut’s Div. A. of P.
118th Line (2). Late Lamartinière’s Div. A. of P.
119th Line (2). Ditto. 7,127
Brigade 120th Line (3).
Ditto.
Gauthier:
122nd Line (2). Ditto.

Reserve (General Villatte).


Brigadiers: Thouvenot and Boivin.
(1) 1/4th Léger. Late Sarrut’s Division A. of P. 9,102
1 & 2/10th Léger. Late Abbé’s Division A. of N.
3/31st Léger. Late garrison of Vittoria A. of N.
1/3rd Line. Late Abbé’s Division A. of N.
2/34th Line. Late Vandermaesen’s Division A. of N.
1 & 3/40th Line. Late Vandermaesen’s Division A. of N.
1/101st Line. Late garrison of Vittoria A. of N.
1 & 2/105th Line. Late Abbé’s Division A. of N.
4/114th Line (detachment). Old Bayonne Reserve
4 & 5/115th Line. Old Bayonne Reserve
4/116th Line. Old Bayonne Reserve
4/117th Line. Old Bayonne Reserve
3/118th Line. Old Bayonne Reserve
3/119th Line. Late Biscay garrisons
Total: 17 battalions.
(2) Foreign troops:
Neuenstein’s German Brigade, 4th Baden, 2nd Nassau (2),
Frankfort 2,066
St.Paul’s Italian Brigade 2nd Léger, 4th and 6th Line 1,349
Casapalacios’ Spanish Brigade—Castile, Toledo, Royal Étranger 1,168
King Joseph’s Guard (General Guy). 3 regiments 2,019
(3) Gendarmes à pied of the 4th and 5th Legions 900
National Guards 650
Total of Reserve 17,254
This total, as is obvious, much exceeds the 12,654 given as the
total of the Reserve by the tables which Soult sent to Paris on July
16 as representing his available troops. These tables omit the
following French battalions which were all undoubtedly on the
Pyrenean frontier in July 1813 as they formed parts of the armies of
the North and Portugal or of the old Bayonne Reserve in the returns
of May, and are all found again present in the returns of September
—1/3rd Line, 2/34th Line, 1 & 2/40th Line, 1 & 2/105th Line, 4/116th
Line, 4/117th, 2/10th Ligne: i.e. 8-1/2 battalions, which easily account
for the 4,600 men short in Soult’s total. After the battles of the
Pyrenees, in which Maucune’s and Vandermaesen’s divisions were
so cut up that they had to be re-formed with new units, the following
battalions, whose existence is concealed by Soult in his July table,
were drafted in to them—1 & 3/40th Line into Vandermaesen’s
division, 1/3rd, 1 & 2/105th, 2/10th Léger, into Maucune’s. Obviously
then, they were available, though omitted. The 4/116th and 4/117th
(a fragment of four companies) came into the fighting divisions later,
but must have been somewhere behind the Bidassoa all the time
(having belonged to the old Bayonne Reserve).
Officers and
men present.
Cavalry:
Acting as Corps-cavalry with the field army: 13th, 15th, 22nd
Chasseurs 808
P. Soult’s Division: 5th and 12th Dragoons, 2nd Hussars, 5th, 3,981
10th, 21st Chasseurs, Nassau Chasseurs, Spanish Cavalry
Treillard’s Division: 4th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 26th Dragoons 2,358
Total cavalry 7,147
This makes the total available for service in the field:

Infantry 72,664
Cavalry 7,147
Total 79,811
while Soult only gave himself credit for 69,543, including the
Reserve, for his field army.
In addition, there were half-trained conscripts at Bayonne 5,595.
Garrisons of San Sebastian 3,185, Santoña 1,465, Pampeluna 3,550
= 8,200. Also sick 14,074, and detached 2,110.
Finally, ‘Troupes non comprises dans les organizations,’ or
‘troupes hors ligne,’ i. e. artillery, engineers, sappers, gendarmerie à
cheval, train, équipages militaires, &c. = 9,000. Gross total about
122,367.

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