Level 1 – microsystems

Bronfenbrenner uses the term “microsystems” to refer to the key interpersonal relationships and roles that define the child’s day-to-day experience. In the case of a family where parenting capacity and child safety are being considered, these key relationships might include those between the child and any of the following:

While the role of professionals might not be considered to typify the developmental context of children, families who are subject to safeguarding procedures often have extended contact with numerous professionals over time. Thus, it might be expected that these professional contacts will affect the child’s sense of self and of relating to others, both directly and via the other systems outlined below.

Level 2 – mesosystems

The mesosystems level of influence refers to the communication between the microsystems that directly influence development at level 1. This might include, for example, the relationships between or among:

Parents’ experiences of the other key influencers in children’s lives can have a direct and powerful influence on their developing relationship with their child, and this in turn affects the child’s individual development. This might begin with feelings of inadequacy or vulnerability generated by the inquiries of a well-meaning “health visitor” (early years nurse), but as the child gets older and comes into contact with a range of other educational and social provision, parents may have to navigate an increasingly complex web of relationships with professionals.

Professionals, too, are continually working to negotiate potential differences in language and culture across, for example, health, education, and social care. These may cause conflict but can equally serve to reinforce and strengthen narratives about families, which can then take on a “life of their own,” making it hard to complete an objective assessment.

Level 3 – exosystems

The term “exosystems” refers to the connections and processes that occur between two or more settings, at least one of which does not contain the children themselves but affects them. This might include, for example, the links between:

The last point might refer to the court’s influence over how and within what time scales an assessment is completed, and this in turn will affect the child’s experience of the relationship with those professionals charged with completing an assessment. Similarly, the capacity of mental health services to adequately identify and meet a parent’s needs can have a significant impact on children’s experience of their parents and their sense of the world as a safe and predictable place.

Level 4 – macrosystems

The construct of macrosystems reflects the overarching pattern of the above systems that are seen as the “social blueprint” of a particular culture – for example, specific belief systems, resources, bodies of knowledge, or customs.

For families who find themselves in the court arena, some of the key themes that might have prominence include the perceptions of the cultural community. This may be reflected in the responses of a school, neighborhood rumors, narratives generated in the media, and so on, with an impact on:

Jones (2008), for example, argues that “good enough” parenting is generally considered to include “those activities and behaviours of caregiving adults that are needed by children to enable them to function successfully as adults, within their culture” (p. 38). He continues by outlining a number of domains that might be included within this (for example, provision of basic physical care, safety, stimulation) but emphasizes that how each of these is operationalized will vary according to the culture in which they are developed. For those parents who find themselves raising children outside their culture, navigating the expectations of others becomes ever more challenging.

Similarly, Warner (2006) found that the decisions that mental health social workers make about the risk that adults with mental health difficulties pose varied in relation to how “risk” (to others primarily) was located. This could be “within” the person or “within” their symptoms, and this factor in turn had a strong influence on how that risk was managed. The construction of risk in this way is inevitably a culturally defined process. Warner also identified a relationship between ethnicity, gender, mental health symptoms, and risk; for example, Black men with psychotic symptoms were experienced as more risky than their White counterparts, in the absence of any objective evidence to support this. While Warner’s study did not specifically relate to child safeguarding, the study points to the importance of challenging potential assumptions made during assessment when providing effective and balanced feedback to the court.

Level 5 – chronosystems

Finally, Bronfenbrenner outlined the influence of change or consistency over time in terms of both the children themselves and the cultural environment. The impact of a parent’s illness or incapacity will, for example, have a differential impact on the child at different ages – with the ability of a 5-year-old to ensure that their needs are met being fundamentally different from that of a 15-year-old.

The political and cultural landscape in which a child and family develop will also fluctuate over time. There has, for example, been a high-profile discourse around welfare and “dependency” in the UK in recent years, inevitably influencing public perception of those requiring the support of public services. Similarly, there is evidence that the thresholds for initiating safeguarding procedures have fluctuated in response to high-profile child deaths, often constructed as “failures” for children’s services, who are subsequently judged to be “inadequate” (Macleod et al., 2010). Inevitably, all of these pressures have an influence across levels 1 to 4. What once was considered “acceptable” can soon fall below an invisible threshold with potentially huge consequences for the family at the center.

The professional charged with making an assessment of parents and their capacity to meet a child’s needs cannot, of course, influence all (or indeed many) of the systems outlined here. Nonetheless, in order to complete an ethical and balanced assessment, these layers of influence must be considered, and any assumptions that arise from these must be challenged both during the process and in the reporting of the assessment.

Ethical dilemmas and constraints

The process of assessment is time limited, and this is increasingly so in the UK due to court concerns about making decisions within the child’s time scales (Ministry of Justice, 2011). The preference of the court is for the proceedings to last no more than 26 weeks. In practice, an expert will therefore have 8–12 weeks in which to carry out the assessment and file the report. These time constraints will have an impact on what can be achieved; the challenge for the expert is to achieve a balance between the need to form a relationship with the parent/child in order to undertake the assessment and the limited time in which to do this.

Completing a comprehensive assessment means finding ways to overcome the parent’s sense of threat even though this may well be a helpful and protective strategy for parents who find themselves under intense scrutiny and at risk of losing contact with their child(ren). The basic skills of warmth, empathy, and genuineness will help the parent and child feel at ease and enable them to talk about their experiences and perspectives. The task (and dilemma) is to form “just enough” of a relationship to complete an assessment that adequately reflects the family and gives them a voice, without the family feeling coerced into providing more information than feels safe and ultimately feeling unduly exposed.

This task is further complicated when the expert has to consider issues related to confidentiality and consent. This is a particular challenge with children and vulnerable adults. Accordingly, Smeeton and Boxall (2011) emphasize the importance of providing open, honest, and accessible information about the processes and possible outcomes of child-protection proceedings. The expert is, for example, meeting with them on behalf of the court, and therefore the interview is not confidential. Similarly, the court will decide who can have access to the report. It may be helpful to remind parents of the limits of confidentiality at each meeting to ensure transparency.

A further ethical dilemma relates to the wider power dynamics of the assessor versus the assessed. Generally, it is privileged, middle-class professionals who are assessing those who are the most disempowered and marginalized in society on the basis of class, disability, culture, educational attainment, and immigration status or citizenship. Furthermore, for many parents who have been subjected to abuse within their own history, the experience of being judged by professionals might re-enact these experiences. This may have a negative impact on their mental health and family relationships and subsequently on their engagement with the legal process. While such an adverse impact may be impossible for an assessor to avoid altogether, an awareness of this dynamic can provide the opportunity to name and explore the experience with the parent and offer an alternative experience of relating.

The assessment process

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