June Thoburn | University of East Anglia (original) (raw)

Papers by June Thoburn

How accountable are decisions about terminating parental rights to ensure an adoption from care? ... more How accountable are decisions about terminating parental rights to ensure an adoption from care? In this paper we examine if the proceedings in eight European jurisdictions are accountable to: a) the private parties, i.e. individuals that are concernedsuch as parents, child; b) the general public that authorized the politicians and the government to make legislation; and c) the elected government, i.e. the legislators and the system that have granted the court, court-like or administrative body the authority to make these decisions. Our data material consists of national legislation, organizational guidelines (courts, child protection, or supervisory agencies), statistics and expert knowledge. The conclusions of our analysis are discouraging. There is only limited accountability for one of the most intrusive interventions by a state into the private lives of individuals. There is a lack of information about the proceedings as well as a lack of transparency. We identify systems that, with few exceptions, operate in isolation, with only a few outsiders having access or knowledge about what is going on. We cannot in this study say anything about the decision-making quality in these proceedings, they may be excellent, but the problem is that very few external actors are in a position to examine the quality of the decisions. This missing connection between the wider democratic society and this part of the legal systems in the eight democracies we studied is of huge concern, and we have indications that the situation is equally concerning in other European states.

Children and Youth Services Review, Nov 1, 2006

Discussions about provision for children in the care of the state have continually raised the que... more Discussions about provision for children in the care of the state have continually raised the question, can the corporate state parent? This question is considered in the light of recent studies of separated children. It is argued that while the state does not need to fulfil all parenting responsibilities when care is shared with families or children are adopted, for three groups of children parenting issues are especially salient. They are: children in kinship care, in long-term foster family care and young people who are seriously troubled and troublesome. Research that would produce relevant information and recommendations to improve the state's parenting is suggested.

Ideally, there is a close interaction between research and practice in human services, and progra... more Ideally, there is a close interaction between research and practice in human services, and program planning is based on such interaction, particularly the findings of outcome research. This book reviews the bodies of outcome research about child welfare programs from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, particularly outcomes in relation to service effectiveness, duration of child placement, permanency planning, and child development and functioning. The purpose of the book is to give child welfare administrators, policymakers, practitioners, and academics a comprehensive picture of the current state of child welfare knowledge. Chapter 1 discusses issues related to carrying out outcome research and describes the different service systems in the three countries. Chapter 2 examines outcome research in traditional services, such as kinship care, family foster care, treatment foster care, residential group care, and adoption. Chapter 3 reviews research findings related to outcomes of more recent service initiatives, including family preservation, family reunification, preparation for independent living, the "Looking After Children" administrative materials used in the United Kingdom, family group decision making, shared family care, and wraparound services. The book concludes by asserting that there are a number of gaps in the available research, including limited comparative studies of the outcomes of such services as adoption, family foster care, and residential care, and limited attention to the dimension of race and ethnicity. Recommendations include greater attention to the role of race and ethnicity and more cross-national research. Appended is an annotated bibliography of texts that consider outcome research in child protective services. (Contains 399 references.) (KB)

Child Care Health and Development, Sep 1, 2004

Study objective To measure the health, educational and social impacts of breakfast club provision... more Study objective To measure the health, educational and social impacts of breakfast club provision in schools serving deprived areas across England. Design A cluster randomized controlled trial and an observational analysis. Setting England, the UK. Intervention: funding to establish a school-based breakfast club vs. control (no funding). Main results Intention to treat analysis showed improved concentration (Trail Making Test Part A) amongst the intervention group at 3 months. Fewer pupils within the intervention group reported having skipped classes within the last month and fewer pupils within the intervention group reported having skipped 1 or more days of school within the last month at 1 year. Observational analysis at 1 year showed a higher proportion of primary-aged breakfast club attendees reported eating fruit for breakfast in comparison to non-attendees. A higher proportion of breakfast club attendees had borderline or abnormal conduct and total difficulties scores (primary-aged pupils) and prosocial score (secondary-aged pupils). Conclusions Analyses revealed a mixed picture of benefit and apparent disbenefit. This study illustrated the challenges of evaluating a complex intervention in which the evaluators had less control than is usual in randomized trials over recruitment, eligibility checking and implementation. If the impact of new policy initiatives is to be assessed using the most robust forms of evaluation, social policy needs to be organized so that evaluations can be constructed as experiments. This is likely to prove most difficult where the perceived value of implementing an intervention rapidly is high.

The International Work Group for Therapeutic Residential Care convened an International Summit on... more The International Work Group for Therapeutic Residential Care convened an International Summit on \u2018Pathways to Evidence-Based Practice\u2019 at Loughborough University (GBR), Centre for Child and Family Research on 27-29 April, 2016 with generous support from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust and in partnership with The European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents (NLD) (EUSARF), the International Association for Outcome-Based Evaluation and Research on Family and Children\u2019s Services (ITA) (IAOBER) and the Association of Children\u2019s Residential Centers (USA) and with the additional support of Action for Children (GBR) and the National Implementation Service (NIS) (GBR). Membership includes: Lisa Holmes (Chair), Director, Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University (GBR); James K. Whittaker (Co-Chair), Charles O. Cressey Endowed Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, School of Social Work, Seattle (USA); Jorge Fernandez del Valle, Professor of Psychology and Director, Child and Family Research Group, University of Oviedo (ESP); Frank Ainsworth, Senior Principal Research Fellow (Adjunct), James Cook University, School of Social Work and Human Services, Townsville, Queensland (AUS); Tore Andreassen, Psychologist, The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (NOR); James P. Anglin, Professor, Faculty of the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria (CAN); Christopher Bellonci, Board-Certified Child/Adolescent and Adult Psychiatrist; Associate Professor, Psychiatry Department, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA (USA); David Berridge, Professor of Child and Family Welfare, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol (GBR); Amaia Bravo, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo (ESP); Cinzia Canali, Senior Researcher, Fondazione Emanuela Zancan, Padova (ITA) and President, International Association of Outcome-Based Evaluation and Research in Family and Children\u2019s Services (IAOBER); Mark Courtney, Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago (USA); Laurah Currey, Chief Operating Officer, Pressley Ridge, Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and President, Association for Children\u2019s Residential Centers, (USA); Daniel. L. Daly, Executive Vice President and Director of Youth Care, Father Flanagan\u2019s Boys\u2019 Home, Boys Town, NE (USA); Robbie Gilligan, Professor of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin IRE), Hans Grietens, Professor, Centre for Special Needs Education & Youth Care, University of Groningen (NLD) and President, European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents (EUSARF); Annemiek T. Harder, Assistant professor, Department of Special Needs Education and Youth Care, University of Groningen (NLD); Martha J. Holden, Senior Extension Associate with the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and the Principal Investigator and Director of the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (USA); Sigrid James, Professor, Department of Social Work & Social Ecology, School of Behavioral Health, Loma Linda University, CA (USA); Andrew Kendrick, Professor of Residential Child Care, School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde (GBR) and Consultant at the Centre of Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS) and the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice (CYCJ) (UK); Erik J. Knorth, Professor, Department of Special Needs Education and Youth Care, University of Groningen (NLD); Mette Lausten, Senior Researcher at SFI - The Danish National Centre for Social Research, Copenhagen (DNK), John S. Lyons, Senior Policy Fellow at Chapin Hall, University of Chicago, IL (USA); Eduardo Martin, Lecturer at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of La Laguna, Tenerife (ESP); Samantha McDermid, Research Fellow, Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University (GBR); Patricia McNamara, Senior Fellow (Honorary), Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne (AUS); Laura Palareti, Assistant Professor in Social Psychology, Department of Education Studies, University of Bologna (ITA); Susan Ramsey, Parent and Former Children\u2019s Mental Health Advocate, The Walker School, Needham, MA (USA); Kari M. Sisson, Executive Director, Association of Children\u2019s Residential Centers (USA); Richard W. Small, Walker Executive Director Emeritus, The Walker School, Needham, MA (USA); June Thoburn, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, University of East Anglia (GBR); Ronald Thompson, Senior Director, Boys Town National Research Institute for Child and Family Studies, Boys Town, NE (USA); Anat Zeira, Professor, School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Head of Research and Evaluation at the Haruv Institute (ISR). Our work group wishes to thank CFRC staffer Laura…

Pedagogía Social: Revista Interuniversitaria, 2021

This paper first briefly scopes what is known about social workers who make a long-term commitmen... more This paper first briefly scopes what is known about social workers who make a long-term commitment to working within child and family services. It then reports on the response of 32 long-serving social workers from 9 countries to an open-questions survey about the messages they would want to pass on to beginning social workers. The thematic analysis seeks to tease out the motivations, rewards and strategies that are associated with those who, in different country contexts, remain committed to and find satisfaction in child and family social work. Whilst identifying similar themes to those reported in earlier publications, mostly focusing on why some social workers leave and others stay, it adds to the still comparatively limited literature reporting on career-long child and family social workers.

In many developed countries around the world residential care interventions for children and adol... more In many developed countries around the world residential care interventions for children and adolescents have come under increasing scrutiny. Against this background an international summit was organised in England (spring 2016) with experts from 13 countries to reflect on therapeutic residential care (TRC). The following working definition of TRC was leading: "Therapeutic residential care involves the planful use of a purposefully constructed, multi-dimensional living environment designed to enhance or provide treatment, education, socialization, support, and protection to children and youth with identified mental health or behavioural needs in partnership with their families and in collaboration with a full spectrum of community based formal and informal helping resources". The meeting was characterised by exchange of information and evidence, and by preparing an international research agenda. In addition, the outlines of a consensus statement on TRC were discussed. This...

The study aimed to discover how family coaches work intensively with families with moderately com... more The study aimed to discover how family coaches work intensively with families with moderately complex problems bringing together perceptions from 20 families, 20 coaches and six other professionals, and exploring potential savings for 50 family cases. The Family Coaching Service is part of the English government’s ‘Troubled Families’ payment by results initiative, seeking to help families ‘turn their lives around’ to save state spending on anti-social behaviour, worklessness and school absence. Results show the work to be a staged process, over six months with the coach combining practical help with relationship building to engage families, set and achieve goals and negotiate endings. Cost savings were made in 82% of cases. Family coaches find the work rewarding but emotionally demanding. Families say their coach is special and different, and describe potential turning point experiences stemming from the work with their coach. There is clear congruence in the perceptions of the serv...

European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance, 2019

Child & Family Social Work, 2017

Citizens' opinions on child protection public policy are a key dimension of the legitimacy of a p... more Citizens' opinions on child protection public policy are a key dimension of the legitimacy of a political order. We have conducted a survey vignette on a representative sample of citizens (N = 4,003) in England, Finland, Norway, and California, USA. The findings show that citizens' opinions are clearly in favour of adoption (75%) rather than long-term foster care (25%). Context may partly explain the findings, as the responses of the majority of Anglo-American respondents are in line with practice in their countries but for the Nordic respondents, there is a substantial discrepancy between citizens' opinions and ongoing child protection practices.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2016

The English language term 'permanence' is increasingly used in high income countries as a 'short-... more The English language term 'permanence' is increasingly used in high income countries as a 'short-hand' translation for a complex set of aims around providing stability and family membership for children who need child welfare services and out-of-home care. From a scrutiny of legislative provisions, court judgments, government documents and a public opinion survey on child placement options, the paper draws out similarities and differences in understandings of the place of 'permanence' within the child welfare discourse in Norway and England. The main differences are that in England the components of permanence are explicitly set out in legislation, statutory guidance and advisory documents whilst in Norway the terms 'stability' and 'continuity' are used in a more limited number of policy documents in the context of a wide array of services available for children and families. The paper then draws on these sources, and on administrative data on children in care, to tease out possible explanations for the similarities and differences identified. We hypothesise that both long-standing policies and recent changes can be explained by differences in public and political understandings of child welfare and the balance between universal services and those targeted on parents and children identified as vulnerable and in need of specialist services.

Children and Youth Services Review, Nov 1, 2006

Child Care Health and Development, Sep 1, 2004

Pedagogía Social: Revista Interuniversitaria, 2021

European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance, 2019

Child & Family Social Work, 2017

Children and Youth Services Review, 2016