Respect or Empowerment?: Alternative Understandings of ‘Listening’ in Childcare Social Work

Alison McLeod describes a research project that explored the effectiveness of communication between social workers and young people in care. Interviews with young people revealed that, even though their social workers had described making significant efforts to listen to them, the young people did not feel their voices were heard. It is argued that this contradiction arises because the adults and the children understood something different by the term ‘listening’. The adults saw it more in terms of paying respectful attention to what the young people had to say. The young people, in contrast, felt that listening was demonstrated by delivering services that accorded with their expressed wishes. The two also had different conceptions of the social worker's role. While the adults regarded emotional support and therapeutic intervention as key elements of the social work role, few young people shared this view. Although they appreciated reliable social worker availability, what they valued most was practical support combined with promotion of their self-determination. The implications of these findings for childcare social work are discussed.