NOREAM evidence base
The evidence base on which the NOREAM principles are built can be divided into three areas. First, early intervention/action where the evidence suggests that intervening earlier improves outcomes for children, provides better value for money, and has a positive societal impact; Second, migrant aware practice where bordering practices in social work harm children, and are embedded in harmful laws and policies, but can be mitigated in two ways, first through partnership working with both migrant support organisations and informal support networks, and second, assessments which include macro/structural factors in their analysis; Finally, the insight from Care Ethics, which suggests that effective care and support for people with NRPF must be relational and responsive to the needs of the child and family.
Early intervention/Early Action
Early intervention or early action refers to a range of activities designed to improve a young child’s development, based on an assessment of the strengths and needs of children and the family, support and services are provided and regularly reviewed as the child develops (Ramey and Ramey, 1998). Community Links define early action more broadly to encompass interventions with groups other than young children:
“we use the term to describe any activity which is deliberately forestalling a more serious problem. Thus it might cover a spectrum of prompt interventions from, for instance, crime prevention measures, to rehabilitation work with offenders.” (Community Links 2011, p.8).
The Early Intervention Foundation defines early intervention as: “identifying and providing effective early support to children and young people who are at risk of poor outcomes.” With a focus on physical, cognitive, behavioural, and social and emotional development, and suggest that early intervention works best when targeted on particular families who might be at risk (EIF 2020).
Guralnick (2008) suggests ten internationally agreed principles for early intervention projects:
1. A family centred developmental framework throughout the intervention
2. Integration and coordination of all components of the
3. Inclusion and Participation of Children and Families
4. Early detection and identification procedures
5. Surveillance and monitoring activities
6. Personalisation of all aspects of the intervention
7. Evaluation and feedback
8. Sensitivity to cultural differences and their developmental implications
9. Evidence based practice
10. A systems perspective which recognises the interrelationships between all components
The efficacy of early intervention is well evidenced, and statutory guidance in each of the four UK nations highlights the importance of intervening early with children and families before crises develop (Department for Education, 2018; Welsh Government, 2018; Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, 2017; Scottish Government, 2014). Early intervention with families in poverty has been shown to lead to sustained positive effects on intellectual development and academic achievement in preschool children (Campbell & Ramey, 1994), improvements in both short term IQ, and long term effects on educational achievement, grades, special educational placements, and social adjustment (Barnett, 1995). Conversely, a failure to intervene early can lead to long term negative outcomes and acute ‘late intervention’ services cost nearly £17bn per year (Chowdray and Fitzsimmons, 2016).
Most early intervention/action programmes focus on the under 5s. However, the approach can be used across the life course. The Early Action Task Force was created to explore how to build a society that prevents problems rather than deals with the consequences of them (Community Links, 2011, p.3). They argue that a societal shift toward early action across the UK would lead to a ‘triple dividend’:
1. Develop people who are happy and capable and ready for everything, creating strong communities, investing in deep-value relationships, generating social capital and ensuring that everyone has the support they need throughout their lives to reach their full potential.
2. Reduce costs, helping to tackle an unsustainable deficit by investing in provision that will reduce the cost of future liabilities.
3. Strengthen growth, increasing the competitiveness of the UK. Building human, economic and social capital, so widening prosperity rather than simply consuming and even destroying these resources
Early action approaches have also been used in the refugee and migrant sector, and Refugee Action are currently working with eight projects around the country to apply the Community Links model of early action to services for refugees and asylum seekers. The Refugee Action Early Action Charter for asylum is based on six principles:
1. Early Action
2. Belief in Long-Term Change
3. Participatory Service Design
4. Services that Empower
5. Experimentation
6. Collaboration
Early indications from the evaluation are that organisational redesign to incorporate early action principles and develop services which focus on early action, such as Asylum Guide orientation volunteers have contributed to reduced crisis for users of these services (Thomas & Jolly 2020).
LEARNING: Early interaction leads to better outcomes for children, and better value for money services, and more cohesive societies.
Migrant aware practice
Migrants who are subject to the NRPF rule have limited access to social security benefits, and so are particularly vulnerable to poverty (Farmer 2018), although many local authorities, particularly in urban areas, have specialist NRPF teams, there is little empirical evidence to guide social workers in supporting people with NRPF (Jolly 2018).
The role of social work with those with a precarious migration status has been controversial, with the social work profession sometimes accused of engaging with processes of ‘everyday bordering (Yuval-Davis et al. 2019). Humphries (2004) argues that social work in Britain has been complicit in a ‘punishment‘ role which does not take the role of migrant welfare seriously, and Farmer (2017) outlines the ways in which ordering is shown in social work practice with people with NRPF, including gatekeeping, refusal of support and offers to accommodate children without the parents (Farmer 2017). There are also tensions between the international professional standards of social work and the laws and practices governing social work with migrants at a national level (Jonsson 2014).
Support under section 17 of the Children Act (1989) is one of the few pieces of the welfare safety net which is open to children with NRPF, although there are exclusions to section 17 for some parents, which means authorities can only provide accommodation and financial support to such families when this is necessary to prevent a breach of the family’s human rights or EU treaty rights (NRPF Network 2020). Levels of subsistence support under section 17 are often too low for a family to be able to consistently achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development (Jolly 2019).
This has been theorised in different ways. Farmer (2020) suggests that NRPF is best seen as a form of ‘Necropolitical exception’ (Mbebe 2003) where governance is exercised through the power to dictate who should live and who should die. In the case of NRPF this can be seen in how some people are exposed to the risk of death through destitution which strips them of the means to access the essentials for life. Jolly (2018) argues that the NRPF rule is a form of ‘statutory neglect’ where children have experiences resulting from exclusionary policies or legislation which would be considered as neglectful if caused by a parent or carer (Jolly 2020).
Statutory social workers have an obligation to work within existing legislation and policies on the one hand, and professional duties to safeguard the welfare of children on the other, which may result in ethical and professional dilemmas. There are however, models of social work practice when working with migrants. Models of social work practice have so far operated independently of local authority structures such as the Social Work Without Borders volunteer network (Wroe, 2019), or the ‘We Are Here’ collective of undocumented migrants in the Netherlands (Kronman & Jonsson, 2020). However, as Jonsson notes, it is possible for social workers and voluntary sector agencies to make formal or informal partnerships and alliances to improve the living conditions of undocumented and other precarious migrants (Jonsson, 2014).
Gentles-Gibbs & Gibbs’s (2020) research with West Indian migrant fathers in the US identifies the importance of considering both micro (Individual and interpersonal) and macro (environmental, structural and/or institutional barriers) factors in social work with migrant families. Cleavland (2011) suggests the need for advocacy at the macro level to improve policy affecting migrants in contact with social work services.
Similarly, Westwood (2012) found that police and social workers involved in safeguarding migrant children focused on risk at the detriment of child welfare and child rights perspectives, and there was a need to assess for need as well as risk (Westwood 2012). Take up of formal social work services is low amongst migrant populations, but in contrast informal networks of support are often strong. Social work programmes should strengthen this informal support system (Hernandez-Plaza, Alonso-Morillejo & Pozo-Munoz, 2006). Furman, Ackerman and Negi (2012) also suggest that social workers should use a strengths-based perspective when working with undocumented migrants as part of establishing an effective healing relationship.
LEARNING: Bordering practices in social work harm children, and are embedded in harmful laws and policies, but can be mitigated by partnership working with migrant support organisations and informal support networks, and assessments which include macro and structural factors.
Care Ethics
Care ethics are derived from feminist philosophy and were pioneered by psychologist Carol Gilligan (1982) and educational philosopher Nel Noddings (1984). They are an ethical framework based on caring, rooted in “receptivity, relatedness, and responsiveness” (Noddings, 1984. P.2). Noddings argues that care requires three things. First, the carer should exhibit ‘engrossment’, or thinking about the person who is being cared for to gain a better understanding of them. Second, the carer must show ‘emotional displacement’, or the carer’s behaviour being determined by the needs of the person for whom they are caring; and third, the person who is cared for must respond in some way to the caring (Noddings, 1984, 69).
Tronto (2005) argues there are four components to the ethics of care:
1. Attentiveness - the recognition of others' needs in order to respond to them
2. Responsibility - The carer has to actively take on the task of care..
3. Competence – The person providing the care must be able to provide adequate care
4. Responsiveness – The person being cared for must respond in some way.
Noddings distinguishes between wants and needs in care (Noddings 2003). For a want to be regarded as a need it should be: stable over time, or intense; connected to a desirable (or not harmful) and achievable end; within the means of the carer to grant’ and the person being cared for is willing and able to contribute to meeting the want. Needs can be directly expressed by the cared for, or inferred needs, where they do not come directly from those who are cared for, but are identified by the carer.
LEARNING: Care and support for people with NRPF must be relational and responsive to the needs of the child and family.