BASW Child Protection Master Class Series:
https://www.basw.co.uk/basw-child-protection-masterclass-series
Any questions please contact me on richdevinesocialwork@gmail.com
Connect with me on: https://twitter.com/RichardDevineSW
Follow my blog, where you can be sent fortnightly blogs on topics covered on this podcast: https://richarddevinesocialwork.com/about/
If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your friends, and leave a review - positive, or negative, all feedback welcome.
BASW Child Protection Master Class Series:
https://www.basw.co.uk/basw-child-protection-masterclass-series
Any questions please contact me on richdevinesocialwork@gmail.com
Connect with me on: https://twitter.com/RichardDevineSW
Follow my blog, where you can be sent fortnightly blogs on topics covered on this podcast: https://richarddevinesocialwork.com/about/
If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your friends, and leave a review - positive, or negative, all feedback welcome.
Hi. Look into which device social work practice, poke class. Hey step by wrench. Odd. It was essential worker. His podcast is about practice related issues, self development and transformation. It will give you knowledge, ideas and practical tools for being a fantastic social worker, supporting you of assessment skills. Direct work, dealing with conflict. And importantly, helping you make a positive difference in the lives of children and families. So in this episode, If it was kind of weird. Not doing the intro. Myself. I've just had my children. Record the introduction and I've been so used to. I say an out the introduction as I begin every episode. That it now feels unfamiliar to begin the episode without starting with it. Nevertheless, I'm really pleased. About. The introduction that my kids have done. And. Before we get into the episode. I just want to mention again, I'm probably going to mention this in every episode to be fair. That I'm doing a child protection, social work practice masterclass series. In conjunction with Boswell. And really the intention of the masterclass series is to explore the kind of issues that I think social workers are grappling with on a day-to-day basis, but that are sometimes overlooked or neglected in terms of. Research. And practice guidance, and I'm really drawing upon 12 years of practice experience. And. Uh, kind of obsessive reading and. The study in the I've done. So that. It's useful from the perspective of a social worker on the ground. So I'm not coming at it from a academic who is researching and sharing the knowledge, but somebody that's been doing the work for a long time. And I really hope that these, the sessions are going to leave you feeling more confident and Rianna energized in the work that you do with children and families. I want them to be jam packed with ideas. Practical tools. And just also. Inspiring and reenergizing the topics that I'm going to be exploring. Uh, key principles and practical tools. To capture the child's voice. How to overcome confrontation, resistance and denial in child protection. Effect if assessment in child protection. Avoiding common pitfalls to minimize an Amherst. That's actually going to be the theme. Of today's episode. So if you find today valuable, you would definitely most certainly. Find that masterclass helpful. Cause we'll be going into it in more detail. Then practical ideas and tools to write evidentially and robust analytical and child. Centered assessments. Top tips on how to use attachment theory and trauma within a child protection context. The reason why I think that's important is because attachment and trauma have been a significant influence on my thinking and the way that I make sense of working with families. And so much so that I ended up doing a master's in the topic. But I feel like a lot of the attachment literature and the trauma-informed literature. It doesn't land, or I find it hard to translate some of that into child protection practice. So I'll be coming at it from given that we're in a child protection context. How can we use those ideas to improve? The way that we make observations and undertake our assessments. How to survive and thrive in child protection. Skills and principles for a relational approach to addiction. And then finally moral distress, impossible decisions. And that's really a topic examining, how do we make effective decisions in child protection? And what kind of tools are there that are available to us that will improve the quality and evidential rigor of our decisions. And this. Masterclass series will begin in April. And when a car. One once a month and they're an hour and a half each. I'd really love for you to. Join. All or if not, one of the webinars. So. You can check them out@basware.co.uk. Forward slash Basware child protection masterclass series. That's bad word, doc. co.uk forward slash Basware child protection masterclass series. So. That's enough of plugging that. Today, we're going to be looking at. Cognitive biases and how they can derail decision-making and social work. And. What we can do about it. Several years ago, I'd read a book that blew my mind. It forever changed how I fought about how we as social workers evaluate risk and make decisions. The book. Was called thinking fast and slow. And it's by Daniel Kahneman. Who is a winner of a Nobel prize. The his working psychology and decision, make him. After a few years of practicing social work, I believed I was a pretty good judge of character. I thought I could confidently assess the risk a child was experiencing and the probability of that risk occurring in the future. I looking back was utterly oblivious to the fact that the way my mind and indeed. Any human mind makes sense of the world is absolutely riddled with adverse. These errors. Uh, refer to add heuristics or cognitive biases. And they're essentially mental shortcuts that allow us to use our finite cognitive capacities. To comprehend a manage infinitely. Complex world. And for the most part, they do a pretty good job. Surprisingly, these mental shortcuts are predominantly unconscious. And we don't even know that we use them. And I had no idea of that existence until I read this book, nor did I have any sense of the pervasive impact that they had on my decision-making in some sense, this is what makes them. Uh, effective and useful. They are automatic they're quick and they don't require much cognitive effort. So they help us navigate the myriad of everyday decisions we have to compute throughout the day. So for example, You don't have to give much. Four four and consideration to. How you. Climb out of bed in the morning and how you put one leg in front of the other. Uh, how you navigate the physical environment, how you use your hand to pick up the toothbrush, how you use. The other hand to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But. These automatic fast mental shortcuts are prone to error. And in quite reliable and systematic ways. In day-to-day life, the impact of these errors. Can be for the most part minimal. However, if left unchecked in child protection, social work. These errors can have disastrous life-changing consequences for children and their families. The evidence for the role and extent of these biases on decision-making is extensive and that doesn't serve them. And I'm only going to explore the ones I think are most relevant to. Us as social workers. So the first one is overconfidence bias. Overconfidence bias is the tendency to believe that our abilities are more significant than they are. For example, I believe that after a couple of years of working in child protection, That I was a reliable judge of character capable of effectively. Be in evaluate. Being able to evaluate risk. My first man, yet manager Tonya Keaton used to tell me confidence over competence is dangerous. Uh, repeat that again. Confidence over competence is dangerous in child protection. And it was, and still is one of the most important lessons that I've learned in social work. I think it's especially true in child protection when our actions and decisions can profoundly alter the lives of children and families. The second. Bias is availability bias. Availability bias is the tendency to think of examples that spring to mind, familiar facts, recent and vivid memories. Or examples. Rather than thinking representatively, we're making estimations about the future. For example, the shocking nature of a plane crash almost always gets reported in the news. The images and dreadful nature of the plane crash. Widely reported in the media Springs to our mind, much more readily than a car crash. Which happens far more frequently and overall causes substantially more injury and death. Therefore. Even though. Cars. Because many more deaths than planes. Many people believe that planes are more dangerous form of transport than cars. Columban in his book rights. People tended to assess the relative importance of issues. By the ease with which they are retrieved from memory. And this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Following the death of Peter Connolly, there was a significant and relatively prolonged upsurge in children being made subject to care proceedings and placed into. Alternative care. If you Google baby PFS too, you can check this out. Arguably, this was a potential cause of availability bias. Social workers were suddenly and quite shockingly confronted with the possible outcome of a failure to intervene swiftly and decidedly. Both in terms of the impact. That it could have on a child in this case staff and also the impact that it would have. Professionally and more broadly within the. Public domain. It would have been easy to conclude. In other words that our failure to intervene. Leads to child death and highly critical public media and government attention. We also give disproportionate value to sensory input or information presented vividly compared with plain dryly presented information. For example. Over the years. I have read many reports of parents shouting and screaming at their children from neighbors or other professionals. However I found watching a video of this once incredibly impactful. Making me feel intensely protective of the child subject to that. The abuse. And what this means is that the same information presented in different formats can dramatically alter our view, leading us to underestimate or over and dumbest estimate. The level of risk. The third bias is. Confirmation bias. Confirmation bias. Is the strong tendency to find or filter only the information that supports our preexisting view. Or a conclusion that we've already made. In other words. Once we have formed a view. We find it extremely difficult to accept information contrary to this view. We may also avoid gathering information from sources that may cause us to question our view or discredit the reliability. Of information from certain sources. In social work. This means that once we have assessed the child to be low risk, We find it hard to accept new information that a family is at higher risk. Equally. Once we have assessed the child is high risk. We find it hard to accept new information that would prove the risk to the child has been reduced. I was pointed out by Eileen Monroe. The single most important factor in minimizing errors in child protection. Is to admit that you may be wrong. I'll say that again, the single most important factor in minimizing errors in child protection is to admit that you may be wrong. Not a factor, not one of one factor, but the single most important factor. There have been. Countless times during my career, when I have needed to adjust my evaluation of risk. Which I don't believe I could have done without the support of my supervisor. Effective supervision. In my opinion is one of the most effective correctives to confirmation bias. And so if you're a social worker, if not being provided with. Adequate supervision. You're really compromising your ability to. Effectively. Assess and support children and families. And that's even the case for me. And I've been doing this for 12 years, the need for me to have supervision and to make sense of the children and families that I'm working with remains the same. Now, as much as it did when I was six months post qualified. Halo effect is the next bias. And that is the tendency to judge a person's entire character based on one aspect of their appearance or presentation. In addition, the trait of another person we exposed to first alters how we interpret the traits we observe after. Which is a little bit like. First impression bias. Karnam and found, and this is his words. The sequence in which we observe characteristics of a person is often determined by chance. Sequence matters. However, because the halo effect increases the way of first impressions. Sometimes to the point that subsequent information is mostly wasted. One parent that I worked with was incredibly welcome in pleasant. And engage and to work with. She was extremely likable. During my visits to her. She was incredibly warm in the way that she interacted with her children and my first impression of her and the interpersonal relationship. We cultivated made it hard for me to fully acknowledge the harm that her substance misuse had on her children. I had read the extensive chronology. Document in substance misuse and criminal behavior. I also received information from various reliable sources. That her children were being neglected in. Quite frankly, life endangering ways. And that she shouted and swore at them. And yeah, I found this nearly impossible to imagine because of how inconsistent it was with my experience of spending time with her. Because she was nice to me. Essentially. I always assumed she was nice to everyone else. It was very hard for me to. Not think that. Without the evidence. BN right in front of me. Fundamental attribution error is the next bias. And this is the tendency to explain other people's behavior due to fixed. Unchangeable personalities. Rather than the context or environment. So we ignore the situational factors that play a role instead. Assuming that someone who is, who. Does terrible things is a terrible person. There's a really good book on this actually. Bye. Somebody called Todd rose. I'm just going to look behind. The bookshelf. See what is called the end of average, which is. Worth. Uh, read if you were interested in the degree to which. The situation and the context influences our behavior. Ironically when explaining our own behavior, we're much more readily. Inclined to explain it as the, as a result of the environment. So. Does it kind of asymmetry here? Where. When we're looking at somebody else's behavior, we blame it on their character as some. The personality defect or some floor within them. When we look at ourselves, we look at the situation and the context, the surrounds, the behavior. If somebody is a little bit rude to you, issue walk past them. When you walk into the office at work, you think. They're a bit more. A jerk or an idea or whatever. For pops into your mind. Whereas, if you do the same to yourself and that's fed back to you. There's a context from which you've had a really stressful morning. You found out that your parent is unwell. Your child is, um, There's issues at home, whatever it might be, your cars broke down on the way to work. You've walked in. You're flustered, distress, overwhelmed. And you've just misattuned with the individual. So there's a context and a situation, which you attribute the behavior towards. And. I think when we think about the fundamental attribution error, where we explain other people's behavior. As, as a result of that personality, rather than their context, I think we're more inclined to consider a child's behavior in life, the context and environment. But I think we struggle to extend this perspective to adults. The fundamental attribution error, I think is a deceptively powerful mechanism. And I think it's why we constantly need tools or frameworks. Such a science of safety. And systemic practice that deliberately facilitates our ability to think about the person in context. They help counteract the default set in a view impairments behavior stabbing from their personality. And. I'm just going to read. The quote from the book that I just mentioned. The end of average, by. Todd rose. Well, he talks about the context principle, which is a term. That he coined to explain how our behavior is highly context dependent. He writes the context principle, challenges us to think about ourselves and in others in a way that is counter to how we've been taught to think about personality. Most of our lives. Most of us believe that. When it comes right down to it, we are optimists. At heart or cynics. That we are nice. Or rude. That we are honest or dishonest. The idea that who we are changes according to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Even if those changes are unique to our own self seems to violate the fundamental tenant of identity to us. Our personality feels stable and steadfast. To take a slight detour. Monro argued that the fundamental attribution error. Is one factor that undermines the process of learning from decision-making errors. So she found that when a social workers decisions are analyzed, The context that the social worker made the decision then is often stripped away. And this could be a criticism that gets levy towards serious case reviews. I think. Monro argued that we should focus on the context as much, if not more than on the individual. She writes. It is E E is. It is usually easy to identify the people close to the tragedy who made the mistakes and target them for improvement. Whereas the study of the wide organizational context. Would take considerably more effort. She goes on to quote. Somebody called reason. Who writes? We cannot easily change human con cognition. But we can create contexts in which errors are less likely. And when they do occur, increase their likelihood of detection and correction. Situations can be far or less error provoking. Echo in this view, Harry Ferguson in his book, top protection practice. Considered the emotional impact of developing relationships with parents. He argued quite poor. Persuasively that most reviews and decision-making in social work that result within tragic outcomes. Often overlook the relational dynamics between social workers and families. He writes the way that practice is written about in these inquiry reports is that the emotions and lift experience of practice are ignored. Uh, social worker. Confronted with a challenge in resistant or hostile parent can be made to feel SCAD. Fearful or intimidated, and that can influence their fault processes, emotions, and actions. Such that they would make decisions that they wouldn't otherwise. So to give an example. I have frequently experienced fair. An apprehension and asking difficult questions. When faced with a parent who acts intimidatingly. I've also been made to feel so uncomfortable in a family home. I would prefer not to visit. On some visits. I experienced trepidation, fear and anxiety while I approached and spent time in the house. If. I was unaware of these feelings. Quite easily. I could have not asked a central questions or just avoided spending time with children in their family home. And that could then result in me not having access to vital information that would aid in assessment of risk. There's a really brilliant article by Harry Ferguson and his colleagues. That looks at. Working with anxiety, hate and conflict in child protection. The impact of the context on decision-making was illustrated in a paper, another one by Harry folks and called how children become invisible in child protection work. He described how some practitioners who have really brilliant. Uh, effective work. With some families, if not most families. Could in that work with some other families be overcome by the sheer complexity of the interactions they encounter. The emotional intensity of the work parental resistance. And the temps atmospheres in the home, and that could result in them unintentionally losing sight of the child. So. What that reveals is that our capacity to be effective practitioners and make sound decisions. Can be context dependent. Under certain conditions, our thinking ability can be undermined. The next bias. And I think this is probably the most important one and probably the one that's influenced my thinking the most. Is called. What you see is all there is. What you see is all there is, is a bias in which we make evaluations based on the coherence of an explanation. We have conjured up and not based on the quality or quantity of the information. In other words. We'd be able to story from the available information. Even when it's poor quality. If it's a good story, we believe it. However we don't consider the information we don't know or might be message. So Conaman writes. The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story. They can tell about what they see, even if what they see is very little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgment is missing. What we see is all there is. What you see? Is all there is. I think because it incorporates many biases is the one bias, as I mentioned, That I think about the most. I find it hard to. Here's some examples. I find it hard to imagine a child subject to significant harm. When I visit the family and observe emotionally warm, positive, and playful interactions between the parent and the child. What I see is all there is. I find it hard to imagine a parent acting abusively and violently towards their child. When they present to me is entirely amenable and accommodating. What I see is all there is. I find it hard to imagine that the parents chronic and severe drug use impacts their parenting. When I visit the family home and they live in a well furnished, tidy and clean home. What I see is all there is. The final bias that I'm going to talk about today is hindsight bias. Hindsight bias, heavily distort any review of past decisions and response to risk. Especially when the outcome is undesirable. Once, you know, the outcome, it looks inevitable. In fact, Momrow points out the worst, the outcome, the greater, the hindsight bias. Conaman rights. Actions that seem prudent in foresight can look irresponsibly, negligent. In hindsight. Actions that seem prudent in foresight can look irresponsibly negligent in hindsight. I don't know what prudent means, I assume wise or sensible. I'm just going to Google that. Do some learning in action. Prudent. Acting with or showing care and fought for the future. So similar words would be wise. Well, judge judicious. Sage shrewd. So actions that seem prudent in foresight can look irresponsibly negligent in hindsight. Hindsight bias is related to outcome bias. Which is the tendency to blame decision-makers for good decisions that turned out badly and give too little credit for successful decisions that appear on opiate. Obvious only after the fact. And this points to really important debate on how social workers should evaluate that decisions. On the one hand. Good thoughtful decisions can result in harmful unwanted outcomes. Therefore, we should assess decision-making by the quality of the decision making process and not the outcome. On the other hand, poorly fought fruit decisions can lead to positive outcomes. Therefore it's argued that decision-makers should be judged by the outcome, not the decision-making process quality. Now. I'm inclined to a, to prefer the former approach. Where we evaluate the forcefulness in the UN. And the evidential rigor replied to the process of decision-making rather than the outcome. Um, a child can be assessed as low risk. Yeah. An unexpected turn of events can result in a fatal outcome. Low risk. Doesn't preclude the possibility of future harm. Just that it was less likely the more likely based on the available information at the time. Therefore the decision could be assessed as wholly reasonable. Even though the outcome was tragic. And so that's why. On balance. I think I prefer a valuate and the quality of the decision. Rather than the outcome. But that's not. Necessarily. Easy because. I have seen cases whereby social workers didn't act at a point of high risk that would warrant it. Yeah. Surprisingly, the family subsequently turned it around. So from an ethical point of view, it would be hard to argue against this being a favorable outcome. The child was protected from the trauma being placed in alternative care, and the circumstances would rectified. Even though at one point. The child was clearly an evidentiary at risk of sufficient harm that would warrant removal. Hindsight and I'll come by us. I think they're essential to be aware of when undertaken, audit. At the end of effective child protection. By early Monroe. Which is definitely in the top five most influential books I've read. She outlines. Nine principles to judge professional decision making. Um, one of them includes the need to factor in the effect of hindsight bias. So I'm just going to read. This. Sachin. Hindsight bias can seriously affect people's appraisal. Of a decision when it is followed by an adverse outcome, but the quality of decisions is inevitably affected by the many influences that decision makers are subject to. When a decision is being reviewed, the four conditions and influences exist in at the time should be identified and examined to determine whether the antrum was taken. Was reasonable in those circumstances. Implement in this principle provides a rich source of learning about how the organization is functioning. And identifying strengths as well as areas of weaknesses. So I'm just going to move into. A brief overview of system one and system two. In thinking fast. Thinking, sorry, fast and slow by Kahneman. He invokes the metaphor of system one and system two. And it's just a useful heuristic. System one is fast, automatically automatic, effortless, mostly unconscious. System one effectively helps us navigate the world and our day-to-day life. Constantly evaluating our decisions throughout the day would be exhausted. And I'm paralyzing. However. And so because of that is outsourced to unconscious processes that use mental shortcuts to come to good enough decisions. However it is predictably prone to errors. We've just discovered. System two. It deliberate effortful unconscious. It tends to be more accurate, especially with. Complex decisions. But it is cognitively costly and time expensive. Therefore it can't be relied upon as a substitute for making routine decisions. Taking into consideration the advantages and limitations of each system. Carmen recommends. The best we can do is compromise. Learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when stakes are high. System one is efficient. Yeah, reliably vulnerable to distortions system two is cognitively demanding and time consuming. Yet more accurate. So. How do we use our understanding? Of the systems in our practice. I have. Several ideas from practice. Which I won't go into. I will just summarize. Some of them. Firstly. We have to recognize that our mind predictably uses heuristics or mental shortcuts to make sense of the world. We don't get to opt in or out to them. Secondly, I think supervision is one of the most effective antidotes to harmful accesses of cognitive biases. Thirdly, I think we need to use discrepancies as a vital source of information. And make our hypotheses about families explicit. Fourthly learned to play. Devil's advocate. To try and play around with offering counter-arguments to what you think is happening within the family. Fifthly. If you can work in an environment and culture that facilitates free thinking and hypothesis generation. CIC flee, evaluate your decisions after the fact to see whether or not you are accurate. And. When I do the webinars series. We're going to look at some of what we've talked about in this episode. But I'm going to go into much more detail about. The several strategies for overcoming the biases and what we can do in practice. To really improve the quality of our decision-making. So that you can have a greater level of confidence. Obviously with a touch of humility, we don't want to be overconfident. And. Make decisions that residentially robust. A couple of notes to finish on. Firstly. If you haven't already, I would recommend Arlie Mambos. Rose book, effective child protection. It's probably the most informative book I've read on the topic of assessing risk. Or she's got lots of really excellent articles. Another is there's a article called 10 pitfalls and how to avoid them. What research tells us that was published. In 2010 by the NSPCC and that's a useful guide. Um, so just to kind of recap, Some of the biases that we've talked about. We have overconfidence bias the tendency to believe that our abilities are more significant than now. Availability bias the tendency to think of examples that spring to mind, rather than thinking representatively, we're making estimations about future. We also give value to sensory input or information presented vividly compared to. The plain or dry information. The halo effect, where we judge a person's entire character based on one aspect of their appearance. The fundamental attribution error, the tendency to explain. Other people's behavior due to fixed unchangeable personality traits. And what you see is all there is a bias, which we make evaluations based on the coherence of an explanation. Rather there on the quality of the information. And I just want to end. This episode. Um, this quote that I read. In the newsletter, the IRC by. James clear. And it's by a poet. Cool whiz Lauer. SIM Bosca. Apologies. For mispronouncing that name, which I'm certain I've almost done. And it's from the poet in the world. I just really love this quote. Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. That is, that has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visit. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do that job with laugh and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers gardeners. I could list a hundred more professions. The work becomes one continuous adventure, as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. What inspiration is it's born from a continuous, I don't know. Whatever inspiration is it's born from a continuous, I don't know. I just love that because I do think social work. Keeps us the opportunity to be constantly discovering. And learning. All of the time. And that we can find inspiration from. Being in a continuous state of, I don't know. And what I really love about that idea is that it invokes humility, which I think is. Critically important within social work. So manufacturers for listening to this episode, if you haven't already, then please do consider subscribing. Or if you wouldn't mind leaving a review, it only takes a couple of seconds. You don't have to write something. You can just. Put 1, 2, 3, 4. Or if you're feeling generous, five stars, it takes a couple of seconds. And, uh, I'd really appreciate it. If you were able to do that. And feel free to leave a comment positive or negative or feedback is very welcome. And finally, if you have any questions, please do get in touch. I would love to. Hear from you and respond to any questions. Either via email or on the podcast. And I will leave the details of the bars were masterclass. I might email in the show notes. Goodbye.