Experimental Methods and Children's Social Care

Edited by Michael Sanders, School for Government, King's College London, David Westlake, Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University and Vanessa Hirneis, The Policy Institute, King's College London, UK

• ContentsForeword: the promise of learning what works xList of abbreviations xiiIntroduction: what are experiments, and why are they important? 1Michael Sanders, David Westlake and Vanessa Hirneis1 ‘That’s all very well, but if a child is at risk, you can stick your randomisation up your ****’: a brief history of trials in social work and UK children’s social care 7David Westlake2 RCTs, the What Works centre and children’s social care 21Donald Forrester3 The international evidence on Family Group Conferences 29Jonathan Scourfield, Sophie Wood and Melissa Meindl4 Reflections on running a large randomised controlled trial in children’s social care 43Sarah Taylor, Emily Blackshaw and Hannah Lawrence5 Lessons learned from 25 years of intervention research: the Fostering Healthy Futures Program 55Heather Taussig6 Signs of Safety – what is it, and what did the evidence say? 67Lorna Stabler7 When and how can we find causation without randomisation? 79Michael Sanders, Julia Ellingwood and Vanessa Hirneis8 Motivational interviewing in Islington: our first, worst, and most eye-opening trial 89Donald Forrester and David Westlake 9 Missing what matters for practice 103 Bernie Brown, Chris McLoughlin and Wilson Litchmore 10 Go big or go home: trialling the Social Workers in Schools programme during a pandemic 113 David Westlake and Verity Bennett 11 Safeguarding the safeguards – more support needed, but how? 129 Lucy Stokes and Johnny Runge 12 Subgroup effects in education trials: the case of young people with a social worker 143 Michael Sanders, Alix Leroy, Chris Mitchell and Jake Anders 13 Studying social work practice in context 163 Eileen Munro and Mike Caslor 14 Null effects in trials – a worked example of a maltreatment prevention trial 175 Michael Robling and Rebecca Cannings-John 15 Equalities and trials in CSC 197 Nimal Jude and Lisa Zaranyika Looking to the future – concluding thoughts 207 David Westlake, Michael Sanders and Vanessa Hirneis Index 213

‘A fascinating and timely book, offering critical reflections and clearly articulated insights on the nature and usefulness of trials in children’s social care. Thoughtfully edited, and with an impressive cast of chapter authors, this book provides much-needed commentary on the contribution – and limitations and challenges – of randomised controlled trials. A worthwhile read for RCT sceptics, evangelists, and all of us in between!’