I completed my training in ParentAssess in 2021 and I was struck by a story Sarah Lowe relayed about why she had created the framework. She had been working with a parent who did not understand the outcome of her parenting assessment and somehow this hadn’t been viewed as essential.  It hit a chord with me, and I reflected that parents I have worked with in the past may not have understood what I wrote about them. I had tried to be clear but inadvertently my ‘professional jargon’ had crept in. But every day is a school day and the reports I write now, are very different!

Shortly after completing my ParentAssess training, I worked with a parent who did not have a diagnosed learning disability and was in fact very able to express themselves. I was asked for a ParentAssess assessment, as that is what was requested for the other parent in the case. This parent had been involved in family court proceedings before, when I asked what happened in these proceedings the parent said they didn’t know. It seemed the wall of professional jargon had shut them out and they had not felt able to ask for clarification or explanation. They had not had any reports shared in a format they could digest, so they had just accepted the outcome, which was a contact arrangement. The parent did not know what informed this arrangement or what had been written about them which ultimately informed the court decision. They were subsequently unable to answer their child’s questions as to why the contact arrangement was set up in that way.

We at ParentAssess continually underline the importance of using simple language in our assessments but it’s not an easy part of our practice to change it seems. We regularly hear from the social workers that we train about the expectations of using more professional language in reports – sometimes the clear simple language will be corrected and they are ‘told’ to make their reports look more ‘professional’ – I wonder could the word ‘professional’ be exchanged for ‘powerful’ ? When what we should be doing is making reports more ‘accessible’.

The use of simple language in reports for people with learning disabilities is enshrined in the case law and the Good Practice Guidance of Working with a Parent with a Learning Disability 2021. This refers to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010 underlining the importance of making reasonable adjustments. Judge Mumby in the judgement Re D (2016) said “all parts of the Family justice system should take care as to the language and vocabulary that is utilised.” Re D (A Child) (No 3) [2016] EWFC 1 [164.6]

In 2015 Judge Lea (Nottingham) provided a judgement which criticised several social workers about their use of language in court reports. Judge Lea referred to the language used in a special guardianship assessment as ‘opaque’ and went onto say that it may as well have been written in a foreign language for the family involved. (Silman, J., (2015) Community Care https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/08/05/social-worker-criticised-judge-using-jargon-court-report/)

Are we behaving in a professional manner if we use language (jargon) in reports that a parent does not understand?

Professionality is an important quality in social worker, and I sometimes feel sad when I hear that someone has been told that they are not professional when they have written a report using clear, simple language. Whilst thinking about professionality it occurred to me that as a profession, social workers have a set of professional standards to adhere to. I thought well in that case there must something about this topic in the standards and there is!

The first of these is promote the rights, strengths and wellbeing of people, families and communities. There are then seven points which we agree to uphold, all of which relate to respecting an individual’s strengths, ensuring their human rights are protected, working in partnership, working with diversity. Using simple language in report means that we are working in partnership, we are working with a person’s individual needs and strengths and ensuring that we are working in an inclusive way.

The second professional standard relevant to this discussion is to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of people. Often the people that we work with have had experiences of social care involvement before and this may not always have been positive. To build, or in some cases rebuild, trust we must open channels of straightforward communication. We need to address the power imbalance, and this starts with the language we use. We need to understand the parent, but they also need to be able to understand us and the work we are doing.

If the parent has been enabled to understand what has happened and why it is has happened it will pave the way to coming to terms with any loss or how they can build on their strengths. It may even help them to retain some of the learning that they completed during the assessment. There is a saying in the ParentAssess team “if the understanding is not for this child, it may well be for the next child”

Moving forward for me it is important that if a social worker is criticised for being ‘unprofessional’ because they have used simple straightforward language, they must feel able to challenge this. They should point out they are upholding their own professional standards by adopting an approach that helps to work WITH the parent.  They are also complying with case law and the GPG 2021.

By Claire Connors ParentAssess Senior Trainer