How power is managed between clinicians and parents in social care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An investigation of how power is managed between clinicians, and parents with emotional and relationship difficulties, when working together in a safeguarding context.
IRAS ID
140478
Contact name
Rachel Watson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East London
Research summary
I will aim to understand how power dynamics are managed between systemic psychotherapists and a particular group
of parents they work with in the social care context. This is important because clinicians, including me, are attempting
to carry out work with a particular group of parents to safeguard children. These are parents who have a diagnosis of
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and are known to adult mental health services, or do not have a diagnosis, but
have similar difficulties and are not known to services until concerns about their children are raised. Both groups
struggle to make and maintain relationships and are often in high levels of distress, particularly when under stress.
I have found that there are particular approaches, methods and techniques that have provided the opportunity to
consider and deal with the particular relevance of power in the work, and provide the kind of ‘connectivity’ needed to
make and sustain therapeutic relationships while implementing evidencebased
interventions. I have found that
these ideas (that are from the systemic psychotherapy approaches) can be useful in dealing with the impact on the
relationship of carrying out an intervention that parents overtly disagree with, or covertly rail against. As clinicians we
are managing the ever present power dynamics in subtly different ways, using a systemic repertoire to do so, and it is
vital for us to describe how we are doing this in order for us to identify best practice.REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
13/IEC08/0041
Date of REC Opinion
11 Nov 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion