SOCIAL-WORK STUDENTS PERCEPTIONS OF CHILD-ABUSE - AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON AND POSTMODERN INTERPRETATION OF ITS FINDINGS

The decision about whether behaviour with children is acceptable has f ar-reaching consequences for those involved. Social workers must decid e what behaviour leads people into the child;protection system. This s tudy aims to identify how far social work students achieve a consensus on the acceptability of behaviour, and whether similar items achieve agreement between groups in Sweden and England. Forty-four vignettes o f behaviour with children which might be seen as unacceptable were adm inistered to 52 first-year social work students in Umea, Sweden, and 5 0 English students. They were asked to rank the behaviour on a 5-point scale, where '1' represented 'Fine' and '5' 'Totally unacceptable'. K ey findings were that there is little consensus within societies about what is acceptable behaviour towards children, and significant differ ences between them. It is argued that this is the result of the many d ifferent discourses operating in the field. The author points out the difficulties this can cause, and argues for the acceptance of a postmo dern approach, which though stressing the importance of consensus in d ecision making, ultimately posits that effective and ethical practice must be based on relationship. Such an approach would resolve paradoxe s which have challenged a more modernist understanding of social work.