Professional Learning Webinar - Working with families in recurrent care proceedings

Around one in seventy-seven first time mothers will ever appear in care proceedings. Whatever is happening to the families we see repeatedly, it is not something that happens to most people. Yet nearly half of the newborns before these courts have a mother who had another child removed in the previous five years, and around four in ten mothers in recurrent proceedings were themselves in care.

This session traces where the idea of ‘the cycle of deprivation’ came from, why it was discredited within four years of being coined, and why it survives anyway. It looks at what happens in practice when we aim at the wrong target: how a system ends up marking its own homework, and how independent assessors are instructed to answer a question that was never the right one. It examines the phrase ‘failed to engage’, and what happens to it under cross examination in the court.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this session participants will be able to:

• Describe the origin of the cycle of deprivation idea, the evidence that undermined it, and why it persists in policy and practice language.

• Use the current prevalence and recurrence evidence accurately, including its limits, rather than relying on the assumption of an intergenerational cycle.

• Recognise how the framing shapes letters of instruction, assessment questions and care planning, and where that leads assessments astray.

• Analyse the phrase ‘failed to engage’ and articulate what it does and does not evidence.

• Identify approaches with a stronger evidence base for families in recurrent proceedings, and the caveats attaching to that evidence.

Who this is for

Social workers and social work managers in children and families services, independent social workers, children's guardians, and practitioners in family support and early help. It will also be of interest to anyone who commissions or reads independent assessments.

About the speaker

Vince Peart is an independent social worker who has completed over two hundred and twenty five independent assessments for solicitors, local authorities and children's guardians, and has given oral evidence on more than a hundred occasions. He has worked as a social worker, an advanced practitioner, a team manager and a children's guardian for Cafcass, and sits on the BASW Independents Committee.

A version of this presentation was delivered as a keynote at the Spire Barristers summer conference in July 2026.

Delivered via MS Teams. Please contact ProfDE@basw.co.uk for any queries.

If you aren't yet a BASW member, why not join us and access this event for free? Membership starts at £5.39 a month and you can find out more here - https://basw.co.uk/why-join-basw