Introducing Lived Experience Workers Into a Pregnancy Child Protection Intervention

Parent and Staff Experiences

Abstract

Pregnancy Family Conferencing is a program to support families with identified child protection risks during the perinatal period. Parents are often cautious about engagement due to mistrust of services and fear of having their babies removed if they discuss their difficulties. Subsequently, the inclusion of lived experience parent supporter roles was piloted to support families with engagement. Little is known about lived experience workers in child protection services and thus this qualitative study explored the experiences and perspectives of families, parent supporters and professionals, and of implementing parent supporter roles into the pregnancy family conferencing program. Inductive thematic analysis identified benefits of lived experience inclusion in child protection processes for parents, families, staff, and services, and highlighted that introducing lived experience positions into systems requires significant reflection, structures, and flexibility to ensure wellbeing and sustainability for those working in the roles. Recommendations are made for other child protection or social work services introducing lived experience roles. The inclusion of lived experience workers into child protection services has enormous potential for improving the experiences of people accessing services, enacting the values of social work, and balancing the inherent power dynamics embedded in practice. However, in introducing such roles into existing systems, there is a role for social workers and other practitioners in advocating for, and leading, the structural changes required to ensure the sustainability of positions and wellbeing of people working in these roles.