Position at the outset

The Green family are of white British origin. Ms Green, aged 33, is a lone parent with six children ranging in age from one to 12 years. They live in a three-bedroom ground-floor council flat in a tower block. At the beginning of this piece of work I had been working with this family for nearly three years. The focus had been the second eldest child Martin, aged 10 years, who had a poor relationship with his mother, which manifested itself in Martin presenting challenging behaviour.

An in-principle decision had been made by the joint education/ social services panel that a long-term placement should be sought for Martin at a ‘therapeutic boarding school’, with a view to rehabilitation after two years. As it was envisaged that this would be a lengthy process, it was agreed that Martin would be accommodated under Section 20 of the Children Act (1989) if Ms Green requested it. As his behaviour was putting the whole family at risk and had been for some months, a placement was found for him in a children's home in another borough.

While the focus of my work had been with Martin and his mother, I was aware that there were various issues in relation to all the children, but I felt I had not tackled them in a coherent and constructive manner. At the beginning of the year, I was feeling overwhelmed with the complexities of this case and I asked for a joint worker. Nobody suitable was available.

Doing the Goldsmiths course, however, and having the space – particularly in the three-week block at the beginning of it – gave me the impetus and confidence to tackle the case in a different way. For a genogram see Figure 1.

The resolve to take a fresh approach came when Ms Green told me her concerns about Kim, aged three, who, she told me, was not sleeping well, not eating, demanding a baby's bottle and generally regressing to ‘babyish’ behaviour. She wanted help with Kim's behaviour.

Assessment of the situation

In my time working with Ms Green I found that during the periods that Martin was ‘accommodated’, by and large she was able to manage the other five children, even though they presented different types of difficulties.