Gillian Ruch
Biographic Data
| ID | 218995 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gillian Ruch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gillian |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruch |
| SIGNATURE | RUCH G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6640-1515 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 269 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Living faith at work
Despite social work’s foundational roots in faith-based initiatives and moral philanthropy, the secularization of the field has led to the privatization of religious beliefs. This study explored the extent to which Christian faith is seen as a legitimate dimension of social workers’ identity. Local authority Christian social workers in England were interviewed. Thematic analysis showed that social workers view their practice as aligned with liber…
Feeling rules in child protection practice
This research article draws on Norwegian child welfare workers’ memories from a specific day working with instances of suspected child abuse. Guided by Hochschild’s theory of feeling rules and emotion work, collective memory work methods were used to explore how social workers’ emotions are socially regulated and shaped by institutional contexts. Analysis of the data showed how feeling rules shaped three inter-connected dynamics: institutional de…
How does it make you feel? Understanding the affordances of the Many Minds psycho-social analytic model in child protection research
Recently there has been a growing interest in psychosocial research methods based on psychoanalytically-informed clinical practice. This paper reports on the introduction of the Many Minds approach, a research method for analysing research data, to a group of Norwegian academics. Following an account of the historical and theoretical roots of Many Minds, we explore how the research ‘data’, or research ‘story’ as we refer to the material presented…
Social workers’ experiences of practising with empathy
Decolonising the peer review process
As an editorial team of three it has been a pleasure for us to navigate our way through this Special Issue on Decolonising Social Work Practice, Education and Research. From the outset the three of
‘We were persistently othering them out’
Background: The transition to adulthood may involve experiences of risk and harm – including, for some young people, abuse, violence or exploitation in peer and community contexts. In the UK, such extra-familial risks and harms have prompted safeguarding responses in policy and practice. However, safeguarding conceptualisations are significantly different for young people under 18 than for those over 18, leading to service and system gaps in tran…
A line in the sand
For over a decade, UK policymakers have responded to global ambitions to protect children from exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms by recommending that social workers coordinate local responses. This has required a significant shift in the design and delivery of social care services. In this article, we report findings from a three-year Institutional Ethnography of six social care sites that used three innovation framew…
Creating a containing space for analysing data
This article forms part of a special issue on a psychosocial method of group data analysis characterised as Many Minds. In this article, we aim to democratise and render transparent the Many Minds process and outline its affordances as a method for analysing evocative and provocative data. We move on to explore the specific context in which our experiences were located, how the Many Minds approach operated in this space and the methods we devised…
The Many Minds approach to group data analysis
In this editorial our intention is to describe the Many Minds approach to group data analysis and to contribute to current discussion about the affordances and pitfalls of collective research practices. We showcase work emerging from a particular research culture within the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex and describe the way it has facilitated psychosocially informed qualitative data analysis. The editorial begins…
Sanctuary/ing
How do we – scholars in the academy – hold ourselves, each other and the practices of intellectual work in times of entangled multispecies, geopolitical and educational crises? This article presents and reflects on a two-year writing experiment that involved a regular, virtual, group-writing practice among four academics situated in the global North. The writing and resulting discussions evolved into a shared archive and a recursive archiving pra…
Working with Many Minds
This annotated bibliography is aimed at those new to the Many Minds approach to collective data analysis, wishing to understand its history and influence. We present a conceptual map, distinguishing three key bodies of work/fields, including: psychoanalytically informed group seminars; narrative approaches to sharing and reusing data; and collaborative group-based data analysis associated with feminist methodologies. Starting at the centre of a V…
‘I was detecting a kind of, a from the heart kind of dialogue’
The ESRC funded Innovate Project has explored how innovation is undertaken and experienced by professionals tasked with the responsibility of introducing new practice approaches in welfare provision for young people at risk of harm
Creating the conditions for collective curiosity and containment
In this article, we share our reflections and insights from developing and facilitating small group reflective practice spaces over the last 3 years as part of a government-funded professional development programme for statutory children and families social work supervisors and their managers. Based on formal programme feedback and communication with facilitators and participants, there is clear evidence that participants have valued the space to…
Social work in a superdiverse society
Superdiversity is a rapidly expanding social phenomenon with major implications for social work practice. In this paper, we outline the key characteristics of superdiversity as it is currently understood and explore its implications for social work practice. Drawing on the seminal work of Richard Sennett we consider how his conceptual ideas about cooperation, as a vehicle for embracing difference through dialogue, can be translated into everyday …
Risk, Vulnerability and Complexity
Transitional Safeguarding is emerging as a new concept in social work and social care, inviting us to reconsider the binary divides of existing adult and child safeguarding systems. These often fail to adequately meet the needs of young people, particularly those experiencing extra-familial risks and harm. Transitional Safeguarding acknowledges the ‘in-between’ position of young people in adolescence, relating both to their physical and psychosoc…
Carbon-lite collaboration
In this article we present an example of psychosocial practice – a visual matrix – which attempted to address and embody carbon-lite research methods in the face of global heating. Combining virtual and face-to-face modes of presence and interaction generated insights as well as posing challenges. In the article we explore two ideas through a discussion of ‘interference’ and ‘inclusion/exclusion’. The article extends our understanding of the meth…
Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children
Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “inside…
From communication to co‐operation
Communicating and engaging with children is a foundational component of child care social work practice, but all too frequently, in the wake of serious incidents, it is the focus of criticism. Drawing on findings from a large‐scale ESRC‐funded research project conducted in the four U.K. nations, this paper explores, through a psychosocial analytic lens, how social workers anticipate, enact and reflect on their encounters with both children and th…
Emotional Labour in Social Workers’ Encounters with Children and Their Families
The ways in which social workers experience a range of emotions that are evoked in their professional relationships with children and families is an area that is little focused upon and yet the processes involved in their expression and management can have profound implications for all involved. Theoretically informed by sociological concepts and combining data from a two-year, UK four-nation, ESRC-funded research project, ‘Talking and Listening …
Containment
This article examines children's agency in their interactions with social workers during statutory encounters in a child protection context. It draws from a UK-wide ethnographic study. It finds that much of social workers' responses to children's agency in this context are best understood as a form of 'containment'. In doing so, it offers an original and significant contribution to the theoretical understanding of children's agency, as well as it…
Exploring Communication between Social Workers, Children and Young People
A key issue for the social work profession concerns the nature, quality and content of communicative encounters with children and families. This article introduces some findings from a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that took place across the UK between 2013 and 2015, which explored how social workers communicate with children in their everyday practice. The Talking and Listening to Children (TLC) project had th…
Building Trust with Children and Young People at Risk of Child Sexual Exploitation
Research with children and young people at risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has highlighted that professionals need to engage children in relationships of trust if they are to be most successful in enabling children to explore and address risky behaviours, situations and relationships. More needs to be understood about professional approaches to building such trusting relationships, particularly when children feel (often with good cause) t…
Making meaningful connections
Reports into incidents of child death and serious injury have highlighted consistently concern about the capacity of social workers to communicate skilfully with children. Drawing on data collected as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded UK‐wide research project exploring social workers' communicative practices with children, this paper explores how approaches informed by social pedagogy can assist social workers in connecting a…
Towards an International Consensus on a Research Agenda for Social Work Supervision
Supervision is currently of considerable interest in social work and is seen as a vital activity for meeting many professional demands: the continuing development of professional skills, practitioner well-being, the safeguarding of competent and ethical practice, and the oversight of casework. A recent UK review of evidence found that the empirical basis for supervision was relatively weak ( Carpenter et al., 2012) and evidential support for supe…
Thinking about Thinking after Munro
There has been a recurrent recognition in inquiry reports following high-profile deaths of children known to welfare services of shortcomings in social workers' analytical and assessment skills. There is an urgent need to explore what might help supervisors and practitioners ‘think about their thinking’. This paper draws on cognitive interviewing (CI) and examines its applicability/transferability to the professional domain of child-care social w…
Relationship‐based practice and reflective practice
The renewed interest in relationship‐based practice can be understood in the child care social work context as a response to the call to re‐focus practice in this field. Relationship‐based practice challenges the prevailing trends which emphasize reductionist understandings of human behaviour and narrowly conceived bureaucratic responses to complex problems. In so doing practitioners engaged in relationship‐based practice need to be able to cope …
Reflective Practice in Contemporary Child-care Social Work
In recent years, there has been growing interest in reflective practice as an approach that acknowledges the complexity and uncertainty inherent in contemporary social work practice. Whilst attention has been paid to how reflective practice is defined and understood, less consideration has been given to the conditions that facilitate its development. Drawing on recent doctoral research, this paper suggests that a particular type of reflective pra…
The Boundaries of the Social Work Relationship Revisited
In all professional relationships, there are power imbalances and the potential for discrimination and exploitation. To safeguard against such violations, the concept of professional boundaries is advocated, yet the construction of these boundaries is presented as if it is rudimentary for everyone. Historically, the professional boundaries created within the field of social work have been influenced by other professions, most notably medicine. In…
Where Have All the Feelings Gone? Developing Reflective and Relationship-Based Management in Child-Care Social Work
The past five years have witnessed a growing recognition of the importance of management and leadership in the social work profession. The Social Work Task Force Report has underlined the need for ‘dedicated programmes of training and support for frontline social work managers’ and the Social Work Reform Board is tasked with taking this recommendation forward. Central to these developments is the question of how such ‘dedicated programmes’ are de…
Containment
This article examines children's agency in their interactions with social workers during statutory encounters in a child protection context. It draws from a UK-wide ethnographic study. It finds that much of social workers' responses to children's agency in this context are best understood as a form of 'containment'. In doing so, it offers an original and significant contribution to the theoretical understanding of children's agency, as well as it…
Thoughtful’ practice
Since the publication of Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbé there have been a number of insightful and thoughtful papers into the professional context and circumstances that surrounded this tragedy. Those papers highlight the insufficient thought given to the psychosocial dimensions of Victoria’s situation, their impact on professional practice and the support needs of practitioners. This paper explores the tensions between ‘…
Exploring Communication between Social Workers, Children and Young People
A key issue for the social work profession concerns the nature, quality and content of communicative encounters with children and families. This article introduces some findings from a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that took place across the UK between 2013 and 2015, which explored how social workers communicate with children in their everyday practice. The Talking and Listening to Children (TLC) project had th…
Making meaningful connections
Reports into incidents of child death and serious injury have highlighted consistently concern about the capacity of social workers to communicate skilfully with children. Drawing on data collected as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded UK‐wide research project exploring social workers' communicative practices with children, this paper explores how approaches informed by social pedagogy can assist social workers in connecting a…
Helping Children Is a Human Process
Research studies and inquiry reports in the UK have consistently highlighted children's wishes for social workers to demonstrate honesty, reliability and continuity in their relationships with them. Despite this awareness, social workers continue to struggle to exhibit these qualities. The literature on social workers' communication with children portrays it as a complex, partial and fragmented aspect of practice, with a lack of research that dir…
Building Trust with Children and Young People at Risk of Child Sexual Exploitation
Research with children and young people at risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has highlighted that professionals need to engage children in relationships of trust if they are to be most successful in enabling children to explore and address risky behaviours, situations and relationships. More needs to be understood about professional approaches to building such trusting relationships, particularly when children feel (often with good cause) t…
From communication to co‐operation
Communicating and engaging with children is a foundational component of child care social work practice, but all too frequently, in the wake of serious incidents, it is the focus of criticism. Drawing on findings from a large‐scale ESRC‐funded research project conducted in the four U.K. nations, this paper explores, through a psychosocial analytic lens, how social workers anticipate, enact and reflect on their encounters with both children and th…
Thinking about Thinking after Munro
There has been a recurrent recognition in inquiry reports following high-profile deaths of children known to welfare services of shortcomings in social workers' analytical and assessment skills. There is an urgent need to explore what might help supervisors and practitioners ‘think about their thinking’. This paper draws on cognitive interviewing (CI) and examines its applicability/transferability to the professional domain of child-care social w…
Emotional Labour in Social Workers’ Encounters with Children and Their Families
The ways in which social workers experience a range of emotions that are evoked in their professional relationships with children and families is an area that is little focused upon and yet the processes involved in their expression and management can have profound implications for all involved. Theoretically informed by sociological concepts and combining data from a two-year, UK four-nation, ESRC-funded research project, ‘Talking and Listening …
Identifying ‘the critical’ in a relationship-based model of reflection
This paper explores the critical potential of a relationship-based reflection model. The key psycho-dynamic and systemic concepts shaping the development of relationship-based practice and underpinning the reflection model are explored along with the contribution to the model that originates from Schon's work on reflective practice. The model is outlined and illustrated with a case example that highlights three key critical dimensions identified …
A line in the sand
For over a decade, UK policymakers have responded to global ambitions to protect children from exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms by recommending that social workers coordinate local responses. This has required a significant shift in the design and delivery of social care services. In this article, we report findings from a three-year Institutional Ethnography of six social care sites that used three innovation framew…
Creating a containing space for analysing data
This article forms part of a special issue on a psychosocial method of group data analysis characterised as Many Minds. In this article, we aim to democratise and render transparent the Many Minds process and outline its affordances as a method for analysing evocative and provocative data. We move on to explore the specific context in which our experiences were located, how the Many Minds approach operated in this space and the methods we devised…
The Many Minds approach to group data analysis
In this editorial our intention is to describe the Many Minds approach to group data analysis and to contribute to current discussion about the affordances and pitfalls of collective research practices. We showcase work emerging from a particular research culture within the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex and describe the way it has facilitated psychosocially informed qualitative data analysis. The editorial begins…
Social work in a superdiverse society
Superdiversity is a rapidly expanding social phenomenon with major implications for social work practice. In this paper, we outline the key characteristics of superdiversity as it is currently understood and explore its implications for social work practice. Drawing on the seminal work of Richard Sennett we consider how his conceptual ideas about cooperation, as a vehicle for embracing difference through dialogue, can be translated into everyday …
Risk, Vulnerability and Complexity
Transitional Safeguarding is emerging as a new concept in social work and social care, inviting us to reconsider the binary divides of existing adult and child safeguarding systems. These often fail to adequately meet the needs of young people, particularly those experiencing extra-familial risks and harm. Transitional Safeguarding acknowledges the ‘in-between’ position of young people in adolescence, relating both to their physical and psychosoc…
Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children
Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “inside…
Towards an International Consensus on a Research Agenda for Social Work Supervision
Supervision is currently of considerable interest in social work and is seen as a vital activity for meeting many professional demands: the continuing development of professional skills, practitioner well-being, the safeguarding of competent and ethical practice, and the oversight of casework. A recent UK review of evidence found that the empirical basis for supervision was relatively weak ( Carpenter et al., 2012) and evidential support for supe…
Direct work with children – the practitioner's perspective
Direct work with children is a social work technique widely used by practitioners involved with children who have experienced trauma and abuse. Whilst there is an abundance of literature about how to do direct work and ‘successful’ pieces of work there is little written about practitioners experiences of the work. This article seeks to identify some of the difficulties and dilemmas practitioners, including the author, face undertaking direct work…
Relationship‐based practice and reflective practice
The renewed interest in relationship‐based practice can be understood in the child care social work context as a response to the call to re‐focus practice in this field. Relationship‐based practice challenges the prevailing trends which emphasize reductionist understandings of human behaviour and narrowly conceived bureaucratic responses to complex problems. In so doing practitioners engaged in relationship‐based practice need to be able to cope …
Reflective Practice in Contemporary Child-care Social Work
In recent years, there has been growing interest in reflective practice as an approach that acknowledges the complexity and uncertainty inherent in contemporary social work practice. Whilst attention has been paid to how reflective practice is defined and understood, less consideration has been given to the conditions that facilitate its development. Drawing on recent doctoral research, this paper suggests that a particular type of reflective pra…
Thoughtful’ practice
Since the publication of Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbé there have been a number of insightful and thoughtful papers into the professional context and circumstances that surrounded this tragedy. Those papers highlight the insufficient thought given to the psychosocial dimensions of Victoria’s situation, their impact on professional practice and the support needs of practitioners. This paper explores the tensions between ‘…
Identifying ‘the critical’ in a relationship-based model of reflection
This paper explores the critical potential of a relationship-based reflection model. The key psycho-dynamic and systemic concepts shaping the development of relationship-based practice and underpinning the reflection model are explored along with the contribution to the model that originates from Schon's work on reflective practice. The model is outlined and illustrated with a case example that highlights three key critical dimensions identified …
Child Protection Practice
Where Have All the Feelings Gone? Developing Reflective and Relationship-Based Management in Child-Care Social Work
The past five years have witnessed a growing recognition of the importance of management and leadership in the social work profession. The Social Work Task Force Report has underlined the need for ‘dedicated programmes of training and support for frontline social work managers’ and the Social Work Reform Board is tasked with taking this recommendation forward. Central to these developments is the question of how such ‘dedicated programmes’ are de…
The Boundaries of the Social Work Relationship Revisited
In all professional relationships, there are power imbalances and the potential for discrimination and exploitation. To safeguard against such violations, the concept of professional boundaries is advocated, yet the construction of these boundaries is presented as if it is rudimentary for everyone. Historically, the professional boundaries created within the field of social work have been influenced by other professions, most notably medicine. In…
Helping Children Is a Human Process
Research studies and inquiry reports in the UK have consistently highlighted children's wishes for social workers to demonstrate honesty, reliability and continuity in their relationships with them. Despite this awareness, social workers continue to struggle to exhibit these qualities. The literature on social workers' communication with children portrays it as a complex, partial and fragmented aspect of practice, with a lack of research that dir…
Making meaningful connections
Reports into incidents of child death and serious injury have highlighted consistently concern about the capacity of social workers to communicate skilfully with children. Drawing on data collected as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded UK‐wide research project exploring social workers' communicative practices with children, this paper explores how approaches informed by social pedagogy can assist social workers in connecting a…
Towards an International Consensus on a Research Agenda for Social Work Supervision
Supervision is currently of considerable interest in social work and is seen as a vital activity for meeting many professional demands: the continuing development of professional skills, practitioner well-being, the safeguarding of competent and ethical practice, and the oversight of casework. A recent UK review of evidence found that the empirical basis for supervision was relatively weak ( Carpenter et al., 2012) and evidential support for supe…
Thinking about Thinking after Munro
There has been a recurrent recognition in inquiry reports following high-profile deaths of children known to welfare services of shortcomings in social workers' analytical and assessment skills. There is an urgent need to explore what might help supervisors and practitioners ‘think about their thinking’. This paper draws on cognitive interviewing (CI) and examines its applicability/transferability to the professional domain of child-care social w…
Exploring Communication between Social Workers, Children and Young People
A key issue for the social work profession concerns the nature, quality and content of communicative encounters with children and families. This article introduces some findings from a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that took place across the UK between 2013 and 2015, which explored how social workers communicate with children in their everyday practice. The Talking and Listening to Children (TLC) project had th…
Building Trust with Children and Young People at Risk of Child Sexual Exploitation
Research with children and young people at risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has highlighted that professionals need to engage children in relationships of trust if they are to be most successful in enabling children to explore and address risky behaviours, situations and relationships. More needs to be understood about professional approaches to building such trusting relationships, particularly when children feel (often with good cause) t…
Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children
Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “inside…
From communication to co‐operation
Communicating and engaging with children is a foundational component of child care social work practice, but all too frequently, in the wake of serious incidents, it is the focus of criticism. Drawing on findings from a large‐scale ESRC‐funded research project conducted in the four U.K. nations, this paper explores, through a psychosocial analytic lens, how social workers anticipate, enact and reflect on their encounters with both children and th…
Emotional Labour in Social Workers’ Encounters with Children and Their Families
The ways in which social workers experience a range of emotions that are evoked in their professional relationships with children and families is an area that is little focused upon and yet the processes involved in their expression and management can have profound implications for all involved. Theoretically informed by sociological concepts and combining data from a two-year, UK four-nation, ESRC-funded research project, ‘Talking and Listening …
Containment
This article examines children's agency in their interactions with social workers during statutory encounters in a child protection context. It draws from a UK-wide ethnographic study. It finds that much of social workers' responses to children's agency in this context are best understood as a form of 'containment'. In doing so, it offers an original and significant contribution to the theoretical understanding of children's agency, as well as it…
Carbon-lite collaboration
In this article we present an example of psychosocial practice – a visual matrix – which attempted to address and embody carbon-lite research methods in the face of global heating. Combining virtual and face-to-face modes of presence and interaction generated insights as well as posing challenges. In the article we explore two ideas through a discussion of ‘interference’ and ‘inclusion/exclusion’. The article extends our understanding of the meth…
Risk, Vulnerability and Complexity
Transitional Safeguarding is emerging as a new concept in social work and social care, inviting us to reconsider the binary divides of existing adult and child safeguarding systems. These often fail to adequately meet the needs of young people, particularly those experiencing extra-familial risks and harm. Transitional Safeguarding acknowledges the ‘in-between’ position of young people in adolescence, relating both to their physical and psychosoc…
Creating the conditions for collective curiosity and containment
In this article, we share our reflections and insights from developing and facilitating small group reflective practice spaces over the last 3 years as part of a government-funded professional development programme for statutory children and families social work supervisors and their managers. Based on formal programme feedback and communication with facilitators and participants, there is clear evidence that participants have valued the space to…
Social work in a superdiverse society
Superdiversity is a rapidly expanding social phenomenon with major implications for social work practice. In this paper, we outline the key characteristics of superdiversity as it is currently understood and explore its implications for social work practice. Drawing on the seminal work of Richard Sennett we consider how his conceptual ideas about cooperation, as a vehicle for embracing difference through dialogue, can be translated into everyday …
‘I was detecting a kind of, a from the heart kind of dialogue’
The ESRC funded Innovate Project has explored how innovation is undertaken and experienced by professionals tasked with the responsibility of introducing new practice approaches in welfare provision for young people at risk of harm
Decolonising the peer review process
As an editorial team of three it has been a pleasure for us to navigate our way through this Special Issue on Decolonising Social Work Practice, Education and Research. From the outset the three of
‘We were persistently othering them out’
Background: The transition to adulthood may involve experiences of risk and harm – including, for some young people, abuse, violence or exploitation in peer and community contexts. In the UK, such extra-familial risks and harms have prompted safeguarding responses in policy and practice. However, safeguarding conceptualisations are significantly different for young people under 18 than for those over 18, leading to service and system gaps in tran…
Social Work Education and Practice (23 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Social Work (20 works) · Political science (18 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Engineering (10 works) · Social science (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works)