Writing the right profile
A social worker describes her experiences of writing children’s profiles.
“Trying to condense a child’s complicated situation into a small number of words is very difficult, with many factors to consider. We don’t want to be too vague, particularly as people can try and second-guess what lies behind the words, but at the same time we may not yet have the certainty of, for example, a definite medical diagnosis. Confidentiality is also important – for the child’s sake but also for any relative who might read the profile. Therefore, we do need to be careful what we put down in print.
When I wrote the first profile for James (not his real name), I wanted to convey that he was a happy little soul with special needs. The difficulty I faced was that he was too young to have a precise assessment. I thought I’d got his developmental uncertainty across, but a lot of families still enquired in the hope he would ‘recover’, that nurturing would bring him up to the same level as other children. But that’s not going to happen with James, and sadly, none of the enquiries went any further. It became clear that ‘special needs’ can mean a lot of things to different people.
It’s much better when a child has a definite diagnosis, so people can then go away and decide whether they could care for him or her. For example, when I featured a child with a sight problem, I was able to state it briefly in the profile and then explain the situation in more detail to families on the phone. The family who eventually adopted him went away and did their homework, and once they had researched the condition and felt it was something they could manage, they came back to me.
What happens at Be My Parent?
After social workers have sent in profiles to be featured in the paper, these are typed up and edited by Be My Parent staff to fit in with our house style and to reflect social work good practice.
The revised profiles are then checked by experienced social workers to ensure that all the issues relevant to a child are appropriately represented in the profile. It’s a matter of judgement and they will often contact the child’s social worker to discuss a particular point.
The social worker is then sent a draft of the profile for final agreement.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in January 2005.
This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.
Last updated: 10 September 07
