There has been much criticism of the refocusing initiative.
Littlechild (1998) argued that refocusing ignored problems associated
with colluding with parents and failing to focus on risks to the
child. Parton (1997) suggested that the failure to understand the
nature and purpose of ‘risk’ in social work discourse left refocusing
likely to fail as workers would still have to assess and manage risk,
without guidance on how this should be done. Spratt (2000, 2001)
found that a significant proportion of cases could be redesignated
as ‘family support’, but that redesignating the statutory basis for a
case did not stop the worker from having to manage the tension
between supporting families and evaluating risks. This tension
remains regardless of whether a case is labelled ‘child protection’
or ‘family support’. The key point according to Spratt is that
refocusing argued for ‘less’ child protection but it did not address
the complexities involved in discussing concerns about abuse or neglect with parents. How this should be done has largely been
left to social work practitioners dealing with these challenging
situations.