EVALUATING THE PARENTING COMPETENCE OF BLACK AND MINORITY ETHNIC PARENTS

Between 1980 and 2015, the population in the United Kingdom grew by 7.8 million. According to the office for national statistics, net migration into the United Kingdom was the main factor for this growth (Office for National Statistics, 2017). As new black and minority ethnic communities continue to emerge, the importance of issues of culture and ethnicity has increased. These demographic changes fuel debates about the reasons behind the over representation of black and minority ethnic children in child welfare and criminal justice statistics (Owen and Statham, 2009; Lammy, 2017). Thus, bringing to the fore questions about how social workers appraise the parenting practices of parents whose cultures vary markedly.

This study combines a phenomenological research philosophy with frame analysis to explore how culture and ethnicity is incorporated in evaluating the parenting practices of black and minority ethnic parents. The study highlights the complex and rich dimensions of culturally informed parenting scripts by critiquing how social workers and black and minority ethnic parents conceptualise parenting competence. It contributes to knowledge in this area by postulating that culture and ethnicity influence the parenting practices of black and minority ethnic parents, mainly by framing perceptions about identity. This causes them to socialise their children in ways that seek to affirm cultural and ethnic identity. The challenge for assessing social workers is in determining the extent to which black and minority ethnic parents’ beliefs and practices adversely impact on children’s outcomes. Conversely, culture and ethnicity interact with other ecological factors in dynamic, non-hierarchical and contextual ways to shape ideas about the competences and values that parents seek to promote.

The inherently repetitive research approach used for the study informed the choice of data collection and data management methods. In total, eighty participants took part in the study. Analysis of the findings showed that the salience of cultural parenting scripts was dependent on environmental aspects such as acculturation, economic factors and family support networks. This has implications for social work practice and child welfare policy in that interpretations of what constitutes ‘good’ parenting vary markedly, within and across cultures. There is, therefore, a need for policy and practice to clarify how culture and ethnicity should be appraised when evaluating the parenting competence of black and minority ethnic parents. This study proposes that the starting point is to understand how culture and ethnicity frame conceptualisations of parenting competence and seek to re-frame parenting practices that have negative impact on children’s outcomes.