Why are home visits invisible from Statutory Guidance? and how does it affect social work

About this episode

This episode explores the invisibility of home visits in statutory guidance and its implications for social work practice.

Home visits are the main site where social work happens. And yet they are barely mentioned in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 or any version of Working Together before it. In this episode I'm exploring why this matters, what Harry Ferguson's research tells us about children being invisible on home visits, and why statutory invisibility leads to practice invisibility. I also wonder, in an increasingly virtual world, what happens to the home visit as a skill if we never name it as o...

People in this episode

Host: Vicki Shevlin

Topics covered

• home visits
• social work
• statutory guidance
• child safeguarding
• practice invisibility
• virtual social work

Keywords

• home visits
• social work
• statutory guidance
• child safeguarding
• Harry Ferguson
• practice invisibility
• virtual world

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Working Together to Safeguard Children, Working Together

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• There are so many ways to be a Social Worker · April 17, 2026 · 17 min
• Seeing the Invisible Child: Direct Work With Infants on Home Visits · April 1, 2026 · 17 min
• What Case Recording Feels Like From the Other Side · March 23, 2026 · 30 min
• Voice, Power and Practice with Jade Barnett, CEO of Power2Prevail · March 22, 2026 · 1h 4m