Legislative Framework on Safeguarding Children - Essay Example

?The Current Legislative Framework Surrounding Child Protection, the Emerging Theories Surrounding the Reasons for Child Abuse and The Impact on the Child, and the Requirement of Multi-Agency Work Within the Context of a Pluralist Society. In the United Kingdom, the existing child protection legislative framework is afforded by the 1989 Children’s Act (Allen, 2005). The Act states that it is the responsibility of the local authorities to protect and support the welfare of any child within their jurisdiction. The local authorities are expected to review the needs of needy children in their region, encourage and support for children to be raised by their biological families if this is a possibility. Sometimes, issues of safety of the child arise, and thus they cannot be raised by their natural parents. In such cases, the children’s Act also made provision for children to be cared for by the local authorities (Great Britain: Department of Health, 2003). The Act goes as far as spelling out the various responsibilities that the local authorities will then have towards the children in their care. A revision of the Children’s Act, 1994, enhanced the Act by giving a legal basis for the program known as ‘Every Child Matters’, which is a government initiative (Baginsky, 2008). This review of the Children’s Act totally changed how the children’s services were formed and organised in the United Kingdom, and affected the formation of Children's Trusts. The basic policy guidance of the Children’s Act involves the non-statutory and statutory directions enclosed in the ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ program. This agenda, which was launched in 1999, and reviewed in the years 2006 and 2010, clarifies how individuals as well as children’s organisations should work jointly to protect children’s welfare according to the stipulations of the relevant legislation (Barlow and Scott, 2010). The new draft of the Children’s Act has three different documents which address: Working in concert to protect the rights of children: This is a draft that explains what actions children’s organisations are expected to take whether working alone or mutually with each other, in advancing the rights of children and protecting them Overseeing individual cases: This gives the outline for the evaluation of the cases of children in need as well as their families Statutory leadership in learning and development: This addresses the suggested arrangements for the review of Serious Cases of suspected child abuse (Corby, 2006). It also handles examinations of child deaths and other learning procedures that are directed by the Local Safeguarding Children Organisations. Emerging Theories on Child Abuse Many researchers have carried out numerous studies on the problem of child abuse in the past. These numerous researches have produced theories that seek to address the reason why child abuse takes place. The most recent of these theories are: The Social Learning Theory: This concept stresses the notion of the 'cycle of violence'. According to this premise, behaviour or human conduct is learned in two ways:  Either by a person being rewarded for his or her actions, which is also known as instrumental learning Or by a person watching and copying the behaviour of people around him or her A number of researchers presume that mistreated children learn to mistreat others through these two ways, and exhibit the same violent characteristics in adulthood. This sequence of learned aggression is usually identified as the intergenerational spread of violence or the ‘cycle of violence’. The extensive function of the theory of the cycle of violence, however, has been challenged. This is due to the fact that approximately 20-30% of victims of child abuse become abusers who regularly exhibit criminal behaviour in adulthood (Howe, 2005). Staged interventions that are carried out on the basis of the social learning theory usually have the aim of putting an end to all existing forms of abuse, as well as checking any child abuse in the future. Both the child and parent are taught the appropriate way to relate to each other within the family context (Scott and Ward, 2005). This concept conjectures that people who were abused as children are likely to mete out the same abuse in their adulthood. The Attachment Theory: This concept emphasises on the relationship between the parent and the child. It the parent is close to and feels emotionally connected to the child, and then the relationship between them is not likely to have any characteristics of abuse. If the relationship between the two is not close, on the other hand, it could have abusive qualities. This theory identifies four kinds of bonding that could take place between a parent and child; these are preoccupied, secure, fearful, and dismissive. All but one of these kinds of bonding could result in a child being abused by a parent. Attachment theorists consider that people’s behaviours are a result of how they were treated by their mothers or caregivers when they were younger. According to this theory, the kind of connection that grows between a parent and a child will eventually shape the child’s relations with other people. The four bonding models are: Secure:  The child that is securely attached to his or her parents usually feels free to explore his or her environment and is easily contented. Preoccupied:  Children whose caregivers appear to be preoccupied with other issues usually accept the comfort of strangers as well as their caregivers when they are looking to be reassured but are likely to resist yielding to any comfort from any of them. Dismissive: Children who are exposed to caregivers with dismissive characters exhibit mistrust of the caregiver, and are incapable of being comforted. Fearful:  Children who have fearful caregivers usually exhibit inconsistent behavioural patterns because they are unaware of which behaviours will be viewed positively by the caregiver (Parton, 2006). Secure attachment behaviours are believed to emerge when a child is exposed to a nurturing and consistent caregiver, while the self-doubting attachments are the consequence of unpredictable, abusive, and emotionally negligent caregivers. Numerous researchers have stated that almost 80% of ill-treated children and infants show patterns of insecure attachment (Parton, 2006). The Ecological Theory proposes that child neglect and abuse are a result of several parameters such as the family, the individual, the culture, and the overall community. The ecological theory states that child neglect and abuse can come from irregularities in any of these four factors. For families as well as people involved in child neglect and abuse, the level of influence by each of the four factors may vary considerably. A child that has been sexually assaulted may get good grades, be involved in many activities and with many friends, but detached from his or her family. In a different family, the child that is sexually assaulted may also be friendless, and detached from the overall community (Munro, 2002). If child mistreatment is the consequence of several factors from different systems, then in order to be efficient, programs have to tackle each aspect and system. The Family Systems Theory states that the actual reason for the abuse of children might not have anything to do with the family itself. For instance, where incestuous abuse is enacted where a father molests his daughter, the mother is the instigator of child abuse because her silence shows that she accedes to this arrangement. Both the ecological theory as well as the Family Systems theory centre on the deficiencies in the entire family structure when addressing issues to do with child abuse. The theory of Family systems, though, emphasises mainly on the family, and is a procedure of discovering problems as the outcomes of dysfunctional associations between family members. Critics of this theory, however, have voiced their concern with the inability of this theory to identify the authority of society and power in shaping human behaviour. Some critics feel that the argument about the assault victim’s and onlooker’s roles in sexual abuse may be overstated, and end up removing from the perpetrator all responsibility of his actions. The Self–Efficacy Theory: This theory seeks to emphasise that there are parents that feel that they cannot be good parents without resorting to spontaneous abuse. This theory is centred on how the individual qualities of the abused child and, particularly, the parent affect the functioning of the family. The Self-efficacy hypothesis is concerned with how a parent understands what parental efficiency is meant to be will affect their behaviour towards their offspring. A parent’s expectations will ultimately determine when and how they wish to achieve a given goal. This theory may assist in bridging a gap between human behaviour and knowledge. A breach between behaviour and knowledge becomes evident when, for example, parents understand that it is damaging to their offspring when they hit them in order to correct minor infractions, yet they are unable to find ways of implementing what they know. The Self-efficacy concept asserts that this behaviour-knowledge gap is because of the parents’ conviction that they cannot act in a way that would stop them from mistreating their children. The Self-efficacy theory is imperfect since it does not include a developmental viewpoint. The Resiliency Theory states that it is not all the adults who were abused as children that end up with disturbed personalities as a result of their earlier mistreatment. The extent of psychological damage that is suffered by child victims is determined by factors such as the association with the abuser, the cruelty of the abuse, the frequency of the mistreatment and the age at which it took place. Aspects that contribute to the healing of the emotional wounds that brought the trauma about such as parental affection, or social acceptance also determine if the formerly abused child will be an abuser himself or not. In the past, the research of child abuse was based on the fact that, predictably, the victim would be forever marked by the terrible abuse visited on them at a time when they were defenceless. However, numerous cases have shown that this is not always true. There are numerous people today, in places of power that have attained lofty goals in spite of having had traumatic childhoods. Resiliency does not clarify why child neglect and abuse take place; instead, it gives reasons why some children are not unalterably damaged by systematic abuse. It also seeks to explain ways in which the “cycle of violence” can be broken up. The requirement of multi-agency work within the context of a pluralist society Any community in which citizens can lawfully and publicly have many competing moral views on a variety of subjects, and are permitted to select for themselves what moral beliefs, if any, they desire to have, can be referred to as a ‘pluralistic society’. Pluralistic societies are normally mistaken to be societies that abide by different moral convictions or ethnicities of people and hold that all belief systems are equal. This latter description actually refers to ‘moral relativism’. There is a reason why, in the last century, only autonomous establishments have been able to survive. In reality, only the task centred organisations that delivers the expected results, and then outdoes itself, is likely to survive. This stalwart performance of such organisations calls for narrow concentration as well as a clear focus. Business establishments that have numerous objectives usually do not realise expectations that can be said to be remarkable. Making alterations within organisations to ensure that specialisation takes place will mean implementing a lot of changes. This is a considerable undertaking. The world is pluralistic by nature, and in a constant flux. The constant change that is today being experienced in workplaces, business establishments, and economies all point to the fact that change is an unending and dynamic reality. Learning to reflect in terms of procedures that unfurl over time is a progressively more important ability for practitioners as well as scholars. These change and expansion journeys both generate and are created by multifaceted and pluralistic factors. There is proof that businesses are constantly expanding in virtual as well as vertical connections, assimilating and gaining control over others that have different corporate cultures. Business establishments in the present global economy are also employing more specialised personnel, who form the fastest developing worker demographic worldwide, and interfacing in more aggressive international economies, while making use of the latest information technologies. The basic result of this trend is the emergence of pluralistic organisations in many areas of the world. In these pluralistic organisations, workers have to co-exist and cooperate with different legitimate strategies and intellectual models in the same business establishment, which, itself, are in the course of movement. In this pluralistic environment, workers are challenged to come to an understanding of how different, and equally dependent groups function in concert with each other as they co-evolve in their journeys through various changes. Change procedures are moderately simple, when they take place in integrated and consensual corporate settings. More taxing and practical in the modern world is the requirement for comprehending the journeys that co-workers jointly take in pluralistic settings. Incorporating cultural characteristics is a fact that can work towards the benefit of a pluralistic organisation. There are evidently different requirements as well as sub-cultures that are represented in the labour force of every pluralistic organisation. Decentralisation and diversity are the two factors that most reflect this quality; even though the distinct qualities can be turned to be integrated aspects that connect professional groups and people without needing them to be identical. In real pluralistic organisations, the corporate culture aligns the personnel along common language and common ground so that the corporation can keep operating and adapting efficiently. References Allen, N. (2005) Making sense of the Children’s Act 1989, John Wiley, Chichester. Baginsky, M. (2008) Safeguarding children and schools, Jessica Kingsley, London. Barlow, J. & Scott, J. (2010) Safeguarding in the 21st century: where to now, Research in Practice, Totnes. Corby, B. (2006) Child abuse: towards a knowledge base, Open University Press, Maidenhead. Great Britain: Department of Health. (2003) Keeping children safe : the government's response to the Victoria Climbie inquiry report and joint Chief Inspector's report Safeguarding children, The Stationery Office, London. Howe, D. (2005) Child abuse and neglect: attachment, development and intervention, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Munro, E. (2002) Effective child protection, SAGE, London. Parton, M. (2006) Safeguarding children: early intervention and surveillance in a late modern society, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Scott, J. & Ward, H. (2005) Safeguarding and promoting the well-being of children, families and communities, Jessica Kingsley, London. Read More