Needs and Rights Policy Themes in Children Contact Centres - Essay Example

College: Needs and Rights Policy Themes in Children Contact Centres The in question provides a range of contact services that meets the needs of children following parental separation. The institutes then develops an early intervention to promote child centred practices and positive cooperative parenting after parental separation or divorce. Many children and families experience distress after such separation or divorce hence our services enable separating families to acknowledge and focus on the best interest of their children in their post separation arrangements. In doing this we offer a child focused mediation services (Malcom, 2005). A social policy should thus provide a child centred model to enable the social workers working with families and children provide services without any difficult. This would also empower children to navigate through the family change using a holistic systematic approach Alcock et al.2007). The changing nature of family life and children demands that policies should be flexible to adapt to these changing circumstances. Needs and rights themes in policies are very important in relation to working with families and children. There is need for collective social response to address these issues. Needs and rights policy themes if well formulated can regulate how families and children in need of the social care can be assisted (Spicker 2008). In working with families I have realized that children are in dire need of achieving their rights and meeting their needs. This can only be done with a policy that focuses on the rights and needs of children in question (Barnett & Hustedt, 2005). In my engagement with the families and children, I found out that many children suffer from sexual abuse, physical abuse, serious willful neglect that affects them mentally. This includes failure to provide for them the necessities of life or where a child witnesses violence resulting in or having the potential to result to serious injury to a family member or even death. The child protection protocol states that such instances should be reported to the policy for investigation but have found out that in many instances these cases are not investigated and if investigated the government do not take any action (Dickens, 2010). There should be a policy to address these issues affecting children and families. The policy available does not address fully the issues that we experience at the contact centre. Many of the issues are tricky and hence demand a harmonious consideration of the issues and provide the necessary support but this can only be possible the social policy will be in place to addresses the needs and rights of the families and children involved. Most children need social support from other people to survive and this support with a well established framework will enable them to avoid stress. Social support should be the major theoretical framework of the policies that are formulated. For children at risk, accessible and positive social support can play a vital role in addressing their needs and rights (Barnett & Hustedt, 2005). Children and families we work with have needs and rights that are fundamental and if timely interventions are not taken, these rights and needs would not be realized. Working with families and children one realizes that in spite of the challenges that most of them go through, they have survived and are capable of leading a successful live. Therefore one of the needs and rights of the families and children undergoing difficulties should be entrenched in policies because their rights have to be protected despite the challenges. While working with children and families at the contact centre I realized that children in separated families have a higher chance of encountering many problems in life. For instance, most perform poorly in school, they are usually in need of medical attention and need help in most of other areas to ensure they attain their full potential. We work with parents to support them through the changes that separation brings and help them make right choices for their children. This has helped them to realize that family separation does not have to reduce children’s life chances. Working at contact centre with families and children needs sound decision making for one to be able to analyse the situation and be able to offer the required support to the children and the families. We ensure a focus on the children’s safety and wellbeing while encouraging engagement among them with their families (Dickens, 2010). Children have rights and needs that need to be taken care of this in the contact centre we determine these needs and rights of the children and families and try to assist where appropriate. We offer several services to these families for example; guidance to the parents and children, staying with children who are separated from their parents and who may be undergoing difficulties in life. We do this so as to enable these children and families live stress free lives like other people in the society. Through working with these groups of people, I have realized that many families have many needs that are unfulfilled and thus the rights of the children are infringed. Many of the families cannot even take their children to school due to poverty and these have affected the growth of the children. Needs and rights are crucial policy theme that the formulators of the social policy have to put into consideration. Although many policies do have guidelines as to how the needs and rights of the families that we deal with in social centres or the contact centre but they do not fully articulate all the rights of the children and what they need. For example, while working with families and children I realized that the children need family care to enable them grow well but since they do not get this through family problems most of them undergo stress in life( Spicker,2008). The Children, Young Persons and Families Act (1989) allows for flexibility when considering the appropriate response to meet the needs of children. This allows people working at contact centres to consider alternative ways of assisting children so that they can realize their needs and rights. In investigation of the child or family we have been finding out that there are concerns related to stress episodes that show that there is need for assistance and many of them if early intervention is not made the result into abuse (Malcom, 2005). Children need to stay safe and be healthy hence a policy that addresses these rights and needs of children and families would be welcome so as to make them make positive contribution to the society and improve their wellbeing. Working with children and families, we do provide individual or group work with children, provide parenting assessments, provide carer group and provide counseling and guidance services. We know that a family that one grows up with makes a great impact in the life of that child and hence we try as much as possible to provide care to the children to make them feel at home (Cree &Davis, 2007). We need a social policy that will include the needs and rights of children and families and identify the children at risk. More over, the social policy should be able to help them, formulated according to disparities among the children (Spicker, 2008). The policy should thus enhance the social wellbeing and encompass all areas of children needs and rights including physical and mental health, safety and security, social connectedness, economic or material standards among others. Strategic knowledge of the social policy development needs to have a cross sectored approach to take into account the complex relationships across social domains. It should adopt a child centred approach so as to enable social workers working with children and parents to assist those in need how to grow and live positively and have meaningful relationships with each other after parental separation (Malcom, 2005). References Adams , R 2002 Social policy for social work, Palgave, Basingtoke. Alcock,P Erskine,A 2007 The student's companion to social policy, Blackwell 2007. Bagdi, A., & Vacca, J. 2005 Supporting early childhood social-emotional well being: The building blocks for early learning and school success. Early Childhood Education Journal, 33(3), 145-150. Barnett, S, & Hustedt, J 2005 Head start's lasting benefits Infants and Young Children, 18, Journal 16-24. Barnett, W. 1992 Benefits of compensatory preschool education. Journal of Human Resources, 27, 279-312. Barnett, W 1993 New wine in old bottles: Increasing the coherence of early childhood care and education policy. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 8, 519-558. Cree, V. and Davis, A. (2007) social work: voices from the inside, Routledge, London. Danaher, P 1998, Beyond the Ferris wheel, CQU Press, Rockhampton. Dickens, J 2010 Social work and Social policy , Routledge ,London Digby, A The labour market and the continuity of social policy after 1834: the case of eastern counties Economic History Review, 2nd series 28 (1975): 69–83. Malcom, P 2005, Social Work Theory, Macmillan Palgrave, Basingdtoke Spicker, P 2008 Social policy: themes and approaches, Policy Press 2008. Read More