Safeguarding Young People - Essay Example

SAFEGUARDING YOUNG PEOPLE Introduction The world is changing and so are the people living in it. Everyday we are bombarded with news of new technology evolving, new cures for the ailing and progress and research in every field. Unfortunately the changing world has also given us a reason to fear for our safety. Since the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center, terrorism has become the ‘it’ word and our times have seen quite a few examples of terrorism already. The US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq has instilled fear of attack against all Muslim nations just because terrorism and Islam have time and again wrongly been used concurrently and many a times interchangeably. However the successes and concerns discussed above have all been on the Macro level. It is important that these successes and concerns be judged on an individual level too. At this microscopic level we can find out lesser issues of life and the little reasons happiness. Scoring a good grade on a term paper might be the source of happiness for a student while family pressures may be a distressing factor. This paper aims to discuss these micro level problems the youth face in that period from birth becoming young adults. Safeguarding “Today’s youth is tomorrow’s future”. This adage holds true since a children of today will inevitably become important people in the future. Protecting and looking after them is not only a duty of the parents but also of the whole society. Sometime in the future parents will expect their children to look after them, and the society would want that the children take care of the society’s values and beliefs too. ‘Safeguarding’ is the term that is used to describe the caring and protection the youth need against the various harms and risks they unknowingly face each day. (Safeguarding, Page 257) The example in Activity 1 (page 257) helps us to discover the concept and meaning of ‘Safeguarding’. In the example, Carl is described as an outgoing person who hangs out with his friends. He is abused at home so he goes out with some street friends who are of the wrong type and so he gets involved into wrong activities as well resulting in his grades at school to drop. Evaluating this scenario we can say that everybody near him is at a risk of getting hurt. Hanging out with the wrong type of friends may harm the whole society. Being irregular at school and a source of getting bullied also poses risk to the school environment and other students. However a social worker would describe as Carl being at the highest risk. Domestic abuse, bullying, lighting a fire and abusive language are the risks that Carl faces in his life. He might be kicked out of school and since his parents don’t care about him, and end up with his hooligan street friends stealing to live his life and if he gets caught someday, he will end up in prison. This is how easily a person’s life can be destroyed if they are not safeguarded. Therefore it is our binding duty to protect such innocent children and show them the correct path to the future. Problems Faced Children usually perceive their problems to be connected with the broad domains of school, family and friends. These are usually the domains through which the children get to interact with others and learn. Problem such as domestic abuse may lead to pervasive and persistent damage to health. Family and social relationships will inevitably decrease and the child will become anti-social. Getting bullied in school may hamper the education capability of a person and can downgrade the emotional and behavioural development. The child then might just want to hide his social presence and not participate at all in collective activities that are prompted by the society. (Safeguarding, Page 258, 259) (Young People and Welfare, Page 1) It is observed that when young people are able to rid themselves from situations of harm, they make them vulnerable to a different sort of harm that is usually more dangerous. A child, who runs away from home since his father abuses and hits him, might adopt a more passive yet dangerous profession like addiction, drugs, violence and or a similar criminal behaviour. (Safeguarding, Page 259) Safeguarding must be improved at this level. The parents should participate in the lives of the children and try to solve their children’s problems. One way to get the child to participate is by parents discussing their own problems with the children. This way the children would feel grownup (a belief that children think they are) and a part of the family making the child feel good to share his or her own problem. Changes in Emphasis of Safeguarding The next question that we need to answer is why all of a sudden ‘safeguarding children’ has become an issue? Since the 1960s after the battered babies syndrome of adults hurting babies as a result of social and psychological disturbances, the world has moved on to protect the children. Increased awareness among the society led to the evolution of the word ‘child protection’ from ‘child abuse’ in the 1980s. This shift in social well being of children shows a realization amongst the masses that legal action must be taken against the adults who harm their children. The increased focus on investigations resulted from a number of child death inquiries and the procedures and professional anxieties following them. The term ‘safeguarding’ that is now being used is just a synonym to others like child-abuse, child-protection but with a heightened sense of protectionism (Safeguarding, Page 260, 261,266). Publications and Government Policies on Safeguarding The government of UK has caught up this trend for increased legislations for the protection of children. A UK publication, Care Matters (2006) says that it wants lesser and lesser people to end up in their care as they want to help the children and the parents to understand the problems and resolve them as quickly as possible. Another publication, Every Child Matters (2005), tries to prevent youngsters to get involved in drugs and addiction. It looks to try to solve the problems before the children get involved in this disease. More importantly Childcare Act of 2006 introduced by the government guarantees a sure start for future generations. This specific act establishes a framework to support children’s development and learning from birth to five by imposing a duty on local authorities to improve the outcomes of young children by providing better joined up and accessible early childhood services through children’s centres. Also the Act places a duty on local authorities to secure – in partnership with the private and voluntary sector – sufficient childcare for all parents who choose to work or are in training in preparation for work and a duty to provide information and advice to parents on childcare and other services to support parents. (Safeguarding, Page 260) [1] [2] [3] Intervention from governmental agencies and social workers is really important. Activity 2 (page 262) tells that the agencies in place must improve information sharing to ensure that all local authorities have a list of children in their area, a list of services they have had contact with, and the contact details of relevant professionals. This way they can track the children and find out if they are facing problems that will lead to early intervention and solution to the issue. Strategies to Develop Practice The children in trouble are usually hesitant to contact the agencies to seek help from them. This point is also seconded by the enormity of the problem and the need for confidentiality as described in the last section. Also once the child grows up to the age of 15 and above, the child thinks that he/she can take care of himself/herself. The mental models of children of this age are ones who usually get into the worst type of risk namely from sexual exploitation, drug addiction and suicides. The children of this age debate that no once can understand the problem they are in and all efforts to solve these problems are in vain. (Safeguarding, Page 269, 270) (Young People and Welfare, Page 7) Developing practice to reinforce the concept of formal and informal help to such individuals is extremely important. One such practice that can be helpful to improve safeguarding is through advocacy. In this practice, the children are encouraged to express their own views. The practitioners propose that the children should be empowered to make their own decisions and not be bogged down by the adult dominated environment having control over them. This will help the children realize their potential and increase the creativity. This technique will not only give long awaited independence to the children, it will also help them evolve to better people through trial and error method. These children will be encouraged to ask for help informally (from people in the house) and formally (external agents and social workers). Confidentiality is the aim of the game here to build up the necessary trust between the problem parties. The important point to focus here is to create an environment conducive to participation of all parties in resolving the crisis. (Safeguarding, Page 271, 279, 280) (Young People and Welfare, Page 8) The second practice to help improve the level of safeguarding the children in trouble need is by increasing resilience and decreasing vulnerability in such individuals. High resilience can be found in those individuals who have had good attachment experience, affectionate ties with alternative caregivers, are more intelligence, have a positive self concept and have the capacity to make and sustain friendships. The practitioners encouraging this approach try to instill these sources of resilience in children from a very early age so that if by chance they get to face problematic situations, they can deal with them on their own. By teaching problem solving skills, increasing the self esteem, social inclusion and care at home can help these children attain such capability that would allow them to solve their problems rationally and in a more mature way. Activity 5 (page 283) involves Carl learning this approach and it shows how he has evolved to cope with his problems better. (Safeguarding, Page 281-284) Children respond to their problems both contextually and contingently. Contextual factors such as gender and the young people’s living situation and life experiences are central to the response to their problems. Various contingencies like the nature of the problems they face, the knowledge and perception of the role of formal agencies and the characteristics of their informal network also affect how they respond to certain problems. A lot of approaches may be used to improve the practice to safeguard young people but the focal point of all approaches must be to address these issues to help out the young ones in distress. (Young People and Welfare, Page 10) Conclusion Children are the future of tomorrow hence we must do all in our power to develop their skills and a good character. In effect what is the need of the hour is ‘safeguarding’ which broadly prepares and takes care of issues and problems of the children to achieve in all areas of their lives. To improve safeguarding further, the Governmental policies and legislations should become more childcare oriented which is extremely important to create mass awareness about the importance of this issue. Private and social workers and agencies should be motivated and given incentives to become genuinely involved in childcare. They should share information and communicate with other to make the identification of the problem quicker so that intervention can begin before things get out of hands for the victims. Steps must be taken to insure that parents and people responsible for ruining the lives of the children must pay for their neglect. Also individuals around the age of 15 to 18 needs more care compared to younger children since most damaging and life threatening issues like sexual exploitation, addiction and suicides occur between this age group. Monitoring the actions and responses at all times is the need. The parents and relatives must be encouraged to reveal any irregular activities or actions of their children so that childcare agencies may investigate the cause and find a solution at the earliest. Decisions to intervene and even encourage victims to come out in the open and talk about their problems are often complex and time consuming. Approaches like encouraging advocacy and empowering children to take their own decisions can have a positive impact on solving their problems. It is also observed that children who have faced domestic violence, lack of education and social isolation are more vulnerable to bad experiences in the future. It is important to promote education and awareness at all levels so that the children can grow resilience ability to ward off any bad incident that may happen to them in the future. The key to safeguarding young people is by educating them, as well as the adults to take care of the young so that the future may be bright and fulfilling. Works Cited 1. Care Matters (2006), Available at Read More