To What Extent Does the State Protect the Rights of Children - Essay Example

Running Head: CHILD PROTECTION Child Protection With reference to an issue within social welfare to what extent does, and should, the State protect individual's rights? A main discussion has recently emerged in the Britain about how policies and practices in relation to child protection amalgamate with and are supported by policies and practices that are apprehensive with family support and child welfare more generally. Increasingly it seems there is a great apprehension between the two and that this is posing major problems for policy makers, managers and practitioners in child welfare agencies. This discussion and how it is responded to will be the key issue for all concerned over the next few years. In many areas these current discussions are the most up-to-date effort to come to terms, in a policy and practice sense, with the concern of child abuse. For there is no hesitation that since its modern emergence as a social problem, child abuse has been subject to considerable media, public and political interest and discussion. It has been constructed as one of the major social problems of present times and perhaps the major priority for managers and practitioners in the child welfare field. Child protection work, by which we mean protection from risk of abuse, has become too centred on the occurrence or not of an abusive event and the likelihood of its recurrence. Here one has to consider two scenarios. First scenario is that in the former, policy and practice would be driven by an emphasis on partnership, participation, prevention, family support and a positive rethink of the purposes and uses of care. The main concern would be on helping parents and children in the community in a supportive way and would keep notions of policing, surveillance and coercive interventions to a minimum. In effect Part III and Section 17 of the Act would drive policy and practice. The other scenario was that it would be priorities about child protection which would control—in effect Part V and Section 47 in particular, and concerns about the threshold for state intervention based on ‘significant harm and the likelihood of significant harm’. In effect the central philosophy and principles of the Children Act have not been fully developed in day-to-day policy and practice. Not only are the family support aspirations and sections of the Act being implemented partially and not prioritised, but also the child protection system is overloaded and not coping with the increased demands made of it. While child protection is the dominating concern and this is framing child welfare more generally, increasingly it is felt that too many cases are being dragged into the child protection net and that as a consequence the few who might require such interventions are in danger of being missed. (Landsberg, 2001) Concerns about child protection have become all pervasive to the point where childcare and child welfare policies and priorities have been fundamentally re-ordered and re-fashioned in its guise. What we are currently witnessing is a major debate about whether and how policy and practice can be reframed so that it is consistent with the original intentions of the Children Act 1989. The official definition of the child abuse has been broadened considerably over the last twenty-five years and public and professional awareness has increased considerably. While we do not have a mandatory reporting system in the UK, health and welfare professionals will almost certainly be found morally and organisationally culpable if they do not report their concerns. As a consequence the number of referrals to social services departments has increased tremendously. While statistics on referrals are not routinely produced, it is suggested that nationally these are currently in excess of 160,000 a year. However, this broadening definition and growth in awareness and referrals has taken place in a context where there is considerable argument about the nature of child abuse and what we know about it. Child abuse is an increasingly contested area. As a result social workers and others have a clear responsibility not only to ensure that children do not suffer significant harm, but also that parental responsibility and family autonomy are not undermined. Various perspectives have a bearing on the way in which child protection legislation is ultimately framed and implemented. What is crucial, however, is the way in which a wide range of influential groups, including politicians, practitioners or academic researchers; espouses these perspectives and which, at any one time, becomes influential. What any of these individuals or groups believe, in respect, for example, of the role of the state, favour as an economic theory, or choose as a theory of social problems, are all of importance to the way in which child protection policy is shaped. Within the space of three decades, three major pieces of child protection legislation have been placed on the statute books in England and Wales. Each enshrined very different models of the requisite relationship between state, family and child, which reflect the broader political and social eras in which they were passed. In the context of policies towards children and their families, the main shifts have been from prevention through family support to children in need. Each of these variations on a theme provides examples of the uneasy relationship between (essentially selective) social work, and the changing social policy context. Section 17 of Part III of the 1989 Children Act (England and Wales) gives local authorities a general duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need by providing a range and level of services appropriate to their needs. (Landsberg, 2001) A child shall be taken to be in need if 1) One is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services 2) One’s health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him of such services, or 3) One is disabled. In addition, the Guidance for the Act, while stressing the intention that the definition of need is deliberately wide to reinforce the emphasis on preventative support and services to families, instructs local authorities that they are to ascertain the extent of need, and then make decisions about the priorities for service provision. The task of ascertaining need, which it is tempting to see as a key element of Conservative social policy, given its high profile in both the NHS Community Care Act as well as the Children Act, had by no means proved unproblematic for local authorities, or necessarily been undertaken in the most imaginative or proactive way. The methodological options facing local authorities in a way reflect the two alternative approaches to child protection in the community of working with children on an individual or on a group basis; having defined their situation on the basis respectively of an individualistic or a structural analysis. There are considerable differences between an approach based essentially on the calculation of a sum total of need individually assessed and one based on predetermined groups of children in need, identified through the collection of geographic and demographic data from a variety of agencies. Perhaps predictably, the most popular method of ascertaining need was by a combination of referral and predetermined group membership; only 4 of the 82 local authorities based their calculations exclusively on group membership. The concept of a referral is a reassuringly familiar one, common to earlier legislation, whereas that of group membership is new and potentially more complex, and might be thought to reduce discretion in favour of a more rights-oriented and less stigmatising approach. It may seem strange to suggest that policy aims in relation to child protection are not clear. The Children Act 1989 provides the legal framework for intervention, which is interpreted through detailed State guidance. The national guidance is enforced through local authorities’ own procedural manuals. Further, a national framework for State inspection is in place, under which local performance is periodically evaluated against standard criteria. The objectives of the child protection procedures, the goals that they are intended to reach, are not formulated in a detailed way. State guidance merely tells that the procedures are designed to promote decisive action when necessary to protect children from abuse or neglect, combined with reasonable opportunities for parents, the children themselves and others to present their point of view. Presently the motivation for change is coming from a number of directions in Britain. In the Britain the call for change has come most publicly from politicians, researchers and economists. The Audit Commission report (1994) promoted the notion that more family support activities and facilities should be developed and offered to families who are presently being put in the child protection system but who might better be defined as families in need. (Gornick, 2003) They placed the value of the change within an economic context relating it to the costs of services. Bibliography Gornick C. Janet, Meyers K. Marcia; (2003). Public or Private Responsibility? Early Childhood Education and Care, Inequality and the Welfare State, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Vol. 34. Landsberg Gerald, Wattam Corrine; 2001Differing Approaches to Combating Child Abuse: United States vs. United Kingdom, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 55. Read More