Child Protection and Risk Assessment - Essay Example

Child Protection and Risk Assessment Introduction In practice, if not in theory, risk assessment has always been a component of child protection since its early beginnings. The study and substantiation of child protection, neglect and abuse have been, historically, the first moves in a process meant to measure the probability of future child protection, and to develop protective measures when required (Williams, 2013:21). The evaluation of the potential for future child protection has always been the catalyst for case management and case planning. Among other things, the proof of past or present child protection was presupposed to show more potential for future child protection and was, consequently, the main reason for child welfare intervention (Bandele, 2009:34). Common logic indicated that if parents had maltreated their children recently, the children were at enough high risk of more harm that society should step in and protect them. Examination and substantiation comprised goals that were comparable to those in modern safety evaluations. Post-substantiation evaluations comprised measuring the probability of future grave harm, which is the main goal of formal risk evaluation models employed today. Discussion In spite of the fact that historically, risk assessment operations for travelling families were less define than most of today’s model, they were, nevertheless, risk evaluation operations that were vital to case management and case planning in child welfare services in many developed countries (Williams, 2013:25). Despite the best efforts of child welfare employees, however, the demerits of risk evaluation were obvious in both theory and practice. The undefined and relatively informal feature of these evaluations encouraged mistakes and bias (Laird, 2013:56). The lack of thorough pre-service and in-service indoctrination on child risk assessment inspired irregular and often insufficient direct practice. Therefore, since child abuse was such a complicated and diverse aspect, it was agreed that professionals should not depend only on proof of past management the justification for subsequent case actions. These and other factors led to calls for increasingly accurate and accountable policies to identify and evaluate child risk in travelling families. Although formal child risk evaluation technology existed for a long time in other practice disciplines, it had not been officially employed in child protection and welfare. Its potential and appeal were its superficial potential to enhance the effectiveness and precision of case decisions to encourage permanence and safety for vulnerable, neglected and abused children by helping in the precise identification of children extremely vulnerable to harm. In the early 1980s, many US states started exploring risk evaluation in traveling families as a child welfare and protection practice technology (Lindon, 2008:24). By the end of the 1980s, numerous states had created and established formalised risk evaluation technologies in their child protection service systems. Wald and Woolverton published, in 1990, an article in the Child Welfare journal called “Risk Assessment: The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The article was very seminal and, since then, has been frequently cited and widely distributed in the child protection and welfare literature. In this article the writer presents and explains a wide range of methodological and conceptual challenges that threatened to inhibit the success of fledgling child protecting risk evaluation frameworks and technologies. While recognising that child risk evaluation had the ability to enhance child protection practice, scholars have warned that major developmental work was required before child risk evaluation technologies could realise this potential (Myers, 2012:39). In later years, formal child risk evaluation has become tightly sewn into the fabric of child protection practice. Most of the child protection services in the United States have implemented and institutionalised a kind of conventionalised child risk evaluation to address a myriad of case-specific and system-affiliated practice challenges. Unfortunately, research to support the consistency and validity of many frameworks is still little. In addition, the available literature continues to attract provocative and strange questions concerning all elements of child risk evaluation adoption and implementation. Child protection employees can continue making case decisions that have possibly harmful effects on families and children in particular, while trusting their decisions have been significantly improved by the child risk evaluation technologies implemented by their organisations. Most policymakers, professionals, and agency managers are aware of the gravity of the existing challenges or may not wholly comprehend their scope or nature (Parton, 2013:27). In addition, while individual scholars and practice jurisdictions have strived to refine and enhance child risk evaluation technologies, the child protection profession has yet to arrive at an agreement on a course of action to integrate the strongest as well as the most promising of these policies into practice, or to face the many remaining problems and challenges. To address both practice and policy challenges in child risk evaluation, the Centre for Child Welfare Policy of the North American Resource Centre for Child Welfare conducted a comprehensive risk evaluation program. This program comprised several parts. The first part was an extensive assessment and analysis of the studies on child risk evaluation in child protection (Rettstatt, 2014:46). The second part was a colloquy that lasted 2 days and which was attended by child risk evaluation system developers, researchers, child protection managers, academicians and direct service professionals to teach policymakers and professionals about current concerns and possible remedies, and propose recommendations to encourage and guide the creation of child risk evaluation policy and practice. This paper provides a comprehensive look into child protection and risk and in a comprehensible but critical manner. It is hoped that the information provided in this paper will help in the development, or more ideally, the redevelopment of national policies to stimulate better identification of children who need protection and to make sure that the most effective services to guarantee their safety and performance are delivered. When the phrase child protection services is employed in modern parlance, it often refers to a specific agency bearing that name in a public department of social amenities or a communal or tribal setting. That public agency’s responsibilities comprise receiving, analysing and studying child abuse and neglect reports from communities to determine whether or not they satisfied the criteria that define maltreatment spelled out in state laws and policies (Rose, 2010:73). Different states have different developments of child protection cases through the common system. State departments of social services often display the child protection services situated in a larger section of child protection services using organisational charts. This may also include residential care organisations for children, registration and monitoring of foster homes, services to the developmentally handicapped, adoption or emotionally unstable child protection services and foster care services and child protection services typically fit within a still wider department comprising different services to families and children, such as child support collections, cash assistance and job programs, child care, and youth programs (Rose, 2010:75). Reports of neglect or abuse that deserve investigation are often delegated to a child protection service staff member, who should make inferences concerning the validity of the charges, the accused identity, and the wellbeing of all the children in a facility. The child protection service employee also assesses the need for more agency monitoring of the family, the need to immediately welcome law enforcement bodies, the courts, or other organisations in the community, the need to remove the suspect or the child from the home (Sacannapieco and Connell-Carrick, 2005:49). The child protection service organisation may offer continuous casework services to manage the family conditions that caused the maltreatment, alter the conduct of parents and guarantee the child a decent level of safe discipline, nurturance and care, and connect the parents to services and resources that will enable them to care for their children (Sacannapieco and Connell-Carrick, 2005:51). Other community members and organisations also play vital roles in safeguarding children from neglect and abuse, and reacting to maltreatment as soon as it occurs (Sacannapieco and Connell-Carrick, 2005:54). Such broad community systems comprise the persons who report neglect and abuse, the emergency or hotline that receives and assesses reports, and the child protection services that examine those reports. Law enforcement agencies may take part in the process by collecting evidence and supporting them in deciding whether or not remove children from the home, and they pass criminal accusations against suspects when such accusations are deserved (Scott, 2014:33). Family and juvenile courts hear the charges of abuse and neglect levelled against families by child protective services agencies and police, and they decide if the circumstances make it necessary to initiate casework against the family, removing the accused from the home, or sending the child to live with relatives (Scott, 2014:35). The courts listen to the arguments of those who want to remove a child from a home at emergency hearings which parents are supposed to attend. The emergency hearings are held promptly- often within seventy-two hours. This is the arena for deliberating safe options to removal, including providing the family with services, sending the child to live with relatives, and removing the perpetrator from the home. Within two to three months, and adjudicatory trial is held to establish whether it is true that the child had been abused or neglected. A dispositional hearing held at a later date assigns legal responsibility or custody of the child to the government or the parents, and provides a plan for the rehabilitation of the parents as well as the protection of the child. In case the child stays in out-of-home care, occasional review hearings are held to make sure that there are efforts to provide the child with a new, stable or permanent home or to reunify the family (Stafford, 2012:26). In case reunification is impossible, the child protection services agency can propose that the court invalidate parental rights and ratify legal guardianship or an adoption arrangement. Both private and public child protection services determine and support substitute care facilities and resources for children who ought to be removed from their homes – homes of relatives, institutional or group care environments, foster homes, or emergency shelters, etc. In the event that children are not removed from their homes, the same organisations usually offer many difficult challenges face the United States’ system of reaction to child abuse and neglect. For example, almost three million reports of child abuse were made in 1994 – by concerned persons who took accepted the responsibility of making the reports and who expected that their actions would help the children. The allegations were supported by government authorities around a third of the time (Williams, 2013:39). The outcomes of some of the children were that their households received assistance. A conveniently smaller percentage of the children were removed from their homes to safeguard them while their families were accorded the opportunity to benefit from child protection services. The current system is more advanced in comparison to what existed even a decade ago, yet it still does not react effectively to all genuine community anxiety for children’s safety (Stafford, 2012:29). Of all the obstacles that agencies face in fashioning a reaction to abused and neglected children, two are conspicuous as most important. The first challenge relates to choosing that scenarios demand the official and usually involuntary participation of the child protection agency to protect the children. The second challenge concerns how to mobilise a community’s broader resources to effectively safeguard children and strengthen their households (Williams, 2013:72). Decision-making in child protection currently varies across states and local organisations. However, the criteria for recognising a case for evaluation or research generally require proof that a situation or incident that matches the government’s definition of child abuse has already happened (Williams, 2013:45). The result of the research is most often determined by whether or not the situation or incident can be proven, the suspect can be identified and the conditions satisfy some logical degree of gravity. Most agencies that create professional standards in the area of child protection concur that two vital ingredients should be available to validate child protection actions in the lives of households: a child needs protection, and the guardians or parents are reluctant to or unable to offer that protection (Williams, 2013:23). In addition, these agencies propose that child protection services cooperation with families should be founded on explicit proof that a child has been affected by abuse or neglect or that the possibility of harm is significant, and the risk of harm remains because of the conditions present in the home (Hanks and Stratton, 2007:19). Considering the intrusiveness of actions by child protection services, the cases belonging in child protection services should be those in which parents must take part involuntarily in actions that are meant to improve their ability to safeguard their children. In some situations, the parents accept voluntarily to be offered services, and so their ability and readiness to protect their children can be guaranteed by a less coercive method (Hanks and Stratton, 2007:25). If it were possible that family strengths and needs could be evaluated without the hostile process of a child protection service inquiry, more parents could voluntarily take part in proposed services because they would not need to first be branded as child abusers or neglecters. In practice, as observed earlier, cooperation with child protection services is usually required before households can gain access to the restricted services available (Featherstone and White, 2014:31). This watchman role occurs because most communities do not offer easily accessible services that are required by vulnerable households and children (Featherstone and White, 2014:36). The second major obstacle faced by the current mechanism of reaction to child neglect and abuse is that it is too concerned with one organisation – child protective services – which receives the community’s anxieties about child abuse and neglect. Public and private organisations in the community report child abuse and neglect, but rarely confront it themselves. The onus for reacting is left to the child protection services or the courts. Since they are government arms in most countries, child protection services are charged with offering a detailed and objective inquiry, a tailored professional reaction, and some guarantee that the household’s confidentiality will remain intact (Davies and Lebloch, 2013:43). These are genuine and vital roles, yet they have had the net impact of keeping the rest of the community somehow at bay. There is a desperate need to obtain additional resources from the community to cooperate with child protection services in safeguarding children. As recommended above, other community agencies can now serve, voluntarily, not all but a percentage of the households that to child protection services (Davies and Lebloch, 2013:49). In addition, unlike child protection services, concerned individuals and community organisations have chances to reach out to guardians and parents and prevent child maltreatment, or to act with supports as soon as issues arise. It is unfortunate that currently, few communities can provide supportive resources to take advantage of these opportunities. Society expects the child protection system to protect children from serious harm and that it will reach out successfully to all genuine community worries for the safety of children. The current system and resources are not meeting this expectation (Davies and Lebloch, 2013:53). In addition, it is the standard by which any newly developed community-based child protection system should be evaluated. The support and dedication of the public are vital to maintaining an effective reaction to child abuse and neglect (Cemlyn, 2006:154). In the seminal years of the history of child protection, worried organisations and persons stood behind a structured community reaction safeguard children. Currently, also, public support is required to create consensus required to intervene in household affairs, and to develop community and neighborhood contributions that protect children and improve parenting (Cemlyn, 2006:168). A government agency working in relative isolation should not think about being effective without the contribution of a good number of concerned citizens, public organisations, parents, community agencies, and other private agencies that work with children. Past experience indicates that the core of an enhanced system should be community collaboration for child protection that comprises private and public organisations, neighbours, and parents in a common goal to protect children from abuse, neglect and other forms of maltreatment (Connolly and Morris, 2012:23). If these entities share the onus now assigned to child protection services, which are stipulated by the government and nongovernmental organisations, such collaboration could serve as a vital compliment of the public child protection system framework by reaching out to families and children who are vulnerable, eliminating the isolation linked with child maltreatment, and facilitating the satisfaction of basic household needs (Cemlyn, 2006:171). The bottom line for any child protection system is that it guarantees protection for all children – not just for those who qualify into the system, but for all those who are vulnerable in the country’s communities. Conclusion From this discussion, it is clear that there are many dynamics involved in child protection, child risk assessment and implementation of policies associated with both concepts. Child protection and child risk in travelling families is a complex subject that requires more research to develop better approaches and solutions to current and future challenges. Governments should allocate more funds to research in child protection and risk in child protection and risk in travelling families and the impact on social workers (Williams, 2013:38). As evidenced in the discussion, a more holistic approach is also required to strengthen child protection services and make them a core element of child welfare in most countries around the world. Finally, governments and NGOs need to invest in awareness campaigns that target child protection services, families and the public to sensitise them on child protection, the areas of concern, and the best way forward. References Bandele, F. (2009) Chapter 2: The contribution of schools to safeguarding children, in: Hughes, L. & Owen, H. Good practice in safeguarding children, Working Effectively in Child Protection, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Cemlyn, S. (2006) Human Rights and Gypsies and Travellers: An Exploration of the Application of a Human Rights Perspective to Social Work with a Minority Community in Britain, British Journal of Social Work, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 153-173. Connolly, M. & Morris, K. (2012) Understanding child and family welfare: statutory responses to children at risk, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan. Davies, L. & Lebloch, E. (2013) Communicating with children and their families responding to need and protection, Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: McGraw-Hill Education, Open University Press. Featherstone, B. & White, S. (2014) Re-imagining child protection towards humane social work with families, Bristol, Policy Press. Hanks, H and Stratton, P. (2007) Chapter 5: common forms and consequences of child abuse, in: Wilson, K. and James, A. The child protection handbook, Edinburgh, Baillire Tindall. Laird, S. (2013) Child protection: managing conflict, hostility and aggression, Bristol, UK, Policy Press. Lindon, J. (2008) Chapter 2: Recognising abuse and neglect, in: Safeguarding children & young people: child protection 0-18 years, Abingdon, Hodder Education. Myers, J. (2012) Child maltreatment a collection of readings, Thousand Oaks, Calif., SAGE Publications. Parton, N. (2013) The politics of child protection: contemporary developments and future directions, New York, Wiley. Rettstatt, L. (2014) Protection, San Bernardino, California, Createspace. Rose, W. (2010) Chapter 2: The assessment framework, in: Horwath, J. (Ed.) The childs world: the comprehensive guide to assessing children in need, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Sacannapieco, M. and Connell-Carrick, K. (2005) Chapter 2: Theoretical overview of understand child maltreatment, in: Sacannapieco, M. and Connell-Carrick, K., Understanding child maltreatment: an ecological and developmental perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Scott, D. (2014) Understanding child neglect. Melbourne, Vic.: Australian Institute of Family Studies. Stafford, A. (2012) Child protection systems in the United Kingdom: a comparative analysis. London: Jessica Kingsley. Williams, C. (2013) Social work in Europe: race and ethnic relations, London, Routledge. Read More