Serious in Safeguarding Children - Case Study Example

Discussion of Serious Case Review, Case Number 14 Safeguarding children, providing them with proper education, both academic and moral, as well as letting them thrive in an environment which moulds them into responsible and productive members of society has been some of the aims of child protection services (Munro, 2011, p.10). Such actions entail that children from high-risk families are attended to, and check if they are properly nourished and treated well by their parents or carers. While many would assume that if children become injured at home, it is the parents’ or carer’s fault such things happened, it would also be that such events occurred because these guardians themselves were mentally-incapacitated to provide comfort and support to the children (Lyons-Ruth, et al., 2004, p.70). In this regard other agencies could have mitigated the effects of the debilitation of the parents or caregivers of children, by having them assess the capability of these adults to provide care and support (Phillips, 1997, p.609). Most often agencies such as social welfare, schools, health practitioners and other authorities are able to give provide the necessary assistance to children in high-risk families or neighbourhoods, and the help are able to give positive results, especially when the children in question are provided with proper medical attention as well as psychiatric counselling (Faver, et al., 1999, p.90). However, there are also times when these same agencies are unable to work together in solving cases of child maltreatment or neglect, especially when the parents or guardians involved are rather resistant to any outside help, which could result to the children getting injured or even ending up dead (Rzepnicki & Johnson, 2005, p.393; Wulczyn, et al., 2010, p.5). Such events are likely to be the result of the miscommunications or the lack of correspondence among agencies, as well as not understanding how the interrelationships between welfare agencies could prevent occurrences of children getting injured inside the home. Such a case has been documented by the Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board, when a child in a rather problematic family died due to onset of infections that were attributed to lack of proper nourishment, among other things (Radford, 2010, p.5). In hindsight, the problem could have been alleviated if the agencies which were attending the family were much more proactive in truly finding out the state of the family, as well as the ability of the mother and the partner adult to care for the children. However, the communication gaps between the family members, the children’s school’s medical staff, social workers, the family’s general practitioner, as well as some members of the police force were unable to build the clues that could have exposed the problems which the family was not showing to anyone (Radford, 2010. Thus the report aimed to create recommendations for all concerned units so as not to repeat another occurrence of such a tragic event in the future, and also to bridge gaps to all units that respond to social welfare problems, especially in relation to children. Discussions of the Serious Case Review The report mentioned major issues with regards to the process of handling situations where the welfare of children in high-risk families such as a family with a single parent or with divorced parents is unaccounted for. First issue is that the child’s mother was rather hostile and uncooperative with social welfare agencies, as well as the school’s medical staff with regards to the need for changes in the children’s eating habits (Radford, 2010, p.7). She was in a way showing signs of being psychologically unfit to take care of six children however, the degradation of her relationship with the public, as well as to her own children was never made known to the proper authorities and agencies, due to her reclusion from society in general. Second issue is that due to the lack of communication between the concerned agencies as well as some individuals which interacted with the family, the need to address the children’s malnourishment and whether home-schooling is a good option for them was never raised. Instead, most of the focus was shifted onto the mother, and her complaints against the advancement of social care in giving assessments to the needs of her children (Radford, 2010, p.7). Her abhorrence from any kind of professional help initiated an isolation from medical personnel and social workers, which further masked her debilitated mind-set. The third issue is that the combination of the mother being hesitant to get outside help, as well as a number of agencies tied to the issue but not tied together to solve it created further problems to the children, such as the issue of them developing an obsession with food and stealing some from their schoolmates (Radford, 2010, p.7). The actual death of one of the children and the discovery that the child’s siblings were also severely malnourished with other illnesses have been the turning point for this case and the mother as well as her partner adult were convicted of manslaughter (Radford, 2010, p.5). Based on a lineal approach with regards to the chain of events in the case in study, some problems that occurred early on might have prevented the death of the child. Many recommendations were enumerated in the executive summary of this serious case review, but can be summarized into a five-step plan: 1) identifying agencies that would be handling issues that pertain to securing the safety and welfare of children; 2) establishing connections between these agencies, as well as delineating their positions and functions in the welfare process; 3) forming the steps in identifying potential signs of child maltreatment, including a holistic assessment of the family; 4) upon completing assessments and submitting recommendations for high-risk families to concerned agencies, actions must be taken as a course of intervention for the at-risk families involved; and 5) creating and developing additional networks of support from the general public by producing literature concerning the upholding of the welfare of children and the family, as well as creating public awareness of the network of institutions that are dedicated in the handling of domestic problems such as child abuse or neglect (Radford, 2010). The five-step plan not only serves to decrease the occurrences of child maltreatment, but also gives the public an assurance that in terms of handling domestic problems like these, there are agencies that could provide assistance to anyone in need (Radford, 2010, p.16). The five-step plan was formulated in this report to condense the 18 recommendations enumerated in the serious case review, as a summary of some recommendations with similar agenda. The case file was able to analyse the problem linearly, utilising hindsight bias in the strong possibility that it was a preventable case (Radford, 2010, p.11). While it is true that the problem was indeed preventable, other factors added to the compounding of the problem and its escalation such as the lack of communication among agencies that work on social welfare cases, reluctance of concerned people to act on the evidences, the lack of initiatives from agencies to conduct follow-ups with regards to the welfare assessment of the children and their home, agencies such as the school medical staff and police conducting safe checks not taking into account the behavioural changes observed in the mother, not maintaining professional responsibility in the case of the general practitioner, and school medical staff unable to assess the change in health of the last sibling that stayed in school (Radford, 2010). The executive summary of the case file was able to show some highlights of the need to create a better system that addresses child maltreatment or neglect. While the lineal approach in identifying and discussing the problems as well as the possible results for each one was able to help find areas of concern, the use of a systems approach in constructing the case study was also beneficial due to the fact that people in general are open systems that are able to interact to their environment and the society as a whole (Wulczyn, et al., 2010, p.6). This is exemplified by the need for all agencies to work together in the prevention of child maltreatment, for the vigilance of people outside the family unit such as neighbours or close friends to take the first step in solving the problem, as well as for families to reach out to others should they need any form of assistance (Bromfield & Higgins, 2005, p.39). The serious case review was also able to mention which agencies and individuals have the important tasks of identifying signs of child abuse, as well as identifying errors in actions as well as possible solutions to these errors (Radford, 2010). Also, the most relevant part of the report is that it emphasized the need for agencies to work and cooperate, and not functioning independently from one another. It was mentioned that the mother in the case study was unable to open up complete information to all agencies of concern, namely the school medical personnel, the social services, social psychologists, the police and even the medical staff that arrived when she called for an ambulance (Radford, 2010). Because her case was treated independently by each agency, instead of seeing that the children were having problems, much more focus was given on the mother’s actions, which may not directly show how the children were faring inside the house and being isolated from public view. Instead of approaching the problem in a multidisciplinary fashion, sole accountability for the children’s welfare became the mother and her partner’s burden, which is unfair in certain aspects given her issue of being mentally-unstable to care for her children. Thus it was given emphasis in the report that aside from relying only from a single agency to assess the state of the family, there must also be others that are capable of doing so in order to corroborate the assessments done singly like say, social workers from child services. Corroborations of Other Reports with the Serious Case File Other reports with regards to strengthening child welfare also agree that a multidisciplinary approach as well as open communication among concerned agencies must take place in order to succeed in an endeavour (Bragg, 2003, p.61). Due to the strong impact of domestic violence and abuse on children especially those with a younger age, on whether they experience it or even from just seeing it happen, it would take a lot of effort from authorities to intervene as well as to alleviate its effects on children, (Munro, 2011, p.9; Osofsky, 1999, p.34). Unfortunately, the abused parties are mostly unable to stand up for themselves, mainly due to guilt, shame, or even fear of their abuser, rendering them helpless and avoiding further assistance from authorities (Holt, et al., 2008). The impairment of initiatives from the abused parties is a silent call for help that agencies and local authorities to take action in preventing and halting maltreatment of any form within the domestic settings, and by doing so the cycle of violence in the succeeding generations could be stopped as well, if not minimised greatly (Pearson, et al., 2006, p. 31). Because of this, the positive effects of the results of inter-agency collaborations against child abuse or domestic violence must be emphasized to all members for them to have an idea on the importance of their duties. If agencies working with social welfare were given motivations in their work, as well as giving them an idea on how their work impacts future generations, child abuse and neglect as well as other forms of domestic violence can be prevented from occurring. This would empower members of agencies in helping others, especially in rebuilding the lives of maltreated children (Carter & Bannon, 2002, p.514). Conclusions The effects of domestic violence and child abuse on children have been documented in many publications, which gave rise to the importance of establishing child welfare services to mitigate the effects of abuse. While the agencies which deal with such cases are able to function independently, there has been an increasing relevance in employing a multidisciplinary approaches, or systemic approaches with regards to the handling of such cases. The failure of communication of people that observe the symptoms of child maltreatment properly and clearly with other authorities such as schools, police forces and medical personnel not only perpetuates the abuse, but also prolongs the suffering of the children, which could in turn affect their psychosocial functioning and wellbeing. Thus if the parents or guardians of these children were already determined to be unfit to take care of their children or provide their daily needs properly, it is up to welfare agencies to take action in preventing further damages to the children. The serious case review discussed in this paper was able to discuss the importance of inter-agency relations, especially with regards to the upholding of the laws with regards to safeguarding the children, with emphasis on those belonging to high-risk groups such as children from impoverished or single-parent homes. It was explained in the paper that the escalation of problems from simple problems with regards to food provision in the home to behavioural and health changes in the family members, to the isolation of the mother and her family from public and ultimately the death of her child due to malnutrition might have been preventable if there were both initiatives from the people that had a chance to directly observe the members of the family and assess the presence of some problems, as well as the miscommunication or lack of communication between agencies in terms of their assessments of the mother and her children. Upon analysis of the situations, three interlocking problems were evident in the case study, which were the presence of a hostile and resistant parent towards assistance from local authorities and social welfare, the lack of inter-agency communications among the agencies involved in the case, and the effects of the prolonged child abuse and neglect within the home, which ultimately ended in the death of one child and the hospitalisation of the rest of the family. The problem was approached in a lineal fashion and that it was possible to create a chain of events that lead to the death of a child, but is was also possible to solve the problem systematically by accepting the idea that apart from the proximate environment such as the home, other parts of the environment such as neighbours and local authorities can also affect the outcome of the problem, whether positive or negative. Other recommendations from outside sources also suggested that much more positive effects can be observed if agencies were to work hand in hand when dealing with issues such as child maltreatment or neglect, as well as custody. Thus, it is concluded that by allowing agencies and other concerned citizens to participate in safeguarding the welfare of children especially in high-risk families, as well as putting emphasis on the importance of doing such work for future generations, abuse and neglect can be prevented from affecting the minds of children, as well as ensuring that they would grow up to be responsible and productive adults that would break the cycle of violence. Bibliography Bragg, H., 2003. Child protection in families experiencing domestic violence, Washington, DC: Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, US Department of Health and Human Services. Bromfield, L. & Higgins, D., 2005. Chronic and isolated maltreatment in a child protection sample. Family Matters, Volume 70, pp. 38-45. Carter, Y. & Bannon, M., 2002. Viewpoint 2 - GPs and child protection: time to grasp the nettle. The British Journal of General Practice, Issue June, p. 514. Faver, C., Crawford, S. & Combs-Orme, T., 1999. Services for child maltreatment: challenges for research and practice. Children and Youth Services Review, 21(2), pp. 89-109. Holt, S., Buckley, H. & Whelan, S., 2008. The impact of exposure to domestic violence on children and young people: a review of the literature. Child Abuse & Neglect, Volume 32, pp. 797-810. Lyons-Ruth, K. et al., 2004. Hostile-helpless relational models and disorganized attachment patterns between parents and their young children: review of research and implications for clinical work. In: L. Atkinson & S. Goldberg, eds. Attachment Issues in Psychopathology and Intervention. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 65-94. Munro, E., 2011. The Munro Review of Child Protection Interim Report: The Childs Journey, London: Community Care. Osofsky, J., 1999. The impact of violence on children. Domestic Violence and Children, 9(3), pp. 33-49. Pearson, C., Hester, M. & Harwin, N., 2006. Making an Impact - Children and Domestic Violence: A Reader. 2nd ed. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Phillips, J., 1997. Meeting the psychiatric needs of children in foster care. The Psychiatrist, Volume 21, pp. 609-611. Radford, J., 2010. Serious Case Review: Working Together to Safeguard Children In respect of the Death of a Child, Case Number 14, Birmingham: Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board. Rzepnicki, T. & Johnson, P., 2005. Examining decision errors in child protection: A new application of root cause analysis. Children and Youth Services Review, 27(4), pp. 393-407. Wulczyn, F. et al., 2010. Adapting a systems approach to child protection: key concepts and considerations, New York, NY: UNICEF. Read More