Safeguarding Children against Abuse and Neglect - Coursework Example

Safeguarding Children against Abuse and Neglect Introduction Every child has a right to be loved and given sufficient care by all persons responsible; parents and guardians. It is unfortunate that there are children still existing in deplorable conditions that render them particularly vulnerable. We still have thousands of children scavenging on the streets for life, others have become orphan as a result of war and many others have found themselves in prostitution due to circumstances. Something must be done for these children to know what normal life looks like, feel safe and cared for. Thousands of children are in dire need for our protection. Shockingly statistics by the UNCF indicates that approximately 80% of child abuse in the UK is instigated by own biological parents. At least a child is dying on a weekly basis due to cruelty from adults while thousands are enduring not only abuse but also neglect. It will be noted that this is just a fraction of the problem as majority of the cases are not reported (Fraser, 2008). In this paper I will be discussing how increased awareness of child abuse among professionals and within the wider society could help protect children and young people. While safeguarding is the business of everyone, statistics has indicated that majority of the abuse cases are perpetrated persons who are well known and trusted by the children. More unfortunate is the fact that cases of actual child abuse are often known about by other adults who could acted and prevented occurrence. Today, statistics shows that there are over 30,000 children in UK are currently registered for child protection against abuse and 600 more are added on the registers on a weekly basis. At least a child in every ten has suffered abuse or at least some serious neglect. According to the NSPCC, child abuse is costing approximately £1billion in terms of statutory and voluntary organisations. By definition, child abuse encompasses omission of care, mistreatment & neglect and the abuse could either be either intended or unintended. It usually is caused by adults and may be as a result of behaviour pattern or sometimes just one off (Walker, 2013). Legal Framework and Implications to Chid Protection. Major policy legislation on safeguarding the welfare of children was realized through the Children Act of 1989. This act placed the duty of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the United Kingdom to the courts of law, parents, local authorities and many other agencies working with children (Fraser, 2008). The act is based on the notion that the best care for children can be given while within their families but also has provisions for those events where parents, guardians and families fail to co-operate with statutes. In the spirit of the act, any child’s welfare should be held as paramount by courts as any delay due to system processes will impact child welfare negatively. Courts should thus consider wishes of children, their needs in terms of education, physical and emotional health as well as background, sex and age. While acting within their powers, courts should also consider likely effects of change on children, severity of harm suffered or likely to be suffered as well as parental ability of meeting children’s needs (Morrison, 2010). According to the act, parental responsibility encompasses all rights, responsibilities, duties and authority that in the eye of the law parents have in relation to their children and property. Where the parents are married there is shared parental responsibility while in an event the parents are not married is not automatic the father assumes responsibility. Any father not married to his child’s mother can only apply for responsibility through courts or a mutual agreement with the mother or child. There are also provisions for responsibility by more persons and the persons can act individually when making decisions regarding the child and where children do not has the care of parents then guardians can be appointed (Sharland, 2006). Under section 8 of the Act, courts are permitted to make different orders depending on the situation. A Contact Order for instance has requirements for persons residing with the children to permit contact with other persons. The Prohibited Steps Order on the other hand bars any parent from taking full responsibility of the child where there is not court consent while the Residence Order defines whom the child should live with. Depending on circumstances, courts can issue a Family Assistance Order requiring local authorities or probation officers to offer advice, help and befriend any of the persons named in the order. Local authorities on their part also have a duty in safeguarding and promoting child welfare under the act especially where assessment finds children to be in need. Any child can be considered to be in need if disable, less likely to achieve quality health services and development without services of authorities. It is the duty of local authorities to provide or facilitate the provision of services for such children. All children in need, fewer than five years and not in school must receive day care service offered by local authorities. Section of 20 in fact requires that local authorities offer accommodation for those children in need and who have no persons taking parental responsibility. This can also extend to children with parental care but who are still at a considerable risk (Parton, 2011). In Scotland the stage for legislation on welfare of children was set by the Children (Scotland) Act of 1995. The act centres on the needs of both children and their families and outlines parental privileges’ and responsibilities on their children. The act also outlines powers and duties of public authorities in supporting children and families as well as intervening where required by any child’s welfare state. The act is anchored on a number of principles all of which place paramount the interest of children. Every child in Scotland is entitled to the treatment as an individual and any child has the right of expressing views on matter affecting him or her. Parents have the responsibility of upbringing their children and all children should be protected against abuse, neglect or any form of exploitation. Public authorities on the other hand are required to support and promote families in bringing up children and any interventions on children’s life by public authorities should be adequately justifiable and supported by the collaborative services of the relevant agencies. In the Children Act of 2004, the legal basis on how social services and other agencies should handle matters of child welfare are outlined. This is to ensure all persons involving in taking care children whether at home, in workplaces, school settings or any other locale are made aware of the manner in which to look after children in accordance with the law. In designing the Children Act 2004, a number of principles guiding support and care for children were considered. Firstly children should be allowed to be healthy, remain safe in any environment and ultimately enjoy their lives. All children should also be supported in their quest of succeeding, positively contributing to their own lives and achieving the best possible standards. The objective of the act is to have the government, social service agencies and healthcare providers work for common goals (Smith, 2008). Various structural changes have been put in place following the enactment of the Children Act 2004. Education and social services in all local authorities have since been merged under the director one director for children services. The act also calls for inter-Agency collaboration on issues of child welfare. Any agency aware of abuse, neglect or any other form of maltreatment is therefore required to make such information available to all other agencies of relevance. The act has also introduced co-operation between Children’s Trusts as well as children and their parents & teachers. The act also sets a fund to support eradication of poverty and financial problems for those children who are underprivileged or disadvantaged due to parental financial situations. The Children and Young Person Act of 2008 on its part extends the legal framework for child care in the states of England and Wales so as to ensure care is adequately supported, is of high standard and is relevant to their unique needs. it aims at improving stability in placements for children and young persons under care while at the same time improving their education. Professional Awareness. There are a number of statutes governing child protection and this renders midwives and other professionals fearful in the course of work. The Children Act of 1989 and the Children Act of 1995 (Scotland) are some the most important laws governing child protection. For England Wales there are two important documents summarising child protection. The Children Act of 2004 offers the legal framework on how social workers, medical personnel and other professional groups dealing with children should handle welfare. The documents set out the responsibilities of professionals in protecting children. Midwives are therefore encouraged to ensure familiarity with the publications regarding their responsibilities in protecting children. It is extremely crucial for midwives to be acquainted with common signs and symptoms that signal abuse in children as well as knowledge on the process involved in child protection. This awareness will go a long way in offsetting fears and apprehensions that surround the issue in the entire profession. Three major professional agencies are involved in protecting children. The first group involves health workers i.e. Midwives, nurses, medical doctors and health visitors. The other groups of professionals are the social and police officers (Fraser, 2008). Therefore in order for child protection to be effective, three must be constant communication between the three professional agencies as well as sharing in terms of best working practices. The responsibilities and duties of the various professional agencies as well as their collaborative roles have been clearly cut out in statutes and above mentioned publications. Midwives particularly play a very important role and as such need be so mindful when working with their sensitive clientele. The level of vulnerability among infants is greatly immense. They must depend on adults of or others and for survival; their needs must be met by these people. As part of awareness, midwives and other professionals must become well versed with the signs of abuse of children and respond not only sensitively but also swiftly. This will ensure that the information on symptoms of child abuse is share with other professionals in good time and therefore appropriate preventive interventions are taken to prevent the vulnerable children protected (Morrison, 2010). Alertness in the midwifery profession when it comes to signals of abuse is key to the discovery of risk and initiation of appropriate actions. Some of the symptoms that midwives must proactively look for include injuries and bruises than cannot be adequately explained by the children. They should also sense abuse if there are symptoms such as burns areas that are not usual as well as shakiness when child gives history. Inconsistency when a child is tasked to narrate his/her history and significant delays in seeking medical care are other important signs that signal the professionals to suspect abuse and neglect. Children who have been abused will also typically neglect basic things such personal hygiene and eating. Abuse of children can also detected at the point of seeking medical care when parents are found to fabricate illnesses in their babies or demand the their children are subjected to medical tests which in the eyes of professionals are unnecessary. It should also be treated as abuse where parents & guardians tend to have unrealistic expectations or undermine their children (Sharland, 2006). Awareness is particularly important and therefore all professional groups have to increase their knowledge base on child welfare issues (RCN, 2003). Social, workers, medical personal, teachers and others are required by the Children Act of 2004 to not only work in collaboration but also understand the legal framework guiding children services in order to effectively safeguard the welfare of children. Acquainting with legal requirements, statutes, policy, changes, responsibilities and symptoms of child abuse and neglect will ensure that safeguarding is properly effected (Glennie, 2006). Law enforcing agencies such as the courts, police and probation officers should also have enough information on child welfare so as to be able to act in the best interest of children. Delays occasioned by delays or lack of appropriate information could negatively impact on outcomes in terms of safeguarding and therefore professionals in law enforcement should act with the speed that supports the wellbeing of children. Another very important element of increasing awareness and which is contemplated by the Children Act of 2004 is sharing of information. Further to co-operating in discharging duties, agencies are required by the act to share any information that could help in the protection of children. An agency made of aware of a case of maltreatment for instance is supposed to make the information available to all other professional agencies whose services are relevant to the issue in order to increase synchronization and improve quality of safeguarding. With such efforts in place awareness among professionals will be tremendously increased and this would in turn serve to improve the welfare of not just the vulnerable but all the children. Increasing Community Awareness. There is consensus that safeguarding of children is best achieved when the children are in their communities. As such there are very many voluntary organisations and trustees in the UK working to safeguard and promote the welfare of vulnerable children and young people. The notion of ‘safeguarding is everyone’s business’ is also fast gaining popularity and therefore communities will play a major role in safeguarding children. Children and young persons exist in communities and abuse takes place just in these communities. The communities therefore have a role of identifying points and cases of child abuse as well as reporting the same to the relevant authorities for immediate action. Communities can also safeguard the welfare of children by taking care of every child, co-operating with local authorities, voluntary organisations and trustees in terms of sharing information about child abuse so as to help protect it from escalating (Bell, 2004). Since children are free when they are in their communities, the communities should be able to collect information about the abusers and report them for action. Communities should also participate in awareness campaigns, monitor any cases of abuse and collaborate with professionals who work with children to not only increase awareness but also point out cases as well as the particular families or points where abuse is taking place. (Davies & Ward, 2010). For decades safeguarding of children in the UK has focussed on responsibilities of professionals and communication between the different agencies. Following mantra of ‘safeguarding is everyone’s business,’ it is evident there an increasingly growing shift of paradigm to early intervention strategies that involve the creation of preventive strategies like Children’s Centres and extended schools. The communities and entire society will therefore play a very important role in the safeguarding of children going go forward. It is now obvious that for child protection to be effective, we must look far beyond statutory and the various independent agencies that have been created solely for protection children. We need to increase awareness by looking broadly at the social structures in which abuse of children may start, manifest and thrive. This approach involves increasing awareness in the general public, in terms of the particular points of risk as we the symptoms of child abuse. The approach also requires that the society develops links to professionals in a wide range of child protection agencies that it has been the case hitherto (Holland, Tannock and Collicott, 2011). This approach of developing communities provides a platform for proactively engaging every community in the process of promoting the welfare of children in our society. This effectively extends responsibilities for safeguarding to go beyond the domains of professionals in social and healthcare (Walker, 2013). One benefit of such an approach will be ensuring that professionals are deployed to the communities after with necessary training, support and support that help them engage while doing their difficult work of protecting children. The kind of awareness created through such an approach will also enhance creation of policies and best practices that bring about inclusion in the various communities. This is just as important as incident-based practice for reporting and preventing abuse and neglect for children. There is no doubt that community based projects that included locals con begin to offer structures for the protection of young people. Taking safeguarding to the communities also has another advantage in that it provides an answer the need for using research that listens to local people to obtain crucial information on the specific points of child abuse in the community such as unsafe buildings. This approach has facilitated a change in focus to from the domains of professional work to the families themselves in trying to understand and prevent abuse of children (Smith, 2008). Interventional measures are now increasingly becoming focussed on the high risk families that actually are not any different from any other family that leaves in circumstances of disadvantage. Where one lives matters when it comes to health care services, crime and rates and accidents such structural inequalities play a role in heightening and inducing risk. The take home is that any efforts at protecting children from significant harm to their developmental health must fully take into account the various factors that come into play at the level of community. Effective safeguarding and tracking of issues surrounding parental neglect and ultimately abuse of children therefore will involve changing behaviour, attitude and circumstances in the public. Focus must then be directed to the social networks at the level of parents and at community level the social capital (Smith, 2008). Consensus in literature and research is that the high levels of child abuse are directly linked with a poor sense of identity in the communities. The Tilbury Safe Kids Project- an NSPCC initiative for community development campaigns for the promotion of child-friendly communities. In the project there is a clear commitment of both children and families in the identification of local needs as well as organising ways of meeting the same. It is a perfect case study of community involvement as indeed communities were engaged at all project stages. The project also went further to use results of an independent market research firm in terms of views of both children and parents in the local area as a starting point for dialogue with professionals. The findings were also shared with and used in community conferences and forums. It highlights the importance of awareness and brings out the notion that safeguarding is the business of everyone (Bell, 2004). A characteristic of the community approach is the bottom-up way of engaging with communities in the efforts of reinforcing networks for protecting child abuse. This creates adult networks for increasing appropriate reporting of child abuse and neglect. The bottom-up strategy is based on the fact that majority of children suffering abuse fail to effectively access protection as a result of their positions and location in the society that is exploitative. The objective therefore should be raising public awareness about the presence of child abuse in the communities as well as just how to report the issue when identified. Strategies for engaging the general public include, organised meetings, establishment of databases for local groups of persons working with the children and also allowing the communities nominate child protection advisers to different agencies. Through such approaches, adults are empowered and motivated to begin identifying risks and referring cases for professional attention (Wright, 2004). The Whole Community Approach is particularly important a platform for preventing and managing cases of abuse on children. Newpin program for instance provides education for parents who have children aged below five years and is very well developed in the UK. It encompasses both therapeutic and educational interventions through the parents of children themselves. The purposes of Newpin are twofold; first is enabling parents speak out in publicly regarding their experiences with issues of child protection so as to facilitate reframing of attitudes and reducing labelling in the communities and media (Bell, 2004). The second goal which is particularly important to parenting is increasing parental self-esteem which translates into good parenting. It is a very effective approach at safeguarding and can really impact the efforts positively and improve outcomes. Any issues of ethics that may be raised as a result of public disclosure will be effectively tackled at the agency level and more important is the aspect of serving the very interest of children. Conclusions. Safeguarding the welfare of children is the business of everyone in the society and therefore collaboration is what will yield better outcomes. Even with the many statutes and laws as well as well government guidance when it comes to protection of the welfare of children there still exists some significant rate of neglect and abuse in the UK. All children have a right to be taken care of, protected and provided for. It will not be practical therefore to leave the difficult job of projection in the hands of professionals and agencies. An important and growing reality is that increasing awareness will turn things around and deliver the welfare needed by children. Whereas it is increasingly becoming important for professionals in child protection domains to be acquainted with their roles, responsibilities and what is expected of them, there is also a need for increased communication between the different agencies as well as engaging the communities. Prevention strategies and interventions based in the communities are still in their stages of infancy and thus measuring their impact on the development of child protection services as well as on the different levels of risk reduction and protection in the long term is particularly difficult. However, literature and research findings content that there are a lot of good lessons that can be learnt from community level strategies by local policy makers. It is in the communities that children and their families reside and it is here that abuse & neglect actually takes place. Shifting the attention to the communities therefore offers inclusive models for professional practice from the perspective of community. The approach permits blending of professional service with research opportunities and availability of lots of information from the social capital in the communities. This creates the ground for collaboration that facilitates establishment of trust and therefore increasing reporting of abuse. Increasing knowledge of child abuse among professionals as well as an increased awareness within the wider society could be very helpful in protecting children and young people. References. 1. Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward. (2010). Safeguarding Children Across Services: Messages from Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 2. Elliott F, Frean A. (2008). Telling off other People’s Children is Everyone’s Duty, Says Cameron. The Times. Available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article33.8629.ece/ 3. HM Government. (2015). Working Together to Safeguard Children: A Guide to Inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the Welfare of Children. 4. Jan Horwath and Tony Morrison (2010). Effective Inter-Agency Collaboration to Safeguard Children: Rising to the Challenge Through Collective Development. Children and Youth Review; Vol 33 pp. 386-375 5. Jenny Fraser. (2008).Child Protection is everybody’s Business. The Royal College of Midwives. 6. Margaret Bell. (2004). Child Protection at the Community Level. Child Abuse Review; Vol. 13: 363-367 7. Nigel Parton. (2011). Child Protection and Safeguarding in England: Chancing and Competing Conceptions of Risk and Their Implications for Social Work. British Journal of Social Work Vol 41, 854-875 8. Royal College of Nursing. (2003). Safeguarding Children and Young People-Every Nurses’ Responsibility. London: Royal College of Nursing. 9. Sally Holland., Stuart Tannock and Hayley Collicott. (2011). everybody’s Business? A Research Review of the Informal Safeguarding of Other People’s Children in the UK. Children and Society; Vol. 25, pp. 406-416. 10. Sara Glennie. (2007). Developing Interprofessional Relationships: Tapping the Potential of Inter-Agency Training. Child Abuse Review Vol. 16: 171-183 11. Sarah Wright. (2004). Child Protection in the Community: A Community Approach. Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 384-398. 12. Sharland, E. (2006). Young People, Risk taking and Risk Making: Some Thoughts for Social Work. British Journal of Social Work, 36 (2), pp. 247-265 13. Steven Walker. (2013). Safeguarding Children and Young People 14. Smith, R. (2008). From Child Protection to Child Safety: Locating Risk Assessment in the Changing Landscape, in M. C. Calder (ed). Contemporary Risk Assessment in Safeguarding Children, Lyme Regis, Russell House 15. Tony Morrison. (2010). The Strategic Leadership of Complex Practice: Opportunities and Challenges. Child Abuse ReviewVol.19:312-329 Read More