Safeguarding in Social Work Practice

A Lifespan Approach

Charlotte Chisnell, Caroline Kelly

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781526470911
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Safeguarding is a serious and complex area of social work, and demonstrating an understanding of important theory, law, policy and skills for practice is essential and it is vital that this understanding extends across the lifespan. This book brings together common safeguarding themes and knowledge across social work with children, young people and adults to help do just that.

1 The Historical Development of Safeguarding and Protection Across the Lifespan

Achieving A Social Work Degree

This chapter will help you develop the following capabilities from the Professional Capabilities Framework (2018):

1. Professionalism
2. Values and ethics
3. Diversity and equality
4. Rights, justice and economic wellbeing
5. Knowledge
6. Critical reflection and analysis
7. Skills and interventions
8. Contexts and organisations

See Appendix 1 for the Professional Capabilities Framework fan and a description of the nine domains.

It will also introduce you to the following standards as set out in the Social Work Subject Benchmark Statement (2016):

• 5.2 Social work theory
• 5.3 Values and ethics
• 5.4 Service users and carers
• 5.5 The nature of social work practice

See Appendix 2 for a detailed description of these standards.

Introduction

Developments in safeguarding policy and reforms to social work practice have been influenced by high profile cases which have invariably highlighted deficiencies in protecting children and adults at risk of abuse. Situations where things have gone badly wrong have been drawn into sharp focus while the day to day successes where effective support and good outcomes for people are achieved go largely unnoticed. Developing an understanding of the historical and political context of safeguarding does, however, enable practitioners to analyse and learn from the lessons of the past. The history of responses to abuse is also important in terms of how this has impacted on current attitudes and norms within society and practice with people at risk. Identifying key developments in safeguarding children and adults also highlights how legal, policy and practice approaches have developed in separate ways and within different time frames. This knowledge is central in terms of starting to ask what has been different about the approaches, but also why such differences have occurred. Analysis of the differences also gives the opportunity to begin to question what the common features are and how these impact on work with people at risk across the lifespan. This chapter will look at the historical construction of child protection and how responses to child deaths and policy developments have led to the current system for safeguarding children. Historical responses to adults at risk in the UK will then be considered in the context of prevailing societal attitudes to marginalised groups. Themes emerging which are applicable to people at risk will then be reviewed.

Activity 1.1

As you read the chapter consider how the people in the case studies below are affected by the historical time that they live in and the prevailing responses to people at risk.

John

In 1971 John, a seven–year-old boy, was changing for a PE lesson at school when his teacher noticed that he had lots of different-coloured bruising on his abdomen and back. When his teacher asked him what had happened, John didn’t want to talk about it as the other children started laughing at him. His teacher persisted and he eventually said that he had fallen down the stairs at home. John’s teacher told him he would need to be more careful. He also wrote a note for John to give to his parents suggesting that he might need his sight checked.

Zena

In 1989 Zena, a 21-year-old woman with learning disabilities, was very upset at her day centre. When her keyworker spoke to her she said that Bob, another person attending the day centre, had followed her into the toilet and forced her to do things that hurt. Zena’s keyworker told the centre manager and when they spoke to Zena together, the details she gave them suggested that Bob had forced her to have sex. The centre manager met with a staff member from the residential home where Zena lived and they agreed that it was difficult to know exactly what happened, but Zena should move to another day centre as she was quite distressed now whenever she saw Bob. They talked to Zena after the meeting to tell her what was going to happen and asked her not to talk to other people about the incident as it was private.

Mary

In 2013 Mary, an 83-year-old woman with severe osteoarthritis, had a visit at home from her occupational therapist (OT). Mary became upset while they were talking and said that she was worried about money. Her son Alan sorted out household bills and shopping for her, but she was getting letters threatening to take her to court for unpaid bills. Mary looked extremely thin and there was no evidence of any food in the house, but she said Alan was her only relative and she would be distraught if she couldn’t see him. After discussing the situation, Mary agreed that her OT could make a safeguarding referral. Mary was reassured to hear that arrangements could be made for her bills to be paid without involving her son and that she could get help with her shopping.

The Historical Construction of Child Protection

Protection, prevention and safeguarding

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

(Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa)

The historical and social construction of child protection has undoubtedly been influenced by cultural and political factors, with policies often being driven as a reactive response to tragedy. Another factor which continues to influence social work practice is the complex interplay between a child’s rights, parental rights and responsibilities and the state’s duty to protect.

Safeguarding children, rights, responsibilities and the role of social work

What is the balance between a child’s fundamental right to be safe, parents’ right to raise their children and the state’s responsibility to protect a child’s best interests? This enduring tension between a family’s right to bring up their children without interference and the state’s responsibility to protect a child’s best interests has informed the development of policy and our understanding of abuse. Social work will always play a vital role as it attempts to mediate this complex and conflictual relationship. Determining the balance between children’s fundamental right to be safe and parents’ right to raise their children as they see fit will form a central tenet throughout the following chapters.

Changing constructions of childhood: the relationship between child and society

Childhood is a changing social phenomenon therefore it is important to review how this concept has been shaped by history, culture and society.

Children’s lives are lived through childhoods constructed for them by adult understandings of childhood and what children are and should be.

(Mayall, 1996: 1, cited in Perselli, 2016)

Industrial revolution and concern for social order

During the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain; social order and economic productivity became the new political imperatives. However, one of the consequences of industrialisation was a significant increase in poverty and deprivation within many cities. In 1834, the New Poor Law introduced punitive measures to deal with the poor. Destitute families entered workhouses in return for assistance. Entering the workhouse meant a loss of all rights and freedoms, children were separated from their parents and expected to work long hours in harsh conditions where punishment was advocated to reinforce social order and instil discipline. A desire to rescue the moral wellbeing of impoverished families remained a political driver throughout this century: ‘Paternalistic efforts to shift and rescue those who were deemed deserving’ (Edmondson, 2014: 13).

During the early 1800s there was no clear legal mandate to intervene in private family life, children were an economic commodity who were often afforded little care or protection. Parental rights were considered paramount and cruelty could be justified under the guise of discipline. In a landmark case in 1860 (R v Hopley), the defendant was a schoolmaster who had asked a pupil’s father for permission to punish a pupil for ‘obstinacy’. The father agreed, and Hopley subsequently beat the boy repeatedly for over two hours – the boy died. The judge, Lord Cockburn, held that:

By the law of England, a parent... may for the purpose of correcting what is evil in the child, [to] inflict moderate and reasonable corporal punishment.

This debate around parental rights to reasonable chastisement continues to be a contentious issue within contemporary practice (Barrett, 2015). Following Cockburn’s judgement, social and political awareness of child maltreatment grew and in the 1880s the concept of child cruelty began to be viewed as a significant social disease. In 1884, Rev. Benjamin Waugh founded the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which then became the NSPCC in 1889 following the enactment of the English Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act. The Act provided the authorities with a legal mandate to enter a home and remove children who were being ill-treated. The Act enabled the prosecution of perpetrators of abuse, thereby allowing the state to assume some responsibility for the protection of children (Corby et al., 2012). In 1894 the provisions of the Act were further extended making it an offence to withhold medical treatment to a child. The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act 1904 allowed removal of a child from home on the authority of a Justice of the Peace. This piece of legislation laid the foundations of the state’s ability to remove a child at risk to a place of safety. The Punishment of Incest Act 1908 made intra-familial sexual abuse (incest) an offence (Hendrick, 2003). Prior to 1857 sexual activity within the family was regarded as sinful but not actually illegal, and had been dealt with by the clergy. From 1857 it was removed from ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In contrast, incest in Scotland was illegal from 1567 and punishable by death from 1887 (Corby et al., 2012).

The Children Act 1908 was the first piece of legislation which recognised that children might be at risk of harm and addressed a number of issues to help protect children and young people. The measures which were introduced included the creation of juvenile courts, children under the age of 14 could not be imprisoned and there was an expectation that foster carers should be registered.

The Welfare State, Social Democracy and Children’s Services

Following the Beveridge Report in 1942, the state assumed a more collective responsibility for the provision of welfare services. There was a belief that the state and state agencies should be at the centre of developing and allocating goods and services for everyone in society. This era of social democracy saw a shift in political ideology and informed the creation of the Welfare State: ‘a state with a democratic form of government which assumes responsibility for the wellbeing of its citizens through a range of interventions in the market economy’ (Mishra, 1984). This era led to the implementation of a number of reforms, and an acknowledgement that children could be vulnerable and in need of care.

In 1945 the first public inquiry into the death of a child was held following the death of Dennis O’Neill, who was killed by his foster carers. The issue of child maltreatment and protection achieved political and media attention and the inquiry was instrumental in the creation of children’s departments in 1948 (Corby et al., 2012).

‘The new children’s departments tried to lay to rest the Poor Law and embodied the revolutionary principle that the new agencies should seek the best development of children deprived of a normal homelife’ (Parton, 2006: 18).

Abuse and the transition from private to public

The relationship between social work and child protection began to change due to an increase in the public awareness of child abuse and concerns about the failure to protect.

In 1961 at a Symposium at the American Academy of Paediatrics, Henry Kempe was the first practitioner to identify the previously ‘unthinkable’ notion that there are parents who deliberately harm their young children (Kempe et al., 1962) in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Parton (2014) suggests that the child protection discourse developed from this medical discovery of ‘Battered Child Syndrome’. However, this medicalised view that child abuse could be accounted for on the basis of individual pathology diverted attention away from other structural factors which could impact on abuse, such as poverty.

In 1969 the Children and Young Person’s Act widened the criteria for the application of care orders and introduced Place of Safety Orders to allow the removal of children who were at risk of significant harm. During the 1970s and 1980s this tendency to blame was reinforced by the intense public and media interest in the public inquiries into a number of child deaths. In 1973 Maria Colwell died after being starved and beaten by her stepfather, despite the fact that there had been 50 visits made to the family by social services. The inquiry into her death found that the greatest failure was the lack of communication and liaison between the agencies involved.

The Children Act 1975 saw the introduction of child protection procedures and the creation of an ‘at risk’ register. The guardian ad litem service was created to advocate for and protect the interests of children. However, despite these measures, during the next decade there were many further inquiries into child deaths, all with similar findings: a lack of communication and not recognising that the child was at risk of significant harm (Corby et al., 2012).

Children Act 1989 and the New Right

In 1984 Jasmine Beckford was starved and battered to death by her stepfather. She had been in the care of Brent social services for two and a half years before she died. By 1985 a further 29 inquiries had been held into child deaths that had resulted from abuse. Parton and Williams (2017) suggest that the findings from the inquiry reports revealed similar themes, including an excessive focus on adults rather than on the child.

As a consequence of these cases a new political driver emerged in which resources were to be diverted to invest...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• About the Authors
• Introduction: Safeguarding across the Lifespan
• 1 The Historical Development of Safeguarding and Protection Across the Lifespan
• 2 The Nature and Prevalence of Abuse Across the Lifespan
• 3 The Policy and Legal Context for Safeguarding Practice
• 4 Safeguarding and the Family
• 5 Safeguarding and Communities
• 6 Safeguarding in Residential Settings
• 7 Skills for Safeguarding and Protection
• 8 Key Themes for Safeguarding Practice: Challenges and Priorities
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Professional Capabilities Framework
• Appendix 2 Subject benchmark for social work
• Bibliography
• Index