Rethinking Children, Violence and Safeguarding

Lorraine Radford, Phil Jones

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781847065582
• eBook ISBN: 9781441104786
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

Rethinking Children, Violence and Safeguarding explores the victimization of children as well as children who use violence towards others and presents an overview of key developments in research, policy and practice within the context of the recent major shift in thinking from 'child protection' towards 'safeguarding' and evidencing better outcomes. The gaps between rhetoric and practice are considered and Lorraine Radford argues that the way we 'think' about children and violence has had a profound impact on actions against the abuse of children and children who commit violence. Examples of research, reflections on research and key points and guidance on further reading make this a really accessible text. Rethinking Children, Violence and Safeguarding is essential reading for those studying childhood and undergraduate and graduate level, and will be of great interest to those working with children in any field.

Part 1

Debates, Dilemmas and Challenges: the Background to Children and Violence

Children Living In A Violent World?

1

Chapter Outline

Introduction and key questions

What is violence?

The prevalence of violence in children’s lives.

Is there more or less child abuse today?

Summary

Further reading

Research details

Introduction and key questions

Violence by and towards children has been given a lot of media attention in recent years, and the following Box contains newspaper and website extracts as examples of this.

Childhood under siege?

‘Unstable’ mother let baby starve to death An inquest has heard how an 11-month-old baby was found starved to death in his cot after social workers left him in the care of his mentally unstable mother. The boy’s emaciated body was discovered by paramedics at a council flat strewn with rubbish and dirty nappies in St John’s Wood on March 8 last year. The child was on Westminster council’s at-risk register and his 29-year-old mother had been assessed by doctors, social workers, mental health workers and health visitors in the months before his death.

Evening Standard London, 9 March 2011

Teenager ‘hunted to death by gang’ 15-year-old Zac Olumegbon was hunted down and stabbed to death near his school in South Norwood, south London by four members of a rival gang, the Old Bailey has heard. The boy was stabbed four times through the heart and neck and died in a garden of a house on July 2 last year. Four youths, two aged 17, one 16 and one 15, deny murder. The trial continues.

Metro London, 10 March 2011

The creation of a probationary license for adults through the national vetting scheme exacerbates the breakdown of trust within communities and throws assumptions about adult authority and responsibility into question in a way that mitigates against people stepping in to help children when things go wrong.

Furedi and Bristow, 2008, p. 55

The above extracts illustrate two divergent views about the impact of violence in children’s lives. The first is a view of prevalent violence towards and by children which is largely seen to have its root cause in poor parenting/inadequate mothering. Here the plights of children in the first extract and of baby Peter Connelly tortured and brutally killed by their supposed ‘caregivers’, are ignored by both the community and professionals.¹ Poorly parented, out of control and fearful youth alike, repeating a downward spiral of intergenerational violence and neglect, need to carry knives to survive in an utterly hostile environment. The alternative view, illustrated in the extract from Furedi and Bristow, suggests that the risks of violence are disproportionate, create unnecessary fear, disempower parents and destroy relationships between adults and children. From this perspective, vetting and barring procedures to protect children from abusers and sex offenders who get into positions of trust in order to get access to their victim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Rethinking Children Violence and Safeguarding
• Contents
• Introduction to New Childhoods series
• Preface
• Part 1 DEBATES, DILEMMAS AND CHALLENGES
• Part 2 AN INTERDISCIPLINARY OVERVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
• Part 3 IMPLICATIONS FOR CHILDREN’S LIVES
• References and Further Reading
• Index