Child Protection

Eileen Munro

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781412911795, 9781412911788
• eBook ISBN: 9781446224311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

`Although primarily aimed at social workers, the content of this work is very relevant for other professionals who work with and for children, including trainee lawyers as an introduction to social work practice and the principles of child care law and practice upon which it is based. The book also provides insight for lawyers into the standards to be expected of social workers, which is helpful in children law work. Eileen Munro writes from the perspective of a depth of academic knowledge and many years of experience. I like the clarity of her style, and the ease with which she shares information in a palatable way? - Association of Lawyers for Children

Child Protection is part of an exciting new series from SAGE Publications. Developed as accessible reference tools, SAGE Course Companions offer comprehensive introductions to core subjects, encouraging students to extend their understanding of key concepts, issues and debates. This companion offers readers an accessible overview of the core themes in child abuse and child protection, helping readers understand both the theory and practice involved in child protection, as well as enhancing their thinking skills in line with course requirements.

Designed to compliment existing textbooks for the course, the book provides:

- easy access to the key themes in child protection

- an expert?s view on running themes in the course

- guidance on developing critical thinking

- helpful summaries of the approach taken by the main course textbooks

- guidance on essential study skills

- route-maps to aid the development of wider learning above and beyond the textbook.

The SAGE Course Companion to Child Protection is an essential tool that will help readers take their course understanding to new levels and ensure success in their undergraduate course. The book will also be an invaluable resource for those on post-qualifying training programmes involved in working with children.

part one
introduction to your Sage course companion

Every Child Matters, the government Green Paper published in 2003 (Treasury, 2003), sets out an ambitious plan of reform of children’s services. The goal is to help all children fulfil their potential. Existing services have been criticised for having become too preoccupied with issues of serious, familial child abuse and neglect, paying too little attention to the needs of other children and the other welfare needs of abused children. Children’s services have been undergoing major changes in organisational structures and work practices in an effort to transform the culture from a reactive service for a few to a preventive service for the many. It is hoped that all professionals in contact with children can become better at noticing low-level signs of concern in a child’s health or development and at providing a constructive response to that concern so that it does not develop into a more serious problem.

Within this broader agenda, the area of work traditionally known as child protection still needs to be dealt with. This covers the problems in children’s health and development caused by abuse and neglect. Children may be abused by others in their communities or by strangers, but the focus of child protection services has been predominantly on abuse by parents or carers. Children’s services continue to have special duties in relation to children who are suffering or at risk of suffering significant harm. In many cases, the source of that harm will be abuse or neglect, usually within the home. The fact that the harm occurs within the home creates specific problems in helping the child since it affects the role of the parents. With most problems that a child has, the parents are the people with most concern to solve them and they can generally be trusted to be honest and to try to co-operate with professionals. However, if a parent is the source of danger, then their version of events may be misleading and their efforts at co-operation ambivalent at best.

If preventive services are effective in helping families there will be some reduction in the number that escalate to serious abuse or neglect. However, at this stage, it is too soon to know how big an impact the new children’s services will have on reducing abuse and neglect and, of course, some cases of abuse do not follow the pattern of slow deterioration in family functioning. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, child abuse and neglect by parents and carers will continue to be significant problems for those working in children’s services.

Child protection is one of the most worthwhile areas of work with children and parents since it can make a crucial difference to the quality of children’s lives and, sometimes, it literally makes the difference between life and death. But it is also the most daunting and challenging.

Child abuse is an intrinsically hard problem to tackle. By its very nature, it is hard to see, with abusers often going to great lengths to conceal the harm they are doing to the child. Even once it has been identified, it is difficult to judge how serious it is, what degree of future risk there is, and what could be done to help the child. We have only a limited, and disputed, understanding of the causes of abusive behaviour and how to keep the child safe.

The work is not just intellectually but also emotionally challenging. An accusation of abuse, whether justified or not, stirs up strong reactions in most parents, of fear, anxiety, anger or shock. To accuse someone of being an abusive parent strikes at the very heart of their identity and sense of self-worth. Children who are being abused are psychologically scarred by it, making it hard for the social worker to gain their trust. The emotional impact on professionals themselves is another inevitable and complicating factor. Badly handled, this can distort their reasoning about a case as well as harming their own mental health, leading to burnout and a high turnover of staff.

In addition to the intrinsic complexities of the work, there are immense social pressures. No one can have failed to notice the strength of public reaction when a case goes tragically wrong and a child dies. The critical media stories, the naming and shaming of key workers, the rebukes from politicians, all combine to add to the stress of the work.

At the heart of good child protection work are expert professionals

The intense public concern has, not surprisingly, increased the priority given to improving practice and making children safer, leading to fundamental changes in the workplace in the past two decades. Central government and local management have provided ever more detailed rules and guidance on how the work should be done, accompanied by closer managerial oversight to ensure the guidance is followed. Child protection work is now under tighter political and managerial control than any other part of social work. Besides the legal framework setting out professionals’ powers and duties, there are detailed guidelines, procedures, and standard assessment instruments prescribing how the work should be done.

With all this guidance available, the reader might question what this textbook can add. The London child protection procedures, for instance, now come in a 300-page book that weighs a kilo (London CPC, 2002). But, while it contains a wealth of valuable information, particularly about how to work with other professions, it only catches some features of practice.

It is important to see all the rules and guidance as aids to practice; they cannot replace the professional expertise of the individual worker who is actually working with the family. They cannot transform the task into a clerical process. Official procedures and assessment frameworks are essential elements in practice, but they need to be integrated with the professonal’s reasoning skills, emotional intelligence and understanding of human nature and culture to lead to good-quality work. Procedures can indeed be counterproductive. If used by rote, in a mechanical way, they can create a barrier between the worker and the family, making it harder to get an accurate picture of what is going on or to develop a working relationship with the family.

There is a danger of exaggerating the importance of rules and guidelines because they are such a highly visible and politically sensitive element of child protection work. They figure largely in the set of ‘performance indicators’ by which local authorities are judged. The danger lies in undervaluing the importance and the complexity of other equally essential aspects of work that are not being measured by performance indicators. Management information systems, for instance, measure whether procedures have been followed, whether the timetable for conducting an investigation has been kept to, whether assessment forms have been completed. However, they focus mainly on measuring quantity, but it is the quality of the work that will make the difference to the child. And quality comes from the way that the worker uses the procedures, guidelines, etc., as part of the whole approach to helping the child. Procedures may specify the importance of talking to the child in an abuse investigation but it is the workers’ expertise that determines whether they gain accurate, or indeed any, information from the interview or whether they help the child at all.

1.1
the purpose of sage course companions

This book aims to help students feel prepared to face the tasks and responsibilities they will be taking on. It is a short book that focuses on the knowledge base of practice, with pointers to further reading. Where relevant, it provides cross-references to the tasks or sections of statutory guidance and documents, such as the Common Assessment Framework (DfES, 2006a) and Working Together to Safeguard Children (DfES, 2006b) to help readers make the connection to their work environment.

Unlike many of the other topics in the Sage Course Companions series, child protection courses are taken as part of professional training. The goal is not just to understand a subject but to use the learning in working with families. Therefore this book does not just cover what knowledge is needed, but also the reasoning skills involved in using it. What do we know about recognising and working with abuse? Why should we respond in a particular way? What is the policy, legal and ethical framework in which we must work? And how do we use the knowledge base? For example, what evidence should we use? How reliable are the findings of research? How do we use evaluative studies to decide what to do to help the child?

1.2
knowing what and knowing how

Developing expertise in child protection requires far more than learning material in a book. Many of the key skills can be sketched in a textbook, but it is only through practice, experience and good supervision that they can be cultivated. Formal knowledge about child development needs to be converted into the ability to meet a child, assess the level of development and identify any areas of concern. Critical reasoning skills are honed through good reflective supervision and a supportive atmosphere that encourages workers to assess whether their picture of a family is accurate or their plan of action is well thought through.

1.3
a note on terminology

Child abuse investigations may be conducted with anybody in a caring role with a child but I have used the term ‘parent’ throughout in preference to the more impersonal word ‘carer’ or the more clumsy phrase ‘parent or carer’. The parent is the most common focus of investigation and the term ‘carer’ fails to capture the unique quality of a parent–child relationship.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part One Introduction to your Sage Course Companion
• Part Two Core Areas of the Curriculum
• Part Three Study, Writing and Revision Skills (in collaboration with David McIlroy)
• Part Four Additional Resources
• Glossary of key terms
• Scottish legal framework
• References
• Index