Chapter 1 - Introduction: working together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and families |
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Contents
Supporting children and families
Parenting, family life and services
Supporting children and families
| 1.1 | All children deserve the opportunity to achieve their full potential. In 2003, the Government published the Every Child Matters Green Paper alongside the formal response to the report into the death of Victoria Climbié. The Green Paper set out five outcomes that are key to children and young people’s wellbeing: |
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| 1.2 | The Children Act 2004 subsequently became law and set out these outcomes in statute. The publication of the Children’s Plan in 2007, which was developed having regard to the principles and articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, further set out the role of Government and a wide range of agencies and professionals in improving children’s lives. |
| 1.3 | To achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, children need to feel loved and valued, and be supported by a network of reliable and affectionate relationships. They need to feel they are respected and understood as individual people and to have their wishes and feelings consistently taken into account. If they are denied the opportunity and support they need to achieve these outcomes, children are at increased risk not only of an impoverished childhood, but also of disadvantage and social exclusion in adulthood. Abuse and neglect pose particular problems. |
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| 1.4 | Patterns of family life vary and there is no single, perfect way to bring up children. Good parenting involves caring for children’s basic needs, keeping them safe and protected, being attentive and showing them warmth and love, encouraging them to express their views and consistently taking these views into account, and providing the stimulation needed for their development and to help them achieve their potential, within a stable environment where they experience consistent guidance and boundaries. |
| 1.5 | Parenting can be challenging. Parents themselves require and deserve support. Asking for help should be seen as a sign of responsibility rather than as a parenting failure. |
| 1.6 | A wide range of services and professionals provide support to families in bringing up children. Sometimes children will seek out and ask for help and advice themselves. However, in the great majority of cases, it will be the decision of parents when to ask for help and advice on their children’s care and upbringing. As well as being responsive to children’s direct requests for help and advice, professionals also need to engage with parents at the earliest opportunity when doing so may prevent problems or difficulties becoming worse. Only in exceptional cases should there be compulsory intervention in family life – for example, where this is necessary to safeguard a child from significant harm. Such intervention should – provided this is consistent with the safety and welfare of the child – support families in making their own plans for the welfare and protection of their children. |
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| 1.7 | On 12 November 2008 the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families asked Lord Laming to provide an urgent report on the progress being made across the country to implement effective arrangements for safeguarding children. Lord Laming published The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report on 12 March 2009. He confirmed that robust legislative, structural and policy foundations are in place but commented that although ‘a great deal of progress has been made’ in protecting children from harm, ‘much more needs to be done to ensure that… services are as effective as possible at working together to achieve positive outcomes for children’. |
| 1.8 | Lord Laming made 58 recommendations relating to: leadership and accountability, support for children, inter-agency working, children’s workforce, improvement and challenge, organisation and finance and the legal framework. |
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| 1.9 | The Government immediately accepted all of Lord Laming’s recommendations and, in May 2009 published The Protection of Children in England: Action Plan. This set out the Government’s detailed response to Lord Laming’s recommendations and made a number of commitments for future action. Progress has already been made to address a number of the recommendations and to fulfil many of the commitments made in the Government’s action plan. The publication of this updated and revised version of Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance addresses a further 23 of Lord Laming’s recommendations. |
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| 1.10 | Children have varying needs that change over time. Judgements on how best to intervene when there are concerns about harm to a child will often, and unavoidably, entail an element of risk – at the extreme, of leaving a child for too long in a dangerous situation or of removing a child unnecessarily from his or her family. The way to proceed in the face of uncertainty is through competent professional judgements, based on a sound assessment of the child’s needs and the parents’ capacity to respond to these – including their capacity to keep the child safe from significant harm – and the wider family circumstances. |
| 1.11 | Effective measures to safeguard children are those that also promote their welfare. They should not be seen in isolation from the wider range of support and services already provided and available to meet the needs of children and families: |
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| 1.12 | Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children – and in particular protecting them from significant harm – depends on effective joint working between agencies and professionals that have different roles and expertise. Individual children, especially some of the most vulnerable children and those at greatest risk of suffering harm and social exclusion, will need co-ordinated help from health, education, early years, children’s social care, the voluntary sector and other agencies, including youth justice services. |
| 1.13 | In order to achieve this joint working, there needs to be constructive relationships between individual workers, promoted and supported by: |
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| 1.14 | For those children who are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm, joint working is essential to safeguard and promote their welfare and, where necessary, to help bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against children. All agencies and professionals should: |
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| 1.15 | Lord Laming reiterated the importance of frontline professionals getting to know children as individual people and, as a matter of routine, considering how their situation feels to them. Ofsted’s evaluation of 50 Serious Case Reviews conducted between 1 April 2007 and 31 March 2008 highlighted ‘the failure of all professionals to see the situation from the child’s perspective and experience; to see and speak to the children; to listen to what they said, to observe how they were and to take serious account of their views in supporting their needs as probably the single most consistent failure in safeguarding work with children.’ |
| 1.16 | Since 2005, local authorities have been under a duty under the Children Act 1989 (as amended by section 53 of the Children Act 2004) to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings and give due regard to their age and understanding when determining what (if any) services to provide under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, and before making decisions about action to be taken to protect individual children under section 47 of the Children Act 1989. These duties complemented existing requirements relating to the wishes and feelings of children who are, or may be, looked after (section 22(4) Children Act 1989), those being provided accommodation (section 20(6) Children Act 1989) and children taken into police protection (section 46(3)(d)). |
| 1.17 | In discharging their duties under these sections, the local authority must give due consideration to the child’s ‘wishes and feelings’ so far as is reasonably practicable and consistent with the child’s welfare and giving due regard to the child’s age and understanding. There will be occasions when it is not possible to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings. In these circumstances, professionals should record in writing why it was not reasonably practicable or consistent with the child’s welfare to elicit his or her wishes and feelings. |
| 1.18 | Effective ongoing action to keep the child in focus includes: |
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| 1.19 | In this document, as in the Children Acts 1989 and 2004 respectively, a child is anyone who has not yet reached their 18th birthday. ‘Children’ therefore means ‘children and young people’ throughout. The fact that a child has reached 16 years of age, is living independently or is in further education, is a member of the armed forces, is in hospital or in custody in the secure estate for children and young people, does not change his or her status or entitlement to services or protection under the Children Act 1989. |
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| 1.20 | Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purposes of this guidance as: |
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| and undertaking that role so as to enable those children to have optimum life chances and to enter adulthood successfully. | |
| 1.21 | Protecting children from maltreatment is important in preventing the impairment of health or development though that in itself may be insufficient to ensure that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care. These aspects of safeguarding and promoting welfare are cumulative, and all contribute to the outcomes set out in paragraph 1.1. |
| 1.22 | Young people at serious risk of harm from community based violence such as gang, group and knife crime are likely to have significant needs. Agencies and professionals need to ensure that the safeguarding process responds effectively to the needs of children at risk of suffering violence within the community. This may involve both the perpetrators and victims of violent activity. |
| 1.23 | Child protection is a part of safeguarding and promoting welfare. This refers to the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering, or are likely to suffer, significant harm. |
| 1.24 | Effective child protection is essential as part of wider work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. However, all agencies and individuals should aim to proactively safeguard and promote the welfare of children so that the need for action to protect children from harm is reduced. |
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| 1.25 | Children who are defined as being ‘in need’, under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, are those whose vulnerability is such that they are unlikely to reach or maintain a satisfactory level of health or development, or their health and development will be significantly impaired, without the provision of services (section 17(10) of the Children Act 1989), plus those who are disabled. The critical factors to be taken into account in deciding whether a child is in need under the Children Act 1989 are: |
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| Local authorities have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need. |
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| 1.26 | Some children are in need because they are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm. The Children Act 1989 introduced the concept of significant harm as the threshold that justifies compulsory intervention in family life in the best interests of children, and gives local authorities a duty to make enquiries to decide whether they should take action to safeguard or promote the welfare of a child who is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm. |
| 1.27 | A court may make a care order (committing the child to the care of the local authority) or supervision order (putting the child under the supervision of a social worker or a probation officer) in respect of a child if it is satisfied that: |
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| 1.28 | There are no absolute criteria on which to rely when judging what constitutes significant harm. Consideration of the severity of ill-treatment may include the degree and the extent of physical harm, the duration and frequency of abuse and neglect, the extent of premeditation, and the presence or degree of threat, coercion, sadism and bizarre or unusual elements. Each of these elements has been associated with more severe effects on the child, and/or relatively greater difficulty in helping the child overcome the adverse impact of the maltreatment. Sometimes, a single traumatic event may constitute significant harm, for example, a violent assault, suffocation or poisoning. More often, significant harm is a compilation of significant events, both acute and long-standing, which interrupt, change or damage the child’s physical and psychological development. Some children live in family and social circumstances where their health and development are neglected. For them, it is the corrosiveness of long-term emotional, physical or sexual abuse that causes impairment to the extent of constituting significant harm. In each case, it is necessary to consider any maltreatment alongside the child’s own assessment of his or her safety and welfare, the family’s strengths and supports (For more details see Adcock, M. and White, R. (1998). Significant Harm: its management and outcome. Surrey: Significant Publications.), as well as an assessment of the likelihood and capacity for change and improvements in parenting and the care of children and young people. |
Under section 31(9) of the Children Act 1989 as amended by the Adoption and Children Act 2002: ’harm’ means ill-treatment or the impairment of health or development, including, for example, impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another; ’development’ means physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development; ’health’ means physical or mental health; and ’ill treatment’ includes sexual abuse and forms of ill-treatment which are not physical. Under section 31(10) of the Act: Where the question of whether harm suffered by a child is significant turns on the child’s health and development, his health or development shall be compared with that which could reasonably be expected of a similar child. |
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| 1.29 | To understand and identify significant harm, it is necessary to consider: |
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| 1.30 | The child’s reactions, his or her perceptions, and wishes and feelings should be ascertained and the local authority should give them due consideration, so far as is reasonably practicable and consistent with the child’s welfare and having regard to the child’s age and understanding. (Section 53 of the Children Act 2004 amended section 17 and section 47 of the Children Act 1989, so that before determining what, if any, services to provide to a child in need under section 17, or action to take with respect to a child under section 47, the wishes and feelings of the child should be ascertained as far as is reasonable and given due consideration.) |
| 1.31 | To do this depends on communicating effectively with children and young people, including those who find it difficult to do so because of their age, an impairment, or their particular psychological or social situation. This may involve using interpreters and drawing upon the expertise of early years workers or those working with disabled children. It is necessary to create the right atmosphere when meeting and communicating with children, to help them feel at ease and reduce any pressure from parents, carers or others. Children will need reassurance that they will not be victimised for sharing information or asking for help or protection; this applies to children living in families as well as those in institutional settings, including custody. It is essential that any accounts of adverse experiences coming from children are as accurate and complete as possible. Accuracy is key, for without it effective decisions cannot be made and, equally, inaccurate accounts can lead to children remaining unsafe, or to the possibility of wrongful actions being taken that affect children and adults. (Jones, D. P. H. (2003). Communicating with Vulnerable Children: a Guide for Practitioners, pp.1-2. London: Gaskell.) |
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| 1.32 | Abuse and neglect are forms of maltreatment of a child. Somebody may abuse or neglect a child by inflicting harm, or by failing to act to prevent harm. Children may be abused in a family or in an institutional or community setting, by those known to them or, more rarely, by a stranger for example, via the internet. They may be abused by an adult or adults, or another child or children. |
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| 1.33 | Physical abuse may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating, or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces, illness in a child. |
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| 1.34 | Emotional abuse is the persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development. It may involve conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person. It may include not giving the child opportunities to express their views, deliberately silencing them or ‘making fun’ of what they say or how they communicate. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. These may include interactions that are beyond the child’s developmental capability, as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction. It may involve seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another. It may involve serious bullying (including cyberbullying), causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children. Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, though it may occur alone. |
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| 1.35 | sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, not necessarily involving a high level of violence, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including assault by penetration (for example, rape or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts such as masturbation, kissing, rubbing and touching outside of clothing. They may also include non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of, sexual images, watching sexual activities, encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways, or grooming a child in preparation for abuse (including via the internet). Sexual abuse is not solely perpetrated by adult males. Women can also commit acts of sexual abuse, as can other children. |
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| 1.36 | Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to: |
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| It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs. |
