Ethics and Safeguarding - Week 2 - Lecture Notes

Multi-Agency Approaches

Everyone's Responsibility

•Every Child Matters stated this in regard to securing all of the ‘five outcomes’:
“Families, communities, government, public services, voluntary organisations, business, the media and others have a crucial part to play in valuing children, protecting them, promoting their interests and listening to their views.”
(Chief Secretary to the Treasury, 2003, p14)

•Sentiment repeated in the Staying Safe Action Plan
(DCSF, 2008a) and new ‘Working Together’ (DfE, 2013)

•Summarised by the NSPCC: “All adults must be alert to the warning signs, all children given the opportunities and confidence to ask for help.” (NSPCC, 2011, p4)

"Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility

15. Everyone who works with children – including teachers, GPs, nurses, midwives, health visitors, early years professionals, youth workers, police, Accident and Emergency staff, paediatricians, voluntary and community workers and social workers – has a responsibility for keeping them safe.

16. No single professional can have a full picture of a child’s needs and circumstances and, if children and families are to receive the right help at the right time, everyone who comes into contact with them has a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action.

17. In order that organisations and practitioners collaborate effectively, it is vital that every individual working with children and families is aware of the role that they have to play and the role of other professionals. In addition, effective safeguarding requires clear local arrangements for collaboration between professionals and agencies."

HM Government (2015) Working Together to Safeguard Children

A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children

London: DfE ; available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2
Accessed 29.09.2015

Early Years Professionals have a crucially important role

Listening to and valuing children in order to build their confidence;

Protecting them by being alert to warning signs and taking correct and timely action to offer early help or referral where necessary;

Promoting their interests in meetings with parents and professionals where decisions are made;

Supporting parents and carers in the task of safeguarding;

Caring for children who have experienced the effects of abuse and neglect.

One Possible Solution

Devon MASH started Apr 2010:

oHub includes Police, Children’s Social Care, Probation, Health, Education, Adult and Community Services, Mental Health Services, Early Years, CAMHS, Ambulance

oStaff employed by individual agencies, but co-located
(or virtual connections)

oInformation securely shared within the hub, gathered by the relevant professional ‘lead’ from other teachers, health visitors, school nurses, police etc

Allows the ‘Hub’ to:

oSwiftly collate and share information

oMake joint multi-agency risk assessment of each case

oDeliver co-ordinated intervention

Many local authorities setting up something similar – York’s ‘Front Door’, Triage, Multi-Agency Referral Unit

Overall Definitions- Children Act 1989

 The Children Act 1989 charged local authorities with the "duty to investigate … if they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm" (section 47).

"Harm" is defined as ill-treatment (including sexual abuse and non-physical forms of ill-treatment) or the impairment of health (physical or mental) or development (physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural).

 "Significant" is not defined in the Act, although it does say that the court should compare the health and development of the child "with that which could be reasonably expected of a similar child". So the courts have to decide  what constitutes "significant harm" by looking at the facts of each case.

 Children ‘in need’, under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, are children whose vulnerability is such that

“he/she is unlikely to achieve or maintain,…a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him/her of services by a local authority; his/her health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him/her of such services; or he/she is disabled.