Transcript No Slide Title

Safeguarding Young People
Safeguarding Young People
Responding to young people aged 11
to 17 who are maltreated
Dr Alison Jobe and Dr Sarah Gorin, NSPCC
Safeguarding Young People
Dr Sarah Gorin
Senior Research Officer
NSPCC
Introduction
 Three and a half year project – January 2007 to
July 2010
 Undertaken jointly by The Children’s Society,
NSPCC and the University of York
 Funded by the Big Lottery Research Grants
Programme
 Focused on the under-researched issue of the
maltreatment of young people in the UK
 Undertaken alongside study on ‘Neglect of
Adolescents’ funded by the then DfES
Background to the research
 Literature review, commissioned by NSPCC in
1999, highlighted the lack of attention to this
issue, especially in the UK
 Little further development by 2005
 Practice experience and anecdotal evidence that
there may be a gap in recognition of, and
responses to, maltreated young people
 Statistical evidence that substantial numbers of
young people are maltreated
 Evidence that the types of risks facing young
people are different to those facing younger
children
Purpose and aims
 The purpose of the research was to explore access
to, and initial responses of, Children’s services for
young people with potential maltreatment issues in
order to:
• Inform future policy
• Inform practitioners in voluntary and statutory
agencies
• Inform future training of practitioners
In order to:
 promote improved protective responses for this
target group
Research components
 International literature review
 A study of policy and guidance
 A survey of risk assessment and decision-making
amongst professionals in 12 local areas
 A study of practice in four local areas, including
interviews with young people and professionals
Today we are going to cover:
 Scale of the problem
 Statistics from referral data
 Information about professionals decision-making
about referrals of young people
 The referral process as experienced by
professionals
 The initial response of social care practitioners to
referrals and their perspectives
 Young people’s experiences of referral and initial
responses
The scale of the issue
 On 31 March 2010 in England:
• 39,100 children were subject of a Child
Protection Plan
• 10,000 were aged 10 to 15, and
• 780 young people were aged 16 and over
 A quarter of the serious case reviews from 20072009 were about older young people (Brandon et
al, 2009)
 Actual prevalence of maltreatment is known to be
much higher – Radford et al
Statistics on referrals and responses
 Statistics were gathered from 4 local authorities on
referrals and subsequent actions by age.
 These showed that as young people get older a
referral is less likely to receive child protection and
related responses
 The statistics and qualitative interviews highlight
the wide variation between and within local
authorities in how they deal with young people.
Example local area statistics
45%
40%
40%
35%
30%
34% 34%
29%
24%
25%
21%
21%
20%
19%
18%
20%
17%
15%
15%
13%
11%
11%
9%
10%
8%
7%
5%
5%
1%
0%
Initial assessment
Core assessment
0 to 3
4 to 7
Section 47
8 to 11
12 to 15
Child protection plan
16 to 17
Professionals making referrals
The survey and interviews found that:
 If professionals thought a young person was at risk
of significant harm they were as likely to make a
referral as with younger children
 However professionals perceptions of the initial
risk children and young people were at, was
affected by age.
Age related factors that influenced
professionals decision-making
Within their assessments of risk, professionals tended
to see young people aged 11 to 17 as:
 More competent to deal with maltreatment –
escaping the situation and seeking help
 More ‘resilient’
 More likely to be contributing to and exacerbating
situations through own behaviour
 More likely to be ‘putting themselves at risk’
Influence of age on decision-making
If I’ve got an allegation that mum has slapped a
child round the face, then I’m not condoning that
at all, but if we’re talking about a teenage
person who’s been slapped round the face
for basically gobbing off at mum, I may take
that a little less seriously than if the child is
2 or 3 years old. Because it’s a completely
different scenario in my opinion. I appreciate that
the assault is exactly the same, but the
circumstances are different and you know the
response again you know in my opinion can be
different.
Police Officer
During referral process
 Working relationships between professionals and
Children’s Social Care Services were generally
viewed very positively. Good practice examples
included:
• Feeling able to ring Children’s Social Care
Services to discuss cases
• Being able to challenge decisions.
• Factors that helped were co-location and
building consistent relationships with social
care practitioners.
Obstacles to making referrals
 Perception of high thresholds
 Complex ethical decisions – e.g. young people not
wanting to be referred, sexual relationships with
older men
 More uncertainty about emotional abuse and
neglect
 Potential negative impact on young person and
families of making referral
 Police and education cited resource issues for them
in assessing cases and making referrals
Safeguarding Young People
Dr. Alison Jobe
Senior Research Officer
NSPCC
Initial responses to referrals by
Children’s Social Care Services
Certain age related factors affected response by
Social Work practitioners. These factors included:
 Young person’s perceived competence and
resilience
 Resource issues and the need to prioritise
resources
 Young people seen as more challenging to engage
and work with and have different needs.
Prioritising resources
Interviewer: Ok, what do you see as the biggest
challenges you face in terms of providing protective
services for older children?
SWP: Prioritising them. That’s got to be it. You know,
we are an understaffed team with, you know, worked
to the hilt, staff here don’t just don’t have a second in the
day at all to take a breather and we can’t, we can’t rush out
to a sixteen year old who’s perhaps sofa-surfing and perhaps
experimenting with drugs and getting into crime, you know
that’s a big worry, but we can’t prioritise that when we’re
working with 0 to 5 year olds in, you know, some pretty dire
situations.
Social work practitioner
Ongoing responses to young people
Common view was held by social care practitioners that
the child protection process was often not the best way
of responding to young people because:
 Process less relevant when young people put
themselves ‘at risk’ or are maltreated outside the family
 Difficult to engage young people in Child Protection
process
 Child Protection process does not allow young people
enough involvement/control
 Child Protection plans may not be effective if parents
are not committed to keeping young people at home.
Social work practitioner’s views
I think when children get to fourteen & fifteen and
are, are a risk to themselves then the child
protection system becomes irrelevant to them…
Social Work Practitioner
The child protection process is pretty irrelevant to
teenagers, if you’ve got a child whose hurting
themselves for lots of reasons, maybe alcohol
misuse, or you know, sexual exploitation or mental
health, then they’re a risk to themselves… And it’s
very hard to stop people being a risk to themselves,
very, very difficult indeed. The child protection plan is
not really relevant in that case. In the circumstances
where they are at risk to themselves, the child protection
process is pretty irrelevant, where there’s been some risk
from other people then we would definitely go child
protection….
Social Work Practitioner
Alternative responses
 Dealing with young people through Child in Need
route.
 Using multi-agency approach e.g. Common
Assessment Framework or other multi-agency risk
assessment e.g. ‘Team Around the Child’.
 These were believed to give young people more
autonomy, input and control over the process. Also
a lead professional with an existing relationship
with the young person could be identified.
 However little is known about which process has
the best outcomes for young people.
Young people’s experiences of
seeking help
Barriers included:
 Ability to develop consistent trusting relationship
with a professional.
 Potential impact of a disclosure on themselves,
family, friends, abuser.
 Lack of information about helping agencies, who to
approach and how to access help.
Importance of developing trusting
relationships
Cos me and my mum used to cover it up. I used to have
bruises, the lot, and we just used to make up stories and
just … so at the same time it’s what the child wants to tell
you and it’s what the parent wants to tell you. Because
things can easily get covered up. Because I’ve done
it many a time before and that’s only purely
because I was so loyal to my mum and I thought
social services were the bad ones. And it’s just … I
think that’s when the whole close relationship thing
comes in, because if the child really is hurting and
they do need someone to talk to, then you’ve got to
get their trust first before they’ll do that. Like cos
social services just used to walk into my house and think
I’m just going to tell them everything and it’s not like
that.
Anna, aged 17
Young people’s experiences of child
protection process
 Importance of a good relationship with a social
worker for disclosure and feeling safe afterwards
Interviewer: And what about the second social
worker?
Laura: She’s really … I’ve still got her now, she’s
really, really nice…Like she’s really easy to talk to
and really chatty. She’s a lot more helpful
than the first one, like I’ve had regular
meetings with her, and we’ve done like mind
maps of family and like putting people who are
closer in the inner circles and stuff like that.
Laura, age 15
Obstacles to building positive
relationships
 Numerous social workers.
 Not being able to contact social worker.
 Lack of clarity- not understanding processes or the
roles of different professionals.
 Not feeling listened to or informed.
 Young people not being given a say/autonomy.
 Confidentiality issues.
Numerous Social Workers
I really think that they should try and keep that same
social worker with that child for as long as possible, so
then a relationship can get built up, the trust can get
built up. And then at the end of the day the social
worker will find out a lot more … if she’s just walking in
‘Oh yeah, how are you?’… I think if they expect
children to tell them things and put trust in them,
then you need to put the work in and be with them
for a long period of time, and just make a
relationship with them. Because if you’re getting a
different social worker every 3 months it’s not going to
do anything good for you, it’s just annoying. So it’s just
like another suited and booted person walking into your
house telling you this is right and this wrong – you don’t
want that really.
Anna, aged 17
Not being able to contact social
worker
Emma: She just…it emotionally struck me like running
straight into a wall, it just knocked the wind out of
me, cos it’s everytime something happened I was
like [my Social Worker’s] got to come, she just
got to come, our families need her and she never
showed up, never.
Interviewer: Did you contact her at all?
Emma: Tried to, phone was always off, or she was always
putting it on busy or something, I don’t know. All I
know is that she wasn’t doing her job right and I knew
that, because if a social worker tells you she’s going to
be there at a certain time she’s got to be there at a
certain time because she’s assigned for that family. She
don’t go there and never show, then she’s obviously not
doing her job right and I know that. I weren’t that
stupid, I knew she weren’t gonna come.
Emma age 14
Not listened to or informed
Interviewer: What kind of things would you like to us to say to
social workers about young people’s experiences- what kind of
things should we be telling them?
Tom: That they have got to listen because it’s said that every
Child has the right to be heard and that’s, because they’re not
listening they are just denying people’s rights which is bad because
they are supposed to be concerned about children…Well they took
Mum away and then they barely even talked to us. They just said
hello and then that was literally it.
Interviewer: Do you feel that they listened to you?
Tom: No, they didn’t talk to us.
Interviewer: They didn’t come and see you at all or anything like
that.
Tom: No, no
Tom, aged 12
Confidentiality issues
Interviewer: Did you understand what was happening or
what people were doing?
Fatima: No, it all it felt like what ever I told them they
would go and tell my mum….so I would just stop
telling them
Interviewer: What did you expect to happen or what did
you want to happen?
Fatima: I thought that they were going to help me and not
tell my mum when I told them stuff…When my dad, yeah, he
came to my new house, yeah. He hit my brother. I told [my
social worker] not to say that I told… but then police came to
my house and said, ‘Your daughter said that this happened,’
and my brother denied it…and it kicked off again. They ]the
police] went and it started again!
Fatima, aged 15
Summary:
Key findings from the research
 Responses to young people vary between and within
Children’s Social Care Services
 Age does not affect professionals’ decisions to refer
young people, but does affect assessment of risk
 Young people are seen as more resilient than younger
children but this is not supported by research
 As young people get older they are less likely to
receive a Child Protection response
 Child Protection is not always seen as the most
appropriate response for young people
 Resources affect ability of social workers to maintain
consistent relationships with young people
What can Children’s Social Care Services do
now?
 Provide clear information to young people going through
the safeguarding process
 Focus resources on developing consistent relationships
between social workers and young people
 Listen to young people and involve them more in
process
 Include age-related issues and resilience in training for
social workers
 Review how young people move through the
safeguarding system and which approach works best for
young people
Questions
Any questions?
Further information
Executive summary and full report available at:
www.childrenssociety.org.uk/research/safeguarding
Neglect research available at:
www.nspcc.org.uk/neglectmatters
Any enquiries:
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected]