Neglect is a perennial issue for social workers, but the recent serious case review of Abigail, a three year old girl with severe developmental delay, has reinforced just how difficult it is for social workers to deal with.
Abigail was never put onto a child protection plan. She was admitted to hospital in November 2012 with malnutrition, anaemia and weak bones, as well as severe nappy rash and head lice. At nearly three years old she was unable to walk. Both her parents were convicted of criminal neglect earlier this year.
Gary Walker, a solicitor specialising in child abuse claims points out Abigail’s case was characterised by an incident-led approach. Because each incident alone wasn’t severe enough to reach child protection thresholds, this created "systemic paralysis, not allowing social workers to go any further in seeking help from other professionals."
In the same CommunityCare article, here comes the solution:
"Social workers are not the only people in communities who can help families- it has to come from schools and education and welfare officers."
Children’s teams are now having to rely on agencies like schools, which have contact with the child no matter what, to hold the ring on neglect...
"Teaching assistants are just doing this and getting on with it, but it needs to be shared and recorded."
Hollows says a clear and agreed communication strategy between all agencies would help, but the reality is the responsibility for recognising signs of neglect cannot fall to social workers alone.
Now, if social workers have a problem identifying sustained physical neglect of children, why would the Westminster government introduce the Cinderella Law to make emotional neglect a criminal offence - unless, of course, it is the sharing and recording of information, and the communication strategy which is the important factor? Think about how much more intimate the questioning and recording will be once the integrated services start looking for emotional neglect.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27693587
Meanwhile social services are in a shambles due to the recession.
It’s all good in theory, and hard to object to when it is being presented so persuasively, but the reality is that we have been working collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary team for years, and the ‘new ways of working’ don’t feel new at all. It’s more about rebranding, than a fundamentally new approach.
The new targets being set are so excessively high that it seems people have confused collaborative working with magic!
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