Safeguarding Children - Multi-Agency Working - Essay Example

Safeguarding Children: Multi-Agency Working For a long time, children have been abused and their right to security infringed. The media has reported several cases where children have been subjected to various forms of abuse by those supposed to be their custodians. This has prompted various organisations to find ways of curbing such acts. Multi-agency working is one of such initiatives that have actively been engaged in this fight. Multi-agency working can be defined as a team/group of experts and professionals who come together and work to provide multidisciplinary and holistic services that target mostly the children and youths with an objective to wholly provide a range of social services and human care thereby improving their lifestyle (Cheminais, 2009:76). The state of well-being of a person greatly impacts on his/her feelings and actions in the environment and multi-agency working uses this assumption to change the conditions of people to the better so that other aspects within then human sphere can be unveiled for study. This essay aims to explore all aspects about of multi-agency working and at the end bring out what roles it plays in safeguarding children and promoting education. According to Petre (2009:57), children have gone through various forms of abuse that have greatly impacted on their lives negatively. Evidence exist that children have been subjected to various forms of abuse across the countries in the world and little have been done to protect them. According to Arian (2010:45), child abuse is the subjection of young one to any kind of sexual, physical, emotional or psychological exploitation including neglect and failure to provide the child with basic rights and needs which result into any form of harm. As highlighted above, some of the common forms of child abuse include; emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical harm, neglect, domestic violence among others. Emotional abuse come about when a child is not accorded the feelings of love, belonging and security that he deserves. Primary care givers should provide a child with adequate and genuine love and show him/her that they are safe in the hands in which they’re in failure to which a child may develop with different psychological and developmental disorders and conditions that can retard and stagnate their full positive growth. For example, psychological disorders such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (O.D.D), Separation Anxiety Disorder among others. Physical abuse is a deliberate exposure of a child to physical pain and injury or use of objects to inflict pain on a child’s body. Physical abuse is equally a serious form of abuse a child can ever go through as it results into multi-consequential impacts on a child (Watson, 2004:89). For example physical pain does not only have physical consequences but also psycho-emotional impacts. Sexual abuse are acts aimed at engaging a child in a sexual activity such as sexual intercourse, production of sex films, sexual harassments through inappropriate touch of the genitals, prostitution among other by a person older than the child or another child who is in a position of power and responsibility above the victim child. Neglect as a form of child abuse involves depriving a child from accessing basic need and facilities such as food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, security, basic education among others by the people who are in a position of responsibility such the parents and guardians. Domestic violence as form of child abuse comes about when a child has been threatened or has witnessed violence occurring in their homes or neighbourhood that makes the child undergo traumatic experiences. Domestic violence has been proved to be prevalent in most rural and informal settlements (Petre, 2009:74).These posse serious concerns to the mental health of a child. There are several impacts of these abuses to the child, family and even the society as a whole. One salient negative impact of child abuse is the psychological effects it brings upon the victim child. When children are young, they wholly depend on the people around them for support, guidance, provision of services and protection. The primary care givers are meant to nurture and responsibly guide the child on the do’s and the don’ts. The child then develops trust and attachment with the caregiver. If the caregiver neglects and abuses the child, they will not be attached, develop doubt and grow up not trusting people. These may later on limit his/her relationships and disable him/her from having positive engagements with people. There is also a great relationship between trauma and psychological disorders. A child who has been exposed to violence or abuse of any kind has a high chance of developing mental conditions including poor academic performances and cognitive processes. These directly impact on his/her ability to read, comprehend, learn and reproduce academic and general knowledge facts which affects his/her school performance. It is essential to note that child abuse does not only affect the child psychologically but also health wise. Literally a child who has been physically beaten up or raped suffers physical injuries and depending on the intensity, it can lead to various health problems that may forever live with the child or even cause death. Diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other STIs are usually contracted during rape and these have led to negative health outcomes on the victims. The state of health of a person determines his/her activity and passivity in day-to-day matters revolving around his/her life. A child cannot be active in school when they are sick. This translates to stagnation of various activities that the child should have participated in had they been well. Education cannot progress when child abuse is the order of the day. Without proper education for the children, poverty and other social problems are here to stay and that’s what Multi-agency working works in all fronts to eradicate from the roots. In its mission, multi-agency working takes a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach to provide solutions to children as they understand that problems facing children are not just a single item but interplay of various deep-seated issues that must be considered as whole from all perspectives. A multi-agency working is committed to safe-guard children and ensures their prosperity in areas such as education, healthcare, economic empowerment among others. This has been enabled by their effective approach in which professionals across different areas of their expertise are tasked in reaching out to the children and their families to provide support. These services goes beyond just the child but also they reach out to the child’s families and involve the parents and guardians, schools and engage the teachers, personnel in the legal fraternity when cases of laws are involved and the community at large. Their support is trimmed in a way that it efficiently meets the needs of the target groups. Multi-agency working is relevant in safeguarding the well-being of children as it provides interventions to the problems children go through such as the abuses discussed above. They work to prevent these problems and stop them from happening but in cases where they discover children have fallen victims to these, various intervention steps are taken to restore the child’s state of well-being and resume normalcy so that they can grow and develop as per the normal frameworks of growth and development guidelines. Although multi-agency working has been existence for considerable time, a number of factors contributed to its strengthening and famous recognition in the public domain. The death of Maria Colwell in January 1973, Victoria Climbe in 2000, Baby P as well are major forces behind the great emergence of Multi-agency working (Cheminais, 2009:436). Previously, many professionals from social sciences, education, economics and health care would work together to enhance service delivery to humanity and this demonstrates the existences of inter-agencies but after these many instances of child abuse and torture, multi-agency working, owing to the amendment and modifications of new laws and policies regarding to child protection and rights became much more active and rejuvenated. Maria Colwell was killed by her step father (William Kepple), something that developed public uproar for over three decades and a lot of communications were made to various agencies to provide interventions. Victoria Climbe was also mistreated and murdered by people who acted as her guardians in London although she was an Ivorian national. Her case prompted public enquiry by Lord Laming and modifications of child protection policies and laws in the United Kingdom. The government got concerned and reviewed laws regarding to child protection and these regulations that were changed helped build and strengthen the multi-agency working to guard and ensure safety of the children and their well-being. Public enquiry by Lord Laming into the death of revealed the short comings that were exposed concerning Victoria’s case and it suggested changes that were to be made. Different programmes were formed and embraced and child protection laws were changed. An example is “Every Child Matters” was a programme started to fight for and protect children without any bias or discrimination based on their race, culture religion etc. Also the Children Act of 2004 was passed that formed a base for other legislations being formed in regard to children’s protection. Documents that provide framework to multi-agency working such as ‘Safeguard Children’ got publication in the year 1999 for the first time and a recent second revision in 2006.Through these initiatives, the spirit of togetherness among multi-disciplinary agencies was enhanced and many professionals saw the need to join up together and working towards safeguarding the child (Cheminais,2009,233). The Lord Laming report which was publicised in 2003 had myriad; about 108 ways forwardness concerning the modifications that should be implemented both locally and nationally .It also focused on those changes and alterations that should be made between bureaus and professional bodies in order to affect delivery of services to the children. It is this report that led to the formation and adoption of “Every Child Matters” programme which targeted children from ages ranging from birth to 19 years old. The horrifying abuse of Victoria and her eventual death brought a lot of contributions in various institutions by and policies as her neglect by different professionals during her seeking for healthcare and support exposed a great deal of limitations of professionals and lack of cooperation and collaboration in child support. It is true that Victoria had sought support and healthcare from different professionals such as social workers, healthcare practitioners, teachers and the police but they all could not provide effective interventions to help her. This case (Victoria’s) therefore prompted these agencies to refocus on the importance of working together to provide a holistic support and protection to the child. Victoria’s incident is regarded as the pioneer of Every Child Matters programme which focused on putting up together strategies by the government in ensuring and strengthening protective services, social segregation and poverty eradication by focusing on reviewing reforms, aiding caregivers and families of the children, and providing early measures and efficient security to children. For number of decades governments like that of the United Kingdom have seen cases of serious child abuse and Maria Colwell and Victoria Climbe’s cases are evidence. At the same time over 50 public inquiries have been made and these provided a solemn comfort to the people that such incidences of child abuse would never occur again. However, this has not been the case because a lot of child abuse cases have been reported including Victoria’s just when people thought child abuse is no more because of the many changes that were made. These incidences have exposed the failure in communicating vital information and the existing state of confusion in dealing with these cases. Recently in 2007, a similar occurrence like that of Victoria happened in which Baby Peter got abused by the boyfriend to his mother leading to his death. This has revealed the lack of cooperation between the different agencies that are involved in handling these cases leading to these many tragedies. These child abuse cases can only be prevented if the government and other agencies join efforts and work together. The government has a role in terms of its legislations and directives, while the agencies need to consult each other and consolidate efforts in working towards one objective of safeguarding children (Cheminais, 2009:54) Obviously, when the different multi-agencies and multi-professionals fail to work together in safeguarding a child the results is fatal. For example, if a police officer in charge of a child abuse case cannot work hand in hand with the examining doctor and /or a social worker, then the child may not find evidence to prosecute the perpetrator. Working together therefore is essential in safeguarding the child. Therefore various preventive measures were put in place to ensure this unity and cohesion in dealing with children matters to ensure their well-being and ‘Common Assessments Framework’ and ‘ Lead Professional’ have been adopted. Common Assessment Frame (CAF) is a strategy in safeguarding a child that involves integrating professionals from various agencies such as doctors, lawyers, social workers, counsellors among other to from the same form and commonly provide specific support to the child from a wide range of expertise. The child’s needs are recorded in one form and different agencies get the form and check where they can professionally contribute. The child’s needs are holistically met as they receive assistance from all sorts of angles. This assessment framework enables the agencies involved to come together and formulate a solution as a team and draw a line to follow in working the solution to effectively provide solutions to the child in need. The advantage of this is that it ensures harmonious work process as agencies do not overlap or over step their mandate in service delivery. Also it is critical as sharing of information is made easy among the members involved and the child does not have to be subjected to several interviews since the information is already availed to all from a single source. People work on the same relevant page. Lead professionals are the convergent point; a person who is selected to coordinate the child to the other professional agencies that are providing him/her with support. However, a number of limitations have been realised with this method. As much as Lord Laming required agencies to embrace and adopt Common Assessment Framework, not all institutions have done so and it’s not really possible to determine if they will. Being a new strategy some ignored the directive and has continued delivering their services independently. Consequently, using Common Assessment Framework has proved to be time consuming and adds bulk of work to the professionals involved and this is a major reason why some professionals abandon it. Another model used by multi-agency working is the Team around the Child (TAC) which is a team of experts and professionals from different disciplines who meet with a child to provide support to him/her on a one-on-one basis. It has been found to be one of the most effective models as it case-studies a child at the lowest level and better still involve the parents or guardians. This model though is in line with the Common Assessment Framework. Another method multi-agency uses is through selected service and the delivery hubs which have integrated and all-round service to the children and the community at large. At these centres support, guidance and care for children are provided and reports are forward to the mother multi-agency headquarters. An example of such is Sure Start Centre. The new labour government sought to intervene and ensure well-being of children through the involvement of the councils in safeguarding children. It proposed the founding of a database called Counterpoint which had all the information of children in the nation(it is no longer there), the Common Assessment Framework(discussed), establishing a ‘Director of Children’; a person in the council charged with ensuring welfare of the children, a lead member who is elected to ensure children’s social policies,’ Local Safeguarding Children Board’ which would remove area children committee and would ensure the councils is discharging its duties in regard to child welfare is concerned and organise training for multi-agencies, ‘Children and Young People’s Plan’ in which each council were legally obliged to make and show multi-agency plans they had for the young ones. Also other structure formed include, ‘Children’s Commissioner’ who conducted oversight duties and reported to parliament about what is on the ground concerning children and subsequently children centres were formed to provide education and shelter to children who became victims of any sought of tragedy (Edwards, 2009:320).In May 2010, there was a change of government in UK and major changes were as well made. The database which used to provide children’s particulars was removed. Like it used to happen, the councils were offloaded the burden of production of children and young adult plan and even the ‘Children’s Trust’ was scrapped off, although coordination between agencies was still emphasised and encouraged; the only exception was schools. The children’s Commissioner Office was reinforced and the initial Children’s Director removed. There was a review of the children protection procedure. Policies and Practice Framework The operations of multi-agency working are guided by a number of policies and practice guideline framework. This include commitment and willingness, understanding role, common aim and objectives, communication and information sharing, effective leadership, involvement of relevant personnel, funding/resources, good working relationship, and having adequate time. Although the spirit of commitment is more of an intrinsic quality that a person develops than a job skill, it has been identified as the most significant attribute that keeps multi-agency moving (Clarke, 2007:358). It requires that however challenging and hard a task/project may be, members keep on pursuing it to the end .The stay focused and committed to meet the common goals they had set. Commitment brings about endurance and perseverance and these are virtues that have seen multi-agency grow bigger and bigger. A team of committed professionals is such a worthy and fruitful crew. The second most vital factor in multi-agency practice is the need to understand each other’s role. Since multi-agency is a combination of different agencies and different professional with different expertise, it is key for each person or institution to understand what role they play. It is imperative to understand clearly each role of a member so that a sense of responsibility can be heightened failure to which a person or an agency may sit back and ignore a task assuming that it was someone else’s thereby bringing out conflicts in duties (Taket, 2000:333). People have to know the duties assigned to them and discharge them effectively. Similarly, the need to have common objective and aims cannot be disputed in the operations of multiagency work. It is mandatory to have the same reasons why you’re indulged in that particular task and what you aim to achieve at the end of it. A team that is work on different v agendas cannot achieve the same goals and multi-agency team understands this. They take some considerable amount to time to set their objectives; both long-term and short-term and clearly set their priorities on what should be pursued first. This helps in consolidation and togetherness as people working within the course for the same purpose. These agendas are precisely stipulated and coupled with the spirit of commitment; it makes them be goal-oriented. Significantly, Communication and information sharing is required. All the processes going on may need consultation, information dissemination, work relationship, information clarification among others and all these require that the lines through which communication is transmitted are open. Sometimes trainings are held, professionals dialogue and consult, people require support among others; these free flow of work can only occur when communication is effective. This is not an individual task as much as everyone has his/her own roles, still communication are vital. Good communication skills are required for members to build good working relationships as sometimes debates, arguments and disagreements may arise and the only thing that can bring people back together is the good communication. Communication is also required in information sharing so that professionals are kept up-to-date with the turn of event and the progresses made. To effect a change, to move forward together in a group and to stay focused and yield results an effective leader is required and this is not exception to multi-agency working. Leadership is a key factor in motivating the professionals involved. A visionary leader will remind the people they are working with about what exactly they aim to achieve thereby making them stay on course for the rest of the duty. Psychologically, the presence of a good leader helps maintain order and improves performance in a multi-agency working. Leaders who can go beyond the demarcated boundaries of responsibilities and offer much more that is needed makes working in multi-agency more yielding. Leadership offers guidance when challenges and problems come on the way of the multi-agency working as solutions can be easily figured out when there is a responsible leader who knows what they are doing. Consequently, involving relevant personnel is as well key in the operations of the multi-agency working at all levels. You realise sometimes you need totally different professional or experts who may not be amongst you. A need to seek for the expert’s services therefore may rise and at multi-agency working never hesitate to take their leg forward and invite other professional’s services at whichever level of the work. This has made it possible to cover and exploit all avenues need to solve a problem. Funds and resources are usually a major challenge in all sectors and to solve this, multi-agency working usually share funds and resources. Presence of money can easily facilitate solution to a challenge that when the reverse is the case (Malos, 2011:199). Agencies can come together and share burdens and even add to those voluntary organisations or well-wishers who have contributed to overcome financial challenges that they come across. This strategy has worked pretty well for the multi-agency. Method of sharing funds is: fund and resources or joint contribution or even seeking other alternatives that can generate income for the multi-agency. Other key issues in maintaining operations of multi-agency include: positive working relationship, honesty, openness and continuous review of policies (Needharm, 2007:675). A number of challenges and barriers exist and are faced by people working in a multi-agency .One of them being cultural barriers and this comes in form of language barriers which usually poses a problem to different professionals working together for a common goal. As seen above, communication is critical for multi-agency work and if people are not able to speak the same language, it becomes a great problem. This can deter professionals from other agencies to cooperate and discharge their duties together. Although most agencies try to solve this by holding trainings, language has remained a major challenge (Cheminais, 2009:333). Other cultural factors such as conflicted customs and values also makes multi-agency work become hard as two professionals may interpret a situation in different ways and continue disagreeing until they do not work. Lack of effective communication and confidentiality are also related to the above mentioned problems. These have greatly lowered the work of multi-agency working. Problems of funds and resources are also some of the challenges multi-agency face. Lot of money is needed to conduct the operations of the multi-agency working but they do not have sufficient. Funds for training of personnel, food and accommodation, buying equipments among others are never available putting some of the activities to a halt. Benefits of Multi-agency Working The impact of multi-agency working to the children and their families can be summarised in one word; marvellous. Multi-agency working has been a key player in identification, at early stage, potential dangers to children and actively providing solutions to ways in which they can be avoided. This proactive measures in support of the child has helped prevent a lot of problems that children would otherwise been subjected to. Through setting integrated centres with a range of experts who are willing at all times to provide services and expertise to children has been a major contribution (Soan, 2008:281). Access of healthcare, counselling, legal and educational services has been enabled improving the lives of children. Since multi-agency working approach focuses on a holistic view of a problem, a child’s problems at home, school, play field and community has been addressed from the base as even parents have been engaged in seeking for solutions for the young one. Parent as well has been made to understand what could have been wrong with their child from a holistic point view (Hayden, 2010:234). This has generally benefited not only the child but also the family and society at large. Multi-agency working is no doubt a helpful and beneficial society group. Multi-agency working has not only impacted on the target groups (children) but also to the practitioners and professionals. A lot of positive outcomes can be derived from the impact of multi-agency working on professionals and practitioners (Cheminais, 2011:453). One, it has reduced cost that would have otherwise incurred by the practitioners and professionals if they were working a lot from their own stations of working in providing services to children. When a pool of professionals works together, they incur fewer expenses as they can share resources such as offices among others. They are stationed in one base and this helps reduce cost. Time is also saved as information about a client or a patient is shared making work much more easily. The way professionals work has taken a different course with the introduction of multi-agency working .A multi-agency is like a hypermarket consisting of a range of products less than one roof (Clift, 2012:292). Through this formation, professionals get to learn and understand the different viewpoints of an event and research is prompted. Learning is a common process to professionals working in a multi-agency working. Generally the outcome of their services is of high quality as it is generated from an interactive process with interplay of a various perspectives. Children attended to by professionals from multi-agency institutions receive services that are of high standards since those professionals working there are regulated. Conclusion Attempts to safe guard children can only be actualised if issues affecting children are approached from a multi-faceted perspective. From the historical context discussed above, it is evident that when child abuse issues were considered from an independent and single perspective, success was never achieved. When different professionals join up and work together to provide service to the child it is much more enabled. Although multi-agency faces various kinds of barriers, if support and consideration is given they can be neutralised. 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