The Every Child Matters (2003) framework has five outcomes; be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and enjoy economic wellbeing. Be healthy means not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and sexually healthy and it’s about teaching children and young people how to live healthy lifestyles. Be safe means safe from maltreatment, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation, safe from bullying and discrimination, safe from crime and antisocial behaviour and to have a secure and stable home environment. Enjoy and achieve means to be ready to learn, to be attending school and enjoying it, to achieve educational, personal and social development. Make a positive contribution means to engage in decision making in the community and environment, engage in lawful and positive behaviour in and out of school, develop positive relationships and to develop enterprising behaviour. Achieve economic wellbeing means to engage in further education, employment or training upon leaving school, to ready yourself for employment, to live in a decent home in a sustainable community, to have access to transport and material goods and to live in households free of low income. It is the parents, carers, school teachers, social workers, and all professionals that work with children’s jobs to promote these five outcomes in all of their aspects. It is a set of guidelines that are implemented wherever children are involved. This framework helps children by having something in place in schools, residential care homes and nurseries that guide everybody working with children to help them meet their potential and have all of their needs met. In the same way it helps families of children and young people because the guidelines are there for them to understand how best to promote their child’s wellbeing.
The Children Act (2004) is legislation that strengthens that of the 1989 Act. It encourages partnerships between agencies and creates more accountability for those whose job it is to protect children. It comes following proposals set forward following the inquiry into Victoria Climbie’s death and it places a duty on local authorities and their partners including the police, health service providers and the youth justice system to cooperate in promoting the wellbeing of children and young people and for them to make arrangements to safeguard children.
This piece of legislation helps children, young people and their families by ensuring that children’s welfare and developmental needs are met, including the need to be protected from harm. This Act states that parents and carers should take into account the wishes and feelings of the child when making decisions that affect them. This gives the child some independence and control over their life. It also helps children and young people by placing a duty on local authorities to appoint a director of children’s services who is ultimately accountable for the delivery of their services. In Victoria Climbie’s case there were many opportunities for her life to be saved if only the local authorities and their partners had cooperated and communicated.
The Human Rights Act has a profound effect on services to children. It gives further effect to certain rights that already exist in the European Convention of Human Rights but this Act makes it much easier to raise these rights in the UK. This Act set duties on authorities to not act incompatibly with the rights of the child. For example; courts have a duty under this Act to adjust court proceedings and structures to be child friendly where a child is involved. It also means that the court will have to interpret the law wherever possible to be compatible with the rights of the child.
This Act helps children, young people and their families by affording children the same rights as adults where it is sensible for the child’s level of autonomy. Where a child feels they have been wronged they can choose to take it to court if they so wish.
There are many policies and procedures that promote safeguarding children, ensuring their safety in any type of care setting. I know of a situation where a young child was found outside on their own after being able to leave their house unsupervised because their parents didn’t have appropriate safety measures in place e.g. a child safety gate, window locks, locking the front door. The police were called and they picked up the child until they found their home, after talking with the parent of the child the police informed the local social services and reported the incident. Throughout this, the police have a duty to safeguard the child and assess if the child is safe in that situation, they do this by assessing the child physically (are they hungry, clean, dressed) and assessing the home environment and the physical, emotional, psychological health of the parent. If the assessments they make suggest it is not in the child’s or parent’s best interests that the child remain in that situation, appropriate measures would be taken. However, if this was a one-off thing and they deemed the parent capable of meeting the child’s needs and the home environment was suitable there would be support offered to help the parent safeguard their child. For example; local fire services offer free baby proofing of houses like installing baby gates, child locks for cupboards and doors…etc. That situation involved policies and procedures that the police have to take, that social workers have to take, and then other professionals that then may get involved such as health visitors and their procedures, with the aim of all of them to safeguard that child and to ensure they cannot leave the house unsupervised again.
This helps the child by safeguarding them from accidental harm and neglect whilst also helping the parent by offering her support in ensuring she can safeguard her child.
All bodies and organisations that collect personal date have to abide by the Data Protection Act and they are responsible for the availability, integrity and security of that date under this law. It states that any information must be processed fairly and lawfully, must be processed for limited purposes, must be adequate, relevant and not excessive, that it must be up to date and accurate and processed in accordance with human rights and that it must be kept secure.
This piece of legislation helps children and their families by ensuring that their personal information is safe and kept confidential, that only those who it is relevant to can access it. This enables people to be able to share information about their child that would promote their wellbeing confidently. It also means that when a child is thought to be at risk of harm or further harm this information can be given to help prevent further harm.
D1: Evaluate the regulation of care provision for looked after children and young people
The DBS procedure, although not responsible for the care of looked after children, their procedure does background checks on those who will be working with children to determine whether they are suitable to work with vulnerable people. Teachers, receptionists at schools and nurseries and colleges, social workers, residential care home workers, family members who take over care of a looked after child all have to have background checks as a safeguarding measure to ensure that children entrusted into their care are not abused.
Residential care homes for looked after children are regulated by Quality Standards which set out outcomes that the children must be supported to achieve while living in children’s homes. Each standard has an aspirational, child-focused outcome statement followed by a clear set of underpinning, measurable requirements that homes must meet to achieve the standard. There are nine Quality Standard’s for children’s homes;
- The quality and purpose of care standard
- The children’s wishes and feelings standard
- The education standard
- The enjoyment and achievement standard
- The health and wellbeing standard
- The positive relationships standard
- The protection of children standard
- The leadership and management standard
- The care planning standard
These standards set out what registered providers, responsible individuals and children’s homes managers must do by law under the Children’s Homes Regulations 2015 which is subsequent to the Care Standards Act 2000. OFSTED must regard these standards when regulating children’s homes.
OFSTED is the Office for Standards in Education which regulate schools, children’s homes, nurseries and other learning based organisations and they report directly to Parliament. OFSTED also inspect services for looked after children and young people to ensure each child is safe and protected within these services, they make sure that provisions that work with children are meeting standards of safeguarding policies and child protection. OFSTED is an important regulator their main aim is to allow children and young people to have the best education possible that meets their individual needs and requirements. They are a useful tool for parents and carers because they publish their reports online, this helps with parents choosing schools for their children and to keep up to date with the status of their child’s school.
OFSTED have to tell the school, nursery, college or children’s home that they are going to do an inspection. This is announced the day before the inspection, this allows for child care provisions to have plans in place in preparation for an inspection, so that on the day of the inspection the child care provider could change the way everything is done just to meet OFSTEDs standards and revert back to usual as soon as the inspection is over. This could potentially mean that OFSTEDs reports are not that reliable because they only reflect on that period of inspection. It has also been discussed between professionals such as teachers and social workers that OFSTED inspections cause immense stress that also effects the children, because everybody has to be performing at their very best levels. Anthony Douglas of CAFCASS reported that “the impact of inspection… is profound on social workers. It generally contributes to a low-level anxiety, which, when you are doing very anxious work anyway, is a factor that we need to be much more aware of, if we are not really careful, we will drive people out of this work; they won’t be coming into it.”
The national minimum standards, together with regulations on the placement of children in foster care such as the Fostering Services Regulations 2011, form the basis of the regulatory framework under the Care Standards Act 2000 for the conduct of fostering services. Some of the important principles that underpin the national minimum standards (NMS) are;
- The child’s welfare, safety and needs are at the centre of their care.
- Children should have an enjoyable childhood, benefiting from excellent parenting and education, enjoying a wide range of opportunities to develop their talents and skills leading to a successful adult life.
- Each child should be valued as an individual and given personalised support in line with their individual needs and background in order to develop their identity, self-confidence and self-worth.
- Foster carers have a right to full information about the child.
- Children in foster care deserve to be treated as a good parent would treat their own children and to have the opportunity for as full an experience of family life and childhood as possible, without unnecessary restrictions.
OFSTED are also the regulators of children in social care and take into account the NMS when they are inspecting foster carers.
According to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) the report that OFSTED made this year that more than three quarters of local authorities are not providing a good enough standard of children’s social care is “simply not credible”. The president of the association Alan Wood said that “The UK has one of the safest child protection systems in the developed world, yet the results of the Single Inspection Framework inspections undertaken to date suggest that the services of over 70% of authorities are not yet good enough.”
With this is mind it can be determined that there are differences in views about the quality of social care provided to looked after children between those appointed directors of children’s services within their local authorities and those at OFSTED who determine the quality that is being provided.
I think there needs to be more communication between the two bodies, with the people in charge of providing children’s services having one standard for high quality care and the regulators having another standard it is difficult to determine the true quality of care being provided. I think the two organisations need to work together to agree on a standard of care, to ensure all provisions are meeting that agreed standard and to work together to provide support to those that need improvement or are inadequate.