In 1999 the Department of Health (DoH) published guidelines called ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’. These guidelines required a multidisciplinary approach to child protection, promoting child protection training for all professionals involved in child protection, responding to the child and developing and implementing child protection plans (DoH 1999). With the Government publishing ‘Every Child Matters’ in 2003 it is evident that all professionals are not trained enough in child protection to respond to the needs of the child and implementing child protection plans.
Section 9 of the ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ document states that
‘Professional staff should be able to exercise professional skills in terms of effective information sharing and the ability to analyse this information’ (DoH 1999).
It goes on to state that they should also have the knowledge and the skills to work collaboratively with other agencies in order to safeguard the welfare of children (DoH 1999). The death of Victoria Climbie in 2000, and the failures in communication and information sharing between different agencies, is proof of this.
All of these issues mentioned above had influences towards the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy. This policy has been influenced by political agenda around social inclusion for all children, the death of Victoria Climbie and the perceptions of flaws in existing arrangements to ensure inter-agency cooperation and communication (MacLeaod-Brundenell 2004).
The ‘Every Child Matters’ policy was developed to improve the lives of children, young people and their families. To make this possible, changes in the quality, accessibility and coherence of services are needed. This will enable that all children and young people will be able to meet their full potential and if required, support given.
The Every Child Matters policy is backed by the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. He states in the Forward by the Prime Minister that:
‘We are proposing here a range of measures to reform and improve children’s care – crucially, for the first time ever requiring local authorities to bring together in one place under one person services for children’ (DfES 2003) .
He continues that action by the authorities has reduced the risk children face, but that they want to go further. They want to maximise the opportunities open to children – to improve their life chances, to change the odds in their favour (DfES 2003).
The government has done quite a lot already to improve the outcomes for children and young people. A wide range of services have contributed to improving the lives of children and young people and these are: free early education places for three and four year olds, more children’s centres, improved educational standards at primary school, more extended schools. They have reduced child poverty; they have fewer children in workless households, increased financial support, and developed the five year programme Quality Protects to improve the management and delivery of children’s social services, children leaving care later, progress towards a comprehensive Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). They have extended the Children’s Fund to 2008, they have launched the Young People’s Fund (YPF) in 2004, and they have a pooled fund for tackling young people’s substance misuse. They have also funded ten Information Sharing and Assessment Trailblazers, they have established the Children’s Workforce Development Council, established a Children and Youth Board. The government have invested over £1 billion to implement a national PE, school sport and Club Links strategy and created a creative partnership (enclosure E5 DfES 2004). As you can see from the information above the government have already made good progress to meeting the outcomes of the ‘Every Child Matters’.
‘Every Child Matters’ builds upon existing plans to strengthen preventative services. To address this, the Government have brought together both the education service and the children’s social services into one department to enable better communication between the agencies. This service is known as the Children’s Service. It is lead by a Director of Children’s Services. The Director of Children’s Services is responsibly for making sure that the ‘Every Child Matters’ is put into practice and used fully to its full potential. The Director of Children’s Services is the person that is held accountable, so, that person is the driving force of the policy at local level. The Director will have a specific role in safeguarding and will work closely with the Local Safeguarding Children Board. The Government want to address four areas to improve the existing plans and these are: to increase the focus on supporting families and carers, to ensure necessary intervention before a child reaches crisis point and to protect these children from falling through the net, to address the problems that were identified in the Victoria Climbie Inquiry Report, and to ensure that people working with children are valued, rewarded and trained (DfES 2003).
To be able to address the four outcomes mentioned above, five outcomes were developed after consultation with children and young people. The five outcomes that mattered most to children and young people were: being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and economic well-being.
The Government has worked with professionals from the statutory, voluntary and the community sectors to define what the five outcomes mean and they have identified 25 specific outcomes for children and young people and the support needed to achieve those aims (DfES 2003).
The five outcomes are important to all agencies involved with children and young people. As a practitioner working in the early years, all of the five outcomes are addressed and carried out. The outcomes are assessed by OFSTED within there inspections of schools. Two of the outcomes ‘stay safe’ and ‘enjoy and achieve’ will be discussed in detail as to how it relates to the writers working role and how it is put into practice.
According to MacLeod-Brundenell (2004) and Pugh (2001), the government’s agenda over the past ten years has bee for an integrated approach to education and care. The purpose of ‘Every Child Matters’ is to help professionals working with children and young people carry out the outcomes and develop a stronger partnership between the agencies involved.
All professionals working with children and young people use the ‘Every Child Matters’ document. The document sets out outcomes to achieve for every child and young person so that they can learn and thrive when they are healthy, safeguarded from harm and engaged in activity (Dfes 2003). These will now be looked at in closer detail.
The fundamental principles of the child protection are that all children have a right to be protected and kept safe from harm. The Children’s Act (2004) is the legislative backbone to which the government want to build their reforms of children’s services. The Act establishes a new Children’s Commissioner for England. Their job will be to raise awareness of the best interests of children and young people and report every year to Parliament of his/her findings. The Act also establishes a duty on Local Authorities to promote co-operation between agencies.
Within the writers Local Authority this has already started to happen with the appointment of a Director of Children’s Services. Her job is to make sure that all the agencies are working from the same department so that they can communicate effectively. This will enable that the information regarding children and young people be passed on and shared with the relevant agencies effectively.
The Act requires Local Authorities to set up Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards which are a statutory requirement. This has already been put into practice with the writers Local Authority having already set this up. The Local Authorities also have to publish a Children’s and Young People’s Plan (CYPP), again the practitioners Local Authority has already produced two drafts of this document for consultation and after the consultation period will produce a final draft to be put into practice in April 2006. Section 22(3)(a) of the Children Act 1989 and amended by section 52 of the Children Act 2004 local authorities, in carrying out their duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of looked after children, must pay particular attention to the educational implications of any decision about the welfare of those children (enclosure E1 DfES 2004).
Every looked after child and young person in public care needs to have a Personal Education Plan (PEP). The PEP is an educational plan that takes into account the child’s individual needs. The PEP ensures access to services and support, contributes to stability, minimises disruptions and broken schooling, signal particular and special needs and establish clear goals. The PEP also acts as a record of progress and achievement (DfES 2006).
A social worker must initiate the PEP and this must be completed within 20 school days of the child or young person coming into public care. Social Workers make contact with schools that have a designated teacher for looked after children and arrange for the PEP to be completed. It is then the responsibility of the Social Worker and the designated teacher to identify who needs to contribute to the PEP. This should include the child or young person, parents if appropriate, carers and other professionals. The PEP is reviewed by the designated teacher at the end of each term to ensure that progress is being made. New targets are set and shared with the relevant people mentioned above. At the end of the school year the child or young person’s school report is attached to the PEP. The PEP is shared and reviewed with the relevant agencies.
Within the writers working environment the designated teacher is the head teacher and she is responsible for seeing that the PEP is updated. She has regular meetings with the staff who work with looked after children to check on their progress and make sure that they are achieving their targets. She attends reviews with the designated social worker. The PEP has targets to be met which can be linked to the child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP). Within the writer’s role as a practitioner supporting children and young people with a PEP it is important that information is recorded accurately and kept secure and confidential.
Advice for Individual Education Plans is that they should include short-term targets, teaching strategies and provision, a review date and the outcome of the action taken (Dfes 2001). Weston states that IEPs are records of the strategies employed to enable a child to progress (cited in Alfrey 2003). Various professional are involved in carrying out an IEP. As an early years practitioner their role is to provide support in carrying out an IEP. This can involve supporting the child in literacy and numeracy to achieve their targets.
All professionals working with children or young people should be informed of the children they are working with who have an IEP. They should be able to access the IEP and be kept up to date about the child’s targets.
Within the writers working environment this is not always the case as some teachers do not tell the practitioners who has an IEP and do not show them it. This is not good practice as the practitioner will not know what the child’s targets are and therefore cannot help the child to achieve them.
The writer’s role as an early years practitioner is to support the children and identify any problems early and put in intervention programmes. An IEP should be reviewed regularly; however practice has shown that practitioners are often unaware of what targets are included. Advice given to schools from their Local Authority is that IEP’s should be available to staff to refer to when planning activities. The targets within the IEP’s then can be incorporated into the activities. It is part of the writer’s working role to find out who has an IEP because they support the children to meet the targets set for them. As a senior practitioner the writer offers advice and support to other practitioners to help them support the children fully to help the child achieve targets.
Within the writers setting the governing body has produced a study support policy. For study support policies to be inclusive, the activities must be accessible to looked after children, who often experience difficulties in staying behind after school because of transport arrangements (Dfes 2006). This policy states that the school must include looked after children in activities outside of school hour. This includes breakfast and after school clubs, school trips. It states that the school must provide opportunities for looked after children to be able to participate in these activities. Within the early years setting the looked after teacher, makes arrangement for children to access out of school activities. In her role she picks children up and drops them off at home where transport issues are the problem.
An important part of a practitioner’s role is to communicate information as accurately as possible to relevant people as soon as the practitioner is able to. Practitioners need to share information regarding looked after children and young people effectively through interagency and interauthority co-operation.
Within the writers role this is done through sharing information within the early years setting and outside the setting. This could be sharing information with other practitioners within the setting to sharing information with an outside such as a speech therapist or a member of the local authority. Maintaining confidentiality is an important area of practitioners work.
It is important to know when confidential information should be passed on. Within the writers setting confidentiality will only be broken if there is a threat that a child is in danger. The information that the practitioner is given can be sensitive and must be reported immediately.
As an early years practitioner it is important to identify possible signs of abuse to help children and young people stay safe. It is essential that practitioners are trained in this area. It is important to be kept up to date with training and developments that affect your working role. Kay (2004) suggests that child protection training remains a problem within many organisations and many practitioners do not feel equipped for the demands of the child protection role (cited in MacLeod-Brundenell 2004). Within the writers setting this area has been addressed as many members of staff felt that they had received little or no training in this area since they started working there and for some members this was longer than five years. It is important to be able to identify the possible signs and know the procedures to follow in the event of a case of abuse. With members of staff leaving and new members starting it is possible that people are not kept up to date and information may not be passed on.
The ‘Every Child Matters’ policy states that critical success factors for achieving the outcomes mentioned earlier involve LEAs, schools and other agencies (DfES 2003). This involves utilising the areas of good practice and sharing them within the Local Authority. This enables that practitioners who do not have the relevant skills and knowledge can be shown the good practice which in turn will help them become more skilled and knowledgeable.
This is an area of the Governments agenda to help achieve the five outcomes. They want a skilled and effective workforce. They want to attract and keep more skilled, motivated workers. The government are creating greater flexibility in career pathways and a climbing frame of recognised standards and qualifications (DfES 2003). This is all part of the Governments aims to achieve a valued and respected workforce in which many of the jobs that are frequently vacant will no longer be vacant they will be filled. With workforces working with a happy team of staff that are not overworked the risk of previous failing will be very small. In theory this is an ideal scenario but can sometimes be difficult to achieve, especially if the school or setting is resistant to constant change and upheaval.
Every Child Matters sets out clearly how they want to achieve the outcomes nationally. The main focus of Every Child Matters is on local change. The document sets out clearly the role of the Local Authorities in making arrangements to achieve the outcomes. Local Authorities are required to publish policies related to ‘Every Child Matters. They are required to use schools or agencies in their area to share good practice in achieving the five outcomes.
Within the writers setting the staff liaises with other members of staff and other agencies. They welcome good practice and advice and have recently used other schools that are showing good practice to help their workforce become more skilled. This multi-disciplinary approach is in line with the Government’s vision of services working together to give the best possible service they can provide.
With ongoing training, changes in attitudes and provision, most schools and other agencies are making changes in the way in which they communicate as part of everyday practice. The ‘Every Child Matters’ policy supports and guides practitioners and other professionals in this duty of becoming a joined up service.
In 1988 a review of services for children showed that there was a patchwork of uncoordinated services, showing different variations between one area of the country and another. The outcome of this was that the government should provide an overall framework so that services could be developed flexibly at local level (Pugh 2001). The ‘Every Child Matters’ policy is the framework that in the future will provide a co-ordinated workforce.
In theory all children should be receiving care and guidance to keep them safe and help them to achieve. However this has not always happened in the past and with agencies failing children and young people this is evident. This ‘Every Child Matters’ policy makes clear that all agencies should co-operate with each other if they are involved with children. This again acknowledges the importance of communication within different agencies.
The underlying principle of the ‘Every Child Matters’ is that all children have a right to achieve the five outcome. They have a right to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well-being. This policy is the framework in place to help Local Authorities achieve this. However, like any framework, if it is used as it is intended it will be effective, if it is not, then it will not be effective.
It has been shown how the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy affect’s the writers working role. This includes carrying out duties in a school/early years setting.
The examples of good practice in relation to looked after children in the writers setting show how the policy is working. However different schools and early years setting are at different stages of implementing the five areas.
We have seen how the history of legislations has paved the way for the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy. With new developments and initiatives, more support is available to agencies to help them achieve the five outcomes. Documents such as Supporting Looked After Learners and the Children and Young People’s Plan are part of the overall aim of Every Child Matters and they will help to understand what is required at local level as these relate directly to the primary/early years setting. ‘Every Child Matters’ see Local Authorities producing various documents such as the children and young peoples plan and other guidance. However with so much documentation in place it can be difficult to know that all the intended outcomes are being delivered. With this policy in place to guide Local Authorities and their support to the various agencies involved, this duty to achieve the five outcomes is made simpler. It is essential however that the agencies are kept up to date with the latest policies and frameworks.
As Every Child Matters is a relatively new policy put in place to bring care and education together under one department to ensure that services are working together, it remains to be seen if this policy will work. As mentioned earlier in this assignment the past failing have contributed to the Government publishing Every Child Matters. Every Child Matters hopefully will help to reduce past failing dramatically. Other frameworks have been tried and tested and with past frameworks failing children and young people it is hoped the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy addresses this so that there is very little error. With developments going on all of the time and feedback from OFSTED and individual settings, it will be interesting to see if any modifications will be made in the future. This may include some of the points highlighted in this assignment.
Reference List
Books
Bruce, T & Meggitt, C. (1996) Child Care and Education. London: Hodder & Stoughton
Donohoe, J. & Gaynor, F (2nd Edition) (2003) Education and Care in the Early Years Dublin: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
MacLeod-Brundenell, I. (2004) Advanced Early Years Care and Education For levels 4 and 5. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers
Pugh, G. (3rd Edition) (2001) Contemporary Issues in the Early Years Working Collaboratively for Children. London: Paul Chapman Publishing
Weston, C. Educating All: Towards Inclusive Classroom Practice for Children with Special Educational Needs. Cited in Alfrey, C. (2003) Understanding Children’s Learning. A Text for Teaching Assistants. London: David Fulton Publishers Ltd (p. 144)
Journals
DfES (2001) Special Educational Needs Code of Practice. Nottinghamshire: DfES Publications
DfES (2003) Every Child Matters: Changes for Children. Nottingham: DfES Publications
DfES (2004) Enclosure E1. Summary of the Children Act 2004. Nottingham: DfES Publications
DfES (2004) Enclosure E5. Progress to date on improving outcomes for children and young people. Nottingham: DfES Publications
DfES (2006) Supporting Looked After Learners. A practical guide for school governors. Nottingham: DfES Publications
DOH (1999) Working Together to Safeguard Children. London: The Stationery Office
Websites
accessed online 15/01/2006
