Lord Lamings Green Paper was published in 2003 however since then there have been other cases highlighted in the Media; so does this mean that the MAW is not working or just that they have not got it quite right yet? There was the death of Baby P in 2007 which then sparked more contrversy regarding social sevices. This lead to Lord Laming creating a progress report in 2009.
In an interview to BBC Radio 4 Lord Laming said " children are still paying the price for organisations failing to do their duty." In this interview Lord Laming also told the BBC: "I believe this is about good practice, day by day good practice, about what happens at the front door of every agency and about a vision for children and I am disappointed that there are organisations that took several years to address and put in place recommendations that I judged could be put in place within a matter of months." (www.news.bbc.co.uk)
This interview was an enquiry into three other deaths of vunerable children that had taken place in London, Swansea and Newcastle.
It is clear in this interview that Lord Laming believes that more needs to be done to make MAW work effeciently and faster to save chidrens lifes.
The report will be focusing on two relevant issues within the setting: Team issues in a multi-agency context - internal or external and effectiveness of intervention in particular cases.
The reasoning behind this decision was the following of two children within the setting who needed intervention by MAW, one with excellent outcomes using MAW and the other very unsucessful due to the MAW system not working. How can it be so different if using the same system? Is it the difference between the agencies used? Hopefully by the end of the report it will be easy to identify why the difference in the outcomes of the two cases are so very different. Information regarding one of the cases was gathered via a child protection review in November 2011, the Safe Guarding Board allowed the meeting to be observed, obviously permission from all involved was given first. Through this review it was clear that the MAW concept could work well and good results came out of it. So why did it fail for the other case?
Along side the cases information as been collated via a questionnaire handed out to teaching staff and support staff to find out what percentage of staff actually know about MAW and how it works. Hopefully this could give the answers as to why the system failed for one of the children within the setting.
The setting which will be used during this report is an Infant & Junior school with a sure start centre which runs alongside it. The Learning mentor who is also the CAF officer, works alongside the head teacher and sometimes the special educational needs co coordinator (SENCo) It is only recentley that all this as been set up due to the fact that the school went into specail measures. Bearing in mind that the school is in a low income area and is prone to having several child protection issues and SEN needs.
Questionaires were given out to all teaching and non teaching staff (teaching assitants and learning mentor), this did not become an issue however some struggled to answer the questions as they were unsure of what MAW was. This highlighted training issues to the head teacher as several of participants were teachers.
Family A
On the 9th of August 2011 a mother of 5 year old twins was admitted to hospital after taking an overdose. The twins were placed with a family friend whilst the mother recieved support with her mental health and further assesments were taken.
The agencies involved with this case were not just for the children but for the mother due to fact she had a history of drug and alcohal abuse.
Agencies involved:
Mothers social worker (substance misuse service), Childrens social worker, CAMHS, Community mental health team, School nurse, Education support, Child protection team and School learning mentor
On the 25th of November with all agencies present a Child protection review took place to determine wether the children were able to return home. All agencies were in favour of this motion however the children are still to remain subjects of a child protection planning for a further period; this was to ensure that the current positive improvements would continue. There had been several observations by all agencies over the past few months and all had positive outcomes. All above agencies have worked hard alongside the mother to get positive results. To achieve these results each agency as been in constant contact with each other. The school setting as constantly worked together to make sure the children have recieved all the help needed not just educationally but also emotionally. They have allowed the mother to come into the school supervised and read with the children. They have kept her up to date with all or any improvements within thier educational needs.Their carer as made sure they have attended school everyday and maintained some normality for them.
All agencies allowed questions to be asked for research for this report although names of individuals have not been mentioned, agencies have been entered.
Each individual admitted that due to the fact that each agency corressponded throughout the case it ensured positive outcomes. They all interacted daily with the needs of the twins and the mother. One individual pointed out that to help in cases like this each agency needed to agree on arrangements for exchanging information, everyone to have a clear and common understanding of the extent and purpose of everyones involvement in the case. She did carry on to say that "its not very often that cases run as smoothly as this one had."
Family B
This case as taken over seven years for the system to start working for the child, although he as now been put on fast track the mother believes it maybe a little to late. She as been fighting for help since he was two years old. He was diagnosed with aspergers at the age of four. Because he was well behaved at school and was above average in most lessons the teachers and head teacher refused to ackowledge the mothers pleas for help. He now refuses to come to school because of his intolerence of noise. If the correct help had been given earlier he would have been given therapy to help him cope in the school setting.For a short while they had come to a compromise with the child, which was that he was allowed to sit outside teh classroom with a teaching assitant to do his work, then at break times he would go to the ICT room. However because of the lack funding this only lasted two week. If the school had helped in the beginning he would of now had a statement and the council would of supported the funding.
His mother as not only begged the school for help she repeatedly took him to the doctors because of the bowel problems that had arisen from his fear of the toilet but because he was diagnosed with aspergers they just put it all down to asperger symptoms. His mother is literally exhausted because of the lack of help. She is a single mother and recieves no respite from him or his sister who suffers from chronic OCD.
He is now in year 6 and should be preparing for secondry school, the head of the secondry school as admitted they will not be able to accomadate him because of his toiletry needs. This also could of been avoided if MAW had worked for this family. The school had been put into special measures January 2011 which forced the school to look how it behaved towards children with specail needs. New people were employed and old ones were trained on how to work with SEN. The new learning mentor took this case head on and made it his priorty to solve. If only he had been employed years ago! In total there are eleven agencies now involved with the case. Although it as now been dealt with appropiatley there is a lot of damage to be undone. Because of all this several other SEN cases are now open, however it is believed they will have positive outcomes as they have been highlighted in time.
‘The most commonly identified practice shortcomings expressed in the 40 reviews included inadequate sharing of information, poor assessments, ineffective decision making and lack of inter-agency working.’ (www.dh.gov.uk)
Here are the results of the questionaire that was given to team members as mentioned earlier in report, the results were surprising especially considering quite a high percentage were teachers. Although since these findings the head teacher as taken all this on board and now more training will be given to all those that require it.
One member said " I believe it to be very effective when agencies talk to each other. I think MAW is vital"
"The welfare of a child is paramount, staff and parents need to be aware of all the support available"
"Everyone is working for the best interests of the child, in my experience I have seen this initiative grow and be successful"
"If professionals communicate clearly together it is highly effective, information sharing is the key to success."
Another said "Unaffective in relation to information being passed on"
" Absolutely essential in order to identify SEN and provide effective support/intervention." this comment was made by one of the teachers who failed to see that child B needed intervention.
Majority of them worried about how the funding cuts would effect it all and how the system would cope as it seems there is more and more children in need of some sort of help whether it be SEN or child protection.
The coalition goverment sees early intervention as the most appropriate means to tackle the root causes of some social problems. Intervening earlier with families, it is argued can prevent children and parents falling into a cycle of deprivation, anti social behaviour and poverty, thereby saving money in the long term. (Allen, 2011)
The coalition are some what correct in their believes but for early intervention to happen people need more training and to be given the funding to support this. Adequate resourcing, in terms of funding, staffing and time, was found to be central to the success of multi-agency working. Whilst financial certainty and equity was important, inadequate or time-limited funding was identified as problematic. A rapid turnover of staff, recruitment difficulties and insufficient time allocated for multi-agency activity were also reported to be potential threats to its success. (www.nfer.ac.uk)
Evaluation
In total there was twenty questionaire given out these were the only ones who knew what MAW was, only three questions were asked:
- Do you have a clear understanding of what Multi Agency is?
- Are you able to name at least five of the agencies that the school could use?
- What are your thoughts on MAW and do you believe it to be effective?
The questionaire needed to be simple due to the lack of time individuals had to give.
This highlighted the training needs within the school, so the results were handed to the head teacher. There as since been training given to the individuals who clearly needed the information to be able to help any children in the future. There is also child protection meetings held now on a weekly basis, hopefully this will continue as it is believed that without the knowledge more mistakes could be made.
Child B as suffered because of the lack of awareness. Just because a child is able to do the work required in class does not mean there is nothing wrong. If the mother had been listened to the case would not of gotten this bad. The way forward for the school is now to listen to parents, to be educated and know what steps to take next.
All individuals who work with children are expected to know the Common Core of skills and knowledge. So why did such a high percentage of people within this setting not know the facts they needed to know, why did it take this report to highlight this fact? One of the factors could be time and resources, but if more financial cut backs are going to take place then this will only make it harder. The Common Core as been around since 2005 and was updated in 2010.
The common core describes the basic skills and knowledge that everyone working with children or young people is expected to have. It sets out six key areas of expertise and the skills needed in each of them. Having the common core ensures there’s a consistent quality, so whoever a young person chooses to approach will know how to talk to them, how to recognise if things are wrong and how to bring in other services if they’re needed. (www.cwdcouncil.org.uk)
Evaluation
All in all the report as shown that MAW can work however needs all involved to communicate effiecentley and have the childs best interest in mind at all times. It as shown that training is key to guarantee success from all parts, all though funding sometimes stops this there should be always at least one person with the knowledge to share.
Limitations of the study have been time, especially because of the holidays. Also the HMI visit the school had just before the holidays limited access to some information so completion had to take place when the school reopened.
The setting is ideal for future research because of the area it is in, especially for the upcoming module as there is several behaviour issues with in the classes.
References
Allen, G (2011)Early Intervention; Next Steps. London; Cabinet Office
Atkinson, Jones & Lamont, 2007: Multi-agency working and its implications for practice: Available at www.nfer.ac.uk
BBC,2008. Child Protection plans 'failing'. Tuesday, 22 January 2008 Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/7200217.stm (accessed 23rd November 2011)
Cloke, C 2007. Safeguarding children: the importance of multi professional and multi-agency working. Available at: www.nspcc.org.uk/inform (accessed 02nd December 2012)
CWDC,2010. The Common Core of Skills & Knowledge: Available at www.cwdcouncil.org.uk/common-core (accessed 02nd December 2012)
The Victoria Climbie Inquiry report of an inquiry by Lord Laming. Available at:http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4008654 (accessed 23rd November2011)
Herczog,M 2001. Child sexual abuse in Europe. ebooks: Strasbourg: Council of publishing Europe. Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books (02nd December 2012)