33 Analyse The Potential Tension Between

Every Child Matters Framework which is currently in the process to be changed is part of the Children Act 2004; it is a piece of legislation which has and influences planning and provisions of learning opportunities. The Every Child Matters ensures that settings provide quality of children’s and young people’s play and learning.This supports children from birth to 19 years. When practitioners plan, they should relate their work to the five outcomes for children; be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve though learning, make a positive contribution to society and achieve economic

There are many social, economical and cultural factors that impact on the lives of children and young people. In my role as a Young Carer’s Support Worker, I work with a number of families living with the consequences of these factors. Every Child Matters (ECM) aims to improve the outcomes and life chances of every child and young person, therefore, it is important we understand and do all we can to help them achieve the 5 outcomes of the ECM, stay safe, be healthy, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, and, achieve economic well-being.

This helps practitioner’s work together for the welfare of children. It promotes the Every Child Matters outcomes to reinforcing how important it is for all child careers to work together.

This aims is to ensure that every child has the chance to fulfil their potential by reducing levels of educational failure, ill health, substance misuse, teenage pregnancy, abuse and neglect, crime and anti-social behaviour among children and young people.

Children Act 2006 – Is an Act that defines the new duties imposed on the Local Authorities in respect to improving the Every Child Matters outcomes for pre-school children. The Act also defines new rules in relation to childcare for working parents as well as parental information services. It is aimed at improving the well-being of young children. It emphasises the importance of safeguarding children and young people within an educational setting. If a child discloses neglect or abuse; an establishment should have instructions to help the child. This could be referral to an outside organisation or internally.

Children Act 1989 – Determines the duty of early year’s practitioners to identify and meet the separate and distinctive needs of children and to keep them safe. It initiated the belief that the child ought to be at the centre of planning and that a child’s well-being and safety are vital when judgements are made concerning them. This act also recognises the accountabilities of parents in keeping their offspring safe. In this act there are two particular segments that relate to the duty of local authority with concern to child protection, these are-

The 5 positive outcomes for children and young people that practitioners should be striving to achieve under the framework of Every Child Matters are:

Following these proposals from Lord Laming, there have been developments in legislation and policy, which involve children’s welfare, one of which was the Green Paper of Every Child Matters (ECM) (DfES, 2003), a pre legislative document from the government of the day. This built upon existing plans to strengthen preventative services using the four key themes of: support, early intervention, problems addressed in the Victoria Climbie case and ensuring adults working with children are trained. The ECM Green Paper was the basis of a consultation between professionals, parents, cares and children about how the services for young people were working. Following from this, the government developed and parliament passed the Children Act

Current legislation is the result of The children Act 1989 which was brought in to ensure that all people who work with children worked together and was clear about their responsibility’s and knew how to act if allegations of child abuse were made.Following the death of Victoria Climbie in the year 2000 an independent inquiry highlighted many problems with how reports of neglect and child abuse were dealt with and found that vulnerable people in society were not being safeguarded.The Laming report led to the governments Every Child Matters paper and The Children Act 2004. In the last year this has now been renamed Every

1.1 outline current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures within own UK home nation affecting the safeguarding of children and young people.

It is everybody’s responsibility to safeguard children – This means every single staff member within a setting; irrelevant of what role they may have there. This also includes non-staff members, such as volunteers, student’s third-party companies (visitors, service providers etc). Each setting should therefore adopt their own safeguarding policy, of which has to be kept up to date and followed at all times.

The children act 1989 has influenced some settings by bringing together several sets of guidance and provided the foundation for many of the standards practitioners sustain and maintain when working with children. The act requires that settings work together in the best interests of the child and form partnerships with parents or carers. It requires settings to have appropriate adult to child ratios and policies and procedures on child protection. This act has had an influence in all areas of practice from planning a curriculum and record keeping. The every child matters framework has

The first policy is security of records/confidentiality this helps keep children and young people safe as if a child had been taken out of their home for their safety and moved out of the area to a new foster family or children’s home then this information should be hidden from their family so there is no way that they would be able to snatch the child

If a child/pupil discloses information to an adult in school that is of a serious nature, then the child should be made aware that the information given will need to be shared to protect them. If the school believes a child/pupil is at risk of serious harm then the confidential information will need to be shared with external professionals, such as police, social services, and other

Due to the need to meet the needs of society as a whole, the needs of children can sometimes either be ignored or regarded as a secondary concern. Even though that one day these children will be adults in our society, we do not always put their rights at the forefront for their overall development, education, housing, health and general well-being.