Essay on The Waterhouse Report

1.1 Outline current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedure within own UK Home Nation affecting the safeguarding of children and young people.

The report made 108 ‘sweeping recommendations’ (Laming, 2003) about modifications that were needed in the child protection system as a response to the errors made by professionals who had accountability for Victoria’s care. These involved the creation of a children and families board, a children’s commissioner, new local authorities management boards and the creation of a national children’s database. The thrust of the report was to address the integration of children’s services, bringing the relevant sections of the professional sector together to improve co-ordination and communication as that would directly lead to effective collaboration.

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

Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility, and includes measures to prevent or minimise the potential for abuse occurring. Protection is considered a statutory responsibility in response to individual cases where risk of harm has been identified

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.

1.1 Outline current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures within own UK home Nation affecting the safeguarding of children and young people

Safeguarding is for everyone and every organisation responsibility to protect children from any harm and promote their welfare (Children Act, 2004). However, the Department of Children, School

There is no one piece of legislation that underpins the safeguarding of children and young people in the United Kingdom but there are countless that are constantly being reviewed, changed or updated. From these many legislations, child care settings develop policies, according to the Oxford online dictionary a policy is ‘A course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organisation or individual’.

National and local guidelines, policies, and procedures determine the nature of relationship and interaction with children and young people. The policies decide on the rights and privileges of children and young people in the society thus outlining how this group should relate to the entire community. National and local guidelines, policies, and procedures for safeguarding determine practice, planning, and organization of all activities in relation to children and young people. The policies ensure that the procedures for protection of children and young people are clear to all in the daily interactions. The policies enlighten the entire society on how to spot child abuse, violence, and exploitation. The policies also have the essence of creating positive and safe environment for the development of children and young people. Policies also

Must be able to identify and record possible signs of abuse or neglect as soon as possible

Serious case reviews are called by the local safeguarding children’s board when a child dies and abuse and neglect are known or suspected to be a factor in the death. They will involve the local authority children’s service and the police, as well as health, education

To be able to safeguard children effectively we need to be aware of the following policies:

As can be seen there are many different organisations involved when there is any suspicion that a child may have been abused or actually harmed.

The following is an outline of current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures within own UK Home Nation for safeguarding children

the social worker in the Maria Colwell inquiry and the social worker in the Victoria Climbié both received criticism within the media for their lack of usage of the power that they had as social workers to prevent the incidents (Parton, 2004), however, it was only the social worker in the Climbié case that lost her job, where she has also been placed on the register, stating she is unable to work with children again (ibid,2004).