Victoria Climbie Story

Throughout this essay, the health, safety and welfare policy and practise that came about after the Victoria Climbie case will be reviewed and evaluated. After arriving in England in November 1991 from the Ivory Coast, eight-year old Victoria Climbie suffered abuse from her great-aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, and her great-aunts partner. The anguish and eventual murder of Victoria in 2000 from hypothermia, caused by malnourishment and damp conditions, provoked ‘the most extensive investigation into the child protection system in British history’ as described by Batty (Macleod-Brudenell, 2004). The high media profiled incident exposed a clear lack of precision and communication between all professionals and agencies involved. This is shown by

Abuse and neglect comes in all different forms and each one of them are as equally as damaging as the next. Others will agree that abuse and neglect are hard to define in some cases, but there are clues and signs that professionals and nonprofessionals can detect in a child if they just pay attention. Being observant isn’t the only key to saving these children, but also being willing to speak up and tell someone what you know and or saw. In “A Child Called It”, David Pelzer is a young boy who goes through horrendous abuse and neglect who might have been able to endure much less pain if one adult would have spoken up, despite the fear of any consequences. There is a disgusting number of examples of abuse and neglect in this book, but there will be three different experiences that will showcase neglect, psychological abuse, and physical abuse discussed in the rest of this text.

The death of a child or adult from abuse or neglect is of huge public and professional importance. In recognition of this, in England, every such

The Victorian Era is a remarkable time in history with the blooming industries, growing population, and a major turnaround in the fashion world. This era was named after Queen Victoria who ruled United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 1837 until she passed away 64 years later in January 1901.When Victoria received the crown, popular respect was strikingly low. The lack of respect for the position she had just come into did not diminish her confidence. Instead she won the hearts of Britain with her modesty, grace, straightforwardness, and her want to be informed on the political matters at hand even though she had no input. She changed Britain into a flourishing country. She also impacted how women interacted

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

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 current legislation is the result of the children’s Act 1989, which is used to ensure that all people who work with children are working together and are clear about their responsibilities and know how to act if allegations of child abuse are made. The children’s act 2004 is a legal framework for “Every Child Matters” and is a direct result of the Laming Report following the death of the Victoria Climbie case in the year 2000. Hereafter an independent inquiry highlighted so many problems with how the reports of neglect and child abuse was dealt with and that vulnerable people in society were not being properly safeguarded. The main points of the 2004 Children’s Act were that every local authority has a director of children’s services who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that children are safeguarded.

‘When a child dies, and abuse or neglect is known or suspected to be a factor in the death…. Organisations should consider whether there are any lessons to be learnt about the ways in which they work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children’ (DfES 2006: 8.2 p169)

For 30 years, advocates, program administrators, and politicians have joined to encourage even more reports of suspected child abuse and neglect. Their efforts have been successful, with about three million cases of suspected child abuse having been reported in 1993. Large numbers of endangered children still go unreported, but a serious problem had developed: Upon investigation, as many as 65 percent or the reports now being made are determined to be "unsubstantiated", raising serious civil liberties concerns and placing a huge burden on investigative staffs.

On May 6, 2013 nearly 11 year after being held prisoner she was finally found by authorities, due to her health condition at the time she was immediately hospitalized since she had not been to a doctor since she was 21 (Knight, 2015). She was told she had a life threatening bacterial infection in her stomach that was eating it away and the doctors were unsure if she was going to make it or not, luckily they found her in time (Mitchell, 2015). Doctors also told her that

Anita Cobby was a 26 year old nurse who boarded a train at Central Station on the 2nd February 1986. She said goodbye to her friends and when her friends next heard about her, she had been severely beaten and raped and had been dragged through a barbed wire fence before having her throat cut and being dumped in a paddock in Western Sydney.

Baby V was taken to GP four days before the fatal incident, with mild viral infection, blocked nose and slightly off food; the GP does not seem to have done full physical examination of the baby. If they had done, then the rib fracture should have been noted along with the bruises. In this instance if those signs of abuse were recognised and reported, baby V could be protected. This shows the failure in performing duty of care by the health professionals.

R/s Victoria (14) wrote suicidal note, stating she wanted to shoot herself with a gun. R/s reportedly the stepfather was making sexual remarks to Victoria. R/s last year, Victoria overdosed and Jennifer didn’t get the child any help. R/s Victoria is staying with her brother, Anthony. R/s Anthony tried to get Victoria help, but Jennifer wouldn’t give Anthony the child’s Medicaid card.

Victoria stated she wanted to watch TV and was given an opportunity to choose the programming. Victoria chose to watch cartoon with her brother, mother, and stepfather. When Victoria was done choosing a show Pablo picked up the remote and hit her in the head with it which left a small red mark in the middle of her forehead. Elizabeth asked if Victoria was OK and she said yes. Victoria did not cry or show very much reaction to being hit as it seemed to not have much effect on her.

According to statistics 12.4 per 1000 children under the age of 17 have been a victim of child abuse. More than 6 million children are reported as abused in the last year. Sadly the fate of many of these children that live in abusive homes is death. 1.84 per 100,000 was reported to be abused in 2012. The number continued to rise to 1.96 in 2014. In the reported cases both or one parent was the cause of the death 79% of the time. In 16% of the cases a non-parent guardian was the cause of death. 5% of the deaths were caused by an unknown person.