NCJ Number
230532
Journal
Child Abuse Review Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Dated: March - April 2010 Pages: 82-96
Date Published
March 2010
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article examines the changes required by agencies and professionals to bring community-oriented policies and practices into more prominent usage.
Abstract
Historically, children's safeguarding policy and practice in the United Kingdom have focused on individual and family-level explanations of abuse and neglect, with relatively little attention given to children's overall well-being or the role played by neighborhood conditions in shaping it. As a result, community-oriented practice, designed to improve the neighborhood conditions in which many of the families who come to the attention of child welfare agencies live, has largely remained on the margins of mainstream provision for safeguarding children and young people. However, more recent policy developments, including 'Every Child Matters and the Children's Plan', do highlight the influence of children's wider circumstances on their well-being, providing the foundations for more holistic approaches to service provision. Nevertheless, it is argued that these policy developments are unlikely to be successful unless they are accompanied by fundamental changes within the culture of many agencies and professions. Using a combination of ecological theory and practice examples, some of the main strands of the changes required (developing a culture of listening to children and adults; recognizing and supporting the safeguarding activities of local people; and promoting partnership approaches to extending local provision) are critically examined. References (Published Abstract)