Understanding Safeguarding of Children and Young People

The local authority has a welfare of duty to protect children in their area and work

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-

Children Act 1989 – Protecting children’s welfare and to provide services according to the specific needs of children.

The integral part of this act is to maintain the child is at the forefront of decisions; the best option in relation to the child’s welfare will be taken into account when deciding the best course of action for the child/young person’s upbringing – creating a partnership between parents and multi-agencies.

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.

Section 47- the local authority has “a duty to investigate when there is reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering

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

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

Analyze how national and local guidelines, policies, and procedures for safeguarding affect day-to-day work with children and young people.

Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 places a duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need and to promote the upbringing of children by their families, so far as this is consistent with their welfare duty to the child, by providing an appropriate range and level of services. A child in need is one who is disabled, or unlikely either to achieve a reasonable standard of health or whose health or development will suffer unless services are provided.

Often children die or get seriously injured due to abuse or avoidable accidents. Society has a duty to protect children. We have a range of professional organisations supported by legislation, policies and procedures in order to do this. When the procedures and policies do not work society has failed at the thing it is meant to do. It is vital and that the causes of failure are known and dealt with.

Police – must be informed at the earliest opportunity when any criminal offence has been, or is suspected of having been committed against a child. The decision concerning instigation of criminal proceedings is made by the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS. This decision is made, whenever possible after consultation with other agencies. All forces have a Child Abuse Investigation Unit (CAIU). It is their responsibility to:

This is only based on the already obtained information. If, as my assessment progresses new facts come to light the children’s circumstances may change but with the information given I would consider these children to be children in need. In addition, this can also be supported by the Human Rights Act 1989 (Long, Roche and Stringer, 2010: 96-97). This is important because everyone is entitled to a right to private and family life. This act also makes it unlawful for a public authority to breach convention rights, unless an act of parliament meant it couldn’t have acted differently. This family is not unsafe, just not very clean or healthy. This does not take away their right to a private and family life and as public authority there is no reason to breach convention rights. Furthermore, there is the importance of proportionality, meaning that to consider Amelia and Olivia to be children in need would be proportional to their current situation. To take a more drastic measure, like

In section 1 of the Act there is a welfare checklist which consists of seven principles that courts must give consideration to the wishes and feelings of children, their physical, emotional and learning needs, features which will be applicable to the court’s conclusion, The possible outcome on the child if circumstances changed as a result of the court’s decision, any harm the child has suffered or may be at risk of suffering and the capability of children’s parents (inbrief helping with life’s legal issues, n.d).