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The views of children, young people and families who have been involved in the child protection process

In June we published a report on family perspectives on safeguarding and children's services as part of our ongoing work to improve the child protection system by promoting children's views on it.

The report, which was commissioned from In-Trac, is already being used by the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young Peoples Services (C4EO) to inform social work training.

‘Family perspectives on safeguarding and relationships with children's services' found that service providers need to be better at removing barriers to helping families and should try to create real partnerships with them, rather than see l them as ‘resistant to social care'.

The common experiences of those interviewed for the report were fear of the consequences of being drawn into the child protection system and disagreements with workers about their problems.  Mistrust which lingered from past experiences, whether personal to them or from encounters with unhelpful workers, was an obstacle to developing relationships with new social workers. Criticisms emerged of an unresponsive system and of a lack of respect from individual social workers who also failed fully to understand issues such as poverty and domestic violence.

The practices families found helpful are familiar: knowledgeable and empathic workers who provided explanations and grasped the impact of previous experiences were much valued. Open communication was essential to family members, as was information which helped them to understand their rights.

Social workers have the difficult task of judging when parents are deliberately misleading or disguising their resistance or actual abuse - they cannot be naively optimistic. Persistence in the face of potential risk to a child, combined with respectful treatment of vulnerable and troubled parents, requires the confident use of authority and a system which supports social workers in their task.

The follow up to this research will look more closely at children's experiences and  at children's help-seeking and ways to improve their access to support following abuse. We know that many children never tell anyone about abuse, and others only address it many years later. It is a major challenge for all involved in safeguarding to enable children to get the help they need at the earliest possible stage and to listen to their messages about what would make this possible.

You can download the report here.

Work with others

We are gathering the views of children and young people for the Munro Review of Child Protection and for the Family Justice Review. Children and young people can submit their comments to the Munro Review here.

For more information about our work in the area of safeguarding, contact Jenny Clifton, Principal Policy Advisor (Safeguarding).