Sector recruitment challenges key barrier to safeguarding children, report warns
Amrit Virdi
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Recruitment and retention challenges across services working with families is a key barrier to safeguarding vulnerable children, a major report warns.
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel's annual report has found that 53 per cent of children experienced neglect before a safeguarding incident occurred in 2022/23.
The data was collected through an analysis of evidence from national and local safeguarding reviews in partnership with the National Policing Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme from January 2022 to March 2023.
It highlighted that “funding, recruitment, and retention pressures have had a discernible impact on the delivery of the best safeguarding practice to children and families”.
A decline in children and family social workers in 2022 and a drop in workforce numbers across other services supporting vulnerable families, like health visiting, was also highlighted.
The report states: “Together with an increase in population numbers and level of vulnerability, the decline in workforce numbers places significant pressures on health visiting services in meeting the scale of need.”
“Placement sufficiency for children looked after by local authorities” was also deemed as “an acute problem” with “too many children who are looked after living at considerable distances from their family and community networks” in “settings where the quality of care cannot be effectively monitored”.
The report also highlighted that 21 per cent of children involved in safeguarding cases looked at had one or more mental health issues.
There was “a high prevalence of mental health conditions for teenagers identifying as being LGBTQ+” and “a significant proportion of teenagers with reported mental health conditions were also recorded as experiencing alcohol and/or substance misuse. Suicide was also notable as cause of death for nearly half of those teenagers with mental health conditions who had died”.
The report highlights a further link between children who experienced neglect and a lack of school attendance.
It states that: “Over half of the reviews observed that a child had experienced neglect and that that a high proportion of school age children who died or were seriously harmed were either not in school (11 per cent) or reported to be regularly absent (29 per cent)."
Some 11 children in the reviews were also not enrolled in a school at all, it adds.
Panel chair, Annie Hudson, said: “The children at the heart of this report endured shocking and almost indescribable violence and maltreatment. We must never become inured or habituated to the abuse, neglect, and trauma they have suffered. What happened to these children cannot be undone but it is vital that we learn from how well safeguarding agencies responded to their needs, acting at a national and local level where necessary.
“We welcome the important safeguarding reforms that have been initiated but the momentum for change must be accelerated to help families and protect children.”
