Dispatches

Comments

1. I thought dispatches showed a varied picture for the protection of children. Having worked with looked after children, school health children and now a health visitor, throughout these years, there has been many experiences which show interaction, communication and good effective resources are essential to offer proactive safeguarding of vulnerable children. Some of the comments posted are interesting. Perhaps the decrease in child deaths are due to hv interventions? We all have our own professional perspective, which is good and enhances professional collaboration but at present hv are very thin on the ground and, though experience, can identify a vulnerable family there are professional stresses and dilemmas which are increased when you know you cannot professionally put the time, assessments and proactive measures into place due to being overstretched and having to meet core targets. When it comes down to the bottom line, deaths will occur but what the government need to listen to are the professionals who are trying to prevent child abuse and promote safeguarding, identifying their 21st Century role, the publics expectations of our professional acccountability and after all let us 'do our job well'. The identified families, their children/babies/toddlers require our interventions, we do not need to 'police' communities; we offer a 'universal service' .Dispatches raised an issue which will always be inflammatory however, while we have the media, government targets, public expectations (dont forget!), we will surely have to strive to achieve the optimum best we can within each professional role and when difficulties arise, then they should be addressed. We should set our benchmark against what we hope to achieve and perhaps not reflect on what has improved.

   Posted by Sue on 02/08/2009 08:18:02

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2. Im glad Dispatches feel they have solved all the professional dilemas i have been facing over the last 15 years with a six month study. heres a fact for you, at every time in history and in every country in the world a very small number of parents will kill their children. The only serious debate concerns; is the rate reducing or just staying the same? In addition, some would say we are one of the safer developed nations whilst others would argue we are merely average. People need to accept that child murder is a fact of life, like cancer and car crashes and we should do our best to reduce it but you will not stop it ever. and since im writing heres another fact. If you could assess the risk of a parent killing their child accurately (which you cant) but say you could say there was a 0.1% chance a parent would kill their child. Would we want the child placed into care and put up for adoption and introduce all the documented risks of such a step. If you answer no, a 0.1% chance of murder is an acceptable risk you will be sentancing 1 in every 1000 children in such a situation to death ie it will still happen. The threshold arguement is key to this issue. If you intervene more you will protect more children but you will also remove more children from families who would have cared for them well. If people want the state to take their children into care when they take them to a and e with an injury that might be none accidental well then yes i suppose you might reduce the number of murders but the price in misery would not be one many people would want to pay. id also add that the countries that have the slightly lower rates of child murder are not the ones with the interventionist public services, countries like greece and ireland fair well probably because families are stronger.

   Posted by peter on 14/07/2009 21:20:50

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3. thought it was really interesting, but sad to learn the awfal true about what some parents are capable of doing. some through lack of understanding of thier medical conditions by so called professions. why does everything come down to money and the blame culture that has become the norm. if agencies work together properly of 1 system that (for example the social security system, you can walk into any dole office and they have access to all your details.)all agencies can access which includes the data protection, this at least would help with interagency working and flag up any concerns that way we could get away from the blame culture and start ating to help parents/ carers and children.

   Posted by donna bruce on 14/07/2009 18:23:18

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4. As a child protection worker of many years experience I'm afraid I found the programme rather superficial, revealing nothing new, suprising or, frankly - helpful. The themes and characteristics of families where children die or are seriously injured are and have long been well known and researched. The problem lies in developing practice which is sensitive to the uniqueness of each situation, whilst being authoritative enough to benefit children. The relationship between the state and the individual and family is also unresolved -but the programme had nothing useful to say about the importance of privacy from bureaucratic intrusion, the lack of predictability in human affairs (and the well researched phenomenon of false 'ves & -'ves), the poor outcomes for children caught up in investigations and in care and so on. To truly prevent child deaths (and most other tragedies) would require a level of surveillance and state action totally unnacceptable in our society/culture (and at a more personal level - to me). Training more health visitors and giving them a greater safeguarding (CP) remit is no answer - we used to have more health visitors and a higher death rate; actually, the number of child deaths have come down over the past 30 years or so (more or less since Maria Colwell). Mention child protection to a 'lay' person - and the complaints will be about 'not enough' on the one hand, and 'health & safety is too intrusive/out of control etc' on the other. Child protection takes the form of a number of dilemmas (Care/control; unique/universal; sensitive/bureaucratic; support/remove; punish/help etc). The nature of a dilemma is that there is no 'correct' solution. So, whilst the programme is a handy lesson for those who don't know, and a reminder for those who do, it takes us no further forward. Is there to be a follow-up which looks at the issues and debate about how to protect children in the 21st century?

   Posted by Jem on 14/07/2009 11:58:51

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5. As an independent author of serious case reviews I all too readily recognised the points made in last nights programme. The same issues of poor assessment, inadequate information sharing and failing to take positive action are sadly present in nearly all serious case reviews. Agencies always claim to have implemented serious case review recommendations, yet the same errors and misjudgements are repeated. I'm never certain whether it's lack of knowing what to do or having too much to do, that consistently lets children down. One thing is certain, children will continue to be seriously injured and killed by parents and carers and perhaps that fact should be at the forefront of our minds when making decisons on safeguading children. Finally, to balance the thrust of the programme, I do know that there are many, many professionals who do care about outcomes for children and work hard to promote their safety and well being. For each tragedy there are far more successes. However, I acknowledge that any serious injury to, or death of a child is not acceptable.

   Posted by David HUNTER on 14/07/2009 10:36:15

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6. what strikes me is the results are: not enough social workers, not enough health visitors (not enough midwifes, nurses etc etc) yet still ---high unemployment and no jobs. Someone should pick up on this.

   Posted by P on 14/07/2009 06:54:11

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7. Thx for highlighting these aspects. My gt nephew is probably in your statistics here. His father killed him at 34 days old, and he was a man with a violent past, unbeknown to us. I am campaigning for Sara Payne's pilot scheme to cover violent offenders as well as sex offenders. The 'system' let my gt nephew down as it protects the offender above the vulnerable. The ultimate let down in child protection?

   Posted by D on 13/07/2009 22:24:00

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8. Excellent programme. Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric, health visitors are not being trained or recruited. Caseloads are dangerously high and health visitors are unable to undertake the preventative work they should be doing.

   Posted by hopeful on 13/07/2009 20:48:59

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