Neglect and serious case reviews (PDF, 735KB) - nspcc

Neglect and Serious Case Reviews
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by a garden pond, or in the family’s car, and a fatal accident occurred. While indoors,
accidents occurred when children were left in the bath unattended, or suffered scalds or
burns when unattended in the kitchen.
Reading and colleagues have pointed out that despite childhood injury rates which
compare reasonably well with other developed countries, recent international comparisons
have shown that the UK suffers high levels of underlying household risk factors
(Reading et al 2008:925). In the cases studied here, household factors and factors in the
immediate vicinity of the household, like the garden, played a part in the accident as
well as concerns about parental capacity to keep the child safe. Reading and colleagues
re-examined neighbourhood level influences on the risk of accident and injury in the
first five years of life of the 14,063 children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents
and Children (Reading et al 2008). Although at the outset their prime concerns had
been the link between poverty and deprivation and risk of accident, they concluded that
interventions to prevent pre-school accidents should focus more on vulnerable families
than vulnerable communities. They found that preventing accidents carried more chance
of success if interventions focused on behavioural risks in the child, parental factors
and household circumstances rather than on environmental or community-based risks.
Although this general population study is very different than the cases of children who
feature at the centre of a serious case review, where the safe supervision of a child is
known to be compromised, it highlights the importance of taking into account all family
and household considerations if we are to keep children safe.
Serious case reviews often alluded to a lack of urgency in the work undertaken by
professionals with the families. Thresholds for services were deemed not to be met,
assessments were delayed and poorly completed. Years could pass, with the children’s
safety remaining compromised. Moreover, professionals often tacitly accepted domestic
conditions and a caregiving environment which were hazardous to the child. A lack of
an effectual response, particularly in those cases where the child had a child protection
plan, may well have actually increased the risk to these children, since other agencies
made their concerns known under the assumption that they would be dealt with, when
in reality there was a lack of liaison between agencies, and no clear plan.
adult and community services’ responsibility
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A number of the cases highlighted the need for adult and community services to
consider safeguarding issues for the children in the family, when working with the
parents. Comments were made, in different cases, with respect to drug and alcohol
treatment agencies, housing, the fire services, and the ambulance service. On occasions,
the failure of professionals to regard their clients as parents, and to make the connection
between the adult’s difficulties and vulnerabilities and the effect that these have on their
parenting capacity was noted: ‘(Parent) never took up the support she was offered to
bring her use of alcohol under control; absence of any recognition of the impact this
was having on her child’s welfare. She continued to drink and to neglect child Y. This
was entirely predictable though the incident could not itself have been predicted’.