Jane Appleton - Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing

SERIES EDITORS

JOHN DEVANEY

School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queens University Belfast

and JULIE TAYLOR

School of Health and Population Sciences, University of Birmingham

and SHARON VINCENT

Social Work and Communities, Northumbria University

Edited by

Jane V. Appleton

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University

and Sue Peckover

Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam University

Thank you to Sarah Howcutt who helped with formatting our first draft.

Jane V. Appleton is Professor of Primary and Community Care at Oxford Brookes University. Janes research interests focus on health visiting, safeguarding children and child protection systems.

Dr Caroline Bradbury-Jones is Reader in Nursing at the University of Birmingham. She has a clinical background in health visiting. Her primary areas of research interest are in relation to vulnerable families and domestic violence and abuse.

Dr Eija Paavilainen is Professor of Nursing Science at the School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland. Her research interests focus upon family violence, child maltreatment and family risks.

Dr Sue Peckover is Senior Lecturer in Health Visiting at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research interests include public health, safeguarding children, domestic abuse, e-technologies and interprofessional knowledge and practices.

Dr Catherine Powell is a freelance Safeguarding Children Consultant and a Visiting Academic at the University of Southampton. Her career has embraced clinical practice, leadership, academia and national policy.

Dr Suzanne Smith has specialised in safeguarding in the NHS (National Health Service) for twenty years. A registered nurse and health visitor, Suzanne is currently Assistant Director of Nursing (Safeguarding) at a large acute trust.

Julie Taylor is Professor of Child Protection at the University of Birmingham. She is a nurse scientist whose research programme focuses on the wellbeing of vulnerable children and their families.

Following the 2015 general election, with a new government in post, the revision of the Working Together guidance and the recent revelations of historic abuse leading to major enquiries and consideration of current practice, Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing is a welcome and timely publication. The authors and their fellow contributors remind us that nursing staff have a critical role in safeguarding and protecting children and also in contributing to a public health agenda that should embrace tackling child abuse and neglect. This book, aimed at nurses, health visitors and those working in child protection, helpfully discusses what is meant by the public health framework and why our strategy for preventing child maltreatment has to be framed in this way. Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing also looks at the challenges and difficulties that nurses face in safeguarding children and suggests possible solutions. As public health nurses, there is no doubt that health visitors particularly have a critical role to play.

I have long been a supporter of the work of health visitors, school nurses, community nurses and a range of other nurses in meeting the needs of families, protecting children and preventing abuse. The universal nature of nursing provision or variations of that universalism, as described in this book mean that the service reaches all children and young people and their families and is delivered in non-stigmatising ways. The culture of some professional groups creates barriers between themselves and their service users in contrast to nurses who can be more accessible. Nurses spend greater amounts of time with families, children and young people, affording opportunities for health visitors and nurses to build relationships, and both observe their families and the conditions in which they are living and identify causes for concern.

A number of years ago, with my colleague Jane Naish, I co-edited a series of papers which were published in Key Issues in Child Protection for Health Visitors and Nurses (Naish and Cloke, 1992). At the time we were generally optimistic that health visitors, school nurses and other nurses could positively progress safeguarding. We noted that the Children Act 1989, recently passed, had the potential to shift professional attitudes and organisational cultures. Preventive services were seen as important. The focus on childrens rights and the paramountcy principle should have led to a greater focus on the child. There was a greater emphasis than ever before on professionals working together and on inter-agency collaboration. The principles and building blocks were sound.

Over the past twenty-five years there have been some improvements in safeguarding nursing practice, and Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing provides a number of good examples from across the family of nursing. The general direction has been positive. However this is not to deny that on occasions there have been shortcomings and that practice has fallen short of the ideal. Serious case reviews (SCRs) point to these failings. Child protection is complex, and nurses like all professionals face difficult decisions and dilemmas. They do not and should not operate in a vacuum. The authors and their contributors to Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing discuss these complexities.

Health visiting has not always been able to deliver on the preventive agenda and some of the reasons for this are clear. Appleton points out that for over some twenty years there was significant disinvestment in health visiting. This had a major impact on the profession, and while the policy has now been reversed, as is evident in the 2011 Health Visitor Implementation Plan: A Call to Action (DH, 2011), it is taking time for health visiting to recover.