Safeguarding Children Across Services
Safeguarding Children Across Services Series
Series editors: Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward
Safeguarding children from abuse is of paramount importance. This series communicates messages for practice from an extensive government-funded research programme designed to improve early recognition of child abuse and neglect as well as service responses and interventions. The series addresses a range of forms of abuse, including emotional and physical abuse and neglect, and outlines strategies for effective interagency collaboration, successful intervention and best practice. Titles in the series will be essential reading for practitioners with responsibility for safeguarding children.
Carolyn Davies is Research Advisor at the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London.
Harriet Ward is Director of the Centre for Child and Family Research and Research Professor at Loughborough University.
other books in the series
Safeguarding Children from Emotional Maltreatment
What Works
Jane Barlow and Anita Schrader McMillan
ISBN 978 1 84905 053 1
eISBN 978 0 85700 364 5
Recognizing and Helping the Neglected Child
Evidence-Based Practice for Assessment and Intervention
Brigid Daniel, Julie Taylor and Jane Scott with David Derbyshire and Deanna Neilson
Foreword by Enid Hendry
ISBN 978 1 84905 093 7
eISBN 978 0 85700 274 7
Adolescent Neglect
Research, Policy and Practice
Gwyther Rees, Mike Stein, Leslie Hicks and Sarah Gorin
ISBN 978 1 84905 104 0
eISBN 978 0 85700 280 8
Caring for Abused and Neglected Children
Making the Right Decisions for Reunification or Long-Term Care
Jim Wade, Nina Biehal, Nicola Farrelly and Ian Sinclair
ISBN 978 1 84905 207 8
eISBN 978 0 85700 441 3
Safeguarding Babies and Very Young Children from Abuse and Neglect
Harriet Ward, Rebecca Brown and David Westlake
ISBN 978 1 84905 237 5
eISBN 978 0 85700 481 9
Safeguarding Children
Across Services
Messages from Research
Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward
Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia
First published in 2012
by Jessica Kingsley Publishers
73 Collier Street
London N1 9BE, UK
and
400 Market Street, Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
www.jkp.com
Copyright Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84905 124 8
eISBN 978 0 85700 290 7
Contents
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Preface
Safeguarding Children Across Services: Messages from Research brings together a wideranging body of government-funded research on safeguarding children from neglect and abuse in England and Wales. It provides a succinct Overview of 15 research projects and highlights the main implications for all professionals and policymakers involved in the safeguarding process.
For many years non-technical summaries of research programmes and initiatives in childrens social care, funded by the Department of Health and the Department for Education, have been produced. The intention is to make the messages of research useful and intelligible to practitioners, clinicians, service providers and policymakers. There is a distinctive process through which these Overviews are developed. They are written by academic experts with the support of an outside advisory and implementation group, consisting of clinicians, practitioners, managers and others with expertise in the subject area. Each Overview incorporates the comments of practitioners, clinicians and policymakers on the projects and on the draft text. Each Overview also tries to ensure that the individual researchers agree with the synthesis produced, although the writers have the responsibility of drawing out the messages that they think are warranted by the research.
The Advisory and Implementation Group saw the production of this Overview as one key element in a rather larger exercise that would involve the various stakeholders in safeguarding children, the research community and others specifically concerned with training and dissemination. The key aims have been to bring to a wider audience material that is relevant, evidenced and accessible.
In order to ensure relevance, each study was read by two or more members of the Advisory and Implementation Group who contributed both a summary and an assessment of its main implications. In order to ensure accuracy, the researchers involved in the core studies also read the resulting draft Overview to ensure that their own work had been properly represented. They also contributed the research summaries of their work. The authors, Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward, then took final responsibility for redrafting the Overview as a whole.
Thanks are due to the many people who have helped support both the programme of research and the preparation of this publication.
We would like to extend our thanks to the Department for Education and the Department of Health for their support in funding and overseeing the preparation of this Overview and particularly Isabella Craig, Julie Wilkinson, Jenny Gray (who chaired the Advisory and Implementation Group), Sandra Williams, Zoltan Bozoky, Christine Humphrey and Alison Elderfield.
Thanks are also due to the following members of the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) at the Institute of Education and the Centre for Child and Family Research (CCFR) at Loughborough University: Penny Mellor, who supported the commissioning and progress of the Safeguarding Children Research Initiative and developed and maintained the website; Suzanne Dexter and Debi Maskell- Graham, who provided multi-faceted support in preparing the Overview; and Harriet Lowe, who finalized the presentation of the text.
We would also like to express our appreciation to the research teams who conducted the studies on which this Overview is based. They have been very committed and helpful throughout the process and their input is much appreciated.
We are very grateful for the support of our multi-disciplinary Advisory and Implementation Group, whose names are listed in Appendix 1. The group were exceptionally helpful in reading and commenting on drafts, advising on the selection of key messages and providing wisdom from their respective disciplinary perspectives. The Overview has been much improved by their contributions.
