Only a few days ago, Cafcass published 5 year historical figures. These figures showed a continuous increase in recent figures of children taken into care. An explanation of the increases has been given by Anthony Douglas, Chief Executive of Cafcass who explained that “Agencies are working more quickly to ensure that children are removed from deeply damaging households where many have been for some time and are showing a lower tolerance for poor parenting. What we are seeing is an elimination of drift in neglect cases and a greater recognition of the appalling impact neglect can have on children”.

One other view as to why the figures may have increased is put forward by Patrick Butler of the Guardian, who says “Most children who go into care do so as a result of concerns that they are being neglected, not that they are at risk of physical violence or sexual abuse. The increase in applications reflects a greater appreciation of the impact on children of parental neglect, emotional abuse and domestic violence”. This comes in the wake of the Baby P case only a couple of years ago.

Following the recent Munro Review, the group Every Child In Need has voiced its concerns that the proposed rules are too vague and may risk harming vulnerable children. The group believes that local authorities may fall short of protecting vulnerable children when rules are relaxed at a time when cash-strapped local authorities won’t be tied down to dealing with cases within certain timeframes, specifically referring to the removal of the requirement for local authorities to prepare an initial assessment of a child’s needs within 7 working days of a referral.

Another group voicing it’s concerns is the National Deaf Children’s Society which believes that it would be much harder for deaf children in England to get the social care which they need.

They believe that the new rules are focussed too heavily on child protection and will not have enough focus on the much larger area of children who do have significant needs but are not at an immediate risk of abuse.

When you take one of our child protection courses, did you know that you get a fully portable certificate? Each certificate contains a unique identification number which allows anyone to check whether a certificate is valid and still current.  To verify a certificate simply go to our certificate verification page on our website.

Following an analysis of serious case reviews covering 2009 to 2011, it has been found that child protection practices have improved although there is still a slight concern that a minority of cases were not investigated by social workers.

The analysis found that approximately 85 children die in England each year as a direct result of neglect or abuse. It was noted that in 14% of cases, a referral had been made but not accepted. One of the concerns about this figure comes from a belief that the thresholds for accepting referrals to children’s social care are being set too high.

The research, carried out by the University of East Anglia and the University of Warwick found that only 42% of children were receiving services from children’s social care at the time of a child’s death, 21% of children were not known to social working and the remaining 37% were cases which were closed or had not been accepted at the point of referral.

On a positive note, the analysis did find that the number of children dying at a time when they already had a child protection plan in place was reduced from 16% to 10%.

The Department of Education recently asked the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre to carry out a study into the work of 8 local authorities which are piloting recommendations laid out in the Munro Review. The changes in working relate to the reduction of statutory guidance on children’s safeguarding in order to allow councils and practitioners greater freedom to decide how they conduct their work.

The study found that giving councils more control over child protection assessments may encourage delays in processing cases. Although some changes had been welcomed by social workers and had led to more family visits, there were mixed views about the benefits of streamlined assessments.

Evidence was also found that the lack of clear deadlines meant that some cases would have been closed quickly before the changes but were now being kept open longer thereby possibly leading to delays in more urgent cases.

Warnings were also given that a less rigid format of single assessments could mean that social workers would need more time to complete assessments.

In a repeat of a study carried out in 2009, CAFCASS has shown that local authorities are now acting more quickly to keep vulnerable children safe.

Since 2007-08, Cafcass has seen a 62% increase in numbers of care applications, which culminated, in 2011-12, in the number of applications topping 10,000 for the first time ever.

The research has also published five year’s history of local authority care application numbers.

The study surveyed more than 200 Cafcass guardians involved in care applications for 401 children and can be found here.

iPad has just launched a free new app – called Maily. It’s an email system specifically designed for children from 4 years old. The app allows children to create visual messages using digital pencils, stickers, backgrounds and photographs taken using the iPad camera.

The designs can then be sent to people on a list of contacts which is created and managed by parents. Parents are also able to monitor what the child sends and receives.

However, questions will be asked about the absolute safety of introducing children to such technology at such a young age and what the consequences could be for online child protection.

A survey of over 1,000 parents of children aged between 8 and 15 years old recently found that parents have concerns over child protection issues when their children are using mobile phones to access the internet. 67% of those surveyed said that they would like to be able to use parental controls on their child’s phone. 71% of those said that they would be willing to pay for the service in order to protect their children from online threats.

The annual report and accounts for Cafcass have recently been published. They show that Cafcass worked with 145,810 child and received 10,218 care applications during the year 2011-12.

Applications received between May 2011 and February 2012 were the highest ever recorded for individual months with January 2012 being the highest ever recorded with 916 applications.

Are you looking for a proforma set of child protection policies and procedures?  Do you need help with your child protection strategy?  Do you want the reassurance of knowing you can ask questions to a child protection expert at any point?  If so, we can help.

Our child protection support package is designed to provide you with everything you need so that you can quickly and efficiently setup and maintain your child safeguarding policies and procedures. It also provides you with an expert review of your child protection practices and the ability to gain accreditation status. The benefits of the package include:

• A full range of proforma child protection policies and procedures that can very quickly be deployed in your organisation.
• Updates to policies and procedures as child protection legislation changes.
• Guidance from our team of child protection experts for any queries you may have with your policies and procedures.
• Access to our child protection experts for any general support queries you may have.
• Expert support and consultancy on any CRB or recruitment matter that may arise.
• A comprehensive accreditation checklist which can be used to verify your policies, procedures and practices.
• A review of your accreditation checklist by a child protection expert.
  Once you meet the necessary standard you will be given accreditation status and supplied with an accreditation logo.