Child Care Principles in Social Work

Child C ar Principles in fond regulateProfessional child cargon in the field of loving crop, endure come under intense scrutiny recently. Much of this scrutiny, concerns the way in which federation and interagency excogitate contributes to outmatch fargon in the sagaciousness of children, unfledged person mess and families. This paper seeks to explore the principles of collaborative work and highlight why it is necessary that inter-agency work is successful and efficient in the field of neighborly work. In doing so, give provide examples and discuss current signposts for partnership work and strategies of new perspicacity practices to ensure its effectiveness. The essay lead also anticipate common problems of interagency and partnership work and identify policies to guard against these potential issues.The incision of Health (1998) in encouraging the use of partnership, stressed that joined up serves should be the hallmark of good service delivery. The Audit bil ling (1998) declares that for services to be efficient and effective, there must be obligatory partnership working. At a basic level, inter-agency and partnership are formal institutional legal injury attributed to the practice of and need for different agencies and sectors to work together. According to Whittington (2003), partnership is a state of relationship at organizational, group, pro or inter-personal level, to be achieved, maintained and reviewed, eon collaboration is an alive(p) process of partnership in action. It is within the umbrella term of partnership, that terms such as inter-agency and multi-agency arise to pin down the policies and concretise the practice of joined-up work in the midst of agencies.The principles of collaborative working stipulate that there should be seamless interaction amidst agencies to facilitate ruff practice and unconstipatedtually improving shell out services. In a research of 30 multiagency organizations in wellness and educat ion and over 140 staff, Atkinson et al (2002) found the pursuit necessary principles for inter-agency work everyday aims and objectivesOrganizational commitment to the aims and objectivesThorough misgiving of the various roles and responsibilities of other involved professionals and agenciesSolid leadershipEnsuring task relegation and referrals are to the correct personnelAccess to resourcesIn addition, Whittington and Bell (2001) naturalised that the ability to work together effectively require numerous skills which are essential for social workers, such as the ability to challenge contrariety by other agencies and professions, the ability to conduct multi-disciplinary meetings, the ability to respect and hump issues of confidentiality, and being able to handle conflicts and manage clays and human resource that lead need to adapt to change.There are many form _or_ system of government directives which delegate partnership work within services relating to child care and legal opinion, and star of these is the 2003 government green paper, Every Child Matters policy archive which stipulates the knowledge of Childrens Trusts, to ensure that agencies work effectively together to safety device and boost the well-being of children. Childrens Trusts emerged after the death of eight year-old capital of Seychelles Climbi who even after repeated visits to hospitals and visits by social workers, her abuse was non identify and she subsequently died. The Laming Report of 2003, an inquiry into Victorias death reason out that the adolescent girls death could have been avoided if individual social workers, police officers, doctors and nurses who came into contact with the girl, had effectively responded to Victorias needs. He emphatically declared that Victorias death re exemplifyed a gross failure of the system, wherein, not 1 of the agencies or individuals had the presence of mind to follow what are relatively straightforward procedures on how to respo nd to a child virtually whom there is concern of deliberate harm.The Childrens Act of 2004 in Section 10, mandated the duty to co-operate on agencies involved in child care protection and assessment. On November 18, 2008, the Childrens Trust outlined in a release which identified the partners with a duty to co-operate as district councils, the police, the probation board, the juvenility offending team, the Strategic Health Authority and Primary Care Trusts, Connexions partnerships, and the encyclopaedism and Skills Council. Moreover, in 2004, the government rolled out the National Service modeling for Children and Young stack (NSF), a ten year strategy document which aims to improve the support and services that spring chicken people, children, resurrects and carers receive. It stipulates ten different standards which will largely depend on efficient partnership and inter-agency work to be successful.To assist in the efficient assessment of children and young people crossway s services, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) ensures that frontline delivery of integrated services to children and young people are streamlined for maximum efficiency. It is a standardised assessment methodology crosswise service sectors, which aims to ensure that any inadequacies in service delivery to children are picked up quickly. The CAF looks into the childs social and health environment to assess the role of the parents or carers, as well as the childs own strengths and weaknesses, in order to make a reasoned and informed judgment about the childs present and future well-being. This CAF method of assessment provides much more room and blank shell for preventative action.The croping Together to fortress Children (2006) is another policy guideline for frontline managers and social workers to improve inter-agency work in order to safeguard the welfare of children. It asserts that all persons with responsibility for children must display full commitment and that there sh ould be clear lines of accountability. The job of safeguarding children and young people, falls under the government agency of the Local Authority (LA) whose main objective is to ensure that young people are protected from harm, They ensure this by vigourously pursuing exacting partnership standards with other public organisations, the voluntary sector, children and young people, parents and carers, and the wider community (Working Together to Safeguard Children 2006). A tripartite system which incorporating the police, the Local Authority and other agencies avail to improve the quality of service and ensure the seamless interaction between agencies in safeguarding children. Social Workers who are directly involved in the assessment of children and young people, must be knowledgeable to these inter-agency links and all up to date protocols of inter-agency work to ensure best practice.Behan (2005) at the National collection for merged Childrens Framework, stated that services mus t improve outcomes for children, and devise themselves round the child rather than expect the child to move from one service to another. To be successful services have to work in partnership. As was demonstrated in the Victoria Climbi theme, and more recently the case of tyke P, who died after being tortured by his mothers and deuce others and whose suffering was missed by the many individuals and agencies who came into contact with him, inter-agency does not ever so work, despite many policy guidelines and duty of care responsibilities. This essay will now examine some of the challenges to effective collaborative working.One of the some prominent challenges to effective and efficient inter-agency and partnership work to safeguard children from harm, is the worldly concern of power struggles between various agencies. As stated earlier, Atkinson et al (2002) asseverate that a commitment to the ideal and practice of partnership must be bought into by all agencies to avoid power struggles. There are many instances, whereby social workers sometimes outline that their child care reports are not heeded by health care professionals who come into contact with children deemed at risk. Leiba and Weinstein (2003) argues that while many social workers have to work closely with nurses and doctors in the UK to safeguard children, there were significant ideological and cultural differences with how they approached their work. Mathers and Gask (1995) suggests that GPs sprain frustrated with the long assessment process that social workers require for best practice.Leiba and Weinstein (2003) lament that such differences can cause power struggles between health professionals who may thin that medical-know-how should trump seemingly long-winded assessment models. They come on state that power struggles can be exacerbated by the nature of professional education which normalise professionals into different, values, jargon and culture and the fear of dilution and associated professional protectionism ( Leiba and Weinstein 2003). The voice communication of health has been said to be very alienating and does not usually give space to social work theories and assessments (Peck and Norman 1999). Leiba (2003) maintains that even though the Health Act of 1983 and the National Service Framework stipulates greater co-operation between health and social care services, in practice this has been very grave to achieve. He cites the example of requirements for a single assessment strategy across services, but highlights how each agency continues to compile its own data. because accommodate the Douek (2003) unless argues that parents and carers can become very frustrated when the collaboration process is not a seamless one and a lack of co-operation from a parent or carer can be extremely detrimental to the child assessment process.Conclusively, it can be stated that the cases of Victoria Climbi and more recently Baby P, demonstrate that in order to safeguard a nd protect children and young people from harm, it is absolutely essential that inter-agency and partnership guidelines are executed. The many policy directives such as the NSF, the CAF, and the 2006 Working to Safeguard Children document should be zealously advocated across agencies and total organizational commitment to the principles around partnership should be elucidated from top to bottom in institutional structures, in order to rid of power struggles. Social workers, with responsibility for child assessment, should vehemently pursue best practice by following Whittingtons (2003) earlier advice, and report default and discriminatory practices which could lead to the harm of children. Such practices ultimately benefit the children and young people and their families, when total commitment to partnership is shown and inter-agency policies do work.ReferencesAtkinson, M., Wilkin, A., Stott, A., Doherty, P. and Kinder, K. (2002) Multi-Agency Working A Detailed Study. LGA inquiry Report 26. Slough, Berkshire National Foundation for Educational Research.Behan, D. (2005) Inspecting Childrens Services in Partnership. Paper presented at the National Conference for Integrated Framework. Accessed on celestial latitude 7, 2008 at http//www.csci.org.uk/Docs/inspecting_in_partnership.doc.Childrens Workforce Development Council. (2006) Common Assessment Framework. http//www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/resources-and-practice/IG00063/ section of Health. (1999) The Challenge of Partnership in Child justification Practice Guide.Department of Health. (Spetember 2004) National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services. The Stationery Office. Accessed on December 7, 2008 at www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/HealthAndSocialCareTopics/ ChildrenServices/ChildrenServicesInformation/fs/enDepartment for Education and Skills (2006) Working Together to Safeguard Children. Accessed on December 7, 2008 at http//www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/_files/AE53C8F9D7AEB1B 23E403514A6C1B17D.pdf.Douek, S. (2003) quislingism or Confusion The Carers Perspective. 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