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Child Protection Services (child + protection_services)
Selected AbstractsEarly case conferences shorten length of stay in children admitted to hospital with suspected child abuseJOURNAL OF PAEDIATRICS AND CHILD HEALTH, Issue 9-10 2005J Anne S Smith Objective: To compare the outcomes of two models for the management of children admitted to hospital with suspected child abuse: routine early case conferencing versus standard evaluation. Methods: Between March 2001 and February 2002 professionals from the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria Police and Child Protection services collaborated on a randomized controlled study involving children admitted to hospital with suspected child abuse. The intervention group (n = 13) received a case conference within 24 h of the child's admission to hospital. The control group (n = 12) were managed according to standard procedures whereby each organization conducted their own evaluation (and a case conference might or might not have been held). Patients were followed for 3 months with data collected from all three professional groups. Results: The process of evaluation, the eventual diagnosis of child abuse and the confidence with which professionals made this diagnosis was not significantly different between the groups. Case conferences were judged to be useful regardless of their timing. Mean length of stay in the intervention group was significantly less than in controls (42.4 h vs 99.7 h, P = 0.01). Conclusion: Early case conferences appear to shorten the period of time children spend in hospital when child abuse is suspected. This has significant implications for reducing costs for all organizations involved in the evaluation of suspected child abuse. [source] ,Violent' deaths of children in England and Wales and the major developed countries 1974,2002: possible evidence of improving child protection?CHILD ABUSE REVIEW, Issue 5 2008Colin Pritchard Abstract Child protection services are criticised for failing to prevent abuse but demonstrating successful prevention is impossible as it is trying to prove a ,negative'. The alternative is to examine ,failures', i.e. the ,violent' deaths of children (0,14 years) to indicate whether matters are improving or deteriorating. This paper uses the latest World Health Organisation data to compare children's ,violent' deaths in England and Wales with those in other major developed countries. To account for possible ,hidden' under-reported abuse deaths, undetermined, i.e. ,other external causes of death' (OECD) and fatal accidents and adverse events (AAE), deaths are also analysed along with homicides, to compare all ,violence-related' deaths between 1974,76 and 2000,02. England and Wales infant (<1 year) homicide rates were annually 57 per million but fell to 17 per million, a 74% fall. Infant AAE deaths fell in every country with England and Wales falling from 341 per million to 71 per million, a 76% reduction. Both these results were significantly better than those of eight other major developed countries, although England and Wales infant OECD at 26 per million, were high compared to the major developed countries. In the 1970s, combined ,violent' deaths of all children (0,14 years) (homicide, OECD and AAE) in England and Wales were 203 per million, they are now 61 per million, a 70% decline with only Italy having lower rates. The worst rates were in the USA which had the highest combined ,violent' death rate. These overall results in the major reductions of ,violence-related' deaths in England and Wales can be a boost to the morale of front-line staff and provide the public with an indication of the progress being made. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Failure of Organizational Learning from Crisis , A Matter of Life and Death?JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2009Dominic Elliott The continuing failure of organizations to learn from crisis has many costs, social, political, financial and individual and may be attributable to a misunderstanding of learning processes. This paper maps out contributions to learning from crisis from a number of fields. Central to the paper's argument is that the separation of policy development from practice, in theory and action, has contributed to a failure to learn. The paper considers two cases where the failure of child protection services resulted in the deaths of the children concerned. These two cases, separated by seven years, were connected by the failure of the same local authorities and agencies. The paper concludes with a number of observations concerning the public inquiry process. [source] Making Child Protection Policy: The Crime and Misconduct Commission Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Foster Care in QueenslandAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2008Clare Tilbury Internationally as well as in Australia, public inquiries have become one of the dominant means of scrutinising child protection services. As such, inquiries have become a policy mechanism for defining the problem of child abuse, and developing possible solutions. This article examines the 2004 Crime and Misconduct Commission Inquiry into the Abuse of Children in Foster Care in Queensland. It discusses both the problems and potential of public inquiries in promoting positive change in a contested policy field like child protection. [source] The preoccupation with thresholds in cases of child death or serious injury through abuse and neglectCHILD ABUSE REVIEW, Issue 5 2008Marian Brandon Abstract Thresholds into and between services emerged as a significant theme in the biennial analysis of cases of child death and serious injury through abuse and neglect ,serious case reviews' carried out in England for the (then) Department for Education and Skills between 2003,05. The preoccupation with thresholds was one of a number of interacting risk factors and many children's cases were on the boundary of services and levels of intervention. In most cases child protection did not come ,labelled as such' which reinforces the need for all practitioners, including those working with adults to be alert to the risks of significant harm. Policy makers should acknowledge that staff working in early intervention are working within the safeguarding continuum and not in a separate sphere of activity. The emotional impact of working with hostility from violent parents and working with resistance from older adolescents impeded engagement, judgement and safeguarding action. In the long term neglect cases that were reviewed, the threshold for formal child protection services was rarely met and some agencies and practitioners coped with feelings of helplessness by adopting the ,start again syndrome'. Adequate resources are essential but not sufficient to redress the problems. Effective and accessible supervision is crucial to help staff to put into practice the critical thinking required to understand cases holistically, complete analytical assessments, and weigh up interacting risk and protective factors. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||