The establishment of Ireland’s first dedicated Child and Family Agency (aka Tusla) represents an essential response to recent reports on child protection failings, including inconsistency. Key to the Agency’s work plan is an emphasis on partnership and interagency working (dcya.gov.ie 2011)
This essay/assignment is to:
• Highlight some relevant, to development of Child and Family Agency, events, and how it is connected to interagency working.
• Examine the benefits and challenges of interagency working.
• Look at examples/ experiences whether the new systems worked (shared by practitioners abroad).
• Discuss how ECCE practitioners can support interagency working.
CDI is used as a case study to support this project.
Tusla is the first dedicated Child and Family Agency in Ireland launched by Department of Family and Youth Affairs (DCYA). Tusla mainly focuses on partnership and interagency working. ‘Government says it is the most effective response to repeated and tragic failings of the past’ (five rivers fostering 2014). The agency takes over the role of three current operating bodies. Their services include a range of services, such as Child Protection and Welfare, Alternative Care, Family Support and Preschool Services.
.
As outlined in Tusla website the agency operates under the Child and Family Act 2013 and brought together four thousand staff and a budget of over six million from existing bodies.
The agencies primarily responsibility is to promote the safety and wellbeing of children by seeking an improvement in areas such as workforce and development, and partnership working (tusla.ie/services 2013).
DCYA (2011) in partnership with The Atlantic Philanthropies established the Prevention and Early Intervention Programm...
... middle of paper ...
...aluation of the Early Years Programme. Child Care Practice
• Child Centred Practice; Lecture 3 (O’Donoghue. M 2014
• Newzealand.govt.nz (2011) Social Work Now: Working together to protect children in cases of neglect: Complexity and the four ‘Cs’ Available at: http://www.cyf.govt.nz/documents/about-us/publications/social-work-now/372390-swnow-oct2011-lores.pdf [Accessed 20/02/2014]
• Social Sciences at ARROW@DIT (2008) Conference Papers; the Childhood Development Initiative: Developing Quality Services. ARROW@DIT: Dublin
• Tusla (2013) [online] Tusla – towards a shared purpose. Available at: tusla.ie/uploads/content/tusla-towards-a-shared-purpose.pdf
• Working together for children (2011) A review of international evidence of interagency working; to inform the development of children’s services committees in Ireland. Department of Children and Youth Affairs.
Through the Troubled Families Agenda the police, housing and youth offending teams will all communicate between services to discuss families, Walker discussed that multi agency working was important to help families with their problems and aid them toward a better living. The Home Office (2013) states that each local area will have different multi agency approaches and safeguarding threats, but should still work towards delivering effective multi agency approaches to provides services that are required by
Every Child Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit human service agency founded in 1997 by Pittsburgh native Susie Davis. Every Child Inc. initial focus was on providing supports for families with medically fragile children. Since its founding, Every Child has grown to include a host of services intended to develop and strengthen the relationships among children, adults and families. Every Child Inc. has grown to a staff of 75 and an annual budget of approximately $4 million.
In Scotland, the government is responsible for child protection. Child protection committees (CPCs) are responsible for child protection policy procedures and make sure that all the different local agencies, such as children’s social work, health services and the police work together.
Department of Children and Youth Affairs. (1999). Children First-National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children. Available:http://www.dcya.gov.ie/documents/publications/Children_First_A4.pdf. Last accessed 23/01/14.
Another guidance which helps to safeguard vulnerable adults is the Safeguarding Adults- a National framework for good practice and outcomes in adult protection work. This is a follow up from the no secrets guidance and set out some national frameworks to limit the risk of abuse. there are many different standards set out in this guidance e.g. all local authorities should have a multi-agency partnership who should representing all the agencies, all agencies must have a strategic plan ensuring there are relevant policies and procedures, training strategies, a commissioning strategy and strategies for reducing risk of abuse. this helped to set the national standards of care that should be given to vulnerable people. It also defined the ways we can give services, established ways of measuring achievement or improvements and gave people support to help implement these changes. This helps to reduce to risk of harm for vulnerable people as it helps to establish a nationwide initiative to reduce abuse of vulnerable people and multi-agency working. [5] [16]
Children’s Social Care work with parents and other agencies to assess the stages of child protection procedures, record information and make decisions on taking further action. The police work closely with this agency to act on decisions made such as removing a child or the person responsible for the abuse while gathering evidence and carrying out investigations regarding the matter. Health professionals have a duty to report suspected non-accidental injuries to Children’s Social Care and examine children to give evidence of abuse. The Children Act 2004 requires every local area to have a Local Safeguarding Children Board to oversee the work of agencies involved in child protection, place policies and procedures for people who work with children and conduct serious case reviews when children die as a result of abuse. The NSPCC is the only charitable organisation that has the statutory power to take action when children are at risk of abuse. They provide services to support families and children and two helplines for children in danger and adults who are concerned for a child’s safety. They also raise awareness of abuse, share their expertise with other professionals and work to influence the law and social policy protect children more efficiently. There are also acts in place to protect children such as the Children Act 1989, the United Nations Convention On The Rights Of The Child 1989, the Education Act 2002 and the Children Act 2004. Legal framework from such acts are provided for Every Child Matters which requires early years practitioners to demonstrate that they provide activities that help children protect themselves. This may be through books and group talks known as “Stranger
...be seen gave the author a clear vision on how child protection has developed. Looking at the death of children and discussing them also gave some answers on how children services have developed over time over the years. In the evaluation the author discussed Tthe benefits and challenges offered by inter-agency and inter-professional partnership work have also been considered and it has emerged . By weighing the pros and cons of the author finds out that there is limited evidence on the outcomes for children and families. Even though a number of outcomes were discussed by Atkinson et al., their review provides evidence on the outcomes from professionals’ view point. Therefore, their review is not representative. Perhaps more study based on the outcomes or children and families will provide us a better understanding of on how effective inter-agency working really is.
During the court case the judge said that lead social worker Gunn Wahlstrom was “naïve beyond belief”. This report brought over 68 recommendations to make sure cases like this did not happen again. The recommendations included putting the child first and the parent’s second. “Jasmines’ fate illustrates all too clearly the disastrous consequences of the misguides attitude of the social workers having treated Morris Beckford and Beverley Lorrington as the clients first and foremost” (London Borough of Brent, 1985,p295). The social workers in Jasmine’s c...
Child welfare and family services: Policies and practices, USA: Parson Education Inc. Garbarino, J. (1992) The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secon Children and Families in the Social Environment, New York, NY: Walter De Gruyter, Inc. Walls, J. (2005). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary The Glass Castle, New York, NY: SCRIBNER.
of Human Resources. It has for mission to respond and investigate child maltreatment, to protect
I was able to develop skills that will be relevant for practice in the future and support my professional development. This case study allowed me to focus on a specific case that developed my understanding of theory, law and policy that organisation use to provide services for families. I was able to enhance my understanding of the Cycle of change, Children Act 1989 and Working Together safeguarding policy. Developing my understating of evidence based practice and the importance of linking theory to
Downs, S., Moore, E., McFadden, E., & Costin, L. (2004). Child welfare and family services: Policies and practice. (7th. Ed., pp. 319-363) Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
LSCB, (2013), SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE AND VULNERABLE ADULTS POLICY, (www.safechildren-cios.co.uk), [Assessed 1 November 2013].
By listening to what families, children and young people perceive their needs to be and working to adapt their services in order to cater or counteract some of the problems that arise when the wellbeing of the individual is being affected is what practitioners aim to achieve. Several agencies in UK worked together to improve children and young adults welfare such as Teachers, Social workers, Foster carers, Children safeguarding team, etc…Using Activity 2.9 ( Open University 2014 ) as an illustration, the narrator explained about Connors story, a young boy who has been place into foster caring. As a young child, Connor had probably experienced ambivalent, avoidant and disorganised patterns of attachments before his current placement which might have an impact on his behaviour. The foster family had concern that if Connor had to leave them, this could lead to further problems. Agencies working within Connors welfare such as Children social workers should adapt the fact of Connors relationship with the foster family does not impact on his wellbeing. Practitioners need to work in accordance of children and youth people diversity as well. Diversity can help to begin to overcome inequalities in society, which be might be a positive outcome or a negative outcome. Practitioners must firstly identify the assumptions they make about people so that they can make sure that they treat everyone with respect.
Social workers are legally obligated to assess and support the 397,600 children in need and their families as they are one of society’s most vulnerable groups (DfE, 2014). The social worker’s role and responsibility is to ensure children’s additional needs are adequately met to try to reverse disadvantage and enable children to maximise their lives and potential. To achieve this objective, social workers sift through in-depth information in different areas of family life, both past and present, as the vast majority of issues affecting children evolve from external factors which particularly relate to parenting. Gathering data involves collaborating with the family and relevant professionals to understand the family’s plight and establish strengths which are built upon so future troubles are positively resolved independently.