Child deaths in the juvenile secure estate Barry Goldson and Deborah Coles Introduction This chapter engages with one of the most controversial issues in contemporary youth justice: child deaths in custodial institutions. The chapter maps recent trends in child imprisonment in England and Wales and reviews what is known about the biographies of child prisoners, together with the treatment and conditions that they experience within the juvenile secure estate. It presents an overview of ‘safer custody’ reforms and their limitations alongside a critical
Independent Child Death Review Group (ICDRG) and the National Review Panel (NRP) published official reports tabulating and partly describing these deaths. A close reading of the reports indicates that practitioner involvement is frequently enmeshed in factors associated with neoliberal imperatives connected to unfilled vacancies, related staffing problems and the rationing and curtailment of services. Following the appearance of the reports, an emerging ‘change agenda’, partly influenced by New Labour in the UK, has sought to chart a way forward. Nevertheless, given
Following high-profile Serious Case Reviews into the tragic deaths of children, including Victoria Climbie, Peter Connelly and Daniel Pelka, information sharing has now become a moral and political imperative for safeguarding the welfare of children.
What prompts information sharing and how do we get it right? This accessible book challenges widely held assumptions about information sharing in child welfare that facts about risks to children are clear and that sharing them with other professionals is a straightforward process. End-of-chapter questions prompt reflection and ensure direct practice relevance.
This is essential reading for academics and policy makers, students on post-qualifying child protection courses, social workers, managers and all other professionals tasked with safeguarding children.
Over the last decade, the reformed youth justice system has seen increases in the numbers of children and young people in custody, a sharp rise in indeterminate sentences and the continuing deaths of young prisoners. The largest proportion of funding in youth justice at national level is spent on providing places for children and young people remanded and sentenced to custody.
The publication of the Youth Crime Action Plan during 2008 and the increasing emphasis on early intervention provides a framework to consider again the interface between local services and secure residential placements.
This report brings together contributions from leading experts on young people and criminal justice to critically examine current policy and practice. There are vital questions for both policy and practice on whether the use of custody reduces re-offending or whether other forms of residential placements are more effective long-term. The report looks at current approaches to the sentencing and custody of children and young people, prevention of re-offending and a range of alternative regimes.
This comprehensive international study provides a cross-national analysis of different understandings of errors and mistakes, as well as lessons to avoid and how to handle them in child protection practice, using research and knowledge from 11 countries in Europe and North America.
Divided into country-specific chapters, each examines the pathways that lead to mistakes happening, the scale of their impact, how responsibilities and responses are decided and how practice and policy subsequently change. Considering the complexities of evolving practice contexts, this authoritative, future-oriented study is an invaluable text for practitioners, researchers and policy makers wishing to understand why child protection fails – and offers a springboard for fresh thinking about strategies to reduce future risk.
Childhood and youth have often been the targets of moral panic rhetoric. This Byte explores a series of pressing concerns about young people: child abuse, child pornography, child sexual exploitation, child trafficking and the concept of childhood. With an appraisal of the work of the influential thinker, Geoffrey Pearson, who wrote on deviance and young people, it draws attention to the moralising within these discourses and asks how we might do things differently.
The number of children entering the child protection system has risen dramatically in the last three years with implications for children’s services and partner agencies. This timely volume takes a critical look at the impact of the Munro Review (2011) on child protection and the Government’s response. It looks at questions including how effective Local Safeguarding Children Boards are in providing the necessary scrutiny to ensure children are safe, how the early offer of help at local level might reduce the numbers of children at the critical end of the spectrum and whether reducing regulation from the centre will result in better outcomes for the most vulnerable? Moreover, it also considers those young people who traditionally bypass child protection services but remain at risk of harm. These are critical questions for both policy and practice in understanding the reforms Munro states are required. Contributions from leading experts working in the child protection system review current safeguarding policy and explore the future after Munro.
Health and social care professionals are constantly exhorted to work collaboratively. This book reports on research which examines interprofessional work with families in which mothers have a mental health problem and where there are also concerns about child protection.
Breakdowns in interprofessional collaboration, issues of risk and relevant resources are all addressed. Mothers’ views and experiences are contrasted with professional perspectives.
Child protection and mental health services:
· reports on a survey of 500 practitioners working in health, social services and the voluntary sector;
· presents data from in-depth interviews with mothers with severe mental health problems;
· identifies weaknesses in interprofessional coordination in this area of work;
· suggests a new model for work with families where mental health problems and child protection concerns co-exist.
All those involved in child protection or mental health work with families will find this book a stimulating read. This book will be of interest to practitioners, managers and policy makers as well as students studying health and social care.
For several decades, social work and child protection systems have been subject to accelerating cycles of crisis and reform, with each crisis involving intense media and political scrutiny. In understanding the nature and causes of this cycle, little attention has been paid to the importance of collective emotions.
Using a range of cases from the UK, and also considering cases from the Netherlands, the US and New Zealand, this book introduces the concept of emotional politics. It shows how collective emotions, such as anger, shame, fear and disgust, are central to constructions of risk and blame, and are generated and reflected by official documents, politicians and the media. The book considers strategies for challenging these ‘emotional politics’, including identifying models for a more politically engaged stance for the social work profession.
Discussion of convergence in the EU in recent years has centred on economic indicators related to monetary union and the single European currency, but it is the convergence of living standards that is the ultimate goal of European integration.
This book analyses the living standards of the nearly 80 million children in the EU, who represent over a fifth of the Union’s total population. The well-being of Europe’s children is important now - and the nature of their progress to adulthood will have a major impact on the shape of Europe’s future.
By analysing the trends of child well-being in Europe over the last two decades, this book asks:
Is the well-being of children in the EU becoming more similar across member states?
Or
Are countries diverging while their economies converge?
These issues are addressed with a wealth of data on different dimensions of the changing welfare of Europe’s children - evidence that has not previously been drawn together in a single source. The authors consider in turn the material well-being of children, their health and education, teenage fertility, and young people’s own views of their lives. There is careful treatment of conceptual and measurement issues and data quality and comparability, together with reference to a large literature across the different relevant disciplines.
This book aims to raise the profile of children in the debate on Europe’s future, and in doing so to contribute to the growing discussion of economic and social cohesion in the EU. The analysis is rigorous but it avoids disciplinary jargon and will appeal to a pan-European audience. It is important reading for academics across the social sciences interested in the well-being of children and youth, NGOs working on behalf of the young, and local and national government policy advisers concerned with the issues in a domestic or European context.
