Child Protection at the Edge of Chaos: Irene Stevens at the BASPCAN Congress April 2018

Our second confirmed keynote speaker for the BASPCAN child protection congress, 2018 is Dr Irene Stevens, independent consultant and expert in complexity theory.

Child Protection at the Edge of Chaos

The protection of children takes place in a dynamic and, at times, fast moving environments. Yet many of the models which are used in risk management and decision making are based on linear assumptions. While this has been challenged, particularly in the Munro Review, there may be resistance to thinking outside the usual linear box. I will present some key ideas from complexity theory and explore how the development of a ‘Complexity Imagination’ among those who work with children can contribute to better outcomes for children and staff. The key concepts among others to be explored and related to child protection are bifurcation, emergence, self-organising criticality, dissipative structures and non-linear conceptualisation of issues.

Complexity theory, by its very nature addresses life at ‘the edge of chaos’ in dynamic systems. This is at the very crux of decision making in practice. In order to protect children, we need to think outside the box. Concepts from Complexity theory can add to the toolkit used by practitioners by raising questions about the nature of risk and how we, as human beings, deal with this. By developing some of the concepts from Complexity theory and exploring how they can be put into practice, staff and organisations may be much better prepared to contribute to the protection of children.

Irene Stevens

Dr Irene Stevens was a residential child care worker and manager, and a social care educator from 1984-2000. She then worked at the Scottish Centre of Excellence for Residential Child Care based at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, from 2000-2011, where she carried out training, research and evaluations in residential child care. Since 2011, she has been an independent child care consultant carrying out research and training both nationally and internationally. She has published on the topic of Complexity Theory since 2007 and has presented on the topic of risk and complexity at national and international conferences.

Thinking Outside the Box: Innovative Perspectives on Protecting Children and Young People

BASPCAN 10th International Congress, 8th-11th April, 2018, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

This major Congress will bring together experts by experience – survivors of abuse and users of services – practitioners, researchers and trainers, commissioners and policy makers from around the UK, Europe and beyond, to learn from each other, reflect and consider how we can improve services to support families and protect children and young people.

The theme of Thinking Outside the Box reflects our desire to learn and develop, encouraging participants to be creative and reflexive, and to interact with each other.

Update your knowledge and skills, learning from new and emerging research
Hear innovative and challenging keynote talks from a range of speakers within and outside the child protection fields
Celebrate the good work and progress that has been made in safeguarding children, while acknowledging the ongoing pain experienced by those affected by abuse and neglect, and recognizing the need to continually learn and improve
Network with others who feel passionately about protecting children and supporting families

The call for abstracts and registration opens soon. Keep an eye on the website for further details, for the full programme and details of other keynote speakers.

To register your interest and receive the latest updates as they become available, please email conferences@baspcan.org.uk with your email address and the header ‘Congress 2018 Updates’.

February 15, 2017February 20, 2017

Pebbles in the fairy tale: Anne Fine, children’s author at the BASPCAN 2018 Congress

I am really excited that Anne Fine, celebrated children’s laureate will be a keynote speaker at our BASPCAN 10th International Congress to be held at the University of Warwick in April 2018. Anne is the author of such books as Madame Doubtfire, Flour Babies, and The Tulip Touch. Her keynote talk, Pebbles in the fairy tale will explore what we can learn from children’s literature about protecting children.

Thinking outside the box

The theme of the congress is ‘Thinking outside the box: innovative perspectives on protecting children and young people.’ The theme reflects our desire to learn and develop, encouraging participants to be creative and reflexive and to learn from each other.

The congress will bring together practitioners, survivors of abuse, researchers, trainers and policy makers. We will learn from each other, reflect, and consider how we can improve services to support families and protect children and young people.

Pebbles in the fairy tale: what can child protection learn from children’s literature

Literature has always been the most accessible instrument we have for ethical enquiry and the clearest way to answer Socrates’ great question, “How ought we to live?” But all too often the child’s need for a means to interpret their own experience of childhood is ignored. A young person who cannot bear even to begin to think about his or her own unhappy and stressed situation can often begin, safely, to explore the problems they face through fiction – somebody else’s problem.

In her talk, Anne Fine will show how books can offer shafts of light and comfort to the troubled child. She will show how they can foster self-scrutiny – not just in the young reader him or herself, but also in the (often overly self-protective) adults who deal with them. Anne will show what these fictional avenues of vicarious experience can mean to young readers, what insights they can bring, and what a comfort they can be. She will try to show how the tolerance and understanding offered by particular novels can offer the twenty first century equivalent of the pebbles in the fairy tale, gleaming in the moonlight and showing the way out of the dark forest.

Anne Fine

Anne is a distinguished writer for both adults and children. She has twice won both of Britain’s most coveted awards for children’s literature, the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread (now Costa) Award, along with a Guardian Award, two Smarties/Nestle Awards, and many other national, regional and international prizes.

Anne is known for writing, with sensitivity and often with humour, on many serious subjects that affect the lives of young readers. Madame Doubtfire tackles the topic of access and custody after divorce. Both Goggle-Eyes and Step by Wicked Step delve into the special strains and complications of stepfamily relationships. Flour Babies is a comedy that illuminates for its readers both the joys and the sheer effort and commitment necessary for successful parenting. The Tulip Touch is a novel about a seriously disturbed child from an unsupportive home. The Book of the Banshee delineates teenage upheavals. Blood Family deals with the topic of family brutality and addiction. Up On Cloud Nine is a masterful portrait of an eccentric child’s progress through education. Charm School has been described as ‘Germaine Greer for Juniors’, and Bill’s New Frock unpacks unthinking gender stereotypes.

Anne Fine has also published eight black comedies for adults. She was Children’s Laureate from 2001-3. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded an OBE. Her work has been translated into forty five languages.

Registration opens soon

Registration for the congress will open soon. There are special rates for BASPCAN members and for students, the unemployed, those on low incomes and those from low-income countries.

A call for abstracts will open soon. We are looking for presentations from practitioners, researchers and experts by experience (both survivors of abuse and users of family services). So watch this space, or register your interest on the BASPCAN congress website.

Click here to find out about the other exciting keynote speakers, to see the programme, and for more information about the congress.

January 28, 2017January 27, 2017

Kneeling on Mung Beans

Imagine a world where each child has the right to live in a happy family that is full of hope, where children can play in clean playgrounds, where no child is beaten or hit with a piece of wood, belt or hanger, or is cursed, pinched, slapped, or made to kneel on mung beans.

That was the dream of a non-violent and non-discriminatory family and community expressed by a group of street youth in Manila (1).

Such a dream is something we strive for in our work to combat child maltreatment worldwide. It is not something that will be easily achieved, but we need to do all we can to promote it through education, family support and early intervention, services for abused children, legislation, and research. It is fitting, therefore, that our final issue in the 25^th anniversary volume of Child Abuse Review, now available online, should focus on research from different countries, bringing a global perspective on different aspects of safeguarding children.

The research being reported by Daniel Wartenweiler and Roseann Mansukhani in this issue is a powerful example of what can be achieved through participatory work with young people in a resource-poor setting. The 11 young people who took part in the research reported often quite disturbing examples of both physical and verbal abuse within the guise of discipline. The young people reported feelings of rejection, anger and resentment, rifts in the parent-child relationship, and defiant behaviours as a result. However, their participation in the research project truly empowered them and enabled them to effect change in their relationships and their community.

‘From the safety of their storytelling, [the young people] had made the transition to the bigger world, and from being hidden and disempowered, they had become actors on social transformation. Because they had been empowered themselves, they now wanted other children to become empowered too.’

As part of the research project, the young people themselves decided to produce a short video, communicating what they wanted to say about corporal punishment, and to show the video to parents from their community. An abbreviated version of the video with English subtitles is available online (https://youtu.be/dP5nFhj_9O4) and is well worth watching.

Most impressive, however, were the reported changes following the parents’ meeting, with most participants reporting changes in parental discipline and parent-child relationships, summed up in the experience of one young person who had previously reported that:

‘Sometimes […] she [mother] shamed me in front of my friends and she took my clothes off in front of many people. Sometimes she tied me to a pedicab with a chain. Sometimes she beat me and she banged my head on the steel bars.’

Following the project, this young person reported that she had returned to live with her mother, and that their relationship had improved:

‘I am not scared anymore because I know my mother is now listening to my problems and to my feelings’

As well as Wartenweiler and Mansukhani’s inspiring work from the Philippines, this issue of Child Abuse Review also features research from Kenya, Nigeria, Ukraine, Romania, Lithuania and the USA.

Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde’s paper on infant trafficking and baby factories in Nigeria makes disturbing reading, but brings to light a crucial issue and presents a challenge to the international community in relation to infant trafficking for adoption and exploitation.

There are some equally challenging issues in relation to institutional care and international adoption flagged up in papers by Lavinia Barone and her colleagues, and by Shihning Chou and Kevin Browne.

You can read my editorial (free open access) and see the other papers (BASPCAN members and subscription only – sorry) by clicking on the links below. I hope you will take the time to read these, and that you, like me, will be both challenged and inspired.

Child Abuse Review Volume 25, Issue 6

Table of Contents

Editorial

Peter Sidebotham Kneeling on Mung Beans (pages 405–409)

Original Papers

Daniel Wartenweiler and Roseann Mansukhani Participatory Action Research with Filipino Street Youth: Their Voice and Action against Corporal Punishment (pages 410–423)

Toby Candler, Hannah Gannon and John Wachira Child Protection in a Low-Resource Setting: Experiences From Paediatric Professionals in Kenya (pages 424–432)

Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde Infant Trafficking and Baby Factories: A New Tale of Child Abuse in Nigeria (pages 433–443)

Shihning Chou and Kevin D. Browne The Relationship over Time between International Adoption and Institutional Care in Romania and Lithuania (pages 444–453)

Lavinia Barone, Antonio Dellagiulia and Francesca Lionetti When the Primary Caregiver is Missing: Investigating Proximal and Distal Variables Involved in Institutionalised Children’s Adjustment (pages 454–468)

Marina Lalayants and Jonathan D. Prince Child Neglect and Onset of Substance Use Disorders among Child Welfare-Involved Adolescents (pages 469–478)

Training Update

Female Genital Mutilation Programme (e-FGM): E-Learning to Improve Awareness and Understanding of FGM by e-Learning for Healthcare.

Book Reviews

Comparative Study of Child Soldiering on Myanmar-China Border: Evolution, Challenges and Countermeasures by K. Chen, Springer Science and Business Media, Singapore, 2014.

Redressing Institutional Abuse of Children by Kathleen Daly, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014.

Wartenweiler D, Mansukhani R. Participatory Action Research with Filipino Street Youth: Their Voice and Action against Corporal Punishment. Child Abuse Review. 2016;25(6):n/a-n/a.

December 6, 2016

Safeguarding Child Development

In our 2009-11 biennial review of Serious Case Reviews, Marian Brandon and I highlighted the crucial importance of an understanding of child development to effective safeguarding of children. This is not a new perspective however, and the relevance of such understanding spans a range of areas, including:

recognition of the influence of development on vulnerability towards abuse
recognition of developmental delay as a possible indicator of abuse or neglect
the influence of children’s development on our interpretation of the signs and symptoms of abuse
the long-term impact of abuse and neglect on children’s development and how we may intervene to improve developmental outcomes, and
the particular vulnerability of disabled children.

These are all themes that have been explored within Child Abuse Review over the years.

We have now published a new virtual issue which picks up on some of the themes through a selection of some of the most important papers on the theme, particularly from recent years.

The virtual issue with a full editorial and seven papers is freely available for download from the Child Abuse Review Website

Virtual Issue on Child Development and Safeguarding

Contents

Why Have We Made Neglect So Complicated? Taking a Fresh Look at Noticing and Helping the Neglected Child
(Volume 24, Issue 2, 2015)
Brigid Daniel

Health, Developmental and Support Needs of Vulnerable Children – Comparing Children in Foster Care and Children in Need
(Volume 23, Issue 6, 2014)
Shanti Raman and Sharmishta Sahu

Out-of-Home Care versus In-home Care for Children Who Have Been Maltreated: A Systematic Review of Health and Wellbeing Outcomes
(Volume 25, Issue 4, 2016)
Miriam J. Maclean, Scott Sims, Melissa O’Donnell and Ruth Gilbert

Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and Improvements in Child Development
(Volume 18, Issue 1, 2009)
Mogens Nygaard Christoffersen and Diane DePanfilis

Child Abuse, Child Protection and Disabled Children: A Review of Recent Research
(Volume 21, Issue 1, 2012)
Kirsten Stalker and Katherine McArthur

The Connections between Disability and Child Abuse: A Review of the Research Evidence
(Volume 1, Issue 3, 1992)
Liz Kelly

November 30, 2016November 30, 2016

Launching our new national guidelines for responding to unexpected child deaths

The unexpected death of an infant or child is a huge tragedy for any family, leaving them bewildered and grieving, and cutting across all their joys and hopes for their child. While much progress has been made in our understanding of the causes of such unexpected deaths and how to prevent them, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) remains the biggest cause of infant death after the first week of life, with over 200 babies per year dying this way in England and Wales. Whenever a child dies unexpectedly, there is a requirement for the coroner to investigate the death. These investigations can, however, further add to the parents’ distress. It is therefore crucially important that each unexpected child death is thoroughly investigated in a sensitive and supportive manner.

Every week at least four families in England and Wales experience the sudden, unexpected death of their child

Sudden unexpected death in infancy and childhood – Multi-agency guidelines for care and investigation

These new national guidelines have been published by a multi-agency working group convened by The Royal College of Pathologists and The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. They provide guidelines for professionals responding to an unexpected child death which are both sensitive to the needs of grief-stricken parents and seek to help parents understand why their child has died.

The revised guidelines build on previous work published in 2004 and seek to outline best practice for the different professionals involved in responding to an unexpected death and to ensure that the response to such deaths is both sensitive and thorough.

I have been enormously privileged to have been part of the group writing these new guidelines, and also to have been involved in some of the research on which they are based. We have seen huge improvements in the ways police and health professionals respond to such deaths, but there is always more that we can learn. So I hope that the revised guidelines will be a stimulus for improving services across the country.

In my work with bereaved families, I have come across terrible situations where parents have been kept in the dark or made to feel like criminals, but also some great examples of how families have been supported through the days and weeks following their child’s death and how police and health professionals have worked together in a sensitive, thorough, and caring manner. Parents often tell me that what they want, above anything else, is to understand why their baby died, but also their hopes that by investigating their child’s death thoroughly, we can work to prevent other families having to go through a similar experience.

The guidelines are freely available for download from the Royal College of Pathologists. Click here to download the guidelines.

The Lullaby Trust

While so many families continue to face this awful tragedy, we must do everything we can to support those families and to prevent future child deaths. Particularly at this time of year, many parents will be feeling the grief so much more intensely. It has been really encouraging to be involved with the Lullaby Trust who continue to work to support families and professionals as well as supporting research and public health initiatives to further reduce the incidence of SIDS. This week, they are once again holding a fundraising challenge through The Big Give: From 12 midday on Tuesday 29 November to 12 midday on Friday 2 December donations made to us via The Big Give website will be matched pound-for-pound; this means a donation to us could go twice as far absolutely free of charge to you!

November 25, 2016

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

Today, 25th November, has been designated by the UN as an international day for the elimination of violence against women.

“Violence against women and girls is a human rights violation, public health pandemic and serious obstacle to sustainable development. It imposes large-scale costs on families, communities and economies. The world cannot afford to pay this price.” — Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

In my work in the field of child abuse, I have increasingly become aware of the huge tragedy of violence against women, the awful scars it causes to the women themselves, and to their children. It is also a scar across the whole of humanity – something Elaine Storkey has explored in her powerful book, Scars Across Humanity. We must do more to stop it.

Violence against women harms their children too.

In the three years from April 2011 to March 2014, Local Safeguarding Children Boards in England carried out a total of 293 Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) (1). Each one of these concerned a child or children who had died or been seriously harmed as a result of abuse or neglect. In a review of these SCRs, we found that in 54% of cases, there was documented evidence of domestic violence in the parents’ relationship. This included 70 children who had died within a context of domestic violence in the family.

It is now abundantly clear from research that living with domestic abuse is always harmful to children. This was emphasised in a recent special issue of the journal Child Abuse Review (2). At its extreme, this may result in the death of a child, the risks for which may continue even after separation. However, far more children continue to live in households where domestic violence is a part of ‘normal’ family life. The myth that because the children are in a different room and so don’t witness any actual violence, they aren’t harmed by it, has been very clearly shown to be a myth. Children pick up on the stress their parents feel; they experience the fear and terror when their mother is being hit or shouted at; they suffer from the controlling, threatening behaviour, the isolation and intimidation that are imposed on their mothers (for the reality is that, in most of these cases, it is the mother who is the victim).

Over the past few years, there has been huge progress in how we as a society, and as child welfare professionals, recognise and respond to domestic violence, including a growing recognition of the impact on children of living with domestic violence. However, there is still much to do. In our research we identified the importance of police, health and social care professionals carefully considering the needs of children in a family whenever there is evidence of domestic violence; of recognising that domestic violence should not be seen solely in terms of violent incidents, but also within the context of ongoing coercive control and the impact of this on the parent and children; and that controlling behaviour may continue to pose risks to mothers and children, even following separation.

By recognising these risks, and taking action to protect women and children from domestic violence, perhaps we could prevent some of those 70 deaths and many more of the cases of serious harm and children and women living in fear.

The full research report, Pathways to harm, pathways to protection, is freely available for download from Research in Practice: http://seriouscasereviews.rip.org.uk

The special issue of Child Abuse Review is available via the BASPCAN website: http://www.baspcan.org.uk/child-abuse-review/

Sidebotham P, Brandon M, Bailey S, Belderson P, Dodsworth J, Garstang J, et al. Pathways to harm, pathways to protection: a triennial analysis of serious case reviews 2011 to 2014. London: Department for Education; 2016.
Humphreys C, Bradbury-Jones C. Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding Children: Focus, Response and Intervention. Child Abuse Review. 2015;24(4):231-4.

November 17, 2016November 16, 2016

Evidence-informed Practice, Practice-informed Research

This Friday, 18th November, we are celebrating 25 years of the journal Child Abuse Review with a special anniversary conference in Birmingham.

To mark the occasion, we have launched a virtual issue of Child Abuse Review which is freely available to download from the journal website:

Child Abuse Review

Evidence-informed Practice, Practice-informed Research

In this virtual issue we have pulled together a selection of papers from across the 25 years of the journal’s publication within the four conference themes of neglect, child sexual exploitation, domestic violence, and research into practice. We include papers by each of our four keynote speakers, as well as papers by several of the other free-paper authors who are speaking at the conference.

Over the 25 years of the journal, we have seen an increasing emphasis on evidence-informed practice: ‘the application of appropriate evidence, combined with the experience of the practitioner and their responsiveness to the current context’ (Sidebotham, 2013). Equally important is the emphasis on research being informed by and relevant to practice.

Neglect

Neglect is one of the most prevalent and most challenging forms of child maltreatment. Our keynote speaker, Marian Brandon, is well known for her work on Serious Case Reviews, and has given a lot of thought to the role of neglect in child fatality and serious injury (Brandon, Bailey, Belderson, & Larsson, 2014). She points out that while neglect is rarely the direct cause of a child maltreatment fatality, it is a contributory factor in a much larger proportion of cases, and we need a more nuanced understanding of the different forms of neglect and their potential impact on the child. Given all that we know about the prevalence and impact of neglect, it is perhaps surprising that this topic is relatively under-represented in published research. One of our other conference speakers, Katherine Kloppen, undertook a systematic review of prevalence studies of child maltreatment in Nordic countries and found only one study reporting on the prevalence of neglect (Kloppen, Mæhle, Kvello, Haugland, & Breivik, 2015). Within Child Abuse Review, we have been able to publish a number of original research articles focusing specifically on neglect, including our 2014 special issue, from which we would particularly highlight the papers by Elaine Farmer, another conference speaker: (Farmer & Lutman, 2014).

Child Sexual Exploitation

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) has come to prominence more recently, although it is clearly not a new phenomenon, as was pointed out by Nina Biehal, another conference speaker, in her 1999 paper on the risks associated with going missing from substitute care (Biehal & Wade, 1999) and in a highly cited review of CSE by Elaine Chase and June Statham (Chase & Statham, 2005). Our conference keynote speaker on this theme, Jenny Pearce, has been a leading advocate for appropriate responses to dealing with the issues raised by sexual exploitation, as highlighted in an early discussion paper (J. Pearce, 2006) and a more recent review of how Safeguarding Children Boards work to protect children from sexual exploitation (J. J. Pearce, 2014).

Domestic Violence

Our awareness of the impact of domestic violence on children has similarly grown over the years, and it is now much more clearly recognised as always being harmful to children. Part of this has involved the recognition that children are harmed even if they are not directly involved in the violence, and that the ongoing context of coercive control may be as damaging to children (if not more so) as any physical incidents. In a landmark paper published earlier this year, Emma Katz explores these issues and considers how we as practitioners can respond more appropriately (Katz, 2016). Preventing and responding to domestic violence presents huge challenges to practitioners, particularly where children are involved. In a systematic review available online through our Early View function, William Turner and colleagues searched for evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to improve the response of professionals (Turner et al., 2015). They found good evidence of training interventions improving knowledge, attitudes and clinical competence, but less evidence around system level interventions. One of the biggest challenges in this area is how to work with fathers, and this is an issue which Stephanie Holt, our keynote conference speaker, has specifically explored in her research (Holt, 2015).

Research into Practice

Our fourth topic of research into practice is addressed by one of the former editors of Child Abuse Review, Kevin Browne. Kevin has been a leading advocate for child protection services, particularly in Eastern Europe, and his paper comparing institutional care and international adoption between Romania and Lithuania is published online through Early View (Chou & Browne, 2016). Translating research into practice isn’t always easy and the paper by Helen Buckley and colleagues exploring the factors that may influence practitioner uptake of research is well worth reading (Buckley, Tonmyr, Lewig, & Jack, 2013). They highlight particular ways in which practitioners can both access and use research evidence to inform their practice, and get involved in further study and research, thus promoting the full circle of evidence-informed practice and practice-informed research.

You can access all the papers from the 25th anniversary virtual issue by clicking on the link below:

Child Abuse Review 25th anniversary virtual issue

Content of the Child Abuse Review 25th Anniversary Virtual Issue

Neglect

The Role of Neglect in Child Fatality and Serious Injury
(Volume 23, Issue 4, 2014)
Marian Brandon, Sue Bailey, Pippa Belderson and Birgit Larsson

Prevalence of Intrafamilial Child Maltreatment in the Nordic countries: A Review
(Volume 24, Issue 1, 2015)
Kathrine Kloppen, Magne Mæhle, Øyvind Kvello, Siren Haugland and Kyrre Breivik

Working Effectively with Neglected Children and Their Families – What Needs To Change?
(Volume 23, Issue 4, 2014)
Elaine Farmer and Eleanor Lutman

Child Sexual Exploitation

Taking a Chance? The Risks Associated with Going Missing from Substitute Care
(Volume 8, Issue 6, 1999)
Nina Biehal and Jim Wade

Commercial and sexual exploitation of children and young people in the UK—a review
(Volume 14, Issue 1, 2005)
Elaine Chase and June Statham

Who needs to be involved in safeguarding sexually exploited young people?
(Volume 15, Issue 5, 2006)
Jenny Pearce

‘What’s Going On’ to Safeguard Children and Young People from Child Sexual Exploitation: A Review of Local Safeguarding Children Boards’ Work to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation
(Volume 23, Issue 3, 2014)
Jenny J. Pearce

Domestic Violence

Beyond the Physical Incident Model: How Children Living with Domestic Violence are Harmed By and Resist Regimes of Coercive Control
(Volume 25, Issue 1, 2016)
Emma Katz

Interventions to Improve the Response of Professionals to Children Exposed to Domestic Violence and Abuse: A Systematic Review
Early View: First Published 29 June 2015
William Turner, Jonathan Broad, Jessica Drinkwater, Adam Firth, Marianne Hester, Nicky Stanley, Eszter Szilassy and Gene Feder

Post-separation Fathering and Domestic Abuse: Challenges and Contradictions
(Volume 24, Issue 3, 2015)
Stephanie Holt

Research into Practice

The Relationship over Time between International Adoption and Institutional Care in Romania and Lithuania
Early View: First Published 14 July 2015
Shihning Chou and Kevin D. Browne

Factors Influencing the Uptake of Research Evidence in Child Welfare: A Synthesis of Findings from Australia, Canada and Ireland
(Volume 23, Issue 1, 2014)
Helen Buckley, Lil Tonmyr, Kerry Lewig and Susan Jack

November 3, 2016November 3, 2016

Children and Families and the Care System

The latest issue of Child Abuse Review is now available online, with an editorial by my co-editor, Jane Appleton in which she explores some of the complex issues of working with these children and young people, and the huge challenges they may face:

The papers in this issue revisit the very important subject of children in public

care, which Child Abuse Review most recently examined in a themed issue in

2014 (Appleton and Sidebotham, 2014). Signiﬁcantly, the latest statistics on

children looked after in England show a steady rise in the numbers of children

in care since 2009, with 69 540 children being ‘looked after’ at 31 March 2015,

‘an increase of 6% compared to 31 March 2011’ (Department for Education,

2015, p. 1). While this trend is not mirrored in Scotland or Wales, children

in the public care system are recognised as being some of the most vulnerable

in society with high levels of need, particularly around emotional wellbeing

and mental health (Bentley et al., 2016). In the UK, most children are placed

with foster families, with other placements including children’s homes, secure

units, hostels and with their parents under social care supervision. Children and

young people enter the care system for different reasons, but for many it is as a

result of abuse and neglect. The experience of being in care, as DEMOS (2010,

p. 11) has noted, ‘clearly serves some g roups of children better than others’ and

there is considerable interest in the outcomes of young people’s care

experiences.

Children in the public care system are recognised as being some of the most vulnerable

in society with high levels of need, particularly around emotional wellbeing

and mental health