Caring for Children and Young People free essay sample

Once you have read this handbook, it will help you understand why many children often end up being looked after by other people rather than their parents. When a child ends up getting† looked after† it means the local authority has placed a care order to be put in place for them to be placed in someone else’s care. There are two types of care that a child can enter into. One is voluntary where their parents put them in care because either they cannot cope or are finding it difficult to look after the child. The other is involuntary when a court order will be placed due to concerns for the child’s welfare and safety. In this booklet I will explain some of the reasons why children can end up in care or being looked after. There are often family related reasons and some of these are listed below: Loss of a Parent – if the child’s parent/s passes away and they can no longer be cared for by them, then they will be put into care hopefully with other family members or family friends if safe to do so. Emotional abuse is when things are said to the person who can mentally damage them, for example telling your child something which can make them feel bad about themselves and it can lead to disorders such as anxiety or depression if it continues. It can also be when the parents choose to restrict the child’s freedom, by making them unable to see certain people or making them feel jealous about events which they should have no emotions for. Intellectual abuse can take place whereby the parents call their children names such as â€Å"nerd† if they are really good at something in particular or â€Å"stupid† if they keep failing in a certain thing without being offered any help. Sexual abuse is when the child is sexually harassed while they are still young so the parents or strangers are able to get to the child very easily as they child isn’t fully aware of the situation they are in. Neglect happens when the parents choose to simply ignore the child. If they child is saying they are hungry or wants help on their homework the parents would simply ignore it and let the child fend for themselves. Most the time the children are too young to know how to make them selfs food and often end up going hungry. Also the parents may choose to leave the child at home while they go out, even though the child is still quite young and it can be dangerous if anything goes wrong while they are out. Bullying and harassment can be maltreatment as someone who chooses to bully another individual can make the individual feel down about them selfs and they may choose to disengage from the society due to how they are being treated by others. This ca be the same with harassment as someone would constantly be harassing another individual, probably for no particular reason and it would cause that individual to be agitated and they may feel the need to apply inappropriate behaviours either towards the individuals bullying or harassing them or towards themselves, which could be more tragic for their families and friends. Within all the different types of maltreatment, the child can be at risk of maltreatment of any kind, at any time within their own family circle, outside their family, so meaning around their friends or peers or community, within a care setting, which could be school, if they are present within a residential care home, or even with strangers who may choose to stalk the child or could apply more inappropriate behaviours towards the child. As a health and social care professional it is inessential that you are area of the indicators which can suggest any forms of maltreatment within the children and younger people. The two main ways which you can spot signs of maltreatment is physically and via the childs behaviour. Indicators of maltreatment which would be physical on the children would be constant bruising on their skin, if you see one bruise you can’t automatically assume there is maltreatment going on within their family home as all children at a young age have bruises every now and then from falling over, however if you are constantly seeing bruises that aren’t going and instead getting worse, that can be a indicator of maltreatment. That ties in with any unexplained injuries that may be spotted on the child at any given time. If you happen to see the child has an injury which is considered as unexplained as it may not be a normal everyday injury, that can indicate maltreatment within the childs family home. Soreness in places which shouldn’t be sore can be a big indicator of maltreatment occurring within the family home. If the child seems underweight or may not be the average size for a child of their age can be an indicator of maltreatment within the family home, whereby they aren’t being fed the right amount of food or are going hungry at home from being ignored. With the child having poor personal hygiene, it can be an indicator of maltreatment happening within the family home where they aren’t getting treated how they should be and may have to fend for themselves and at the age they are at they don’t really understand what they need to do in order to be healthy. There are different behaviours which the children may show which can be indicators of maltreatment occurring within the family home. Withdrawal from activities and not participating can be an indicator, as well as aggression towards either the other children or staff. The child may show some sort of distressed behaviour while they are within care of the professionals. They may constantly be rocking or head banging which may be behaviour which they do at home to calm them down and show this indicator while in care of the professionals. The child may be showing signs they are always hungry or constantly alerting the staff that they are hungry. They may feel reluctant to go home when it is home time and may show fear when their parents or carers arrive. Having low self-esteem can indicate maltreatment, whereby they wouldn’t act as themselves as they may have been criticized about it within their family home. Their development compared to the other children could be behind as they haven’t been receiving the support they need from their families and have missed important milestones within their development stages. There are also wider factors which suggest risks of maltreatment occurring within family homes. Living in dysfunctional family relationships can increase a risk of maltreatment occurring due to the fact of the relationships within the family aren’t to the best they can be, meaning there are more arguments than normal making the bonds between each other poorer than they should be. If there is a link within family history of abuse it can increase the risk of abuse happening due to the fact it has happened before in previous generations, there is more of a chance it may happen again. With the parents having poor or impaired parenting skills it can increase the risk of maltreatment whereby they aren’t very sure as to how to look after and treat their child which can lead to neglect. They may also have impairments which would make it harder for them to look after their child properly and without them realising it may lead to neglect. The parents having a lack of attachment can increase the risk of maltreatment where they haven’t bonded very well with their child and may feel that they aren’t loved very much and choose to neglect the child. Substance abuse within the household can increase the risk of maltreatment as the parents would be under the influence of illegal drugs or alcohol and wouldn’t be fully aware of their actions. To meet M3 – Assess strategies and methods used to minimise the harm to children, young people and their families where abuse is confirmed. Within the same presentation you are required to assess how useful the multi-agency approach is to dealing with safeguarding children. You may want to discuss previous real-life cases where child abuse has occurred and the intervention or lack of intervention that has taken place, for example Victoria Climbie and Peter Connolly. Where abuse has been confirmed within families, there are different strategies and methods which are used in order to help minimise the harm to children, young people and their families. With children and young people, you would be respectful and use the child-centred approach, which is safeguarding the children and young people with services that are effective and have a clear understanding of the needs and views of children. The children would want to be respected; their views heard, stable relationships with professionals built on trust and for consistent support provided for their individual needs. The professionals should see, speak and listen to what the child has to say, take their views seriously, and work with them when deciding how to support their needs. This is the same for the professionals with providing active support to the children and young children. If they show that they aren’t interested in giving support to the children and young people when they need it the children may feel like they aren’t going to get the help that they need. Keeping no secrets within cases of abuse is important as the children and young people may feel like they are missing out on important information which could be about being helped with the situations they are currently in. Giving the children and young people support on their assertiveness and self-confidence, to help them feel better about themselves regardless of the situation they are in, which would make them feel like they can tackle the problems and find a way out. With parents and families, there are different strategies and methods which are used to minimise the harm where abuse is confirmed. By developing supportive partnership relationships with parents and families they are able to minimise the harm, whereby the parents are involved with the assessment of the childs needs so that the parents doesn’t have any problems with the arrangement made. As the parents may make contributions, one method is helping the parents to recognize the value and significance of their contributions that they make which can also encourage the development of their parenting skills. With maltreatment as a whole, there are different consequences which can occur, some more tragic than others. Emotional and psychological dysfunction affecting relationships can occur, where the child may have displaced their anger for their parents on to a friend or another loved one, without realising and caused damage to themselves and the others around them. They wouldn’t mean to displace their anger as it would just happen naturally where they have had the build-up of anger towards their parents for a long period of time and are unable to hold it any longer; making them lash out on another loved one. Self-harming can be a big consequence within teenagers as they feel it’s the only way to ‘feel better’ as they think living on pain is better. They may also injure to self-harming as they find it as a relief to the other pain which is being conflicted onto them within their life. Worst of all they may end up becoming perpetrators of abuse themselves so when they have children of their own there is more chance of them being abused by their parents as their parents were abused in their childhood too. This is bad as the abuse would have continued within their family and causes more problems for when their children grow up and as they continue making the family line, signs of abuse may be evident within every generation. Intellectually the child may have an impaired capacity to learn. This could be where they have been abused from the early years of their life making them unable to learn the main everyday things due to the fact they may feel scared of the consequences which may occur if they attempt it. This can also occur if they have missed the important milestone of learning basic things at a certain age due to the abuse the child was receiving off their parents and not being taught the need to know basics of life. This leads on to the point that their brain development can be subtly affected where they haven’t learnt or been taught what they needed know at the certain ages within their early years development as they had missed the crucial time where they would have picked up the certain action at a quick and easy pace. Socially they become inadequacy, meaning they wouldn’t socialize with their peers who are always around them and feel incapable of talking to others, as they find it hard to socialize. This is also known as ‘Avoidant Personality Disorder’. Children and young people who suffer from this would have more sensitivity to negative criticism and rejection as well as being shy and socially awkward. For someone who has the avoidant personality disorder may show signs of avoiding work, social, or school activities due to having the fear of criticism or rejection. Have low self-esteem and choose to self-isolate themselves from others. They may also be afraid to speak up as they have the fear of saying something wrong, blushing, stammering or just simply getting embarrassed. This makes it difficult for them to connect with other people just for simple friendships, and if within a relationship, they may feel afraid to share any personal information or talking about your feelings, which all makes it hard to maintain any relationships. Illnesses can occur as a consequence of maltreatment where an individual can develop psychosomatic illnesses, auto-immune disorders, suffer from unwanted pregnancy and carry sexually transmitted infections. A psychosomatic disorder is a disease which involves both the mind and body. Some physical diseases can be made worse by mental factors such as stress and anxiety. Most diseases which are developed are mainly psychosomatic diseases as there is a mental aspect to every physical disease, due to how we react and cope. Compared to this there can be physical effects which are caused from the mental illness as you may not eat well or take care of yourself very well which would cause your physical problems. Auto-immune disorder is a condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy tissue within the body. The person’s immune system can’t tell the difference between healthy body tissue and antigens and as a response to that the immune system destroys the healthy tissue. An auto-immune disorder may result in the destruction of one or more types of body tissue, abnormal growth of an organ, or changes in organ function. It may affect one or more organs or tissue types and the most commonly affected organs and tissues include: blood vessels; connective tissues; endocrine glands, such as the pancreas; joints; muscles; red blood cells; skin. Unwanted pregnancy may occur as a consequence of maltreatment on the basis of sexual abuse. It could have happened while the young person was in their teens and were sexually abused within their life. They may be left with an unwanted pregnancy due to their childhood. Also they may have sexually transmitted infections due to sexual abuse which could have happened within their childhood or teenage years, which makes them suffer for the rest of their lives. Mental health can be a consequence of maltreatment where the young person had been growing up within an abusive environment and may have felt anxious while growing up, which could have carried on with them in their later years, resulting in stress or anxiety. Attempted suicide can be a massive consequence of maltreatment as where the parents are not acknowledging the childs presence and continually putting the child down, they may feel that they are worthless and no one would be affected if they disappear. Also they may attempt suicide in a chance to stop all the pain and nastiness which they have within their life and just want it all to end. Substance abuse may occur as the young people may find it relieving to excessively drink as it takes the pain away and by abusing drugs. This would make them addicted but they would probably feel some pain relief from it, and that could end up resulting badly if it isn’t tended to. There are four theories of maltreatment, which are medical, sociological, psychological and feminist. Range Theories of maltreatment: Medical, Sociological, Psychological, Feminist Issues: Cultural, eg changing face of the family, Social disadvantage, Different concepts of discipline, Cultural variations To meet D2 – Justify responses where child maltreatment or abuse is suspected or confirmed, referring to current legislation and policies. Justify the responses taken where suspected maltreatment or abuse is suspected or confirmed and to refer to current legislation and policies. For example; justify reasons why it may at times be necessary to remove a child from the family home and place into care. Range Procedures where maltreatment is considered, suspected, confirmed or excluded: Policies of the setting; Implementing safe working practices; Whistleblowing; Reporting arrangements; Security of records; Sequence of events leading to registration on child protection register or care proceedings Roles and responsibilities: Following the policies and procedures of setting; Observation; Responsibility for observing children and families and their interaction; Recognising maltreatment indicators; How to respond if maltreatment is suspected; What action to take following disclosure, maintaining confidentiality according to policies of the setting Responding to direct or indirect disclosure: Listening carefully and attentively; Communicating at the child/young person’s own pace and without undue pressure; Taking the child/young person seriously; Reassuring and supporting the child/young person; Providing unconditional acceptance; Boundaries of confidentiality; Promptly following the correct procedures of the setting; How to deal with own feelings and emotions Support for children/young people who disclose: Provide access to professional support; Demonstrating unconditional acceptance of the child/young person; Empowering children and young people to take control of their situation; Awareness of the potential impact on the child/young person and other family members, counteracting possible stereotyping Minimising the effects of abuse: