Haringey Children's Services Child Abuse Case Analysis

Child Abuse in London Borough of Haringey: An opinion of students from college in Central London.

Research Question

The study will focus on child abuse cases in Haringey Children’s services by exploring the strategies the child protection agency deploys to protect children at risk or harm in the borough.

Introduction

The purpose of this research project is to investigate the child abuse cases at Haringey Children’s services by evaluating the approaches employed by the agency for safeguarding children against harm or risk. It will also highlight the strategies used by Haringey council to identify students at risk.  There are have been different cases of child abuse in the borough and that is the reason why the researcher is interested in conducting a critical analysis of the strategies use employed by the council to identify children that are immediate risk or harm from their parents or carer. The Haringey local safeguarding children board encourage anyone that have a concern about a child that may be at risk of significant harm or has already been harmed or abused to immediately contact Haringey council by telephone or email (Haringey LSCB, 2017). The council provide encourage to make contact through the single point of access where professionals or any concerns about a child can contact the council. Haringey local safeguarding children board pride itself in identifying welfare and safeguarding concerns as well as taking prompt action to deal with any concerns about children (Haringey LSCB, 2017).

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They encourage all professionals working with children and young people and their families, including teachers and nursery staff, children’s centres, doctors and health workers, housing support officers, police and probation officers, family support services, social workers and voluntary and community run organisations to get in touch with them if they have any concern about any child or children. However, the council has been riddled with different cases of child abuse over the couple of years. The aim of this research is to evaluate child abuse cases in the borough and to identify the strategies used to identify children at risk. Recommendations will be made based the evaluation and findings of the study through analysis of different child abuse cases in the borough and strategies used to identify children at risk. Literature reviews, academic journals, articles, text books and magazines will be critical analysed to identify how the children protection agencies can prevent child abuse and improve safeguarding measures for children.

Background

Child abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country for decades and the latest high profile cases of celebrities and trusted official abusing children has brought the matter into prominence. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children(NSPCC) describe child abuse as any action any individual, either a child or adult that causes significant harm to a child. It can be physical, sexual or emotional, but can just as often be about a lack of love, care and attention. What form of abuse against children can have a damaging effect on a child (NSPCC, 2017). Research has shown that 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused and 1 in 3 children sexually abused by an adult did not tell anyone (Radford, 2011). Similarly, the child protection register and plan statistics for all UK nations for 2014 show that 3,000 children were identified as needing protection from sexual abuse and up to 90% of children who have been abused will develop mental health issues by the time they are 18 years old (NSPCC, 2017).

In addition, disabled children are over 3 times more likely to be abused than non-disabled children (Radford, 2011). These are very disturbing findings that required the partnership of government agencies to identify and prevent child abuse in the country.  The cases of child abuse have increase significant over last couple of years because of the opportunities provided by the internet with children watching pornography thinking that it is normal and adult exploiting children on the net.  To compound the problem, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC), found that about 85% of sexually abused young people are not receiving help and treatment, while urgent actions are needed to identify and prevent child abuse as one in eight victims in England comes to the attention of authorities (CCE, 2017).

Aim

• To investigate the methods and approaches implemented by Haringey children services to identity children at risk.
• To evaluate the preventive measures taken by the council to mitigate against child abuse.

Objectives

• To identify measures that can be taken by government agencies to identify child abuse in the community
• To make recommendations on preventative approach agencies can employ to mitigate against the risk of harm or abuse to children

Literature review

Child abuse and neglect are serious global problems and can be in the form of physical, sexual, emotional or just neglect in providing for the child’s needs (Kemoli and Mavindu, 2014). These factors can leave the child with serious, long-lasting psychological damage. In this study, the researcher intends to explore and analyse the current literature review, academic journals, textbooks, government publications on child abuse identification and prevention strategies, articles, newspapers related to child abuse or exploitation on how to identify children at risk and the preventative measure that can implemented to mitigate against the epidemic of child abuse.

Methodology

Qualitative and quantitative approach will be used for this researcher.  Questionnaire will be used to collect data randomly from parent living in Haringey council on how they protect their children form child abuse and information given to them by the council. Interview will be conducted with Haringey Children’s service on how they identify children at risk and the preventive measures in place to mitigate against any risk or harm on children.

Design or Method

A questionnaire will be developed containing 20 questions ranging from their age range, occupation, numbers of children they have and their understanding of child abuse etc., to survey parents of children living in Haringey council. Unstructured interview will be conducted with the management of Haringey Children’s Service to evaluate how the agency identify children at risk and the preventative measure in place to deal with the threat.

Data Collection Method

Questionnaires and interview will be used to collect data from parents and management of Haringey Council.

Sampling technique

A sampling technique is the name or other identification of the specific process by which the entities of the sample have been selected (Cassady and Nachlas, 2009). Stratified sampling is commonly used probability method that is superior to random sampling because it reduces sampling error. A stratum is a subset of the population that share at least one common characteristic. Examples of stratums might be males and females, or managers and non-managers. The researcher first identifies the relevant stratums and their actual representation in the population

Probability

A probability sampling method is any method of sampling that utilizes some form of random selection (Greenwood, Mills and Vrana, 2007). This approach will be used by the researcher for this study by conducting unstructured interview with the management of Haringey council.

Data Presentation and Analysis

Interview transcripts, field notes and observations provide a descriptive account of the study, but they do not provide explanations. It is the researcher who has to make sense of the data that have been collected by exploring and interpreting them. Microsoft Word and Excel will be deployed for data analysis and presentation in this study.

Limitations

Foreseeable limitations will be getting contents to interview Haringey children’s service and funding and the time frame maybe an obstacle to the research.

Overcoming limitations:

By starting early and getting the consent of the management of Haringey and the consent of the parents

Research Specification or Plan or Timeline:

Ethical Considerations

Haringey children’s service and parent of children that live within Haringey council will be informed of their right to withdraw from the study at any time without ant recourse.  Sensitive information collected from the council management and parents will not share by third parties. Identity of the parents and personnel of the council that participated in the study will be kept confidential.

References

Cassady, C. and Nachlas, J. (2009). Probability models in operations research. 1st ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

CCE, (2017). Child sexual abuse. [online] Children’s Commissioner for England. Available at: http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/learn-more/child-sexual-abuse [Accessed 13 Mar. 2017].

Creswell, J. (2013). Research Design. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

Greenwood, R., Mills, G. and Vrana, B. (2007). Passive sampling techniques in environmental monitoring. 1st ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Haringey LSCB, (2017). Haringey LSCB. [online] Haringeylscb.org. Available at: http://www.haringeylscb.org/ [Accessed 13 Mar. 2017].

Kemoli, A. and Mavindu, M. (2014). Child abuse: A classic case report with literature review. Contemporary Clinical Dentistry, 5(2), p.256.

NSPCC. (2017). Child protection in the UK. [online] Available at: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-protection-system/ [Accessed 13 Mar. 2017].

Radford, L. (2011). Child abuse and neglect in the UK today. 1st ed. London: NSPCC.