Issues in Child Protection Practices, Reporting Procedures, Risk Assessment and Interagency Working

Running head: PROTECTION OF CHILDREN
Protection of children
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1PROTECTION OF CHILDREN
As per 2016 WHO report, approximately 41,000 children below the age of 15 years were
victims of homicide that is incorrectly reported attributed to factors that are unrelated; similarly,
minor girls are also vulnerable to exploitation and abuse (who.int 2018). Child protection
practices are developed to target children who are subjected to neglect and abuse. According to
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), ‘child protection’ is defined as prevention and
responding to exploitations, violence and abuse against children including trafficking and child
labour (unicef.org 2018). However, as reported by World Health Organization (WHO), child
abuse and neglect in all forms of physical, emotional ill-treatment is prevalent resulting in actual
harm to children’s health, wellbeing and dignity (who.int 2018). These practices are aimed at
creating a protective environment for the children ensuring their rights to survival, proper
development and wellbeing. However, there are issues witnessed and therefore, the aim of the
following discussion is to explore these issues in child protection practices, reporting procedures,
risk assessment and issues related to interagency working.
Numerous inquiries into child protection practices have concluded that there are
witnessed failures in the service responses attributable to rising demand of services, low morale
and ill-equipped workforce, lack of interventions for the families and rising number of children
population with lack of suitable placements. There are raising concerns about child welfare that
had been escalated by child protection departments’ workforce in terms of reporting, scale of
increase in child abuse and issues in absolute number of notifications. The departmental staffs’
responses are weak or rate of notifications per thousand in the children population is scarce
(Kempe et al. 2013).
The main critical issue in current practices of child protection is the lack of services.
There is lack of prevention services concerning the comprehensive range of child protection

2PROTECTION OF CHILDREN
practices, as they are unable to fulfil the increasing demands of the child population. There is
increasing demand for child protection services in local areas likely to have serious
consequences. Various factors, both internal and external with structural and demographic
factors contribute to wide scope of crisis because of increasing responsibilities and diminishing
resources (Pelton 2015). Child protection services are inadequate for the children and their
families due to issues like poor housing, unmet health needs, racial discrimination and parental
incarceration challenging the child protection staffs ability to serve vulnerable children and their
families. The services need to be put into right place supporting vulnerable children and their
families in the first place.
Child protection system workforce is another issue facing critical challenges like staff
turnover, lack of training, inexperience and incompetent, high caseloads and inconsistency.
There is lack of sophistication and clinical skills that is required to engage the vulnerable
population. There are emerging issues related to worker satisfaction and retention that is
resulting in ineffective service delivery to vulnerable children and families. There are severe
workforce issues like high staff turnovers failing to meet the needs of children ensuring safety
and achievement of permanency for vulnerable children (McFadden, Campbell and Taylor
2014). Due to lack of qualified personnel, the hiring process is frozen and worker turnover are
some of the barriers to effective delivery of child protection services. Therefore, there is need for
management of workforce with proper recruitment, hiring, supervision and retention for effective
child protection services.
Any issue that is related to child abuse should be taken seriously and handled
appropriately that ensure to provide safety to the child with instant reporting. Any form of
physical abuse, neglect, sexual or emotional abuse is defined as child abuse. In Ireland, specific