Safeguarding Children: A Critical Reflection

Children 1
SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN
Name
Course
Professor
Institution
City
Date

Children 2
Safeguarding Children
The Incident
Student Health Visitor, Health Visitor (HV) and MAT worker did joint home visit to a
family with four children. Concerns were expressed regarding the stepmothers bond with one
of the children, which will be referred to as Jake throughout this reflection. Jake and his twin
brother initially lived with biological mother but were removed from her care at 14 months of
age due to neglect. Social care intervention was not continued when they initially moved to
live with their biological dad and stepmother.
Stepmother is under the care of her GP for anxiety and Dad has difficulty with
memory due to a brain injury. During the joint visit stepmother expressed she was struggling
to cope with Jake’s behaviour which is having on impact on her anxiety. Jake was observed
to be withdrawn and sat on the floor rocking. Stepmother reported he will cry for long
periods of time and she is struggling to bond with him. Stepmother reported that she did not
want Jake but wanted the other three children. Jake would often be singled out, stepmother
would go out with the other three children but leave Jake at home with dad.
Concerns were escalated to social worker by MAT worker and HV due to the
emotional impact this is having on Jake. Parents shared that they wanted Jake to stay a week
with them and then a week with other relatives to give them respite as Stepmother felt her
mental health was deteriorating due to Jakes behaviour. There was no emotional warmth
evident from stepmother towards Jake. Following social care assessment a strategy meeting
was held by social care and it was agreed for all children to be placed on section 47 and for
an initial case conference to be held.

Children 3
Critical Reflection
This incident prompted the student health visitor to look at threshold for social care
intervention. The Derbyshire Safeguarding Children’s Board (2015) highlights four levels of
need following a practitioners request for support. This consists of low level needs, emerging
needs, complex/serious needs and child protection concerns. The basic level, low level occurs
when the need is low and the universal as well as individual services may sufficiently handle
the needs without calling upon the involvement of other agencies. With emerging needs, a
number of early help options may be required and coordinated via an help assessment when
the concerns pertaining the needs and well-being of children are not clear, not being met or
not known. The complex/serious needs level comes up when the intervention may be at risk
or the needs at a state in which the health and development of the child may face serious
impairment. Level four, child protection concerns, comes up when there exists sufficient
suspicion that a child is already suffering or about to suffer serious harm as a consequence of
neglect or abuse. The setting up of these levels is a welcome move as it ensures that each
issue receives the sort of attention it deserves.
The family were initially considered to have emerging needs and therefore supported
by MAT due to stepmother struggling to manage Jake’s behaviour. However following
support from MAT and further home visits by the HV it became apparent that the family’s
needs were becoming more complex than the emerging needs level. It would seem that the
needs had indeed progressed to the child protection concerns. On the basis of what had been
reported, that Jake was withdrawn and would sit on the floor rocking, and had been singled
out and left at home when the mother would go out with other children, it can be argued that
indeed this was already a notch higher than the level that had been reported. It would indeed
have been sad to wrongly classify this issue as the child was experiencing what one would