Child Abuse Workers: Roles, Policies, Societal Changes, and Success

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of child abuse workers, exploring their duties, responsibilities, and emergence within society. It delves into the specific tasks they perform, such as ensuring child safety, providing counseling, and finding suitable care placements. The essay traces the historical development of child abuse workers, highlighting key legislative policies like the Protection of the Children Act 1889 and the Children Act 1989. It analyzes the changes within society spurred by these workers, including increased awareness of child rights and the implementation of various protective measures. Furthermore, the essay assesses the successes and downfalls of child abuse workers, acknowledging their impact on reducing child abuse cases while also addressing challenges like insufficient funding and lack of support from certain groups. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of continued support and funding for these workers to effectively protect children and their families. The essay uses information from various journal articles and books to support its arguments.

ESSAY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..............................................................................................................................................3
Duties, tasks as well as responsibilities of child abuse workers...............................................................3
Emergence of child abuse workers..........................................................................................................4
Policy & legislation of child abuse worker..............................................................................................4
Changes within society............................................................................................................................5
Success as well as downfalls of child abuse workers...............................................................................5
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Child abuse workers are basically the entity as well as group of people who work towards
the welfare of children and ensure their protections from various forms of ill-treatment, abuse
and neglect. The main aim of this report is to study the various duties and responsibilities of
child abuse workers and understand their development within society.
This report gives a brief overview of duties, tasks as well as responsibilities of child
abuse workers, emergence of child abuse workers, policy and legislation of child abuse worker,
changes within society and success as well as downfalls of child abuse workers.
MAIN BODY
Duties, tasks as well as responsibilities of child abuse workers
Duties
The major duties of child abuse workers are
 To ensure safety of the children and providing a safe environment for their welfare
 To focus on the well-being of children and provide mental and physical support to them
and their families.
 To improve the social as well as psychological functioning of the children by providing
the well-through assistance.
Provide counseling to the children as well as their family and foster their growth and
development by placing them within the care centers (Lwin and et.al.,2018).
Responsibilities
The major responsibilities of child abuse workers are
 To protect and secure the children from various situations of neglect, abuse as well as
other forms.
 To ensuring the social, psychological, physical as well as emotional well-being of the
clients.

 Visiting home to investigate the allegations of neglect and abuse and thus providing
assessment for determining that whether parents or guardian are fit for providing care or
not.
 Protecting the children and helping them to overcome various difficulties.
Tasks
The tasks of child abuse worker encompass an array of tasks through which they are able
to serve children and their family better.
 To provide the foster homes and other care services to children for ensuring their well-
being.
 Finding the best adoptive homes for children having no adult caretakers and providing a
great environment for their mental growth and development.
 Providing the various effective healthcare services to the children and their families and
identify the various threats which impacts the growth of children.
Emergence of child abuse workers
The child abuse workers emerged with the rise of child abuse as well as neglect in early
1970s within United States. According to various studies, children were considered as inferior
and minors in the early 1960s and were considered as inadequate version of the parents. In early
1870s the child abuse took a drastic turn and captured nation’s attention with news of 8 year old
Mary Ellen Wilson. This orphan was mainly suffering from the beatings as well as whippings at
foster home. That time, there were no organizations which came into existence for protecting the
abused children. In the late year of , an article was published in Journal of American Medical
Association which focused on the maltreatment done with children. This article enlightened the
need for organization which will help to secure the rights of children and will protect them from
various kinds of abuse and maltreatment. Initially, the social workers emerged as well as well as
nurses for providing the healthcare services to the children. These social and domestic workers
were mainly focused in providing the assistance and support to the children suffering from
maltreatment. Later in the 21st century, with the increasing cases of child abuse, child abuse
workers came into existence (Pollard, 2018). Different groups began to form and develop over
the time in order to reduce the prevalence of child abuse. In the year 2009, the case of Plymouth

child abuse was reported which led to the advent of child welfare system within which group of
people came together to provide justice to the child. This case resulted in the emergence of
various child abuse workers across country to provide relief to the children which were suffering
from various maltreatment across different locations.
Policy & legislation of child abuse worker
The government has come up with various policies as well as legislations against child
abuse. Various policies are
Protection of the children act 1889
This is one of the most remarkable and important legislation being established by the
parliament of UK in order to ensure the safety and well-being of children. Under this act, any
person of ill-treats, neglects or exposes the children to unnecessary suffering or causes injury to
their heath then that person would be liable to pay the fine or bear imprisonment (Peckover and
Golding, 2017).
Children act 1989
This is the another legislation which was passed by the government of UK and is the
most comprehensive reform. This policy mainly stresses upon protecting the children from the
ill-treatment and work together for safeguarding them as well as promoting their welfare.
There are numerous policies and legislation which are being established for the
betterment of children and for promoting their growth and development. The child abuse
workers in UK are now strictly following these legislation and mainly emphasizes on providing a
better environment not only to the children but also to their families who are struggling through
different tough times. Like for example as current children protection system in UK is mainly
based upon children act 1989 thus child abuse workers follows the various rules and regulations
of this system thoroughly and aims to provide assistance and support to children who have been
neglected or ill-treated by various groups of the society. These workers work together under the
another act which is children act 2004 for providing them a safe and secure environment (Wilke
and et.al.,2018).

Changes within society
With the development and emergence of child abuse workers in 21st century, a large
number of changes have occurred within society. Since the formation of various child abuse
workers, there has been growing focus on the children regarding their security, protection,
educations etc. Now various organizations as well as countries have posed a ban on child labour
and have started taking actions regarding the maltreatment and abuse of children. In the year
2017, there has been rise in the child abuse workers and the percentage of organizations working
towards the welfare of children has increased from 32.7% to more than 75.4%. With the
development of child abuse workers, now each and every social care and foster care has started
providing assistance to children and their families by providing them various forms of assistance
and healthcare facilities. Besides this, most of the organizations have engaged themselves in
protecting the rights of children and have started creating awareness among people towards
children education, maltreatment, abuse with the help of different campaigns and seminars.
Besides this, government has started working towards the welfare of children by developing
various policies and legislations (Moore, 2018).
Success as well as downfalls of child abuse workers
The child abuse workers have gained a huge success with the increasing cases of child
abuse and neglect. Their success is basically marked by the support of various organizations and
people which have helped these workers by providing funds and assistance. The child abuse
workers have been able to reduce the cases of child neglect and ill-treatment from 76.4% to more
than 25.7%. This percentage shows their success where these workers have provided assistance
to more than 10.2 million children and their families across the various regions in UK (Davies
and Duckett, 2016).
The major downfall which has been faced by child abuse workers is the lack of support
from various activists and protagonists like environmental activists. Various social activist,
human rights supporters, environmental protagonists have not shown much support to the child
abuse workers as they were mainly concerned towards working for the welfare of environment
and rights of adults and old aged people. Besides this, another downfall of these workers is lack
of funding support. These workers have not received much financial support from government

and due to inadequate funding and money these works have not been able to provide proper
healthcare services and other facilities to children and their families (Fryer, 2019).
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized that child abuse workers have emerged as the major constituent
and entity working towards the welfare of children and protecting them from different forms of
maltreatment and abuse. For the well-maintenance of the child abuse workers, firstly government
should provide enough funding and support to theses workers in order to enable them for
providing effective counseling and healthcare facilities to children and their families. Besides
this, the various organizations and people o community should show their support these by
working in collaboration with them and raising awareness among people.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Davies, L. and Duckett, N., 2016. Proactive child protection and social work. Learning Matters.
Fryer, G.E., 2019. Child abuse and the social environment. Routledge.
Lwin, K and et.al.,2018. A changing child welfare workforce: What worker characteristics are
valued in child welfare?. Child abuse & neglect.81. pp.170-180.
Moore, J., 2018. The ABC of child protection. Routledge.
Peckover, S. and Golding, B., 2017. Domestic abuse and safeguarding children: critical issues
for multiagency work. Child abuse review.26(1). pp.40-50.
Pollard, L.W., 2018. Social worker experience of fatal child abuse. The British Journal of Social
Work.48(7). pp.1948-1966.
Wilke, D.J and et.al.,2018. A multi-level conceptual model to examine child welfare worker
turnover and retention decisions. Journal of Public Child Welfare.12(2). pp.204-231.