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Real reform needed to stop children being abused and killed
• The Children Bill heralds an opportunity for landmark reform.
• In the past, too many child abuse tragedies have occurred because the buck of responsibility has been passed around from professional to professional. The bill aims to foster a sense of shared responsibility between local services for protecting children from abuse.
• The bill has also sought to bring about an unprecedented level of integration in the way that children’s services – such as education, health and social services - are planned and delivered at a local level. The NSPCC welcomes this.
• However, the NSPCC feels that the Government has given too much flexibility for local authorities and other local bodies to determine how they will improve the way in which they work together.
• Too much flexibility will not guarantee results.
The Government needs to demand a commitment to reform from schools, GP surgeries and other primary health services
• The NSPCC is pleased that the Government has proposed that Children’s Services Authorities (CSAs) are created in every local authority, under the leadership of local Directors of Children’s Services.
• CSAs will be responsible for ensuring that all local services, such as education, social services and health, are working together to improve children’s lives.
• They will also be responsible for protecting children from being abused.
• Key local services will have a legal duty to work collaboratively, (a ‘duty to co-operate,’) to plan and deliver integrated services to children and young people.
• Key services bound by that duty include local education authorities, social services and health authorities.
• However, the NSPCC believes that the Children Bill is not specific enough and that schools and health services commissioned by primary care trusts, such as GP surgeries and walk-in centres, and registered social landlords, such as housing associations, should also be named as having a duty to co-operate.
• This would guarantee their involvement in the development and delivery of local plans to improve the lives of children and protect them from abuse.
The expectations and remit of the Children’s Services Authorities should be strengthened
• The NSPCC welcomes the proposal for Children’s Services Authorities (CSAs) to have lead responsibility for improving children’s lives at a local level.
• However, the NSPCC believes that it needs to be far more robust in the expectations it has of them.
• The Government has said that Children’s Services Authorities should from time to time prepare and publish a children’s plan. However, it is not specific about how often those plans should be produced or what their objectives and targets should be.
• Also, CSAs belonging to ‘gold standard’ local authorities do not have to produce a plan, irrespective of the performance of local services.
• The NSPCC believes children’s plans should be the glue that hold local partnerships to account.
• It should be mandatory for all local partnerships to produce children’s plans that set out clear objectives and targets for improving the lives of children in their local area.
• Local partnerships should also be required to produce specific strategies on how they propose to protect children from abuse.
• The NSPCC is concerned that local Directors of Children’s Services, leading CSAs, don’t have to be in post until 2008. The NSPCC wants the Government to commit to arrangements to protect children from abuse before then.
Local databases must be kept simple to work effectively
• The NSPCC believes that the current proposals are too vague about what information should be shared on databases of information about local children.
• Local authorities could end up with complex databases which contain too much highly-sensitive information that would be difficult to interpret out of context. The cost of this, both in human and financial terms, could be very high.
• The Children Bill needs to be amended so it is clear what information will be shared on the databases.
• The NSPCC believes that databases of this kind will only succeed if the information on them is factual and objective.
The databases should only store identifying details for a child, the name of his/her GP, school, parent/carer and contact details for any professional who has had contact with the child.
• Databases in different areas need to be able to talk to each other – it is not currently clear how they will all link up.
• IT alone cannot solve child abuse. It is important that professionals keep talking to each other and remain alert so they notice when something might be wrong with a child.
Children’s Commissioner will not have sufficient power
• The NSPCC is very concerned that the Children’s Commissioner – a champion for children - will lack the independence and powers to hold the Government to account on its responsibilities to children.
• S/he and others will need real powers to have real clout.
• The Commissioner must be able to influence legislation affecting children.
• The Commissioner needs to have the power to carry out investigations into any area where children may be failed.
• In exceptional circumstances, the Commissioner must be able to investigate complaints by children. S/he must also be able to make complaints on behalf of children.
• The NSPCC believes all this can be achieved if the Commissioner has similar powers to the Children’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland.
Equal protection from assault for children
• Though children are the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, an archaic law provides a defence for parents who physically punish them.
• The NSPCC is calling on the Government to amend the Children Bill as it passes through Parliament to give children the same legal protection from being hit as adults – no more, no less.
• The NSPCC is urging Parliamentarians to vote out a current proposal to define an acceptable threshold of violence towards children.
• It fears that this proposal would create confusion and send out a dangerous and misleading message that violence towards children is still acceptable.
• The NSPCC believes that equal protection from assault for children is the only credible and clear way forward.
• A change in the law would not criminalise parents who use physical actions to protect their children from immediate danger. For a case to get to court it has to have public interest and there can be no public interest in taking a parent to court for a light tap.
Child protection is everyone’s responsibility
• The responsibility of professionals and politicians in protecting children from cruelty is of the utmost importance, but their work does not exist in a vacuum. Nor can it solve child abuse on its own.
• Everyone – individuals, families and communities – must have a sense of responsibility for protecting children from harm.
For further information, please contact Vicky Hardman 020 7825 7403. Out of hours mobile 07976 206625
Copyright © 2006 NSPCC - All rights reserved. National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Weston House, 42
Curtain Road, London EC2A 3NH. Incorporated by Royal Charter. Registered charity number 216401. NSPCC, charity registered in Scotland, charity number SC037717.