Neglect
AMENDMENT
This chapter was updated in May 2021. A link was added to the Children & Families Practice Toolkit.
Contents
1. Introduction
The majority of children and young people in County Durham will grow up and reach their potential in a supportive environment.
However, some children, young people and their families face difficulties and problems. Additional help and support needs to be available at the earliest opportunity to stop these challenges from escalating and negatively impacting on their future.
Evidence shows that the major issue facing children who need a Child Protection Plan is neglect. By the time the situation has deteriorated to the point that protection is required, children have often lived several years of their lives in these circumstances.
It is known that practitioners often find it difficult to identify and respond to indicators of neglect or appreciate their severity. Examples include:
- Patterns of parental behaviour;
- The impact this behaviour may be having on the child's physical, emotional, psychological and behavioural development and well-being;
- The impact on the child's attachment behaviours;
- The specificity of the child's day to day lived experience over time.
The focus should be on the child's well-being as, too often, attention by professionals is focussed on the parent(s) unmet needs to the exclusion of understanding the potential or actual impact on the child.
In Durham the Threshold Guidance alongside the Single Assessment Procedures have been implemented so that professionals can be guided with regards to thresholds and to the most appropriate level of intervention.
The Durham Children & Families Practice Toolkit provides additional information and guidance on dealing with neglect.
2. Definition and Impact of Neglect
Working Together defines neglect as follows:
The persistent failure to meet a child's basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child's health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to:
- Provide adequate food, clothing and shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment);
- Protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger;
- Ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate caregivers) or ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment;
- Be responsive to the child's basic emotional needs;
- Provide consistent guidance and boundaries;
- Failing to provide stability of physical and emotional environment (e.g. frequent short-term house moves).
Impact of Neglect
Neglect is a long term, chronic form of harm to children, and services offering early help should be able to impact positively on outcomes for this group of children and young people either in reducing levels of neglect or in reducing the delay that many children experience before decisions are made about 'good enough' parenting.
It can be particularly difficult for practitioners to recognise the signs of neglect because there is unlikely to have been a significant incident or event that highlights the concerns; it is more likely that there will be a series of concerns over a period of time that, taken together, demonstrate that the child is in need or at risk.
Children (including those who are unborn) need adequate food, water, shelter, warmth, protection and health care in order to thrive. They also need their carers to be attentive, dependable and kind. Children are neglected if these essential needs (the things they need to develop and grow) are persistently not met.
There is extensive evidence to show that this group of children often experience poorer outcomes against a range of measures including education; higher prevalence within criminal justice agencies, amongst others. The impact on children is both psychological and physical; neglected children are smaller, fail to thrive and are less emotionally resilient.
Parental issues of domestic abuse, mental health, drug and/or alcohol misuse continue to be key issues and are collectively known as 'Hidden Harm'.
It is important to remember that neglect can be fatal to the child.
3. Assessment of Neglect
The Single Assessment procedures and the Threshold Guidance provides guidance about the criteria for making and receiving referrals.
Regardless of which 'step' where children, young people and families' needs are on, they will be supported at the earliest opportunity and continue to be supported by the relevant services.
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