Convenor: Ruth Gardner Discussant: Marian Brandon NSPCC

1. Symposium 15:
Developing Collaborative Policy and Practice
to Tackle Child Neglect –
Sharing the Learning from a Three-year
NSPCC Programme of Practice
Implementation and Research
Convenor: Ruth Gardner
Discussant: Marian Brandon

2. Supporting and developing
early responses to child neglect
in health and education
services in England
Alice Haynes

3. 3
Model of provision of early help in universal services

4. Aims: What are the policy guidelines? What are professionals’ perceptions? What
early help are they currently providing? What are the barriers?
What are the solutions and policy recommendations?
Method:
• Review of policy and delivery context
• Discussion groups and one-to-one interviews with 41 professionals
• Online survey of 852 professionals from across health and education:
o Early years practitioners, n=107
o Health visitors, n=93
o Midwives, n=227
o School nurses, n=89
o Teachers, n= 290
o GPs, n=46
• Discussions groups with 18 young people
4
Aims and method

5. Policy and delivery context
• Statutory and non-statutory guidance gives professionals a role in
providing early help, but extent to which this role is explicitly set out varies
• High levels of discontent with current health and education policy within
universal services

6. Key findings: Perceptions of responsibilities
• All professional groups believed they and other universal services have a
responsibility to be able to both identify neglect and to respond directly in
some way
• Relatively high degree of variation on perceptions of responsibilities within
professions
*
Monitoring Working directly
with children
Working directly
with parents
Signposting to
other services
Health visitors 7 6 7 7
School nurses 6 5 5 6
EY practitioners 6 5 5 7
Midwives 5 3 6 7
Teachers 7 5 4 5
GPs 5 4 6 6
*All ratings are medians

7. Key findings: Current provision
• Signposting families most common response across all groups
• Referral to children’s social services: 75% of midwives & 47% of school nurses
would, with other groups between 29% and 35% said they would
• Talk to a child: 69% of teachers, 67% of school nurses & 63% of GPs would not
• Talking to a parent: 74%-90% of health professionals, compared to 66%-72% of
education professionals
• Providing parents with emotional & practical support: 96% of health visitors,
79% of EY practitioners, 67% of GPs, 66% of school nurses, 59% of midwives and
53% of teachers said they would
• Providing children with direct emotional & practical support: 87% of EY
practitioners and 73% of teachers and school nurses, 53% of health visitors and
39% of GPs said they would
• Monitoring: 33% health visitors, 48% of school nurses, 63% of GPs said they would
not
• Contacting other professionals: 82%-89% of health professionals, compared to
64% of education professional

8. Key findings: Barriers
• Workload and time pressures greatest barrier in health
• Multiagency working/information sharing greatest barriers in education -
multiagency working also rated as second biggest barrier in health
• Mixed findings on identification as a barrier
• Not all participants had received training on neglect in the past 3 years, in
particular health visitors (18%), midwives (15%) and EY practitioners (14%)
• Many professionals with specific safeguarding responsibilities had not
read their LSCB threshold document; between 20% and 50% of GPs,
teachers, midwives and health visitors
• The young participants did not tend to see universal services professionals
as well placed to provide them with support

9. Recommendations
• Clear role expectations
Example: Government and professional membership bodies should set out the
expectations of specific universal services to provide early help for neglect to be
clarified and set out in statutory, professional guidance and professional job
descriptions
• Relational, not transactional, public service provision
Example: Postnatal services, case continuity, home visits
• Professionals who feel confident, valued and supported
Example: Training on the impact of neglect on child development, how to
articulate concerns about neglect, how to convey concerns to parents/young
people, how to develop relationships with parents/young people
• A well-resourced workforce
Example: Financial commitment to early help, recruitment of school nurses,
recruitment and training of family support workers in schools and other settings