Safe guarding children

1. Safe guarding children

2. Safeguarding &promotingwelfare
Protecting children
from mistreatment
Preventing
impairment of
children’s health or
development
Ensuring children
grow up with the
provision of safe and
effective care
Enabling
children to have
optimum life chances
and to enter adulthood
successfully

3. Significant harm
 ‘harm’ means ill-treatment or the impairment of health or
development, including, for example, impairment suffered
from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another;
 ‘development’ means physical, intellectual, emotional, social
or behavioural development;
 ‘health’ means physical or mental health; and
 ‘ill-treatment’ includes sexual abuse and forms of ill-
treatment which are not physical.
(Source: Children Act 1989 as amended by the Adoption and
Children Act 2002)

4. vulnerability
Children who may be more
vulnerable to being
harmed
 babies and younger children
 disabled children
 children who are isolated
 children who are already thought
of as a problem (e.g. children in
care; children in secure
accommodation, children with
emotional/behavioural
difficulties)

5. vulnerability
Disabled children are:
 3.8 time more likely to be
neglected;
 3.8 more likely to be
physically abused;
 3.1 times more likely to be
emotionally abused.

6. vulnerability
Professionals must take special care to help safeguard
and promote the welfare of children and young people
who may be living in particularly stressful
circumstances. These include families:
 living in poverty;
 where there is domestic violence;
 where a parent has a mental illness;
 where a parent is misusing drugs or alcohol;
 where a parent has a learning disability;
 that face racism and other forms of social isolation;
 living in areas with a lot of crime, poor housing and high
unemployment.

7. vulnerability
 The under-ones are particularly vulnerable to abuse
(although it should be remembered that abuse can
happen at any age).
 The homicide rate for under-ones is nearly five times
greater than the average.
 Babies under one have
the highest rate of child protection plans.