New Ofsted Report Says The Extent Of Child Neglect Is "Not Understood"

A new report by Ofsted claims that local authorities are not doing enoguh to protect children from neglect.

The report Child Neglect: The Scandal That Never Breaks states that figures suggest that most children know another child suffering from neglect. The Ofsted inspectors found "inconsistent approaches" to assessing neglect, and conclude that children are being left for too long in harmful situations in nearly half of the long-term cases they examined.

The report also recommends that social work training is improved to increase professional understanding of the impact of neglect on children's lives.

You can read more about this report and its findings on the BBC News website here.

Child neglect calls to NSPCC double over past two years - 6/11/2012 - Community Care

Reports to the NSPCC's helpline about child neglect have doubled over the past two years to reach record levels, the charity has revealed.

From April 2011 to March 2012, NSPCC counsellors dealt with over 12,000 calls and emails about neglect from the public. In 8,600 of these cases, the involvement of police or social services was required.

The NSPCC has warned that the sharp increase in reported neglect cases is placing additional pressure on already stretched children's services. Dr Ruth Gardner, head of the NSPCC's neglect programme, said more research was needed on why the increase had occurred.She added:

"Eileen Munro highlighted in her review of social work the importance of acting quickly to tackle neglect, before problems spiral out of control. But social workers tell us they need better tools and training to help them identify and tackle neglect earlier."

Child neglect calls to NSPCC double over past two years - 6/11/2012 - Community Care

The Case For Reforming The Law On Child Neglect

Neglect can have some of the worst and most long-term effects on a child's brain, physical development, behaviour, educational achievement and emotional wellbeing and Action for Children is calling for this to be recognised in law. The criminal law on neglect was passed in 1933 and Action for Children warns that it is out of date because it doesn’t cover all forms of neglect, particularly emotional neglect. The charity argues that in order to meet its purpose of prevention of neglect, the criminal offence and its associated sentencing guidelines should be updated to reflect the true nature of neglect, and should be re-written to enable early intervention and support for families. It is therefore calling on the government to commit to a review of the law on neglect during this Parliament.

The full report is available here: http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/media/3788628/action_for_children_keeping_children_safe_the_case_for_reforming_the_law_on_child_neglect.pdf

NSPCC Report on Child Abuse & Neglect in the UK Today

The NSPCC’s second UK-wide study of child abuse interviewed a random sample of parents, children and young adults about experiences of child abuse and neglect. Among the key findings are that some forms of child maltreatment reported by young adults aged 18–24 years were lower in 2009 than in 1998/9 (when the first study was carried out). However, there is still a substantial minority of children and young people who are severely maltreated and experiencing abuse at home, in school and in the community, from adults and from peers. All forms of abuse in childhood were associated with poorer mental health and elevated delinquent behaviour and strong associations were found between maltreatment, sexual abuse and physical violence, and poorer emotional wellbeing, including self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
You can read the full report here: Child Abuse & Neglect in the UK Today