Protecting the Vulnerable: Program
The protection of children has become priority issue now with a number of landmark cases identifying significant problems in child protection and the more recent OFSTED report in England finding faults with the critical case reviews and inquiries, which fail to deliver a clear plan of action and which appear to remain to be implemented long after recommendations are made. Clearly child protection is not an area where one would want change for change's sake but recognised academics such as Eileen Munro have identified limitations in evidence base to guide change. This conference aims to spark discussion and to promote reflection before other studies are undertaken. Rather than pre-judging the critical issues on what would appear to be flawed evidence drawn from critical case reviews, which seem to be largely ignored by those charged with this vital role.
Measures of Success in Child Protection
For the general public measures of success in child protection seem pretty obvious, preventing deaths at the hands of abusers and preventing sexual or other forms of serious physical abuse. However, abuse patterns follow a spectrum from life threatening through to milder forms of abuse and neglect. Chronic medium and low level abuse may be as damaging to the quality of life for the individual in adulthood because the individual is intrinsically more vulnerable to or perceives the abuse or neglect in a damaging way, or copes in an ineffective way, such as through the use of drugs and alcohol. Or, it may be an awareness that their parents apparently care less for them as an individual that may be damaging, as this creates future self-esteem issues.