Action on Neglect: Noticing and helping the neglected child

Action on Neglect aims to ensure that practitioners such as teachers, nurses and social workers are supported to provide the best possible response to children who are experiencing neglect. Neglect is extremely damaging to children in the short and long term. The experience of neglect affects physical, cognitive and emotional development; friendships, behaviour and opportunities. Child neglect tends to attract less public attention than child sexual abuse, physical abuse and online exploitation. The safeguarding and child protection system in the UK also struggles to provide an effective and swift response to neglected children. All too often children have to endure chronic lack of physical and emotional care over long periods of time before they receive help. And all too often that help is too little, too late. Key to effective help for children is that their plight is spotted early and that something is done quickly to help them.

We undertook a review of studies undertaken across the world that had gathered evidence about the ways in which neglected children's need for help is spotted by those in a position to help and what happens in the early stages of the involvement of the safeguarding and child protection system. This phase tends to be known as 'recognition and response'. We found that the people in the community have a good understanding of the signs of child neglect. We also found that there is evidence that professionals such as health visitors also have a good understanding of the signs of neglect and also of the kinds of things that can affect parenting. For example, parental substance misuse, the experience of domestic abuse and poor mental health can all contribute to children's physical and emotional needs being neglected.

One of the key findings from our research was that the systems we have developed in England can actually get in the way of neglected children getting help promptly. Practitioners such as teachers and health visitors find that it is difficult to get a response to their concerns from children's social care and social workers find that they are caught up in a lot of procedural issues. One of our conclusions was that the system had lost sight of the child. On the basis of our research we, therefore, developed a more child-focused framework for practitioners built around three questions that a child can ask of us:
1. What do I need to grow and develop?
2. What do I need people to think about?
3. What do I need people to do?

In the follow-up to our research we will work in partnership with Action for Children to bring together groups of practitioners and managers from all key professions to work with us to develop suggestions for more effective responses to neglected children. With these groups we shall analyse the way in which neglected children are currently helped and explore what can be done to improve recognition and early response. We shall work in three different local authorities so that we can look beyond specific local issues. We shall develop 'case studies' and, with the groups, trace children's pathways through the system. With the groups we shall develop a series of detailed worked examples setting out improved 'pathways to help'. Our project will also be supported by two advisory groups - one involving parents who have received help with their parenting and one involving young people who have received support as a result of neglect. These groups will give us some insight into the experiences of those who use services and, in particular, we would like their views on how the early response to the signs of problems could be improved.

On the basis of all this work we will produce a pack: Action on Neglect. The pack will set out details of feasible and cost-effective blueprints for improved routes to services for neglected children and their families. We shall organise events to ensure that our findings are heard more widely by those in a position to improve services.

In the longer term the expected beneficiaries include:
-children whose physical and/or emotional needs are not being met to the extent that their development is likely to be compromised,
-parents and other carers who are affected by factors that undermine their capacity to meet their children's needs,
-communities where there are high numbers of neglected children and families in need of additional support.

In the medium term the beneficiaries will be:
-front-line practitioners from all disciplines who have responsibilities for ensuring the well-being of children, including teachers, social workers, health visitors/public health nurses, housing officers, GPs and police,
-senior managers of all public services delivered to neglected children and their families,
-charities and independent agencies providing commissioned services to children and their families,
-local and national policy-makers,
-further and higher education providers and future employers of the next generation.

In the short term the beneficiaries will be:
-the practitioners and managers in the project sites who will have the opportunity to analyse their local practice and enhance it.

The project will have social and economic impact. Anything that can be done to alleviate the human emotional toll of neglect upon children is an important contribution. However, there are wider benefits of providing timely and effective help to neglected children including increasing their capacity to benefit from education, to participate in leisure activities and contribute to their community, to develop better physical and mental health and to reduce the chances of them running away, falling prey to sexual exploitation, becoming involved in anti-social behaviour, crime and engaging in substance misuse.

Neglected children tend to live in families known in communities as more likely to be involved in substance misuse, to be difficult to have as neighbours and to move frequently. Communities often see services are ineffectual and as responding far too late to their genuine concerns about the well-being of children. In the short term improvements may not be obvious to members of the community, but over time there should be an increasing perception of services as more responsive to the needs of children and more visibly effective in assisting neglected children.

Frontline practitioners in the project sites will benefit from the project's detailed analysis of the ways in which the existing bureaucratic systems and processes can be adapted to incorporate the messages from our research about practitioners' concerns. They will immediately benefit from increased knowledge and support in their work with neglected children but it will take time to incorporate the kind of multi-disciplinary organisational change that our findings suggest would be required. Those who take part in the Action on Neglect groups will develop transferable skills in taking research messages and applying them to practice -skills that practitioners are very keen to develop.

Senior managers in the project sites will benefit from the opportunity to undertake a detailed analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of the joint endeavours in their locality on behalf of neglected children. We anticipate that the Local Safeguarding Children's Boards will act as important hubs for the project. In the face of public service cuts and the recommendations of the Munro report (2011) they will benefit from a head-start in developing evidence-based solutions to the provision of more streamlined support for neglected children and their families.

As Action on Neglect embeds the learning and spreads it wider via practice and policy developments over the latter part of the project so a wider group of children, families, communities and practitioners should begin to benefit within the next year and beyond. Sustainability will be guaranteed as the project will move into Action for Children's neglect hub.