A report considers learning from six inspections of local authority areas with a focus on the neglect of older children. The inspections reviewed practice in children’s social care, education, health services, the police, youth offending services and probation services. The report calls for a greater awareness of the neglect of older children and a focus on trauma-based approaches to tackling it. It also calls for a greater awareness among professionals in adult services of the risks of neglect of older children who are living with parents with complex needs.
Details
When older children who have experienced neglect come to the attention of agencies, risks of exploitation or offending behaviour may elicit an appropriate response from professionals, however, without understanding and addressing the underlying impact of neglect, the effectiveness of any work to support these children will be limited.
Older children still need a great deal of parental care, support and guidance. Parenting older children requires different skills, as does working with older children. Professionals lack the skills and training to work with older children as effectively as they could.
The impact of long-term neglect can result in children experiencing trauma and the repeated experience of trauma can lead to post- traumatic stress. Early childhood or chronic trauma will most likely affect a child’s mental and emotional well-being and behaviour into adolescence and beyond. Where Youth Offending Teams invested in training on trauma, the impact of this training was clear to see in the work with older children, because their need for therapeutic support to address the impact of neglect including trauma was prioritised.
Older children may be skilled at hiding the impact of neglect. They may appear ‘resilient’ and to be making choices about their lives, when in fact they are adopting behaviours and coping mechanisms that are unsafe. For example, they may look for support from inappropriate and dangerous adults or use alcohol and drugs as a form of escape.
Unless all agencies work together to address the underlying neglect of older children who are experiencing multi-layered problems and risks, the experiences of these children are unlikely to improve.
In too many cases, police officers were dealing with incidents involving children in isolation, without considering previous incidents or the wider context of risk and vulnerability including evidence of cumulative neglect.
The report contains numerous case studies illustrating examples how the approach of professionals can impact on outcomes of children.
Commentry
Older children within the criminal justice system are at higher risk of being treated as ‘mini adults’. This report is useful reference material for practitioners representing adolescents who have experienced neglect and serves as a reminder that all professionals working in the system have duty to promote the welfare of the children they encounter.