Child welfare is a term used to describe a set of government services designed to protect children and encourage family stability.
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Food intolerances are a simple example. The purchaser will be unaware of potentiality allergic content unless clearly advised by the producer. The purchaser, or more generally ' procurer ' person who obtains , of product may not be the ultimate consumer. A parent procures for a child who is, potentially, the most vulnerable consumer. The approach is no different to employment health and safety, but for the consumer rather than the employee.
It is the "manner" of acting that is important: The person responsible for a child should know the child's food allergies and check any product content for potential food intolerances before allowing the child to consume the product. Child safeguarding follows directly from these principles. Safeguarding means taking the necessary protective measures for the child's safe consumption of any product, stair-gates, seatbelts, protective footwear, glasses, basic hygiene, etc. The list is both endless and, to the most part, obvious common sense.
Failure by the responsible person is an offence of child cruelty on the grounds of failing to protect the child in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care. A parent, person with parental responsibility for a child, has an express liability, whoever is responsible for the child at the time s.
Just as in employment health and safety, the powers of parenthood can be delegated but not the duties. Parents should make arrangements for suitable and properly informed others to have responsibility for their children see also s. For the product to be safely consumed by a child means that the responsible person must fully understand the product's safe use for its intended purpose.
Miss-selling in the law of contract, suggesting the product does something it doesn't or selling products to those that do not fully understand what they are getting is potentially hazardous to the child as the ultimate consumer. Health and medical treatment may involve some form of physical contact in which case lack of proper consent is a potential battery , or even assault, of the person. The procurer must be placed in a position to assess any potential risk to the child in the reliable use of the product.
Just as in all of life, the likely benefits of a procured product come with possible non-beneficial qualities. Procurement is a careful activity attempting to achieve the best value for money. The benefits of the product must be satisfactorily delivered as specified for performance in the law of contract. Just as in food intolerances and consent to examination and treatment, the procurer must be made aware of any potential hazards in their circumstances of a product that performs reliably.
Welfare defines the process by which proper consent or agreement is given when procuring products that will be beneficial and safe in the procurer's particular circumstances. If a child is the ultimate consumer of a procured product then the child's welfare health, safety and happiness is the paramount consideration when coming to the decision see s. A balance must be struck between the obligations of the producer and the obligations of the procurer for the child's safe consumption of the product. The calculus of negligence is a legal approach, in the spirit of procurement efficiency, that attempts to strike that balance on economic grounds.
This is most easily understood in terms of insurance liability. Should a car driver have a duty of care towards until cyclists at night or should the cyclist have a duty of care to properly illuminate his bicycle at night? The costs of bicycle illumination are considerably less than the cost of driving with a duty of care to unlit cyclists.
A parent must also procure obtain all necessary products, environments, accommodation, goods and services to be provided for the child's safe consumption. Failure to do so is, again, an offence of child cruelty under s. The outcome is a CAF Action Plan to safeguard and promote the child's welfare with the specified outcomes of the services that best serve the child's needs to be delivered under the terms of proper consent see 1. Decisions made on all the necessary products: A child is a person, not an object of concern who simply lacks the capacity to give consent on her own behalf until Gillick Competent to do so.
Failure of the responsible person to so is an offence on the grounds of emotional neglect see, Part 2 B, 24, sentencing guidance, Overarching Principles: Working Together to Safeguard Children extends mental capacity to parental capacity for a person with parental responsibility and the best interests consideration under s. Just as in employment health and safety, these are the risks of the present care environment. There is both a business and social imperative to give all the opportunity for safely and satisfactorily consuming the offerings of producers.
Some, may not have the capacity to be capable of giving proper consent or agreement for the products that best serve their needs to use those products safely. In the case of parents, their children's needs to keep their children safe. This is called Legal Disability. Disability is the difference between capacity and capability.
In the case of parents parental capacity of Working Together and parental capability of s. Disability is defined as a mental or physical impairment with and adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities. A person without the use of their legs lacks the physical capacity to walk. They are not capable of carrying out the normal day-to-day activity of, say, shopping without some corrective measure such as a mobility scooter see s.
The Welfare of Children
Mental capacity is the ability to make decisions in a best interests determination on a particular issue so as to be mentally capable of giving proper consent or agreement. Determining mental capacity requires the information on which the decision to be made to safeguard the person's welfare. A lack of mental capacity to process the information and make decisions is a legal disability leaving the person incapable of instructing a solicitor s.
Physical and moral health refer to the faculties of the mind used in making decisions. Physical health is the mental capacity to understand the effects of matter and energy on both self and others. That is, to understand how a person may be physically harmed which is called causality in the law of negligence. Moral health is the mental capacity to recognise the persons and environment that may be damaged by the acts and omissions in the law of negligence, the neighbour and neighbourhood.
The offence of child cruelty under s. Again, the manner of the exposure endangers the child's physical and moral health as faculties of the mind. It means nothing more than setting a bad example in either behaviour towards others moral health or carelessness with potentially dangerous items, e. Emotional health is firstly intellectual health, the capacity to reason based on the understandings of physical and moral health when making decisions so as not harm a neighbour or neighbourhood.
It is secondly the competencies to engage in social relationships, personal or business, under the terms of proper consent or agreement following that reasoning and decision making.
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Thirdly, it is the likely capability of applying those competencies to take opportunities in the cause of growth and well-being and then to perform reliably. The Department of Health Introduction to the Children Act described new notion of parental responsibility as "the authorities conferred by parental responsibility exist only for raising the child to physical, emotional and moral health".
The child's physical and moral health are developed as physical development and behavioural moral development of physical and moral capacities; the child's emotional health is developed as intellectual development for the capacity to reason based on those understandings when making decisions; social development as the competencies to enter into social relationships, both personal and business; and emotional development of likely capability to take opportunities in the cause of growth and well-being and perform reliably see s.
Lady Elizabeth Butler Sloss made this oft quoted remark in her inquiry into the Cleveland child abuse scandal. As a medical discipline, child welfare under s. An animal is a possession whilst a child is a person and this distinction was a central intention of the Children Act Lord McKay also said when introducing the act, "The days when a child was regarded as a possession of his family, indeed to sue on their loss, are today buried forever ". The child is socially and emotionally developed, whilst he lacks capacity, by full involvement in the decision making process in his best interests until he becomes competent as Gillick Competent.
The Department of Work and Pensions disability assessment is a measure of physical and mental capacities under clinical or controlled conditions from occupational health in respect to employment performance. The test for disability is capability as "the mental or physical impairment with an adverse effect on day-to-day activities" as social performance. The assessment of capacity is used in a home based disability assessment under s.
For a parent, a parental disability is the mental or physical impairment with the adverse effect on the day-to-day activity of giving the child the care it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give a similar child s. Whatever their mental or physical impairments parents should be given the necessary disability support to care for their children to maintain a reasonable standard of health and development. For those with parental responsibility mental capacity to make decisions in own best interests is extended to parental capacity to make decisions in the best interests of the child by Working Together to Safeguard Children.
The services include advocacy services for advice and assistance in decision making when exercising the authorities of parental responsibility. This was another clear intention of the act described in the Department of Health Introduction as " In the case a parent who is not capable of meeting the child's needs then the local authority can intervene with a court order under s.
To do so they must meet the public law thresholds that the child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm attributable to the care it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give, the same criteria as for parental disability support. It is assumed that the parent has been given the necessary support for any parental disability under the terms of proper consent, that the welfare of the child has been safeguarded and the risk to the child is parental negligence. The test of parental negligence is, following Donoghue later called the Bolam Test , the same test as for professional negligence.
If a care order is made the local authority acquires parental responsibility under s. These thresholds are highly controversial and poorly understood. A number of esoteric legal principles are involved and most easily understood in terms of employment performance and health and safety.
A parent, just like the CEO of a corporate body, must be, and be seen to be a fit and responsible person. If called into question the court will firstly examine the facts. In employment health and safety there are the facts of accidents, the accident record book of harm suffered, [22] and the facts of the employment environment, harm likely to be suffered, [23] say, from a trip hazard. The facts are found to the civil standard of proof, the balance of probabilities, 'Did the facts of the alleged trip hazard occur? If so, do these found facts amount to a trip hazard?
This conforms that the alleged events occurred and were unlawful but that is not enough there is next the issue of culpability or State of Mind. Negligence is a state of mind. This notion comes from the criminal law and the offence of child cruelty under s.
Child protection
What was the motivation, carelessness or malice? There is a defence of diminished responsibility , the offence occurred but was not voluntary or reasonably foreseeable by an impaired or incapacitated defendant. The offence of child cruelty allows a defence of parental incapacity on a wide range of grounds see sentencing guidance, Overarching Principles: Assaults on children Assaults on children and Cruelty to a child.
The employment health and safety approach is again helpful in understanding this complexity.
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To summarise so far, as a matter of fact found on the balance of probabilities, the child has suffered harm or been exposed to an unsafe environment. This is all based in the present and the final finding is as a fit and proper person to hold this responsibility into the future. Is there a track record of such irresponsible behaviour? The offence of child cruelty can be prosecuted concurrently with any assault on the child.
If a child is assaulted, sexually or physically, then both the assailant and the person responsible for keeping the child safe from the assault are culpable for the harm suffered as physical abuse abuse or sexual abuse. This completes the definitions of child neglect and abuse in Annex A of Working Together see also Preventing child maltreatment: Article 19 2 requires social programmes to for preventing violence to children and these are to be found under s.
A particular challenge arises where child protection professionals are assessing families where neglect is occurring.
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Professionals conducting assessments of families where neglect is taking place are said to sometimes make the following errors: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Child protection disambiguation. In , the federal Children's Bureau was established to manage federal child welfare efforts, including services related to child maltreatment. In , amendments to the Social Security Act mandated that states fund child protection efforts. By the mids, in response to public concern that resulted from this article, 49 U.
By the present declaration of the Rights of the Child, commonly known as the Declaration of Geneva, men and women of all nations, recognizing that mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give, declare and accept it as their duty that beyond and above all considerations of race, nationality or creed:. A slightly amended version was adopted by the United Nations in , and on November 20, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a much expanded version as its own Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
The United Nations "Convention on the Rights of the Child" is a convention establishing the political, economic, and cultural rights of children around the world, which came into effect in Most members of the United Nations have signed the convention partially or completely. Signing the convention requires that countries collect statistics on basic aspects of child welfare for report to the UN.
The convention defines children as any person under the age of eighteen. Some of the rights specifically defined include: These agencies often run orphanages , coordinate foster care and adoption services. Child maltreatment that merits action by CPS is generally indicated by the presence of any of the following:. States must articulate how a CPS agency is to respond to alleged maltreatment including:. Additionally, state and local CPS-related institutions will develop policies and practices that further shape communities' response to child maltreatment. The National Adoption Center found that 52 percent of adoptable children meaning those children in U.
Dante Cicchetti has found that 80 percent [11] of abused and maltreated infants exhibited attachment disorder symptoms disorganized subtype. Children with histories of maltreatment, such as physical and psychological neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse , [12] are at risk of developing severe psychiatric problems. The trauma experienced is the result of abuse or neglect, inflicted by a primary caregiver, which disrupts the normal development of secure attachment.
Such children are at risk of developing a disorganized attachment. Children who have experienced such early chronic trauma often experience complex post-traumatic stress disorder and require extensive and specific treatment to address multi-dimensional problems experienced by these children. Attachment disorder refers to the failure to form normal attachments with caregivers during childhood. This can have adverse effects throughout the lifespan.
Clinicians have identified several signs of attachment problems. Attachment problems can be resolved at older ages through appropriate therapeutic interventions. The essential feature of reactive attachment disorder is markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts, which begins before the age of five and is associated with gross pathological care.
In the United States, data suggests that a disproportionate number of minority children, particularly African American and Native American children, enter the foster care system. Rates of child orphanhood vary by country, although estimates place the number of orphaned children around the world at around million.
In China, there are some 15 million orphans, mostly girls. Chinese society typically values male children higher because it is the traditional responsibility of a male child to care for his parents in their old age whereas female children traditionally care for their husband's parents.
Though the rights of children are given more attention today than ever before, as the above statistics indicate there is much progress that still needs to be made. The international community has taken useful first steps in passing agreements such as the "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" and "Convention on the Rights of the Child. Still too many children suffer abuse , or homelessness , poverty , and illiteracy.
In order to remedy these problems, international bodies like the UN must encourage the development of national organizations devoted to child welfare similar to the offices of child protective services in the United States. Beyond this minimal level of attention, nations must be willing to offer health care, education , housing, and food for their children.
Implementing successful programs in all these spheres is no easy task, but it appears necessary to improve the well-being of children. Merely mandating services is unlikely to succeed—improving the welfare of children requires a concerted effort from parents , extended family , neighbors, community services, health professionals and educators, and the faith community, as well as all levels of government.
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards.