Neglect - Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership

What is Neglect?

Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023) defines neglect as: The persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse.

Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to:

provide adequate food, clothing and shelter (including exclusion from home or
abandonment)
protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger
ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate care-givers)
ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment
provide suitable education

It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.

Factors that can increase RISK of Neglect:

Parental substance abuse
Mental health issues
Domestic violence and family conflict
Limited access to resources and support services can also contribute to neglect
Social isolation and lack of support
Parental history of neglect or abuse
Parenting stress and lack of knowledge
Lack of parenting skills and support
Unstable living situations
Limited access to healthcare and support services
Poverty and socio-economic challenges

These are just some of the circumstances that may leave children vulnerable to neglect – it is not exhaustive.

The Somerset Family Strengths and Needs Toolkit

This toolkit is designed to as a working toolkit to assist you to engage with parents/carers in identifying and assessing the needs of children and young people who are at risk of or experiencing neglect.

Click on the image (left) to access the toolkit

How to use the toolkit:

6 key areas of need

The Family Strengths and Needs Toolkit focuses on six key areas of need and considers the extent of the parent/carer’s ability to care and the extent to which children and young people’s needs are being put first or are secondary to the needs of the parent/carer’s.

6 key areas of need:
(1) Physical Care
(2) Health
(3) Safety and supervision
(4) Love and care
(5) Stimulation and learning
(6) Capacity and commitment to change

The descriptors of need in the toolkit will help you assess how care is provided to children and young people, the descriptors are:
– Universal needs
– Additional needs
– Complex needs
– Acute needs

Best practice

Use the toolkit to support and develop your assessment of a family’s strengths and needs, it should be used in its entirety, rather than simply jumping to the areas where there are existing concerns. By considering all elements of the toolkit, you may identify other needs that had not previously been considered.

Through evaluating individual sections you should be able to identify strengths which can help to keep children safe and support positive change.

Use the summary sheet to help you identify areas of strengths and needs, to provide a clear representation of a family’s circumstances. Are the concerns global about all aspects of a child’s care, or just specific to one area?

When reviewing the toolkit, the summary sheet can show you which areas have improved, which have not or which have escalated. This should be shared with the family.

The toolkit is not intended to be a scoring exercise, but as a tool to help you assess the strengths and needs of a family and guide professional judgement. The descriptors are not exhaustive, but guidelines to support you in your decision-making.

Top Tips

(1) Always use the child’s name in discussion with parents/carers.

(2) Ensure you are familiar with the area headings in the toolkit.

(3) Decide how to involve the parents/carers and child/young person and, where necessary, your safeguarding lead, and how you will share the results with them.

(4) Undertaking a home visit will be key to making observations. Failing that, try to have a conversation with someone who has done a home visit, or who has used the toolkit on your behalf (with parental consent).

(5) As far as possible, consider the usual state of the house – is this normal for this family, or has there been a change and, if so, what may have triggered this?

(6) Ideally, complete the toolkit in partnership with the parent(s)/carer(s), and ensure you listen to the voices of children, non-resident parents, extended family members/friends and other professionals in order to form a holistic understanding of the circumstances.

(7) Be aware of external factors, such as the family support worker arranging for the house to be cleared or cleaned, and assess the parent/carer’s ability to contribute and sustain this.

(8) Where explanation does not match observation/assessment, this should raise significant concern.

(9) Agree the actions you are going to take and set out any goals that a future plan may need to address, as part of an agreement with parents about how you are going to work with them.

(10) With their agreement, you may need to request the involvement of other service(s).

(11) Review the toolkit with families to demonstrate where improvements have been made in meeting the needs of their children, or to show that concerns about the children are ongoing or increasing.

Gaining a holistic understanding

Where there are multiple children within the household it is important to consider each individual child, as well as any common areas that impact them.

Some areas are likely to affect all children in the household, such as poor or unhygienic housing conditions, but they may have different impacts on the children depending on their age, ability or other factors; while for some other areas, such as Love and Care, the circumstances may vary widely between children.

If there are large differences between the children’s lived experiences, consider what the additional impact of this may be, seeking support from other services where necessary if children span age ranges.

When completing the toolkit try to gain an overall view of the situation for all the children, however if there are widely varying circumstances in some areas you can identify these on the summary sheet by marking more than one area and noting this in the text boxes available.

Continuum of needs and services

The continuum of need is intended to provide professionals with a shared understanding and common language around needs and risks. Please see the Continuum of needs and services in the Somerset Effective Support document here.

What to do once you have completed the toolkit:

Using the summary sheet

The summary sheet of the toolkit can help to tell the story of the family and factors that may be impacting upon the child(ren) and it is important to spend time reflecting on what this is telling you and how this informs planning and interventions to improve the lived experience of the child(ren).

For example, factors you may want to consider are:

– Are the needs global (across all areas of the toolkit) or just specific to one area, and what does this tell you?

– Has the situation always been like this, or has something impacted on the care of the children (such as a relationship breakdown, bereavement, poor mental health, or drug and alcohol use)?

– Can any identified strengths be used to help improve the situation (including non-resident parent, extended family members, good relationship with an agency)?

– What underlying factors may be influencing the care of the child(ren)?

– How does the parental response to the concerns raised influence your approach to providing support? Do they recognise and share the concerns or lack an understanding of how to meet their child(ren)’s needs?

– What do the children tell you? What do they feel needs to change? How do they feel support can help? Does what the child tells you match what parents or other practitioners tell you?

– Where are the priority areas to focus support / are there any immediate concerns to address to safeguard the child (such as a young child being left unsupervised or hygiene risks that could cause harm)?

– What actions are now needed to help improve the situation?

Assessing to the needs

Once concerns about neglect are identified, practitioners need to make judgments about the appropriate intervention that is required and what should happen next. The practitioner or agency that has identified the concerns must evaluate the seriousness of their concerns, consider the risk as well as protective factors, and decide what the appropriate response should be using the Effective Support for Children and Families in Somerset.

If, after reviewing, you remain unsure about the best course of action to take, you can contact the Early Help Hub for advice about an early help response. Advice given may include how to complete an Early Help Assessment.

If you feel that the needs may meet the criteria for Children Social Care to undertake a statutory Children & Families Assessment (C&F), or you want to discuss your analysis/understanding with an experienced child protection social worker, you can contact the Consultation Line for advice on 0300 123 3078.

Decisions following the identification of neglect may include:

Talking about your concerns with the family and continuing to support and monitor the situation as a single agency through the development of an Early Help Assessment (with consent from the family), Early Help Plan and by reviewing the circumstances through the Team Around the Family (TAF) process and revisiting the Family Strengths and Needs Toolkit.

Requesting the involvement of additional support, e.g. from other early help services.

Requesting the involvement of Children’s Social Care as Child in Need where needs are acute.

If you are concerned that a child may be at risk of, or may be suffering, significant harm you must contact Somerset Direct on 0300 123 2224 immediately to discuss the best way to meet those needs, and follow up with an Early Help Assessment within a 24 hour timescale.

Planning support

When developing plans to support a family it is important to ensure that these are SMART, (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) and that it is clear who will be responsible for the each of the actions.

When considering the desired outcomes for children, you can use the descriptors in the toolkit to tell you what you want the end goal to be, as well as breaking down the stages are needed to get there. This can help everyone to be clear about any progress made and enables the family to be clear about what the expectations are.

Further Resources:

Video Resources:

What is Neglect?

Young Carers

Somerset Resources

Neglect in Teenagers

Neglect in Unborn and Young Children

Concerned Curiosity and Thinking Family

Podcast episodes:

Training:

Recognising, Understanding & Responding to Neglect A Practical Guide to Using The Family Strengths & Needs Toolkit

Provide Attendees with practical, working knowledge of how to use Somerset’s Neglect Toolkit to address concerns relating to children living in neglectful situations.

Find out more

Courageous Conversations – eLearning

What conversations are you feeling apprehensive about having? In this bitesize course, we’re going to look at what makes a conversation courageous and how you can have successful conversations that make a difference. Developed by the NHS Leadership Academy and is open to all agencies.

Find out more

What is Neglect?

Factors that can increase RISK of Neglect:

The Somerset Family Strengths and Needs Toolkit

How to use the toolkit:

What to do once you have completed the toolkit:

Further Resources:

Video Resources:

Podcast episodes:

Training:

Recognising, Understanding & Responding to Neglect A Practical Guide to Using The Family Strengths & Needs Toolkit

Courageous Conversations – eLearning

Further Reading: