Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

4 Children’s Needs – Parenting Capacity Families experiencing a specific problem: these families are rarely known tostatutory agencies and come to their attention because of a specific issue, forexample acute parental mental illness or a parental drug overdose. Familiesare not confined to any social class and, on the surface their lives may appearquite ordered. Acutely distressed families: these families normally cope, but an accumulationof difficulties has overwhelmed them. Families tend to be composed of singleor poorly supported and immature parents, or parents who are physically illor disabled.The above typology makes a clear distinction between families who normally copewell but have been recently overwhelmed by problems and those who have manychronic problems which require long-term multi-service input. To ensure children’ssafety and welfare, many of these families will require support from both children’sand adults’ services. A collaborative approach would ensure that not only are parentsrecognised as having needs in their own right, but the impact of those needs ontheir children becomes part of a multi-agency response. Research suggests that thevalue of such inter-agency collaboration is widely accepted by professionals (Cleaveret al. 2007). A review of the literature on neglect by Daniel and colleagues (2009)highlighted the importance of developing more effective integrated approachesto children where all professions regard themselves as part of the child well-beingsystem. However, ensuring that practice reflects these principles is not always easy,despite the support of national policy and guidance.Despite considerable progress in interagency working, often driven by LocalSafeguarding Children Boards and multi-agency teams who strive to help childrenand young people, there remain significant problems in the day-to-day reality ofworking across organisational boundaries and cultures, sharing information toprotect children and a lack of feedback when professionals raise concerns about achild.(Lord Laming 2009, p.10, paragraph 1.6)The importance of an integrated professional group being accountable for localchild protection rather than confining the responsibility to children’s social care wasstressed in Munro’s first two reports on the child protection system (2010, 2011).Reluctance to admit problemsIn addition to identifying and responding to the issues that can affect parentingcapacity, the original child protection research also revealed that parental problemsthemselves could influence the process of enquiries under section 47 of the ChildrenAct 1989, which are undertaken when there are concerns that a child may be sufferingsignificant harm (Department of Health 1995a). A number of key factors wereidentified, many of which remain pertinent. The first of these was parents’ anxietyabout losing their children. Cleaver and Freeman (1995) noted that in the earlystages of a child protection enquiry, families were reluctant to admit to a history of