(Press-News.org) Child protection professionals are to be offered new guidance on how best to involve families in the case reviews that follow the death or serious injury of a child as a result of abuse or neglect.
A report being launched today (Monday November 12) will reveal the results of a study led by experts at The University of Nottingham and commissioned by the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (BASPCAN).
The research explored the personal experiences of both professionals and families to make recommendations on best practice in this challenging area.
Kate Morris, Associate Professor in Social Work at the University's Centre for Social Work, said: "This research provides a unique insight into the challenges and opportunities presented by the involvement of families in case reviews.
"The report provides specific practice suggestions, including an advice sheet for families. The high level of interest expressed already by practitioners, policy makers and user-led organisations indicates the value of this research and the resulting report."
Catherine Powell, Chair of BASPCAN, added: "BASPCAN has been pleased and privileged to support this important work. Many of our members have been (or will be) involved in case reviews and this report rightly reflects the crucial importance of taking into account the lived experiences of the child and their family.
"The participative nature of this research, and the engagement of families, practitioners, academics and policy makers from across the UK has challenged the status quo and the final recommendations are a powerful force for change and improvement."
Currently in the UK there are expectations in policy and practice guidance that families should be involved in serious case reviews following the death or injury of a child in that family where abuse or neglect is suspected.
However, there is little guidance about how this should occur and to date no research has been conducted on family experiences of involvement.
The study, which also involved collaboration from Marion Brandon at the University of East Anglia and Paul Tudor, an independent safeguarding advisor, identifies the principles that should support family involvement, irrespective of the review model used, and the practices necessary to ensure this involvement works for everyone.
Families and professionals both acknowledged the need for sensitive communication and practice that demonstrated care for the family's grief and empathy with their lives. Families also wanted to know that the review was going to make a difference and wanted to be kept informed about the reviews progress and to have access to the learning and proposed plans for change beyond just the executive summary.
Evidence from both parties made clear that successful family involvement is not a single event but a phased process that needs careful planning and skilful handling.
The principles to underpin family participation in reviews include:
clarity about the purpose of family involvement in the review, set out in a way that is clear and easy to understand
transparency about the limits and opportunities of participation which should be established very early on in the process
careful negotiation about the terms of engagement for family involvement in each review
sensitivity and professional judgement about the best approaches to facilitate family participation
feedback from family members so there can be evaluation and development of the process
The report offers guidance to professionals, which could be used to underpin the policy adopted by Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB) and the working practices of child protection professionals, and a brief information sheet for families who may be asked to participate in case reviews.
As one LSCB commented: "One of the greatest challenges for LSCBs is how we engage families both effectively and sensitively in the Serious Case Review process. This thought provoking research provides for the first time an insight to what the process is like from the perspective of the family and from this develops practice guidance that will be a become an invaluable resource."
The report suggests that unless local policies make clear the purpose for participation, family involvement will continue to be an area of practice that can be difficult and, at times, unsatisfactory.
### END
Report offers new guidance on family involvement of child abuse case reviews
2012-11-12
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Early stress may sensitize girls' brains for later anxiety
2012-11-12
MADISON — High levels of family stress in infancy are linked to differences in everyday brain function and anxiety in teenage girls, according to new results of a long-running population study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists.
The study highlights evidence for a developmental pathway through which early life stress may drive these changes. Here, babies who lived in homes with stressed mothers were more likely to grow into preschoolers with higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. In addition, these girls with higher cortisol also showed less communication ...
Climate change threatens giant pandas' bamboo buffet – and survival
2012-11-12
China's endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations – and quickly – based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive.
In this week's international journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences give comprehensive forecasts of how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively ...
It's not just what you eat, but when you eat it
2012-11-12
PHILADELPHIA - Fat cells store excess energy and signal these levels to the brain. In a new study this week in Nature Medicine, Georgios Paschos PhD, a research associate in the lab of Garret FitzGerald, MD, FRS director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, shows that deletion of the clock gene Arntl, also known as Bmal1, in fat cells, causes mice to become obese, with a shift in the timing of when this nocturnal species normally eats. These findings shed light on the complex causes of obesity ...
Using rust and water to store solar energy as hydrogen
2012-11-12
How can solar energy be stored so that it can be available any time, day or night, when the sun shining or not? EPFL scientists are developing a technology that can transform light energy into a clean fuel that has a neutral carbon footprint: hydrogen. The basic ingredients of the recipe are water and metal oxides, such as iron oxide, better known as rust. Kevin Sivula and his colleagues purposefully limited themselves to inexpensive materials and easily scalable production processes in order to enable an economically viable method for solar hydrogen production. The device, ...
A better brain implant: Slim electrode cozies up to single neurons
2012-11-12
ANN ARBOR—A thin, flexible electrode developed at the University of Michigan is 10 times smaller than the nearest competition and could make long-term measurements of neural activity practical at last.
This kind of technology could eventually be used to send signals to prosthetic limbs, overcoming inflammation larger electrodes cause that damages both the brain and the electrodes.
The main problem that neurons have with electrodes is that they make terrible neighbors. In addition to being enormous compared to the neurons, they are stiff and tend to rub nearby cells ...
Gene variations linked to lung cancer susceptibility in Asian women
2012-11-12
An international group of scientists has identified three genetic regions that predispose Asian women who have never smoked to lung cancer. The finding provides further evidence that risk of lung cancer among never-smokers, especially Asian women, may be associated with certain unique inherited genetic characteristics that distinguishes it from lung cancer in smokers.
Lung cancer in never-smokers is the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and the majority of lung cancers diagnosed historically among women in Eastern Asia have been in women who never smoked. ...
Detection, analysis of 'cell dust' may allow diagnosis, monitoring of brain cancer
2012-11-12
A novel miniature diagnostic platform using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology is capable of detecting minuscule cell particles known as microvesicles in a drop of blood. Microvesicles shed by cancer cells are even more numerous than those released by normal cells, so detecting them could prove a simple means for diagnosing cancer. In a study published in Nature Medicine, investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology (CSB) demonstrate that microvesicles shed by brain cancer cells can be reliably detected in human blood through ...
Researchers discover 2 genetic flaws behind common form of inherited muscular dystrophy
2012-11-12
SEATTLE – An international research team co-led by a scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has identified two genetic factors behind the third most common form of muscular dystrophy. The findings, published online in Nature Genetics, represent the latest in the team's series of groundbreaking discoveries begun in 2010 regarding the genetic causes of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD.
The team, co-led by Stephen Tapscott, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the Hutchinson Center's Human Biology Division, discovered that a rare variant of FSHD, called type ...
Touch-sensitive plastic skin heals itself
2012-11-12
Nobody knows the remarkable properties of human skin like the researchers struggling to emulate it. Not only is our skin sensitive, sending the brain precise information about pressure and temperature, but it also heals efficiently to preserve a protective barrier against the world. Combining these two features in a single synthetic material presented an exciting challenge for Stanford Chemical Engineering Professor Zhenan Bao and her team.
Now, they have succeeded in making the first material that can both sense subtle pressure and heal itself when torn or cut. Their ...
36 in one fell swoop -- researchers observe 'impossible' ionization
2012-11-12
This press release is available in German.
Using the world's most powerful X-ray laser in California, an international research team discovered a surprising behaviour of atoms: with a single X-ray flash, the group led by Daniel Rolles from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg (Germany) was able to kick a record number of 36 electrons at once out of a xenon atom. According to theoretical calculations, these are significantly more than should be possible at this energy of the X-ray radiation. The team present their unexpected observations in the ...