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Introduction
Inquiry reports and investigations, This assignment is based on social work practices, and how it can be improved by the help of different inquiry reports, cases and investigations that have happened in the past. Few cases will be highlighted in the assignment and each case will be taken in light to develop a lesson learned about child abuse and neglect in UK. Moreover, at the end the implications of these reports and inquiries will be stated which will help the readers to understand how child abuse and neglect can be eliminated in the society by the help of social workers.
Child Abuse
Child abuse has been a cultural issue since decades, where several legislations and laws have been passed on such issues throughout the UK history. Nonetheless, inquiry reports and investigations it is still one of the most unsolved, neglected and destructive issue (Aldgate et al., 2006). Child abuse or neglect is basically the execution of an action or the failure of taking an action in a given circumstance that leads to the child being harmed, dead, emotionally strained or risked.
Additionally, the multitudinous types of abuse include physical, sexual and emotional exploitation. Among these different kinds of abuses, sexual abuse is the most harmful abuse. Sexual abuse can be referred as any sexual activity that occurs without consent of the other party and is therefore, forced upon the child (Ashenden, 2004; Adams, Dominelli and Payne, 2002).
This discussion will revolve around the different cases, reporting and investigations that occurred in past regarding child abuse in Britain.
The aim of the study is to highlight the issues present in the cases regarding child abuse and neglect. From every case an issue will be highlighted and an impact will be stated at the end of each case, which will explain how that case has contributed to the society in order to eradicate child abuse and neglect.
Cases Related to Child Abuse:
One of the most horrendous and initial stories of child abuse is the ‘Death of Maria Colwell’ in Britain which took place in the year of 1973. The female child was 7 year old when the step father brutally murdered her. In this regards, the early researches based on the case revealed that the most important reasons behind her death were the lack of social practice framework, legal outlines, inquiry reports and investigations and laws on children’s rights at the time (Barker and Hodes, 2007). Additionally, it was also identified that the absence of communication and inadequate training of social workers in this sector led to negligence towards children’s rights in the society and eventually to the instance of Maria Colwell’s death (Crawford and Walker, 2008).
On the other hand, it was the first case, the reporting and investigation on which led to different changes and contribution in the practices related to social work. Consequently, an implementation of ‘Child Protection Case Conferences’ and ‘Child Protection Registers’ took place (Munro, 2005). However, the main idea that Maria Colwell’s case uncovered regarding the society was that UK had insufficient diagnosis of physical abuse, lack of medical facilities and crisis of scientific understanding of signs in children regarding physical abuse (Anning et al., 2006). There is no doubt that hospitals in UK have already improved their medical facilities for physical abuse; however, there is still slack in terms of provision of resources (Radford et al., 2011).
After Maria Colwell’s death another dreadful incident was reported known as ‘Jasmine Beckford Case’ on 5th July 1984, when Jasmine was battered to death by her step-father. It was found that Jasmine was locked in a small bedroom and was tied with body building weights to her broken legs (Munro, 1996). The baby girl only weighed around 23 pounds, deformed and shrunken. Also, according to inside sources, she had more than 40 injuries on her face and body; the ribs were found broken (Beresford, 2009). It is stated that after this incident more professionals and doctors started taking immediate interest to prevent children from such harm. This incident changed the perceptions of media, so that more child abuse cases started getting reported (Munro, 1999). On the other hand, Beckett (2007) gave a more important outlook on the impact of this case, where it led to the formation of 1989 Children Act. However, Beckford related inquires criticize the position of social workers in the society and question as to why it is highly significant for social practitioners to ensure that children’s parents have a healthy relationship with their child (Jones, 2015).
Another incident that highlights child abuse is the case of ‘Fiona Pilkington’, when Fiona and her daughter were found dead in a burnt-out car in Leicestershire. After investigation, it was identified that Fiona committed suicide after unlawfully killing her disabled daughter (Brandon, et al., 2008; Bigby and Frawley, 2010). A case like this reflects the idea that children’s mental illness and psychological disabilities are not given much importance in the British society and, hence, incidents like these will keep happening if immediate actions are not taken to provide children with immediate medical support for mental health. After five years of this case, police forces started taking urgent actions against ‘Disability Hate Crime’ in UK (Brammer, 2009). Other than that, Mencap launched the ‘Stand by me’ campaign to end disability hate crime. Moreover, it is also stated that statistics of disability hate crime are now taken seriously and the recording regarding disability hate crime incidents by police has increased by more than 49% (Bullock and Simmonds, 2010).
The similar year, the case of ‘Tyra Henry’ came into light; a 21 years old young woman was murdered by her biological father. It was found out that due to racial discrimination, white social workers belonging from “Lambeth Council” located in South London could not find confidence to charge the family guilty (Burton, 2008; Bulter and Watt, 2007; Burke Draucker and Martsolf, 2006; Parton, 2015). Once again, the social system of UK was highly criticized due to this highly publicized case. Here the problem lied with insufficient liaison between housing and social service, lack of training, resources and supervision. However, the main cause behind this occurrence was the lack of response towards warning signs. Tyra was assaulted by her father a lot of times, yet nobody took immediate and serious action (White et al., 2015). This case also led to the formation of Children Act 1989. Nonetheless, another case of child abuse took place in 2000 namely, ‘The Case of Victoria Climbie’, which then led to the formation of Children Act 2004.
Child Neglect
Children these days are not just suffering from physical abuse, but also child neglect, which is more damaging on their emotional well-being (Corby, 2006). By definition negligence is “the failure to provide for the development of the child in all spheres: health, education, emotional development, nutrition, shelter and, safe living conditions in the context of resources reasonably available to the family or caretakers and causes or has a high probability of causing harm to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. This involves failure to properly supervise …
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