Hard to reach young people and agency neglect: Safeguarding teenagers

1
Hard to reach young people and agency neglect
Safeguarding teenagers

• Patrick Ayre
• Department of Applied Social Studies
• University of Bedfordshire

2
The complexity of the challenge

• Young people 14-18 may be
• Victims,
• Perpetrators
• Parents
• Any combination of the above
• but have the same right to be safeguarded as any
  other child.

3
The background

• National summary of Serious Case Reviews The
  reviews showed that state care did not always
  support these young people fully and that they
  experienced agency neglect Brandon and others
  (2008).
• Two recent Norfolk Serious Case Reviews

4
The young people

• Adolescence marks start of serious problems for
  many children
• Onset of mental health issues
• Family conflict
• Drug use, offending
• Sexual activity
• Running away

5
The young people (Brandon and others)

• History of rejection, loss and, usually, severe
  maltreatment
• Long term intensive involvement from multiple
  agencies
• Parents history of abuse and current mental
  health and substance issues
• Difficult to contain in school
• Typically self-harming and misusing substances,
  often self-neglect

6
The young people (Brandon and others)

• Numerous placement breakdowns
• Running away, going missing
• Risk of dangerous sexual activity including
  exploitation
• Sometimes placed in specialist settings, only to
  be withdrawn because of running away

7
The young people (My experience)

• Long involvement, but not always intense
• Sometimes few placements, but all wrecked by the
  young person
• Common factor that local services just did not
  know what to do with them.
• By the time of the incident, for many of the
  young people, little or help was being offered
  because agencies appeared to have run out of
  helping strategies (Brandon and others, 2008).

8
The response

• Reluctance to identify mental illness and
  suicidal intent (CAMHS)
• Failure to respond in a sustained way to extreme
  distress manifested in risky behaviour (sex,
  drugs, suicide attempts)
• Arguing between agencies about responsibility and
  thresholds
• Reasons for running not addressed adequately

9
The response

• Running away leads to discharge
• More generally, does rejection of services lead
  to total abandonment?
• Age used as a reason for not imposing services
• No proper assessment of competence
  allowed/forced to choose
• Dealing with incidents but failing to recognise
  patterns

10
The obstacles

• Hard to get a purchase on the system
• Wrong children, wrong adults (Ayre, 2000)
• Lack of off-the-shelf resources
• The limited resources are poorly coordinated and
  integrated
• Government targets not child centred or child
  driven
• Different agency agendas and mutual
  misunderstanding falling down the gap

11
The solutions?

• Thats what we are hear to explore!
• Biehal (2005) recommends adolescent support teams
  in the community but is that enough?
• The complexity of the challenge requires flexible
  collaborative, individualised responses built
  around the young person

12
References

• Ayre P. and Barrett D. (2000) Young people and
  prostitution An end to the beginning?, Children
  and Society 14, 48-59
• Biehal, N. (2005) Working with Adolescents
  Supporting Families, Preventing Breakdown,
  London BAAF.
• Brandon, M, Belderson, P, Warren, C, Howe, D,
  Gardner, G, Dodsworth J and Black J (2008)
  Analysing child deaths and serious injury through
  abuse and neglect what can we learn? London
  Department for Children, Schools and Families