Safe Guarding Children Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Safe Guarding Children - Essay Example Sometimes, issues of safety of the child arise, and thus they cannot be raised by their natural parents. In such cases, the children’s Act also made provision for children to be cared for by the local authorities (Great Britain: Department of Health, 2003). The Act goes as far as spelling out the various responsibilities that the local authorities will then have towards the children in their care. A revision of the Children’s Act, 1994, enhanced the Act by giving a legal basis for the program known as ‘Every Child Matters’, which is a government initiative (Baginsky, 2008). This review of the Children’s Act totally changed how the children’s services were formed and organised in the United Kingdom, and affected the formation of Children's Trusts. The basic policy guidance of the Children’s Act involves the non-statutory and statutory directions enclosed in the ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ program. This agenda, w hich was launched in 1999, and reviewed in the years 2006 and 2010, clarifies how individuals as well as children’s organisations should work jointly to protect children’s welfare according to the stipulations of the relevant legislation (Barlow and Scott, 2010). The new draft of the Children’s Act has three different documents which address: Working in concert to protect the rights of children: This is a draft that explains what actions children’s organisations are expected to take whether working alone or mutually with each other, in advancing the rights of children and protecting them Overseeing individual cases: This gives the outline for the evaluation of the cases of children in need as well as their families Statutory leadership in learning and development: This addresses the suggested arrangements for the review of Serious Cases of suspected child abuse (Corby, 2006). It also handles examinations of child deaths and other learning procedures that are directed by the Local Safeguarding Children Organisations. Emerging Theories on Child Abuse Many researchers have carried out numerous studies on the problem of child abuse in the past. These numerous researches have produced theories that seek to address the reason why child abuse takes place. The most recent of these theories are: The Social Learning Theory: This concept stresses the notion of the 'cycle of violence'. According to this premise, behaviour or human conduct is learned in two ways:Â   Either by a person being rewarded for his or her actions, which is also known as instrumental learning Or by a person watching and copying the behaviour of people around him or her A number of researchers presume that mistreated children learn to mistreat others through these two ways, and exhibit the same violent characteristics in adulthood. This sequence of learned aggression is usually identified as the intergenerational spread of violence or the ‘cycle of violence’ . The extensive function of the theory of the cycle of violence, however, has been challenged. This is due to the fact that approximately 20-30% of victims of child abuse become abusers who regularly exhibit criminal behaviour in adulthood (Howe, 2005). Staged interventions that are carried out on the basis of the social learning theory usually have the aim of putting an end to all existing forms of abuse, as well as checking any child abuse in the