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Implementing. Policies and. Procedures. Policy making has been defined as 'the process by which governments translate their political vision into programmes.
Child Abuse Review Vol. 16: 205–208 (2007) Editorial Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/car.994

Implementing Policies and Procedures

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Editorial David Gough and Nicky Stanley

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olicy making has been defined as ‘the process by which governments translate their political vision into programmes and actions to deliver outcomes—desired changes in the real world’ (Cabinet Office, 1999). What has been the political vision that over the last 40 years has produced a plethora of policies and procedures in child protection across the world? A major influence has been greater concern for children’s rights and awareness of how these are frequently violently and fatally infringed. Another key influence has been political pressure from cases where children known to services as being at risk have died or where service intervention has touched concerns over parental rights. The policy makers have walked a tightrope between preventing abuse of children while defending the family against intrusion from the state. Developing broad based approaches where there is a lower threshold for child protection involvement may leave agencies open to more criticism for policy failures. Whatever the system, there will be some cases where children are still killed by their parents. The broader the system and the greater the number of child protection cases known to a service, the more likely services are to have prior knowledge of families where deaths occur and so will be more open to criticism for not preventing these. The cases creating such political pressure may not be typical or may not represent a good basis for planning service provision (Stanley and Manthorpe, 2004), but in the UK such cases have led to a major investment in central policies. So, how do these policies measure up against government ideals for policy development and implementation? The UK government Cabinet Office’s paper on policy development (Bullock et al., 2001) stated that policy making should clearly define the outcomes it aims to achieve. Policies should be inclusive and take account of their impact on all people directly or indirectly affected; for example, those responsible for service delivery and those on the receiving end of the policy should be consulted. The policy-making process should be holistic and this can be achieved though cross-cutting objectives and implementation strategies including ways of working across departments’ strategies to overcome potential barriers to joined-up work (Bullock et al., 2001). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘Government ideals for policy development and implementation’

Child Abuse Review Vol. 16: 205–208 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/car

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‘How policies and procedures to protect children from abuse are being implemented in practice in the UK’

‘A potentially good policy development lacked an ongoing implementation and evaluation strategy’ Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Editorial

Polices should be constantly reviewed to ensure that they are meeting their objectives and be modified or curtailed if they are not doing so. Evaluation should be built into the policy-making process and should employ clear criteria for success (Bullock et al., 2001). These ideals for policy formulation, implementation and review provide an appropriate context for the five papers in this issue of Child Abuse Review. All these papers consider how policies and procedures to protect children from abuse are being implemented in practice in the UK. The first paper by Bell and Skinner examines the functioning of new safeguarding boards in Scotland. These boards provide a forum for developing local strategies to fit into the wider national policies and procedures developed in Edinburgh and London. The authors report that the boards are successful in developing policies, procedures and training resources, although the process is dominated by lead agencies such as social work. The boards may aim to be inclusive but in practice do not engage fully with all agencies and disciplines or with front-line practice. Bell and Skinner argue that the boards should not only focus on structures but also on implementation of authority, trust and negotiation of joint working. The paper by Kay and colleagues also comes from Scotland and evaluates the implementation of a system of safeguards for staff recruitment in residential childcare. Although a detailed toolkit to enable safe recruitment has been developed by government and circulated widely, this advice has not always been applied rigorously. Most effort has gone towards identifying those who had behaved inappropriately in the past and less effort has been invested in seeking ways to recruit the best people and in developing strategies to provide high-quality care and safe environments. The study provides a basis for developing the toolkit, examining the barriers to its use and how it does and does not fit into local recruitment policies and practices and into wider contexts of safe-nurturing environments for children and young people. In a very different context, Hartill and Prescott discuss the lack of systems and structures for implementation of child protection policies in Rugby League. The national organisations have developed a policy but this has not been communicated or implemented with staff, parents or children and young people in local clubs. Some respondents to Hartill and Prescott’s survey stated that they had not previously recognised the relevance of safeguarding policies for their work but aspects of the policy had raised their awareness in ways they had not predicted. If these policies had been more broadly introduced and fully communicated within the clubs then maybe there would have been even greater changes in attitudes and awareness of child protection issues in the sport. The study provides another example of how a potentially good policy development lacked an ongoing implementation and evaluation strategy. Child Abuse Review Vol. 16: 205–208 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/car

Editorial

The paper by Bunting looks at professional practice in response to cases of convicted female sexual offenders. The emphasis in this paper is on the differential implementation of policies and practices arising from the low frequency of such cases compared to those with male offenders and common assumptions about female sexual offenders. It may be that female offenders are a special case and need specific polices and procedures or there should be more consistent implementation of current policies. This study reminds us that a ‘one size-fits-all’ policy rarely works in the field of child protection and that policies need to be sufficiently flexible in their form and operation to respond to the multiplicity of experience as well as new developments in knowledge and understanding. The final example of policy implementation is the Short Report by Afza, Wardle and Light on general practitioners’ lack of knowledge and training in child protection. A wealth of multidisciplinary policies and procedures is distributed to general practitioners but these are not well known and understood by many family doctors and there is little uptake of the training opportunities available. As the authors comment, this may not be surprising when the doctors are unlikely to encounter many child protection cases and have less direct involvement with the child protection process than other professionals such as health visitors. Afza and colleagues suggest therefore that the policies should be directed at the primary care team as a whole rather than at doctors. The positive finding of this study is that it came about because of the requirement of National Health Service organisations to audit the quality of their child protection arrangements and to make recommendations for action. It is an example of implementation checks being built into a policy. All the papers in this issue concerned with policy implementation are from the UK which has a particularly developed policy framework. Some of this development is due to concern about the lack of earlier policy implementation with some elements of the recent Children Act in England and Wales (2004) attempting to ensure that the multi-professional co-operation advocated in the Children Act, 1989, is achieved. Despite this, the papers in this issue show that there are still many barriers to full policy implementation. The aim that all policies should include implementation and audit (Bullock et al., 2001) is to be welcomed as an aspiration but this policy itself may need to be better implemented and audited.

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‘A “one size-fits-all” policy rarely works in the field of child protection’

‘Audit the quality of their child protection arrangements and to make recommendations for action’

References Bullock H, Mountford J, Stanley R. 2001. Better Policy-Making. Centre for Management and Policy Studies Cabinet Office: London. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Cabinet Office. 1999. Modernising Government White Paper, Cm 4310. The Stationery Office: London. Children Act 1989. HMSO: London. Children Act 2004. The Stationery Office: London. Stanley N, Manthorpe J. 2004. Introduction: the Janus Gaze of inquiries (2004). In The Age of the Inquiry: Learning and Blaming in Health and Social Care, Stanley N, Manthorpe J (eds). Routledge: London.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Child Abuse Review Vol. 16: 205–208 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/car