‘We should have been helped from day one’: a unique perspective from children, families and practitioners

This fifth report from the Local Authorities Research Consortium, LARC5, reflects a slight shift in focus for the Consortium this year, building on previous rounds which looked at early intervention more generally and digging deeper. The participating authorities worked together to define a research focus that looked at one of the pressing issues facing the children’s sector: that of neglect. Specifically, we posed the question: ‘How do we effectively support families with different levels of need across the early intervention spectrum to engage with services within an overall framework of neglect?’
Neglect is known to be the primary reason for almost half of child protection registrations in the UK, and may affect ten per cent of children in the UK according to some studies (Action for Children, 2012). It is often linked to other difficulties, such as domestic abuse, and is noted by professionals as being a challenging issue to identify and respond to. Whilst chronic neglect is addressed through child protection procedures, bringing clarity and structure to identifying and addressing neglect within early intervention can be – as practitioners in this project noted – very much ‘a grey area’. LARC5 used a scale developed by Southampton Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB) to identify families with differing levels of need below the threshold for statutory intervention, allowing us to apply some consistency. Such clear frameworks are not yet employed nationwide. Furthermore, as this study demonstrated and other studies support, practitioners vary in their skills and knowledge in relation to dealing with neglect. These factors, alongside emerging evidence of the costs incurred by not addressing families’ needs early, mean that building our understanding of how to tackle neglect is a critical issue.
This report draws upon data gathered from over 40 parents, children and young people and 105 practitioners across nine local authorities. It presents our learning about how authorities respond to neglect, the barriers and enablers to engaging families, the perceived gaps in provision, and what practitioners and families believe is needed to improve this area of work.