For the past few years there's been pilots of child protection volunteers in Bromley and Sunderland. These volunteers are assessed and trained over months before being assigned to struggling families. It's proved popular and largely successful and there seems to be other areas interested in taking it on. But is this taking volunteering a step too far? Can volunteers ever have the skills to protect children at risk even if they are closely monitored/supported by QSWs?

 

 

Very valid points from everyone. Communities used to care for and safeguard the vulnerable. When a family had difficulties there used to always be  neighbours or close family member to offer support/care. We dont have that any more. Everyone is isolated now. Some communities do not know each other today.

You're very right anne, we are very isolated in our a communities now, almost scared to talk to each other. I imagine that many people would turn the other way rather than turn to their neighbours for help. When I was young, on the street where we lived the younger families and parents looked out for the elderly neighbours. I'm not sure that would happen today, or maybe that's my perception after living in London for ten years! I wonder if CP volunteers could help by bridging the gap between statutory services and families with problems. Maybe in that respect they would make child protection professionals' jobs easier and the impact they can have greater? However, I still can't help thinking that this could be one step too far and wouldn't wash in the NHS for example - I mean, can you imagine a volunteer doctor or CPN? No, neither can I.

I have to agree with you Des, there are some areas where volunteers are completely inappropriate and this, surely has to be one of them.  I know, I know, you are all going to barrage me with "but I know some really great volunteers" etc, but you have to consider what the implications are for the volunteer.  We live in a culture where suing people for not giving us the right service/support is rife!  Besides which, the people needing the support really deserve to have someone who is employed to provide it, not someone who has the right to waft in and out when the going gets tough.  I can imagine that there are many social work teams working with children on the at risk register dreading the day when this becomes common practice.  AND, the article mentions 25 hours of training?????  Hardly bears thinking about!  I support children with disabilities, would I want any of them to have a CP volunteer attached to them? No I would not.  Volunteers are indeed a very important part of our society today - let's not scare them off completely!

I work in one of the aforementioned boroughs where CPV's are used, and to good effect. In defence of the process, it is not a blanket referral and you gfet a volunteer system, every allocation to a family is carefully matched and in some circumstances it is not appropriate for a volunteer. Rsponsibility does not shift from the social workers, they remain responsible for the risk assessment/management, not the volunteer. The volunteer is there to support the family and not take on social work roles. CPV's seem to take on the role of the old fashioned 'family care worker'. Stat visits must still be undertaken by the allocated worker.

I have found, where i have had a CPV allocated, for them to be effective. You dont need a DipSW or BA to be a good enough parent or support someone else with their parenting and that is their role.

Just a thought I would like to share. What happens if with all the best will in the world the family that the volunteer is having contact with and they feel confident they are making in roads into the family finds themselves at the centre of a serious case review due to the death of a child? How would they feel. How would the press deal with it? 

Where a child or young person is subject to a Child Protection Plan (previously registration) then the casework responsibility has to rest with the allocated qualified social worker who should have had the appropriate training. That qualified social worker should also be receiving regular formal (and informal) Supervision from their manager.

Any unqualified workers working with the family should come under the direct supervision and monitoring of the caseholding social worker. That worker needs to make the appropriate representations if they feel that the Child Protection Plan is unsafe.

The Child Protection Plan whilst it exists is also subject to 'independent' reviewing from the Independent Reviewing Officer.