Search

Background: Children and young people (CYP) seen by child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) often experience safeguarding issues. Yet little is known about the volume and nature of these risks, including how different adversities or risks relate to one another. This exploratory study aims to bridge this gap, examining rates at entry to services and profiles of risk using a latent class analysis. Methods: Data were extracted for CYP who received at least one risk assessment at CAMHs in South London between January 2007 and December 2017. In total, there were 21,688 risk assessments. Latent class analysis was used to identify profiles of risk from the risk assessments. Results: Concerns about parent mental health (n = 5274; 24%), emotional abuse (n = 4487; 21%), violence towards others (n = 4210; 19%), destructive behaviour (n = 4005; 18%), and not attending school (n = 3762; 17%) were the most commonly identified risks. Six distinct profiles of risk were identified from the latent class analyses: (1) maltreatment and externalising behaviours, (2) maltreatment but low risk to self and others, (3) antisocial behaviour, (4) inadequate caregiver supervision and risk to self and others, (5) risk to self but not others, and (6) mental health needs but low risk. Conclusions: These findings provide fresh insights into adverse experiences and risks identified by CAMHS. For professionals, the profiles identified in this study might provide insights into profiles of identified risks, in contrast to traditional cumulative approaches to risk. For researchers, these profiles may be fertile ground for hypothesis‐driven work on the association between adversity and later outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An up‐to‐date and accurate picture of the evidence on the impact of poverty is a necessary element of the debate about the future direction of children's social care services internationally. The purpose of this paper is to update evidence about the relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect (CAN) published since a previous report in 2016 (Bywaters et al., 2016). A systematic search was conducted, identifying seven reviews. Poverty was found to be consistently and strongly associated with maltreatment, be that in terms of familial or community‐level poverty, or in terms of economic security. Findings demonstrated that both the type and the quantity of economic insecurities impacted child maltreatment. Certain economic insecurities – income losses, cumulative material hardship and housing hardship – reliably predicted future child maltreatment. Likewise, as families experienced more material hardship, the risk for maltreatment intensified. In some studies, the relationship between poverty and maltreatment differed by abuse type. Future reviews need to investigate individual papers and their findings across different CAN measures, definitions, samples, abuse types and conceptualisations of poverty to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current research base and the directions which need to be taken to further understand and prevent CAN. Key Practitioner Messages: Poverty should be a central theme in work with families, and visible in assessments, case conferences and court reports.Research indicates that child protection practices need to move away from a narrow focus on parental risk to harmful contexts and ways of addressing these in which society, communities and families can provide environments where harm is minimised, and children are enabled to flourish.Further research is needed to better understand the relationship between poverty and CAN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having a secure, safe and affordable home is an essential element in the experience of a 'good enough' childhood. This is not available to a large and growing number of children and parents in the UK because of a structural housing crisis affecting the availability, quality, affordability and regulation of accommodation. There is a clear body of evidence which demonstrates the negative effects of poor housing and homelessness on children's health and development. A much smaller body of work implicates housing policies and conditions in child abuse and neglect, but there is a profound lack of good quality data or research about the role which housing and homelessness play in shaping demand for social care in the UK. This article reviews the available evidence, identifying limitations and gaps. Its aim is to open up policy and practice conversations about the increasing significance of housing and homelessness as a critical issue for children's social care in the UK whilst making the case for an urgent research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]