Friday 11 October 2013

Assessments in a jiffy

Professor Harry Fergusson makes some important points in his article in the Guardian last week.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/24/why-social-workers-become-helpless 

There is no substitute for reading the whole of this excellent article, but I was particularly struck by one of Harry’s observations from his own research. 

He found that heavy social worker workloads and high levels of bureaucracy resulted in reduced time devoted to effective child protection interventions and that “… working conditions led to assessments being made after a matter of minutes spent alone with children”.

Harry is absolutely right to conclude that the resources must be made available for those safeguarding and protecting children to have sufficient time to conduct assessments properly.