Charity volunteers successfully protect children

Using volunteers alongside social workers is proving remarkably successful in protecting children from abuse and neglect. This approach, taken by an NPC recommended project CSV Volunteers in Child Protection, was highlighted in The Times this week and on Radio 4.

CSV volunteers dedicate four hours a week to work with families where a child is at risk. At present social workers may only be able to visit a child at risk of abuse once every five weeks.

The volunteers help with whatever the family needs, from setting up routines for homework and mealtimes to helping parents rehearse meetings with social workers, to ensure they stay calm.

Two trials over the last three years have shown that all the children the project works with have been removed from the Child Protection Register. And three years after being removed, none of the children had been put back on. This is impressive considering that typically two thirds of children who are taken off the register end up back on it again.

The move to have volunteers and the local community working alongside social services to protect children was recommended following the enquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié who died at the hands of her aunt despite intervention from social workers.

Rosemary Bennett writes that, ‘critics of the present child-protection system say that social workers should be responsible for this sort of long-term help. Many social workers say that they would love to be able to do this but do not have the time or resources and have to focus on preventing the most severe cases of abuse.’

CSV’s Volunteers in Child Protection is a charity recommended in our child abuse report, Not seen and not heard.

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