Every Child Matters Policy

and The Victoria Climbie

Death
[WRITER]
[INSTITUTE]
[DATE]
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Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 2

Discussion ..................................................................................................................................................... 2

Every Child Matters (ECM) (2003) and Victoria Climbie’s Death .............................................................. 3

Strengths and Weaknesses of Every Child Matters Policy ........................................................................ 7

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 9

References .................................................................................................................................................. 10
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Introduction
Services, especially the social care services, should not discriminate the people or service users
on the grounds of their race, sex/gender, language, culture, disability, religious belief, or
sexuality. Within health and social care field, another right of a person is being treated with due
respect as well as dignity. The circumstances and the vulnerable states of an individual do not
matter when benefiting from using health or social care services and they should always be
treated justly and equally. An individual’s another right is communication.

Therefore, it is imperative for all the health and social care settings to operate with highly trained
and passionate professionals who clearly know how effective communication should be
conveyed to avoid assumptions and unfair treatment. The service users or patients should feel
very easy while talking to the care staff and should be informed what is currently happening to
them in the care setting. As an instance, once a patient in a health care setting has experienced a
major surgical treatment a care staff member or nurse should be fully capable of effectively
communicating with him or her and update him or her about all the important information.

So, translators should be an integral part of a health and social care setting. As an instance, a
child’s, as a patient, rights are declared within the Humans Right Act (1998) (Churchill, 2011),
which should be fully applied with no inconsistency. Initiatives related to the national policy,
such as the Every Child Matters (ECM), refer to the Laws assembled by society instead of the
government. They help in minimising and at times stopping marginalisation and in promoting the
individuals’ rights by fulfilling their needs.

With all keep in mind, this critical analysis will provide a report on how the policy developments
in the field of social work are influenced by events in practice. In this regard, the Every Child
Matters policy has been chosen to critically analyse it and then explain how the policy
marginalises people. Further, the case of The Victoria Climbie death will also be analysed as an
example in context of the ECM policy.

Discussion
The anti-discriminatory practices in the health and social care services field are done through the
policies set at the national level by targeting such domains where it is needed. As an instance, the
anti-discriminatory practices are addressed by both the Human Rights Act (1998) (Churchill,
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2011) and the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) and (2005) (Mayes and Moon, 2013) but
with different approaches by making sure that people as the social care service users are treated
with high level of respect and dignity when being supported by health and social care
organisations.

Every Child Matters (ECM) (2003) and Victoria Climbie’s Death

The key aim and purpose of the ECM as the national policy initiative is to increase services in
scope and range in order to enhance life chances of all the children, while assisting them with
other problems related to their lives (Parton, 2006). The ECM clearly sheds lights on the need for
social care services, which comprise education and social workers and health care professionals
to make hard effort with the aim of providing protection and support to children’s needs and
rights. Victoria Climbie, an 8 year-old child, was died due to hypothermia on 25 February 2000
(Ferguson, 2005). She was died following a few months of continued abuse by MarieTherese
Kouao, her foster-carer and Great Aunt, and Carl John Manning, her partner (Ferguson, 2005).

The health and social care organisation was visited by Victoria many times during her
mistreatment or abuse and she was discharged with no care staff member questioning her large
number of ill-treated marks on arms and legs and her broken leg as well. Moreover, as her race
was Black and her dark skin colour hided her mental or emotional injury. She really faced the
cruel treatment for many years of her life. (Ferguson, 2005)

After the death of Victoria, Lord Laming as a social service and child protection expert was
invited by the Home Office and the Department of Health and they concluded that there had been
several deaths of children by suffering abuse and absolutely abandoned by the health and social
care services (Munro, 2010). The report presented by Laming maintained that the death of
Victoria had been completely avoidable (Lees, Meyer and Rafferty, 2013). The report identified
some major practical events where services could have effectively intervened to prevent this
death.

The major events missed were inadequate support via decision-making process for social care
workers working at the front line; and failure to exchange all the information between the
concerned authorities and agencies (Turnbull and Spence, 2011). This is where multi-agency
working became highly recognised and the ECM (2003) was introduced after Laming’s report
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which chiefly based on the care services working collaboratively and ensuring that the care
providers ensure all assessments are done systematically and comprehensively (Turnbull and
Spence, 2011).

The ECM (2003) as a national policy was established after Lamming’s report and was intimately
associated with the Children’s Act (2004) (Rich, 2011). The ECM (2003) and the Children’s Act
(2004) have the strong potential to provide children with absolute protection, such as Vitoria
Climbie. The ECM policy effectively helps in promoting all the anti-discriminatory practices in
the health and social care services in a number of ways but some of the major facets are as
follows (Ofsted and Gilbert, 2008):

 Be Healthy

 Stay Safe

 Enjoy and Achieve

 Make a Positive Contribution

 Achieve Economic Wellbeing (p.17)

The very initial and thorough assessment of the ECM policy is the development and extension of
healthy ways of life in children.

An absolutely holistic approach is applied to promote health and well-being to children as well
as teenagers by looking at their physical state, sexual health condition, physical exercise,
controlling or managing personal stress and anxiety, and having self-confidence. Besides these,
the other two areas are mental and emotional health which is imperative to promote anti
discriminatory practices of the care providers, because these two areas are the focal point to what
influences the behavioural pattern and well-being of an individual. The safety of children is the
next major assessment provided by the ECM policy. The ECM is very helpful to make sure that
children stay safe from abuse and harm. (Thompson and Emira, 2011)

As an instance, any type of abuse includes discrimination, marginalisation and disempowerment.

Further, this integrates all the care providers or organisations to ensure they strictly abide by the
legislation of child protection as well as Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks for all the care
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staff members because they are very close to people with the vulnerability (Cheminais, 2014).
Protecting young adults from intimidation, mistreatment, harassment and other discrimination-
based practices is indeed very important because as it can have significant effects on the future
life of a child.

It has been found that 50% of the children are affected by bullying and harassment in the school
setting, which leads to their bad academic performance and at times self-annihilation
(Garandeau, Lee and Salmivalli, 2014). The ECM policy is helpful to promote anti-
discriminatory practices of the care workers to keep an apparent comprehending about how to
prevent children from bullying and how to educate and train care workers to strictly abide by the
laws, policies and procedures with the aim of assisting and minimising abuse (Dolan and
Sherlock, 2010). This policy also includes the achievement of economic well-being (Dolan and
Sherlock, 2010).

The ECM is also helpful to promote anti-discriminatory practices by assisting children in

developing and improving good teamwork and collaborative skills that will prevent them from
discriminating. The overall impact of this national policy lets social care providers, such as
schools, to train and prepare children how to develop and enhance skills and knowledge needed
for their future employment and how to live economically and independently. The policy also
assists children to develop and enhance self-esteem to promote anti-discrimination by enabling
them to develop a strong and good relationship with others. (Dolan and Sherlock, 2010)

The ECM as the assessment is also very helpful to children because it assist them in their
training for the external environment outside their school settings and lets them to observe how
they can hire professional carers and be financially capable. The policy also lets children to be
fully capable of benefiting from the immense opportunities for employment, work experience
and work-based learning, to assist them in their future. Another assessment included in the ECM
policy is the importance of children relishing from education, and the level to which they
progress in the academic world, while building their personal development. This specific aspect
and its influence have significant promotions to anti-discrimination because it trains and educates
children to comprehend the inequality of discrimination and how it is intolerable in the society
where they live.
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Teaching children how to protect them from mistreatment can also be very helpful to them
because it is very disastrous that not all types of mistreatment and abuse are thoroughly
identified and does not prevent them, and Victoria’s death is its best example. Moreover, it has
been found that around 30% of children facing abuse and neglect will later mistreat their own
children, which could be a terrible cycle of abuse (Thompson, 2016). Therefore, ways need to be
promoted to enable children to psychologically defeat the battle of abuse. Further, anti-
discriminatory practices can also be promoted by using an extensive range of curriculum
comprising in teaching diverse children.

It is clear that education is one of the significant promotional factors in anti-discriminatory

practices, which can also be supported by health and social care organisations by letting their
care personnel to treat patients or service users with open mind especially when they work with
children. As an instance, at the point when a teacher is to educate a lesson they ought to make it
fun and energising that will help the learner be more positive about what they are being
instructed and really appreciate it. Support this is typically for the most defenceless of
individuals consequently this approach utilises promotion to ensure that the privileges of children
are given to them in any situation. (Cocker and Hafford-Letchfield, 2010)

Nevertheless, the advocate must ensure they do not begin to talk and direct themselves via their
prospects but rather the individuals. Further, this is an integral element of being a compassionate
professional. There are the majority of the children who do need advocates because they are at
times not familiar with the problems they are facing. As an instance, if discrimination from a
teacher is faced by a child, such a child may not take it as discriminatory practice and not take
any step against such a practice. This is the area where children need an advocate to get help.
(Cocker and Hafford-Letchfield, 2010)

So, all the health and social care organisations strongly need to set and implement policies based
on the specific legislation or Acts that must be followed by all care staff members. All
professionals working in the health and social care organisations need to strictly obey the
policies and procedures set by the organisation with the aim of ensuring they successfully fulfil
their assigned roles and responsibilities by strictly following the laws and regulations. This is
promoted by the ECM policy in there laws and regulations by supporting every employer in
doing so, which is done via well-organised and professional training and experience.
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This assessment is associated with the ECM policy and other national policy measures. Indeed,
the impact of these initiatives on the service users is immense because these policies are
primarily developed for their core benefits and protecting the children and care providers within
the practice. The promotion of children’s welfare is the ultimate assessment on the ECM policy.
This is also connected with the anti-discrimination in many different ways because it strictly
looks at making sure all the children have the opportunity on the equality basis, regardless of
their race, language, gender, and so on.

Some children belong to low social class, and thus, are deprived of the greatest opportunities and
support in the childhood. The ECM policy is very helpful to solve these problems by providing
with services for those families who lack the resources to afford care services. Indeed, it is also
the promotion of anti-discrimination which is done by letting the children from diverse cultural
backgrounds to successfully develop the same skills and knowledge that can be applied in their
future lives.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Every Child Matters Policy

Although the ECM is a policy document developed by the government green paper, there are still
rooms for further enhancements. One of the major strengths of this policy is that it has the strong
potential to promote anti-discrimination by means of clear learner-centred development strategic
plans. The education’s primary objective in citizenship and personal development is to empower
and enable children to develop their self-esteem and to become responsible in and beyond their
school environment. As an instance, behaving respectfully and politely is a promotion of anti-
discriminatory practice, because they are taught and trained how to esteem and treat others.
Moreover, telling them that all the races, religious beliefs, and ages are equal and they need to
respect all of them. This is strong point in enacting anti-discriminatory practices as children are
educated very important life skills by citizenship lessons, such as political and public life.

Education as the strength can be seen in the “Citizenship”, a lesson provided for students, as it
has been stated by Hannah Richardson (2015) as a BBC reporter that there are probabilities and
opportunities of citizenship lessons to become non-mandatory, but it has established as an
immense lesson that made some students very successful. The strength of the ECM policy is that
it also offers an effective initial advice with complete support (Cocker and Hafford-Letchfield,
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2010). An extensive range of curriculum enhancement activities for children is another strength
linking to the citizenship lessons.

In the multi-agency working, the key positive parts assisting in promoting anti-discrimination is
through early identification and intervention which would have really assisted the past cases and
Victoria’s case is one of them or easy and fast access to care services is another integral
component of what makes the multi-agency working highly appropriate and can prevent children
from discriminatory circumstances. Anti-discrimination is also be promoted by this because
children in poverty are not marginalised by it and it is a comprehensive strategy to assist every
child. (Peel and Rowley, 2010)

In general, a better quality of service is created by the multi-agency working approach whether
the health care or social care service is used by the child; the different professional personnel and
agencies collaborating create a higher chance of the child being in safe hands. Despite anything
to the contrary, some weaknesses have also been observed in the multi-agency working approach
that differ the impacts of promoting anti discriminatory practice in the health and social care
settings. As an instance, challenging issues for care providers and their staff members of
developing new professional personalities in the growing communities of practice. It suggests
that the care professionals are become confused in where they stand within the agency. So,
negative behaviour is caused by it and in some situations it results in discriminatory practice by
overwhelming the key objective of promoting anti-discrimination and related practices. As an
instance, if a social care agency is joined by a health care setting, this approach may lead to
tension between what all the care staff members are qualified to say to the remaining part of the
team and where they are greater than the social workers as their manager or below them. (Peel
and Rowley, 2010)

The above mentioned practices are very necessary and important to be followed in life of a child
to produce a positive outcome in their later (adult) life, and in this regard, the Human Right Act
has the dominant role in the health and social care organisations. As the management and
employers of the health and social care organisations need to be familiar with them in any
circumstances to provide protection to all children as the service users of health and social care
services.
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Conclusion
This critical analysis has provided a report on how the policy developments in the field of social
work are influenced by events in practice. So, Every Child Matters (ECM) as the national policy
has been chosen to critically discuss and analyse by explaining how the policy marginalises
people. In this regard, the case of The Victoria Climbie death has also been analysed as an
example in context of the ECM policy. In 2005, a seminal white paper with the title “Every
Child Matters” was published by the UK Government, which promised to make the social care
and education system stronger, while making other extensive range of recommendations.
However, the impact of a range of the promised reforms is diversified. So, the evidence shows
that policy changes related to social care as well as education have led to quite worsened
situations for children, especially the Black as the marginalised group, and the case of Victoria is
its best example. The overall social effects of this concern are that the deprivation cycle and its
related circumstances continue. As far as the policy implementation is concerned, there have
been events of national level appointments and reference groups and a recommended consistency
of social care and education services at the level of Local Authority. This is aimed to enact the
major strategy-based transformation which also includes the recommendations based on the
report provided by Laming. In general, the ECM policy, besides its core benefits, has a negative
impact on children as the marginalised group.
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