To support our vision, we developed the Children’s Neglect Strategy which is Wolverhampton’s agreed approach to helping children, their families, and our professional community to work together to ensure we each play our part in helping children to thrive and ensure their needs and rights are not neglected.
The fundamental basis of this strategy is to be able to identify when a child’s needs for love, care, attention, education, and human rights are neglected and to help the child and family and professionals working with them to do something about it.
‘The persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy, as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to:
Wolverhampton Safeguarding Together Partnership has developed the WeCAN Screening Tool – this screening tool is to support professionals with their conversations with parents / carers in the identification of neglect and should be submitted alongside all eMARF referrals and Early Support Plans where neglect is the primary area of concern.
Where there are escalating concerns around neglect, a WeCAN Assessment of Neglect Tool should be completed by the Lead Practitioner or Social Worker. This can be found in Eclipse. In cases of cumulative harm of neglect, it is expected that the WeCAN Assessment of Neglect Tool will be used to evidence the impact of the concerns.
Useful links:
