Dr Mary Baginsky,Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce. (414 words)
Dr Mary Baginsky
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s report The Myth of Invisible Men: Safeguarding children under 1 from non-accidental injury caused by male carers, published in late 2021, examined safeguarding of children under the age of one year from non-accidental injury caused by male carers. In summary, the data showed that men are more likely to be perpetrators of physical abuse and harm to babies than women. It indicates that birth fathers are much more likely to be the perpetrator than other male figures. Importantly, whilst just over 50 per cent of families were involved with local authority children’s services (either through early help services or children’s social care), this means nearly 50 per cent of the cases considered as part of the review were only ever known to universal services.
Amongst the report’s recommendations was for investment to ensure that children’s social care developed practices for working with men and fathers within high-risk families, both to challenge and support them, but it also recommended that ante- and post-natal health provision be developed to include fully fathers and to include extra support to those who need it and increase practitioner’s ability to early identify risk factors. The recommendations went further and also said that attention should be paid to strengthening the Family Safeguarding Model, recognising how it currently brings together specialists in domestic abuse, mental health and substance / alcohol abuse to work with practitioners in children’s social care.
The Family Safeguarding Model (FSM), developed by Hertfordshire children’s social care has multidisciplinary teams at its core and has received positive evaluations (Forrester et al., 2017 and Rodger et al., 2020). It has been widely adopted by local authorities across England. The Safeguarding Partnership in Hertfordshire established a team to respond to the Panel’s report to scope what would be required to strengthen FSM, in line with the report’s recommendations, by bringing midwives and health visitors into the model.
These reports record the work that was done by the authors across children’s social care and health to explore the feasibility of expanding the Family Safeguarding model to include health visiting and midwifery.
Dr Mary Baginsky,Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce.
Reports
Baginsky, M., Reavey, S., East of England Probation Service, & Spectrum, Change Grow Live (2023) ‘The Myth of Invisible Men’: Research and evidence summaries to support the Hertfordshire Family Safeguarding Partnership Board’s Response. NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, The Policy Institute, King’s College London; Quest Research and Evaluation.
Baginsky, M., & Reavey, S. (2023) Supplement to ‘The Myth of Invisible Men’: Research and evidence summaries to support the Hertfordshire Family Safeguarding Partnership Board’s Response: Health visitors’ and midwives’ views. NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, The Policy Institute, King’s College London; Quest Research and Evaluation.
References
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (2021) The Myth of Invisible Men. London: Department for Education.
Forrester, D., Lynch, A., Bostock, L. Newlands, F., Preston, B. and Cary, A. (2017) Family Safeguarding Hertfordshire: Evaluation Report. London: Department for Education.
Rodger, J., Allan, T. and Elliott, S. (2020) Family Safeguarding: Evaluation Report. London: Department for Education.