Dorset review

Dorset Safeguarding Children Board and the Dorset Community Safety Partnership should work together to develop a strategy which provides a clear pathway for intervention, taking account of the needs of the parent and the child.

Practitioners working with children and adults should receive information about parent abuse and appropriate structures and tools to assist their practice.

Dorset Safeguarding Children Board should promote a greater understanding of the signs, indicators and impact of adolescent neglect, and the potential confusion between expected adolescent behaviour and behaviour resulting from compromised parenting.

Dorset Safeguarding Children Board should work with partner agencies to ensure that senior managers are clear with front line staff about the expected response to adolescent neglect and that this is taken into account when reviewing priorities and resources.

The strategy for the delivery of CAMHS services across Dorset should be reviewed in line with the recommendations of Lord Carlile’s review of The Edlington case with a view to developing links between Children’s Services and CAMHS to achieve the best possible assessment and response to conduct disorder.

Schools should ensure that every effort is made to retrieve information from previous schools when pupils move into the Dorset area.

Children’s Services should promote assessment practice within Children’s Social Care and YOT that gathers information about family history and background from the young person themselves as well as significant family members.

Children’s Services should ensure that a full assessment that addresses risk issues is carried out for any pupil whom it has been impossible to engage in education. This should take account of any known information from Education, Social Care, YOT and health organisations.

The importance of the current GP self-assessment tool implemented by NHS Dorset should be reinforced in respect of question 13, which focuses on linking family members within GP records.

The Community Safety Partnership in Dorset should request that the MARAC Steering Group review the MARAC Operating Protocol in order to ensure that they address the use of MARAC in situations of parent abuse.

The Chair of the Community Safety Partnership should bring the findings of this review to the attention of the MARAC Steering Group who will liaise with CAADA (Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse) to inform national guidelines.