‘Effective Child Protection’ is a practice framework designed to address the question of ‘how do we know if our child protection work is effective?’
As a model, it has 4 principles:
Conversations - effective communication through practicing ‘collaborative conversations’
Thresholds - consistent decision making when assessing risk
Change - a clear focus on the change that is needed to prevent harm
Measure - measuring our progress towards outcomes
The model is presented as a jigsaw with four pieces. Every element is important. By adopting one element in the practice of child protection, the outcome based practice will be strengthened. By adopting each and every one of the elements, and integrating them in day to day work, this will ensure a good balance of practice skills and new techniques.
Every day, the social care workforce face all kinds of cases and situations. When developing the framework, the aim was to provide a pathway for workers - a pathway focusing on evidence and the best way to make decisions. A pathway that would lead to a similar outcome each and every time, whatever the case, whoever the worker involved.
It has been designed by Gwynedd Council’s experienced child protection practitioners and it aims to meet the real life practice needs of the social care workforce in the most demanding service arena of protecting children from harm and abuse.