Why Is Safeguarding Important?

Safeguarding guidelines are vital because for children in risk every day matters, both the safeguarding agenda and academic research underline the damage that delayed intervention can cause and reinforce the importance of the joint working of professionals and institutions (DfE, 2013 and Broadhurst and Grover, 2009). For children, the areas in which they feel the need for more support are: in the provision of security, sense of belonging and trust and self-development (McAuley and David, 2009).

Since the Children Act in 1989 safeguarding policy have been concerned with increasing the quality and stability of the placement of children in care and on improving their individual outcomes. In recent years, this concern has remained but the focus …show more content…
Recent policies start to portray these concerns, of special relevance are the children acts developed in 1898 and in …show more content…
(2014), NSPCC, DfE (2013) and Gilligan (2008) establish that looked after children are at risk because by the time they come into care they may have already experienced abuse and/or neglect and might encounter harmful situations when being looked after. These in turn can have consequences in children’s in care health: mental as McAuley and Davis (2009) attempt to raise awareness, physical and in their childhood experiences as well.

Children can in some situations nevertheless, develop an ability to cope with harm and neglect, to have a favourable development in unfavourable circumstances due to intrinsic and personal factors, a concept authors call resilience. Multiple studies have come to realise that promoting resilience for children who have experienced trauma can be a beneficial approach to intervene and improve their future lives however, there is still much to learn about this concept and how it can best be operationalised to support the needs of children in