Who Cares

Children’s Social Care

• Enhance responses to harm outside the home and better recognise social care’s role when families are impacted by youth violence. Avoid closing cases prematurely by overlooking the risks of youth violence in the community, as much harm occurs outside the home.
• Improve communication so that it is nonjudgemental, fair and accurately recorded in reports and case recording.
• Listen to parents when they are asking for help. Interventions are needed earlier - stop waiting until things have escalated to offer support. Have honest conversations about what will and won’t be done - to not make promises that are not kept. Have honest conversations about the concerns - the dialogue with parents needs to match what is being said to wider multi-agency partnership and in reports.
• Have honest conversations about what will and won’t be done - to not make promises that are not kept.
• Interventions are needed earlier - stop waiting until things have escalated to offer support.
• Listen to parents when they are asking for help.

The Police

• Approaches should stop being driven by judgement and discrimination, and instead focus on the children’s safeguarding needs, avoiding discriminatory language and methods.
• Communicate what action is being taken or has been taken and explain why. Involve and inform parents of any action being taken.
• Understand their positionality and how they can reinforce and add to children’s experience of trauma.
• Reconsider their approach to safeguarding and physically handling children - especially children who have been impacted by sexual violence and other forms of trauma.
• Invest in developing more specialist officers who possess the necessary skills and competencies, focusing on building trust and ensuring effective communication and collaboration with both children and parents.   

Schools and education settings

• Recognise and take responsibility for their role in exclusions and school moves.
• Adopt more trauma responsive practices, rather than be behaviour management led, making sure staff try to understand the underlying causes of behaviour.
• Limit what action the police can take in schools and ensure that safeguarding and welfare responses are prioritised over criminal justice processes.
• Parents would like to be informed if the police speak to their children in school.
• Access and engage with specialist services who can offer support to identify and address safety concerns in the school, who can build trust and work towards creating safety in the whole school context

Housing

• Support should be more proactive and not place the burden on parents to resolve issues on their own.
• Consideration of the whole family.
• A more inclusive approach to engaging parents that does not assume parents have skills and resources to move without practical support.

Health services

• Quicker access to mental health support - before things escalate.
• Better quality mental health services, including an emergency mental health helpline for children with PTSD. This service should provide support from someone who understands their needs and can visit their home if necessary, or offer support through phone or online calls.
• Formal and informal spaces for both children and families to talk and a desire for professionals across services, not just within health, to acknowledge mental health and check-in with them.

Places and spaces where children spend their time

• Action needs to be taken to create safety in places.
• Approaches built on relationships of trust – where children feel involved in creating the solutions and do not feel pushed out of those spaces.
• More proactive, on the ground responses that do not rely soley on CCTV as the answer. Create youth focused spaces for children to go like youth hubs and community centres.

Youth and voluntary and community sector agencies

• A wide criterion for inclusion that support across area borders and age ranges.
• Access to more specialist services and youth workers.
• Longer periods of support for the interventions – continuation of support over years if needed.