Our new Impact Report for 2016-17 is here!
News article from November 1, 2017
Our annual Impact Report 2016-17 has published! The report is a great way to catch up on everything we’ve done over the past year, including: changes to our team, the impact we’ve had in schools, our new celebrity patrons, and stories from the families we’ve supported.
In the report, we’ve also highlighted certain trends in our data. For example, the actions we’ve taken regarding children at risk from harm has risen dramatically: the number of safeguarding interventions our practitioners made has more than tripled over the past six years*.
SHS practitioners – who supported over 10,000 children and families across London and the South last year – work closely with designated safeguarding leads, Children’s Services and other agencies to ensure children and young people feel safe and protected at all times. The rise in number of incidents undertaken by SHS mirrors the national trend. The report ‘How safe are our children? The most comprehensive overview of child protection in the UK 2017’ (NSPCC), shows an increase over the last decade of numbers of children on child protection plans, public reporting of child abuse, and child cruelty and neglect offences.
Possible reasons for this rise include:
- safeguarding risks arising as a result of poverty and unsuitable housing: instances of these have risen, particularly in London where SHS carries out the majority of their work.
- tighter council budgets meaning schools have had to take on more responsibility for delivering safeguarding interventions. SHS Practitioners based in schools are therefore picking up this work.
22% of these safeguarding interventions were centered around supporting families affected by domestic violence. 10% of our safeguarding interventions concerned neglect and 9% were to do with physical abuse.
Jaine Stannard, Chief Executive at SHS, said, “This is a staggering rise and shows that our support is needed in schools more than ever. Educational settings need dedicated staff, trained in safeguarding work and properly supervised, to ensure that no child falls through the cracks. Budgets allocated to schools must reflect this.”
Daniel Jarrett, Safeguarding Manager, said, “In my time at SHS, and previously as a social worker, I have seen how easy it is for a family’s challenging situation to become a safeguarding risk – and how important it is that there’s someone looking out for the children in these families. These figures show how vital safeguarding support is.”