29 Sep, 2022
For Baby’s Sake was chosen by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel as one of four programmes nationally to highlight in a report identifying good practice on multi-agency safeguarding in relation to domestic abuse.
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel was set up by the Government to conduct national reviews of serious child safeguarding cases and to publish thematic guidance and learning.
Its report, ‘Multi-agency safeguarding and domestic abuse briefing paper’ published on 29 September 2022, sets out common themes emerging from serious case reviews, as well as from learning from evidence and stakeholder feedback on effective practice.
The report identifies four core practice principles that should underpin practice approaches when working with children and young people, their parents, wider families and networks in relation to domestic abuse. As the diagram below indicates, these principles are recognised as interlinked and interdependent.
The report’s authors met the Senior Leadership Team of The For Baby’s Sake Trust and had discussions with Team Managers or Practitioners across all our For Baby’s Sake sites to help identify the core practice principles and how they are interconnected.
The report’s information about For Baby’s Sake (see page 20 of the report) quotes evidence from the King’s College London evaluation that connects well with the Panel’s recommended core practice principles.
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel report’s authors highlighted a key learning from their own research into our programme, that ‘For Baby’s Sake is a whole-family programme, integrating work with fathers and giving them a voice within the safeguarding system that otherwise may not be sought or heard’. This is significant in the context of growing recognition of the need to strengthen engagement with fathers within safeguarding.
This briefing report is the second publication by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to make a reference to For Baby’s Sake and to draw on learning from our ways of working. In September 2021, the Panel published ‘The Myth of Invisible Men: safeguarding children under 1 from non-accidental injury caused by male carers’. In their foreword to the report, the authors said, “Safeguarding practice with fathers of young children is something of a paradox. Despite evidence suggesting some men are very dangerous, service design and practice tends to render fathers invisible and generally ‘out of sight’. The report’s title: ‘The Myth of Invisible Men’ reflects our resolve to get behind this paradox so that work with fathers might become less ambiguous and more effective.”
The For Baby’s Sake Trust’s Director of Operations and Independent Safeguarding Advisor both contributed to the report, through being interviewed and attending round-table discussions, to help identify effective practice, drawing on the ways of working within For Baby’s Sake. This report cited For Baby’s Sake as one of very few programmes nationally working with fathers in ways that specifically incorporated the safeguarding and support needs of babies
