A message of hope for children and young people was the key theme delivered at a recent conference to professionals from Dorset Police, Dorset Council, Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole Council, Dorset Health, NHS Dorset and other organisations who work with children in Dorset.
Presentations centred around how young people in Dorset can be better protected from harm.
Ryan Hart was one of the speakers who outlined the experience of his family who suffered coercive controlling behaviour from his father which ended in the murder of his mother and sister in 2016.
He painted a picture of a family who did not realise they were under such control and of him and his siblings, who had been high achievers as children.
He outlined how his father had created dependency of the rest of the family on him, how he had isolated them from friends and family and how he had made sure they always lived in poverty, even giving money away to ensure the family stayed poor. But Ryan added that there was never even a single bruise on any of them.
He spoke about the work he has done more recently in schools to tell young people about signs of coercive behaviour they may not recognise in their own lives have thought about and encouraged everyone at the conference to consider whether coercive behaviour had been normalised for any young people or families they have been working with.
Theresa Leavy, Director of Children’s Services for Dorset Council, talked about the new Pathfinder programme that will significantly change the way that social care is delivered to children across the country. She acknowledged that the challenge would be to create a system that was both affordable in the long term and safe.
She said: ‘At the centre of this programme is keeping as many children as possible with their families, whether that is their parents or wider family groups, and making sure they have our support to stay safe in those environments.
‘Safeguarding responsibility currently rests with health, the police and the local authority but this work will see education being brought in as a fourth safeguarding partner. And of course all this work will be underpinned by our partnership with the voluntary sector that we work so closely with.’
Nigel Burton from Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole Council spoke about the work they do in the community with young people. He said: ‘Having a good relationship with the young people we work with is really important for fundamental change and you need to be there at key moments. So our caseloads are deliberately low for that reason, you can’t be there at key moments if you are working with too many young people.’
Superintendent Gavin House from Dorset Police spoke about the dangers that young people face of being drawn into knife crime. He said: ‘We try hard to educate our young people and focus on prevention rather than detention so we engage with children at a younger age in schools which has been well received.
‘In the Dorset Council area we have just launched a scheme working with boys and young men to explore the transition from adolescence to adulthood. We will be teaching them about the dangers of exploitation and knife crime and the impact of youth violence as well as talking about self-care and emotional wellbeing and helping them to understand how to manage conflict.’
Simon Hester, Head of Safeguarding at NHS Dorset spoke about the reachable moments all practitioners had whilst walking alongside our children, young people and families and how everyone needed to make full use of those times. He urged the audience to do three things when working with young people: ‘We need to really listen to our young people and in particular find out what makes them safe, but also what makes them scared.
‘We need to be culturally competent to the culture our young people have grown up in, which may be different to the culture that we grew up in.
‘And to truly walk in the shoes of our young people, we need to have compassion.’
Ted Daszkiewicz from Research in Practice spoke about the need to work with young people with compassion and empathy. He said: ‘It’s important not to just respond to behaviour and emotions but to understand why young people might be behaving that way. We need to think about our own relationship with young people and ask “how they are experiencing me?”.’
Young people were also present at the event and spoke about their experience of working with practitioners in relation to issues around gender identity and the need for professionals to work alongside them and understand their view and perspective.
The Independent Chair of the Pan Dorset Safeguarding Children Partnership, James Vaughan, added: ‘We work together to promote good working practices in three key areas:
To safeguard all children to ensure they grow up in a safe environment with people who protect and care for them, to work proactively to protect particularly vulnerable children and to work responsively to protect children who are suffering, or at risk of suffering harm.
‘I was pleased to see so many practitioners all together in one room hearing the same message together which will help to make sure our children and young people are protected from harm.’
