CHILDREN& soQEn(1991)5:1, 28-33

Implications for teachers in schools ROY ATKINSON and GRAHAM SLOPER

Introduction The Children Act 1989 has some parallels with the Education Reform Act 1988 in that it is about reform, in this case the reform of child care law. It is the far reaching nature of the provisions which will replace, amend or supplement the current legislation which presents major challenges to all those involved in child care in its broadest sense. The Act therefore has very important inter-agency and interdisciplinary implications. The brief of this contribution is to draw out the implications for teachers in schoolsboth in terms of primary issues such as the identification assessment of children in need and the new provision for education supervision orders as well as the more general issues of common knowledge/awareness all of which have training implications. It should be emphasised that this is written at a time when final publication of official guidelines are anticipated.

Children in need The Act introduces this new term defined in the following way:

A child is in need i f a. he is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services by local authority; b. his health or development is likely to be significantly impaired or further impaired without the provision for him of such services; or c. he is disabled.

The local authority is required by the Act to assess the extent to which there are children in need within the area, to publish information about the services it provides for those needs and to ensure that those who might benefit from the services receive the information relevant to them.

The provisions of Section 17 and Part 1 of Schedule 2 on the identification and assessment of children in need will require some corporate response and review within local authorities particularly to consider the relationship of this Act to the provisions of the 1981 Education Act and the 1986 Disabled Persons Act. The definition of ‘need’ is wide and reinforces the emphasis on preventive support and services to families. The provisions highlight the importance of multi-disciplinary assessment in appropriate cases and most importantly where it is in the child’s interest to ensure that the

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS IN SCHOOLS

authorities see children in a holistic way whether their particular needs are educational or for health or social care. We are once again faced with the challenge as to how best we might co-ordinateall services effectively to meet the needs of children. Prioritisation will be important in that local authorities are not being asked to meet all and every need but to come to decisions about priorities for service provision in a particular area given specific infomation and in knowledge of their statutory duties.

The challenge is cogently expressed in the Guidance, volume 2, page 2:

Local authorities will need to review all their existing child care policies, their priorities will need to be re-examined and rethought in the light of the Children Act. Priorities in resource allocation must be identified and related to budgeting strategies; there will be a need to re-evaluate service delivery in liaison with the voluntary and private sector and to work out an information strategy.

Agencies in the child care field therefore will need to develop a corporate under- standing and agreement on the factors which may identify a child as being in need in terms of severity, extent and future implications. The broad legal definition contained in the Act will need to be uanslated into an operational definition for agencies in a particular authority which needs to be understood and accepted by all key players and in this case those involved in the Education Service including teachers. Such re- definition, review and prioritisation will not take place in a vacuum but will build on existing inter-agency and multidisciplinary systems. The process will be difficult and pamful unless we take on board the principles involved in the Act and share the new common knowledge abut it. It is to this that we now turn.

Principles and common knowledge The principles outlined in the introductory article in this collection will not be unfamiliar to teachers, particularly senior managers in schools and those who have involvement in either special education and/or child welfare intervention including child abuse. The importance of working with parents and acknowledging their rights is also a principle stated in the Wamock Report @ES and Welsh Office, 1978) and endorsed in the 1981 Education Act concerning special education. But as with issues surrounding special education, such as the principle of integrating pupils into ordinary schools wherever possible, it will be hfficult to get shared understanding and agreement between colleagues from different professional backgrounds and therefore differences of opinion and indeed conflict of opinion are unlikely to be avoided unless there is at least some common understanding of the legislation and what is involved in trying to fulfil its principles.

It is very important therefore that steps are taken to ensure hat at least we all start from a common knowledge as to the changed nature of the provisions of the Act as we

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will all be working within a new framework of definition. This applies not only to definitions about children in need but also about parental responsibility, child protec- tion and a new concept of ‘accommodation’.

The Act introduces the term ‘parental responsibility’ to replace ‘parental rights and duties’ and allows for putative fathers and others to acquire parental responsibility for children in certain circumstances. Four new orders are innoduced (Section 8 orders) to replace the existing Custody, Care and Conwl provision in divorce and matrimonial cases. The orders are:

1. Residence Orders, determining with whom the child shall live. 2. Contact Orders, determining with whom the child shall have contact. 3. Specific Issues Orders, which can determine particular issues in respect of the

4. Prohibitive Steps Orders, which can prevent certain action being taken in respect child.

of the child

It is clear that schools and others dealing with children will require some basic understanding of these orders and in particular the concept and practical application of parental responsibility. Current systems will need to be reviewed and the accompany- ing paperwork appropriately altered.

The Act extensively overhauls the powers of the local authority in child abuse cases. There is a greater emphasis on reaching decisions quickly, more opportunities for parents to challenge the local authority through the courts, the enlarged range of outcome options for courts to consider and still greater emphasis on the inter-agency aspects of child protection work. Without intending to be overly critical but acknowl- edging the need to be honest and realistic, a summary of the current situation concerning child protection might be that it is procedurally in place but operationally uncertain in its outcomes. Given the changed provisions of the Children Act we face a period of re-training and the continuing need to get it right. The term ‘accommodation’ replaces the current provision to receive children into

care under Section 2 of the Child Care Act 1980 - so called voluntary care. However, accommodation is different in a number of ways from voluntary care. Accommodated children do not in fact enter care: the parents retain full responsibility for their children and are expected to make major decisions affecting them. The child may be removed at any time and there is no provision equivalent to theexisting Section 3 of the 1980 Act - Parental Rights Resolutions. Teachers will need to be aware of he arrangements for accommodatingchildrenandthewaysthisdiffersfromhec~tstatusofvoluntarycare.

Education Supervision Orders Section 31 of the Act innoduces new grounds for making a Care or Supervision Order but these no longer include non-school attendance. Therefore, Section 36 of the Act

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IMmJCATIONS FOR TEACHERS IN SCHOOIS

makes provision for Education Supervision Orders. Such Orders shouldonly be sought in approPriate and suitable cases where parental influence over their youngsters is poor and results in non-school atiendance.

Before seeking such an order the LEA is required to consult the Social Services Committee in writing and they reply in writing. It is not envisaged that there will be agreement in every case. The effective use of Education Supervision Orders will require time, commitment and skills supported by good policies and guidelines. When applying for an Education Supervision Order, the court should be provided with a report from the authority to include such information as attendance details, background information, an assessment of the causes of poor attendance, parents’ attitude. why an Order is being sought and what intervention strategies are planned.

The duties of a supervising officer are stated as ‘... to advise, assist and befriend and give directions to the child and the parents’. These are the Same words used to describe the social worker’s role and function with regard to Supervision Orders. The aim will be to establish and strengthen parental responsibility. The supervising officer has the power to give directions to the child and/or parents after considering the wishes and feelings of both. If parents persistently fail to comply with directions they can be taken back before the court and fined. If the child persistently fails to comply with directions the social services department should be informed and they must investigate the circumstances and consider whether they need to take any action to ‘secure the welfare of the child’. An Education Supervision Order will normally last for one year or when the child achieves school leaving age but can be extended up to three years. The Order can be discharged before the completion of a full year if the terms are being met.

It is unfortunate that the only point in the consultative document on guidance on Education Supervision Orders where schools are mentioned is in the provision of information to the court on the subject of the child’s educational progress. It is unlikely, however, that Education Supervision Orders will be effective unless schools play a significant role. Even with the best supervising officer in the world it is unlikely that successful intervention strategies leading to improved attendance can be devised without a significant school dimension.

The Act does not prescribe the most appropriate supervising officer. However, the local education authority has to decide whether the supervising officers are suitably qualified by training or experience and can command the confidence of the court. This leads to a Consideration of issues surrounding the experience, training and qualifica- tions of education welfare officers in that there is a hint that not every such officer can, or should be, a supervising officer. This raises the possibility of creating two levels of education welfare officer namely those who felt competent and able to undertake Supervision Orders and those not. This might lead to changing the role and function of some education welfare officers leaving others with increased traditional workloads. Given the number and distribution of education welfare officers holding Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (CQSW) qualifications it is unlikely that it will be

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practical to recommend that only those officers qualified to this level should become supervising officers so far as Education Supervision Orders are concerned. It may be necessary therefore for each local authority to list those education welfare officers who are competent to have responsibility for Education Supervision Orders either by qualification or by experience.

The consultative document states that Education Supervision Orders ‘will not represent a substantial new burden on authorities’. This will only be thecase when such Supervision Orders are seen operationally as one extra approach to a whole array of responses to non-school attendance. The proposals have significant implications for the policy and practice of the Education Welfare Service which needs to be co- ordinated with the developing policies of social services department with respect to the full range of provisions of the Children Act 1989. It is very dfficult at this stage to make an estimate of the resource implications of the proposal. It will be very regrettable if the outcome is a large volume of Education Supervision Orders in that it is likely that the most effective use of such Orders will be to target the most persistent intransigent non- school attendance cases in order to provide the intensity of involvement with the children and their families. If these Education Supervision Orders are to have more value and to lead to more positive outcomes than previous orders, then there are clearly training time, skill and commitment implications for individual officers undertaking the supervision task in collaboration with schools.

Training It is important that training arrangements are planned in relation to the principles of the Act. Cross agency arrangements to achieve integrated child care training programmes will need to be based on common philosophies. Agencies will need different levels of involvement in the training programme relevant to their role, function and responsi- bilities as outlined in the legislation. The programme will seek to endorse and encourage existing good practice which is consistent with the aims of the Act. It will also need to ensure that new principles are adopted and maintained by all those who come to work within the system. One of the problems in the past has been that after a crescendo of activity when new procedures are introduced then often subsequent operational failures arise because of inadequate induction or updating of staff. Given the previous parts of this paper it is clear that the targets of training will need to be changing attitudes, gaining knowledge and developing and acquiring skills. Given current training demands on teachers arising from the curriculum and assessment reforms of the Education Act of 1988, it is very important for training arising from the Children Act 1989 to be well targeted with multi-media presentations to raise con- sciousness perhaps grafted into general in-service training (INSET) programmes for teachers and further detailed specialist training for key players and managers.

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Conclusion The Children Act 1989 will achieve nothing if it is presented as a burdensome additional raft of responsibilities and powers impacting variously on different aspects of the Education Service. This will range from significant implications for those involved in special education and the Education Welfare Service and important implications for all headteachers. The impact for the individual teacher will be varying and unpredictable. Perhaps the most important task therefore is to promote and endorse the principles of the Act, particularly as they are consonant with the main objectives of education, namely the healthy development of the whole person and his or her preparation for adult life. It has been suggested that childhood as opposed to adulthood is a twentieth century concept and that in the past when there was much higher infant mortality then children were conceived as little adults. The philosopher Montaigne is reported to have said that he had lost several children in childhood with sorrow but without great regret. It is right therefore that as a mature civilisation having come to understand the significance and distinctiveness of childhood we should seek to provide a framework of legislation that protects the interests of that tender part of our society based on principles which we can all endorse as ensuring their well-being.

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