Children with Harmful Sexual Behaviours--What Promotes Good Practice?: A Study of One Social Services Department

• NCJ Number: 215730
• Journal: Child Abuse Review Volume: 15 Issue: 4 Dated: July-August 2006 Pages: 273-284
• Author(s): Stephen Hall
• Date Published: July 2006
• Length: 12 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This article describes an evaluation of how the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the United Kingdom handle cases involving children who have demonstrated sexually harmful behaviors.

Abstract

Overall, the 12-month evaluation indicated that the guidelines for working with children who displayed harmful sexual behaviors, which were prepared by the Department of Health in the publication “Working Together,” were being closely followed at the local level. Social workers reported that the guidelines had focused their work and had provided them with a sense of direction concerning cases in which children were sexually harmful. Co-working, informal supervision, and external supervision were identified as components of the guidelines that were the most helpful. The findings indicate that social services departments can respond appropriately to the needs of sexually harmful children if they are provided guidance; specialization of social workers is not necessarily crucial for effective service delivery. The evaluation was designed to investigate how a social services agency had responded to national guidance on how local agencies should respond in cases of children who have engaged in sexually harmful behaviors. The evaluation took place over a 12-month period and all 14 referrals during this period were examined. Data included case files and interviews with all 14 social workers who were responsible for assessing the study cases. While the case files were useful for gathering the facts of the case, the interviews helped establish the social workers’ views of what they did in these cases and how they did it. Interviews were transcribed and reviewed for emerging themes. Followup studies should focus on the views of specialist workers in this field in order to compare their views to the opinions expressed by the non-specialist social workers in this study. Tables, references