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the personal health services play a large part in avoiding the need for the reception of
children into care. There is ample evidence of the very high cost in terms of both
human happiness and money which follows the reception of children into care, or their
retention in care longer than is necessary, and of the consequent benefits which result
from use of the existing social services directed to ensuring that the child can continue
to live with its parents. The importance of the use and development of any services
which will assist in the prevention of family breakdown or early rehabilitation of the
family to the point where parents are able and willing to accept the return home of
their children cannot be over emphasised and it is the Council's aim always, subject
to the best interests of the children being so served, to develop activities which will on
the one hand prevent children from having to be received or taken into care, and on
the other will enable children to be restored to their parents.
The Council has approved a detailed procedure, designed to facilitate the performance
of its responsibilities under Section 62 of the Children and Young Persons Act,
1933, by which the public health, welfare and education departments notify the
children's department of any cases involving cruelty, neglect, ill-treatment or abandonment
of children or of any incipient cases of neglect etc. which it is thought may develop
quickly and require court proceedings. Whatever action is taken by the children's
officer on receipt of this information, the various departments continue to provide
preventive and rehabilitation services so long as they are necessary in the interests of the
child.
Officers in the children's department share the experience of officers in the education,
public health and welfare departments that their work has developed towards dealing
with the disturbed or disintegrating family as a whole and to helping to prevent or
repair family breakdowns, and away from dealing with the child in isolation from his
family. Once the children are in care, rehabilitative work may often be necessary with
families in an effort to speed-up the return home of the children. Between 3,500 and
4,000 children are discharged from the Council's care each year (most of them to their
own homes) and at any one time some 400 children are at home 'on trial' under
supervision, preparatory to discharge from care or revocation of the Court order which
originally removed them from home. Many of these children will come from problem
families, and the children's committee have experimented with intensive case work
with these families and the success achieved has led to authority being given to the
appointment of four intensive case workers in the children's department. One worker
has been employed since 1955 and the remainder took up duty in 1957.
Conclusions
The fact that officers from several departments may be concerned about and have
a statutory duty towards different members of the same family underlines the importance
of the work done by the divisional co-ordinating committee in preventing overlapping
of services and in securing continuity of casework with individual families. These
committees are in the position to reduce fragmentation of family casework and to
implement the activities of the various field workers so that they co-operate with each
other and work together as a team. The divisional co-ordinating committee, or the intermediate
conference of officers, can often arrange that one member of the team will
act as the team leader and assume the main responsibility for the family. Particularly
is there a need for this guidance when the care of a problem family is passed to an
intensive case worker in the children's department or to the proposed social case workers
in the public health and education departments, and a similar principle operates where
families are accommodated in one of the special units operated by the welfare department.
Workers in many fields both in this country and abroad are constantly seeking
new ways by which problem families may be established as secure members of society.
It is true to say that the field workers must develop special skills if they are to understand
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