This help centre article was written for childminders preparing for registration with the Koru Kids' Home Nursery service
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This article is a recap of what you learn in your Safeguarding training with regard impact on children’s wellbeing.
Early help
Early help may occur at any point in a child’s life and includes both interventions early in life as well as interventions early in the development of a problem.
Early Help Teams seek to offer support to help families solve problems or to reduce the impact of problems that have already emerged.
Factors that impact wellbeing
Early Educators should be considering:
What children need to develop;
What children need from their parents;
Family and environmental factors
This assessment framework triangle shows which factors impact wellbeing according to the three categories above.
Increased vulnerabilities
There are several groups of children who are more vulnerable than others:
Children with disabilities or learning difficulties;
Those who have parents with learning difficulties;
Those who have parents with mental health illness;
Those where there is substance misuse at home;
Those where there is domestic abuse at home;
Those where there has been previous abuse within the family;
Children under one;
Looked-after children/being in care;
Those with chaotic, unsettled or transient lifestyles;
Those where there is a lack of parental control.
Toxic trio
The term 'toxic trio' is used to describe the issues of domestic abuse, mental ill-health and substance misuse, identified as common features of families where significant harm to children has occurred.
Significant harm
The Children Act 1989 introduced the concept of significant harm as ‘the threshold that justifies compulsory intervention in family life in the best interests of children’.
It gives local authorities a duty to make enquiries to decide whether they should take action to safeguard or promote the welfare of a child who is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm.
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