Will children’s services respect family culture when making child protection enquiries and doing an assessment?

Children’s services should look at children and parents as individuals. They should look at their specific needs. And should respect the structure, culture, religion and ethnic origins of their family (see Working Together 2018, page 26, paragraph 43 and 45). When doing assessments children’s services should:

• Try to understand how a family operates
• Look at how any religious beliefs and cultural traditions influence this
• Work with the whole family
• Pay attention to the community a family are part of
• Understand what support the community may provide
• Be aware of the effects of racism and discrimination
• Be careful not to stereotype or make assumptions when doing their assessment.

If a child has links to a foreign country, children’s services should look at what help the foreign embassy may be able to give. They should look at this as early as possible. Government guidance called Working with foreign authorities: child protection cases and care orders points out that the embassy may be able to help the social worker to work with a family and explain any differences in approach to child protection matters.