Safeguarding

An act to prevent cruelty to animals was passed before cruelty to children!

The At Risk Register was not introduced until 1975 which was prompted by a public inquiry in 1974 into the death of Maria Colwell.

When child protection has failed in some way - normally the tragic death of a child who was on the "At Risk Register" - the government commission research reviews or public enquiries which make practical recommendations. This then usually results in the laws or policies being changed or updated , which is why the dates of them are so similar to the tragedies.

The most significant reports have been:

The Laming Report ( reports are named after the people that have carried them out)
This was prompted by the Victoria Climbie case in 2002 - shocking becuase a lot of services and professionals knew about her and how at risk she was - in fact Lord laming found 12 seperate occasions where she could have been safeguarded.

The Bichard Report
This was in 2005 after ian Huntley had been employed at a school which led to the Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman murders in soham. Ian huntley was known to police for have a series of sexual relationships with underage girls, but these were not linked together to show an individual who was a risk, and due to data protection - was not passed onto authorities. This report led to changes in the vetting laws.

Current laws and policies:

The Children Act 2004, Every child Matters framework 2004 and Working together to safegaurd children, 2006.

The Child Protection Process

Concern about a child

Initial Inquiries and Strategy meeting

Investigation and Assessment

Child Protection Conference - Form a core group and key worker

Meeting of core group and develop a child protection plan

Child protection reviews to see if child needs to remain on the regsiter

Ethnicity Journals

Article One: Children and Ethnicity:
http://www.open2.net/healtheducation/family_childdevelopment/2005/ethnicity.html
Main Points
- Ethnicity is not just skin colour, but can be religion, language, shared values, country or cultural traditions - an ethnicity is normally made up of 2 or more of these.
- Children tend to learn their ethnicity from parents/peers/TV/Media but dont usually understand ethnicity until 5 - 6 years old, but before that they will know what traditions they celebrate and which flag they prefer etc.
- Ethnicity gives a sense of identity and self but can be a negative things as it results in prejudice/discrimination or conflict and war

Article Two: Ethnicity and Young Children's Friendships

- Research shows children tend to choose friends that are the same as them in skin colour. This is not becuase they are racist but becuase it is familiar to them.
- Ethnicity can be seen as a fluid aspect of collective and individual social identity. There is no division between individual and social as one co-constructs the other. I.E. You have your ethnicity that is yours, but then socially there are traditions, conventions, rituals in relation to the ethnic group.

Article 3: Mixed Race- A New Ethnice Group - BBC Article

- 2001 was the first year in which there was a "mixed" option under ethnicity on the census.
- 40% of the children at that time had one white parent and one black
- Asian women marrying white men is rising due to sexism in traditional Asian marraiges
- Afro Caribean women marrying white men is also rising but this is down to class, as they can have a better life with a white man due to afro caribean men not being able to progress through the system.

Gender - DTT

Six Key points from the pre-reading  - Blurring the edges- Yelland and Grieshaber and constructing the gendered infant - Greishaber

- Identifying gender is a way of dividing the labour and economy in a family unit. Lorber and Farrell (1991)

- Davies and Boldt talked about 'gender bending' to different circumstances you find yourself in.

- Oakley, Taylor and Boyden conducted a study of 20 parents on how gender is constructed at the micro level - finding out gender before birth. Father's want a son to carry on the family name and to play sports with - they saw the infant as an older child rather than a baby. The mother tended to go along with the father in finding out the gender or which gender they wanted. Mother's were generally happy for a healthy baby. Father's tend not to want a girl for fear of her safety. Hegemonic masculinity prevails.

- We can look at academic results to see how the genders differ but Moore argues that education alone can account for the shift. Wider society plays a much bigger part - locally, nationally or globally. This has happened over the last 100 years, but moreso since Thatcher.

- Social class plays a bigger part in education than gender does.

- Thatcher wanted to go back to Victorian values when she came to power. Victorians saw men and women in 2 diferent spheres: women at home and men socially at work. In education girls were taught the same as boys. In 1862 they started to introduce more subjects for girls which were based around domesticity, but more maths, reading and writing for boys. They shifted the concept of the 'perfect lady' to the 'Good Woman'.

- Education was based on class, higher class women were taught music and etiquette but working slass learnt laundry and sewing.

- Through Victorian times there was a worry that a woman's intellect was antagonistic to her biological destiny - Delamont and Duffin (1978)

- Another educational view was that women are different from men, biologically, socially, intellectually and psychologically, they needed education specific to their roles in society.

John Barrowman - The Making Of Me Documentary

Fantastic documentary!!!

He undertook loads of tests to find out if he was born gay or made gay. He spoke to his parents to find out if he always played with girls toys etc, if they were forced on him by his sister etc. They did say that they dressed him up as a girl once for a competition, but he was the one who chose girls toys over his own boys toys.

He spoke to his nephew who he used to dress up as a girl all the time and asked him if he was gay, but his nephew confirmed he was straight. He also visited a set of twins who were both boys, one liked to play with action figures etc but the other one liked barbies and care bares. Their mum confirmed that she had brought them both up exactly the same but one of them just wanted different toys!

In the final test, John found out that being gay can be determined by how much testosterone is taken by the foetus from the womb and as he had 2 older brothers, this was the reason he decided to take. He also did a test with the length of the ring finger to the index finger. Women tend to have their ring finger slightly smaller than their index finger and a scientist found that over 2000 gay men had the same.

Language Acquisition from Slideshare

Found this on slide share, thought it could be quite useful for revision time...

http://www.slideshare.net/cupidlucid/theories-of-language-acquisition1-presentation-710182

My Timeline

1988 - I was born :)
1990 - started nursery
1991 - we moved house
1992 - My little brother Lewis was born
1993 - Started primary school and moved house again
1995 - changed primary schools
1996 - moved house again
1997 - Great Grandad Frank died
1998 - moved house
1999 - Got the lead in the school play :)
1999 - went to Disneyland, Florida
2000 - Moved house AGAIN and started secondary school
2001 - Mum and Dad split up - helped mum read the phone bill that proved dad had been a naughty boy!
2002 - Moved house and started Theatre school alongside normal school - started to rebel in normal school
2003 - Started a part time job in a restaurant, moved up to grammar school, Dad had new partner with 2 children - fell out with him and didn't see him for a few years
2004 - Dad remarried, Mum met Paul and we moved house again
2005 - got my GCSE's and decided to stay on for 6th form
2006 - moved house again
2007 - got my A Levels and started my first proper job at a mortgage brokers as an admin clerk
2008 - Changed jobs to work at Natwest
2009 - First promotion with the bank, and bought my first house with my boyfriend, we also got engaged and bought a dog
2010 - promoted to bank manager, split up with boyfriend - one of the worst year's ever!
2011 - moved back in with mum, still have the dog and made a huge decision to change my life and do what i should have done in 2007 and go get a degree!

Think that just about covers it!

Child Poverty in the UK

I wasn't quite sure what child poverty was, so I asked you tube...

I was shocked to discover that out of 29 European countries, the UK ranked 24th in the number of children that grow up in poverty.

Behaviourist Theory in a nutshell!

So, you will have already seen my videos of Pavlov's experiment and Skinner's experiment...

As far as i understand it this is behaviourist Theory...

John Locke (1632-1704) a philosopher and physician, said that "children were a blank slate at birth and it was the experiences and interactions with people and environment which affected their development" (got this from the book - "Early Childhood Studies, by Johnston and Nohmad-Williams")

So there are a few people that thought they'd test it out with different experiments,.,,

Firstly, Watson and Raynor (1920) taught an 11 month old child called Albert to be afraid of a soft white rabbit by showing it to him and making a loud noise at the same time which frightenend him. So when Albert saw a rabbit in the future he was scared as he associated it with the loud frightening noise. (I suppose this is where phobias come from, some people say that you are scared of certain things because of a traumatic experience that you associate with it)

Anyway, then Pavlov came along in 1920 with his experiment with the dog - see you tube video!

Finally, Skinner did an experiment with rats (see you tube video) here he extended Pavlov's findings to say that when actions are positively rewarded the child/animal is more likely to do it again but if you punish the action they won't continue to do it. Basically - the supernanny theory!

So that was meant to be in a nutshell, but went on a bit!!

Hope that all makes sense!

See you tomorrow...