In August the ยฎnal consultation draft of the new Guidance `Working Together to Safeguard Children' (DH 1999a) was published. The document, which revises guidance, published in 1991, seeks to reinforce the principles that the responsibility for promoting the wellbeing of children and protecting them from harm must be shared across all agencies and professional groups. To meet such a responsibility there must be commitment to joint working at both the strategic level as well as when plans are being made to support individual children and families. Only then will it be possible to identify and meet needs in an integrated way.
The aim of the new guidance is to provide a national framework upon which local child protection procedures should be built. It is the result of a lengthy consultation process initiated by a paper published in February 1998 inviting views and posing detailed questions for consideration by those responding. The new document is more comprehensive than its predecessor. It stresses the links with social exclusion, domestic violence, parental mental illness and substance abuse. It is suggested that professionals, who provide services to adults who are also parents, are to consider implications for children in the family. The protection of children living away from home is given special consideration, which reinforces the commitment to improve the care received by Looked After Children and is in line with the Quality Protects programme. This lastest document also takes into account measures to prevent unsuitable people from working with children which are to be introduced in the Protection of Children Act 1999.
Guidance is provided on investigating allegations of abuse by professionals, carers and volunteers, in children's homes for example, and considers perpetrators who act alone or in organised groups. Those individuals who use and generate child Pornography on the Internet are also addressed with the warning that they may also actively abuse children.
The advice that children involved in prostitution should be seen not as criminals but as victims of abuse, is especially welcome. The increased vulnerability of disabled children is