Children's services for the digital age: A qualitative study into current procedures and online risks among service users

Children's services for the digital age: A qualitative study into current procedures and online risks among service users
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DOI:
10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105872
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发表时间:
2021-01-14
影响因子:
3.3
通讯作者:
Livanou, Maria
Livanou, Maria
中科院分区:
法学3区
文献类型:
--
作者:
El-Asam, Aiman;Katz, Adrienne;Livanou, Maria

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背景资料:英格兰地方政府公共部门儿童服务机构与弱势儿童一起工作,面临着涉及潜在有害数字/在线风险的挑战性案件。所有部门都有义务保护。教育工作者和儿童服务领域的关键专业人员,如社会照料、精神健康、青年司法、志愿部门咨询中心或警务等,都可能参与其中。然而,人们对这些服务如何识别、评估、转介和应对此类案件知之甚少。目的:本研究旨在探讨当地服务机构,包括社会关怀、卫生和警察,如何处理儿童和青少年中含有数字成分的案件,以及他们如何做好准备。研究方法:本研究采用半结构式访谈,对14名参与者进行了10项服务的访谈,这些服务包括心理健康、社会关怀、青年司法、预防少女怀孕、志愿部门在线青年咨询、学校护理和儿童教育检查和保障服务。对访谈进行了转录和专题分析。结果如下:所有参与者都注意到对在线风险的狭隘认识,反映了对单一目标的强调(例如儿童性剥削CSE)。这导致一线工作人员忽略了更广泛的在线风险或梳理的先决条件的探索。因此,结果是缺乏关于除CSE或共享明确图像以外的危害的数据,并且对儿童面临的更广泛的快速变化的风险的了解有限,这可以为预防提供信息。评估工具似乎是通用的,主要集中在CSE或社交媒体上;有些工具忽略了在线风险,除非提出了保障问题。此外,涉及网上风险的证据的转介机制过于简单或根本没有转介机制,阻碍了多机构合作。最后,同样明显的是,缺乏关于在线风险以及儿童和年轻人数字生活的结构化和强制性培训方案。结论:在线风险需要在儿童服务的情况下仔细考虑,并更系统地嵌入实践中。这些发现对于指导服务实现方法现代化,推进培训和评估工具,以加强涉及弱势儿童的多机构合作至关重要。
Background: Local government public sector children's services working with vulnerable children in England are faced with challenging cases involving potentially harmful digital/online risks. All services have a duty to safeguard. Educators and key professionals in children's services such as in social care, mental health, youth justice, voluntary sector advice centres or policing may be involved. Yet little is known about how these services identify, assess, refer and respond to such cases. Aim: This study aims to explore how local services working with children and young people, including social care, health and the police, address cases with digital components among children and adolescents and how equipped they are to do so. Methods: Using semi-structured interviews, this study interviewed 14 participants within 10 services such as mental health, social care, youth justice, teenage pregnancy prevention, voluntary sector online youth counselling, school nursing and children's education inspection and safeguarding services. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. Results: A narrowly focused awareness of online risk was noticed among all participants, reflecting an emphasis on a singular target (e.g. Child Sexual Exploitation CSE). This led frontline staff to omit exploration of wider online risks or antecedents of grooming. The outcome therefore was a lack of data on harms other than CSE or sharing of explicit images, and limited knowledge of a wider range of fast changing risks to children, which could inform prevention. Assessment tools seemed generic and focus heavily on CSE or social media; some omitted online risk unless safeguarding issues were raised. Furthermore, multi-agency collaboration was hampered by simplistic or no referral mechanisms for evidence involving online risks. Finally, it was also apparent that there is a lack of structured and mandatory training programmes around online risk and children and young people's digital lives. Conclusion: Online risks need careful consideration within children's services' cases and to be more systematically embedded within practice. The findings are crucial in guiding services towards modernising their methods, advancing their training and assessment tools to enhance multi-agency collaboration in cases involving vulnerable children.