There is a growing recognition that safeguarding and protection of young people needs practitioners and professionals to reach beyond the borders of their traditional roles and work together. Without better collaboration and information-sharing, young people and families can slip between the cracks, failing to get the support they need.
While there is broad agreement on this, much of the focus has been on adolescents—with interventions that aim to prevent childhood sexual or criminal exploitation, provide better services for care leavers, and stop serious youth violence. These areas are important, and there is cause to be pleased that they are now getting more attention and funding.
However, this focus on a particular cohort of young people and particular professions such as social workers, teachers and the police, risks missing the opportunity to help and support families earlier in life, and perhaps even to change their future path.
Midwives are the among the first professionals to come into contact with children and their mothers—before children have even taken their first breath. As trusted health professionals who are dedicated to ensuring the healthy birth of a child, midwives build strong relationships with mothers and their partners throughout pregnancy and birth. Midwifery offers as close as is possible to a universal service for unborn and newborn children, especially those who have the most complex needs.
Pre-birth assessments by social workers are incredibly complex. They offer few opportunities to observe the parents in the act of parenting, but do afford some vital opportunities, not only to gather information about the likely safety of a child, but also to help support families to take action to prevent a child being taken into care.
According to the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (Broadhurst et al, 2018), the number of care proceedings involving newborns has more than doubled over the past ten years, from 15 in every 10 000 births to 35 in every 10 000 births. Of those, infants remain with their parents in only 13% of cases, while almost half lead to an adoption. Two-fifths of care proceedings commenced for children under the age of 1 relate to children under a week old.
In many cases, these children will be born to mothers who have already experienced care proceedings with a previous child, but in 53% of cases the mother has no prior experience of care proceedings. In these cases, in particular, professionals who are in contact with the mother during pregnancy and early childhood need to work together to support her.
With increasing demands and shrinking resources, it might be tempting to consider safeguarding as beyond the remit of midwives, but they play a vital role. Many midwives have the skills and experience to help mothers struggling with drug or alcohol problems; to gain an insight into their relationship dynamic; and to offer advice about the health and wellbeing of a child. They can also refer mothers to other services. Programmes in social work—like ‘Pause’, which supports mothers who have previously had children taken into care to ‘pause’ before becoming pregnant again to ensure they have the best chance of keeping their next child—have a clear connection to ante- and postnatal care (McCracken et al, 2017). When midwives and social workers work together, there are clear benefits to mothers and children. This collaboration is sure to lead to new and potentially better ways of working.
We are beginning a programme of research to look at interventions, teams, and ways of working that cross the borders between children's services and other professionals working to support families. We believe that midwives—like doctors, police and teachers—have much to offer and need a seat at the table if we are to help build services that keep young people safe and help them to thrive from the very beginning of their lives.