ABSTRACT
Child abuse is unfortunately a common phenomenon: the 2016 Crime Survey for England and Wales found the following rates for self-reported experience of childhood abuse: … 9% of adults aged 16 to 59 had experienced psychological abuse, 7% physical abuse, 7% sexual assault and 8% witnessed domestic violence or abuse in the home. All interventions to safeguard children in England and Wales must be undertaken in accordance with the statutory guidance: Working Together to Safeguard Children. Safeguarding children’s social work draws on an increasingly wide range of ideas of disciplinary and geographic influences. Social workers must be able to work with high levels of uncertainty, look more widely than the family itself and, when assessing risk, consider the dynamic nature of risk, interacting influences on the child and family and what causes child safety to fluctuate or stabilize. Child protection work inevitably links to theories about trauma and loss.
