Learning the Lessons from Punishing Abuse: Why Professional Curiosity and Knowing a Child Well Matters

These video resources, created in response to Dr Alex Chard's hard-hitting report Punishing Abuse, focus on drawing out lessons for frontline professionals working in children’s services.

Punishing Abuse considers the impact of poverty, abuse, loss, adversity and probable trauma on the lives of children known to the youth justice system in the West Midlands, and the impact these experiences have had on their lives and behaviours. Based on research undertaken on behalf of the West Midlands Combined Authority in collaboration with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, the findings have profound implications for policy and practice in work with troubled children, not just locally but also nationally.

Description

In this video and audio replay, Dr Alex Chard discusses his recently published and highly impactful report, Punishing Abuse, with the Youth Custody Service’s Head of Safeguarding, Wendy Tomlinson, who has a longstanding background at a senior management level in children’s services.

The focus here is on drawing out lessons for frontline professionals working in children’s services – paying specific attention to the importance of professional curiosity, seeing the links between early harms and later behaviours and the development of empathic knowing.

These resources will help you:

• Gain an understanding of the key findings from Punishing Abuse and feel what’s at stake
• Consider the importance of knowing a child’s life journey and the impact of adversity
• Critically reflect on ACEs and what they tell us about a child
• Reflect on the health of your own professional curiosity
• Enhance your role as your own case reviewer
• Develop critical reflexivity

Bonus content

Q&A with Dr Alex Chard and Wendy Tomlinson

In this one-hour question and answer video, Dr Alex Chard and Wendy Tomlinson address some of the key themes and audience questions raised during the original live session. Watch or listen

Further reading