IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v3y2014i3p341-358d38848.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vulnerable Family Meetings: A Way of Promoting Team Working in GPs’ Everyday Responses to Child Maltreatment?

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny Woodman

    (Population, policy and practice, UCL-Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, UK)

  • Ruth Gilbert

    (Population, policy and practice, UCL-Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, UK)

  • Danya Glaser

    (Population, policy and practice, UCL-Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, UK
    Great Ormond Street Hospital, London WC1N 3JH, UK)

  • Janice Allister

    (Royal College of General Practitioners, 30 Euston Square, London NW1 2FB, UK)

  • Marian Brandon

    (School of Social Work, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK)

Abstract

This study uses observations of team meetings and interviews with 17 primary care professionals in four GP practices in England to generate hypotheses about how “vulnerable family” team meetings might support responses by GPs to maltreatment-related concerns and joint working with other professionals. These meetings are also called “safeguarding meetings”. The study found that vulnerable family meetings were used as a way of monitoring children or young people and their families and supporting risk assessment by information gathering. Four factors facilitated the meetings: meaningful information flow into the meetings from other agencies, systematic ways of identifying cases for discussion, limiting attendance to core members of the primary care team and locating the meeting as part of routine clinical practice. Our results generate hypotheses about a model of care that can be tested for effectiveness in terms of service measures, child and family outcomes, and as a potential mechanism for other professionals to engage and support GPs in their everyday responses to vulnerable and maltreated children. The potential for adverse as well as beneficial effects should be considered from involving professionals outside the core primary care team (e.g., police, children’s social care, education and mental health services).

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Woodman & Ruth Gilbert & Danya Glaser & Janice Allister & Marian Brandon, 2014. "Vulnerable Family Meetings: A Way of Promoting Team Working in GPs’ Everyday Responses to Child Maltreatment?," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-18, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:3:y:2014:i:3:p:341-358:d:38848
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/3/3/341/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/3/3/341/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:3:y:2014:i:3:p:341-358:d:38848. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.