The Mental Wellbeing of Children and Parents When There are Child Protection Concerns – Can volunteers help?

In child protection work the main focus is on safeguarding the child and promoting better parenting. Focus on mental health is limited even though we know that problems with mental health (parental or child) impact on family functioning. An evaluation of an innovative scheme, ‘Volunteers in Child Protection’ that promotes volunteers to work alongside statutory child care workers in complex child protection cases measured the mental health outcomes for the family. At referral, two thirds of the families were dysfunctional, with children having emotional and behavioural disturbance and some mothers having clinical levels of depression. Repeat measures indicate improvements in children’s emotional wellbeing, family functioning and mother’s mental wellbeing during the volunteer intervention.