Safeguarding Children in whom illness is fabricated or induced
This document is based on Working Together to Safeguard Children: A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (HM Government 2006) and the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health et al, 2000).
Working Together sets out how all agencies and professionals should work together to safeguard and promote children's welfare. The Assessment Framework outlines a framework for use by all those who work with children and families determining whether a child is in need under the Children Act 1989 and deciding how best to provide help.
This supplementary guidance Safeguarding Children in whom Illness is Fabricated or Induced is intended to provide a national framework within which agencies and professionals at local level - individually and jointly - draw up and agree upon their own more detailed ways of working together where illness may be being fabricated or induced in a child by a carer who has parenting responsibilities for him or her.
It is addressed to those who work in health, education, schools, probation and social care, the police and all others whose work brings them into contact with children and families.
It is relevant to those working in the statutory, voluntary and independent sectors. It is intended that Local Safeguarding Children Boards' (LSCBs) local safeguarding children procedures should incorporate this guidance and its references to Covert Video Surveillance, rather than having separate guidance on fabricated or induced illness in children.
Within local procedures, the section on the use of covert video surveillance should make reference to the good practice advice for police officers which is available to them from the National Crime Faculty.
