Ann Marie Christian on Affluent Neglect

Ann Marie Christian is an international safeguarding and Child Protection consultant, trainer, author and trouble-shooter, who helps schools, organisations, charities, churches and childcare settings in understanding their statutory duty and responsibility in keeping children safe.

She set up Child 1st Consultancy Limited in 2010 after working for the local authority in front line child protection since 1996. She worked in partnership with colleagues in various settings and understood their challenges in working with child protection and chose to support them in offering bespoke intense support via training and consultancy.

Ann Marie delivers work as an associate with ISI Consultancy, The Boarding School Association, NSPCC, IAPS, AEGIS, The Key, Smoothwall, Independent School Portal, The DRB Group, Chapel Street Trust, Headteachers Update and many more.

In this interview we discuss ‘Affluent Neglect’, where there is neglect experienced by children who live in households that would be considered wealthy or affluent. This is a topic that is rarely discussed, but it is vitally important for the children that we recognise the risk factors.

Ann Marie explains the types of evasive behaviours that you may see from parents and carers and how to respond to a variety of situations. She discusses how this type of neglect can be overlooked or ignored because of the power imbalance, but how Early Years practitioners and educators should be confident in their own professionalism. We finish by discussing the type of knock-on effects that can happen if we don’t spot this type of neglect early enough.

Links:

Website: http://annmariechristian.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Annmariechild

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annmariechild/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annmariechristiann/

The research that Ann Marie refers to, by Claudia Bernard can be found here: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/25232/