How do we protect these children? There must be more we all can do!

[AnotherThingToDo]

I’m haunted by these poor children who have to endure this torture. How many more are there who aren’t in the news because they haven’t died?

Experts, people in child-protection roles, people with experience: how can people who feel angry and devastated by this channel this emotion into actually making a difference?

We hear time and time again how resources are limited. Is there more that society can do?

@JeanBodel

The people clamouring for social workers to be more hard-nosed, to take tougher measures, need to remember how they would feel if a social worker turned up on their doorstep.

In this country social workers have to balance the duty to safeguard children, with the parents' right to a private live. We cannot intervene in the ways described on this thread - and would you want us to? Imagine if your vindictive neighbour called Social Services the day after your child fell off his bike, knowing he'd have bruises? Would you really want a social worker to get tough and remove your child?

If parents are devious and manipulative it is very hard to spot abuse. It is even harder if the social worker is inexperienced, unsupported by management, and swamped with a huge case load.

A child’s right to safety does not need and should not be balanced with anything else it needs to be the absolute priority.

Social workers do not remove children for falling off their bikes. It is very very hard to remove a child far too hard and children are left in abusive situations far too long.
Spotting a child being abused is often not difficult at all. Family patterns are often indicative of abuse. A couple I once worked with had both had a sibling murdered by their mothers when young. Was it shocking that their children were on child in need plans considering how their were parented.

They like lots of meetings, faffing and produce crap reports that. Then have to be changed. What they managed in 30 hours could have been done in two.

Excellent, I await your advice on how to complete a full child protection assessment and CPO for court in 2 hours. They need to be legally sound, so make sure you reference the relevant legislation correctly, and make sure you have all your evidence clearly stated, that can stand up to court scrutiny. It all looks so easy when it’s not you doing it.

@IknowwhatIneed

They like lots of meetings, faffing and produce crap reports that. Then have to be changed. What they managed in 30 hours could have been done in two.

Excellent, I await your advice on how to complete a full child protection assessment and CPO for court in 2 hours. They need to be legally sound, so make sure you reference the relevant legislation correctly, and make sure you have all your evidence clearly stated, that can stand up to court scrutiny. It all looks so easy when it’s not you doing it.

Quite. I wish the volume of work could be produced in 2 hours. Unfortunately when writing documents to be filed with court that can run to 20000 words on a good day it is important to produce something half decent which takes quite a lot more than 2 hours.

@IknowwhatIneed
Honestly this was my experience. It was first hand and it was shocking. Albeit a snapshot and no doubt their is some excellent and good practice out there but it cannot be ignored that waste and incompetence from police and social workers contributes to child abuse and deaths.

Things haven’t changed - not because we don’t shout about it but because the general public literally don’t know, and don’t want to know.

This is what I’m thinking, the public don’t know and when this case disappears from the news, all of these threads disappear and we carry on with our lives the SWs and police will still be doing their visits and when it happens again (and it will) we will all be up in arms again.
SWs will be complaining about their workload, police will blame SWs, neighbours will say they reported it but nothing happened.
We need the public to know, we need it on TV, on social media. We need whistleblowers, we need politicians with actual facts, evidence of failures to shock us with.
Then maybe there will be change.

The teams I worked in were mid twenties and older.
I left when I wanted dc, the hours were too long and erratic to manage dc without more family support than I had.
There were a fair number of mature students who bring a lot.

Honestly CP social workers are pretty feisty with a very dark sense of humor. You have to be to survive.
You will be regularly threatened, a colleague had an explosive device put under her care, I had a shotgun turned on me.
We saw families that healthcare workers refused to visit. Sometimes we visited with police who waited outside while we went in.

But without a manageable caseload and a team manager to oversee work no individual worker will thrive.
When I left I was grateful I got through without any serious case reviews, I had decent colleagues who didn't.
The biggest difference was I was feisty enough to just hand newly allocated cases back when I felt I couldn't take anymore. That helped me and my caseload but not the team or the unallocated cases.

I really feel that the age bar should be raised. I think 21 is just too young. Especially as most of the graduates will come from cosy middle class backgrounds where poverty etc are just abstract concepts.

Years ago I worked in a very rough, inner city school and the NQTs in their earlys twenties were like lambs to the slaughter.

Like I say, if you can tell me how to compress a full investigation and court report into 2 hours, I suggest you do your training and show us how it’s done. You’ve spoken about “a snap shot” and tarred a whole profession

They like lots of meetings, faffing and produce crap reports that. Then have to be changed. What they managed in 30 hours could have been done in two.

I await your advice on how to compress a full working week into 2 hours work. Or could it be that your snapshot is just that.

Also court reports take a fair time to write even if you write a few of them.
You need lots of details and it needs to be balanced to meet the thresholds

Rightly so because removing children from their families is traumatic for them and will cause its own damage.

So the court is looking for the least worst option in every case.

I can't think of any other professional that would be expected to write lengthy court documents in under two hours.

@peaceanddove

I really feel that the age bar should be raised. I think 21 is just too young. Especially as most of the graduates will come from cosy middle class backgrounds where poverty etc are just abstract concepts.

Years ago I worked in a very rough, inner city school and the NQTs in their earlys twenties were like lambs to the slaughter.

Do you have anything to back up your assumption that most social worker graduates come from cosy middle class backgrounds? What arbitrary age would you set as a minimum, given that many leave when they have their own families- say perhaps around 30ish, and everyone has to pass the same course to the same standard to be able to pass the course? Do you think there should be personality tests as well seen as though that's probably the biggest difference between people regarding certain characteristics you seem to be saying are ideal rather than age? Would you want to raise it for all social workers, or just those that go into child protection?

I'm not particularly against the 21 age limit but I knew very few social workers who were middle class and head tilty in child protection.

@endlesswinter

The teams I worked in were mid twenties and older. I left when I wanted dc, the hours were too long and erratic to manage dc without more family support than I had. There were a fair number of mature students who bring a lot.

Honestly CP social workers are pretty feisty with a very dark sense of humor. You have to be to survive.
You will be regularly threatened, a colleague had an explosive device put under her care, I had a shotgun turned on me.
We saw families that healthcare workers refused to visit. Sometimes we visited with police who waited outside while we went in.

But without a manageable caseload and a team manager to oversee work no individual worker will thrive.
When I left I was grateful I got through without any serious case reviews, I had decent colleagues who didn't.
The biggest difference was I was feisty enough to just hand newly allocated cases back when I felt I couldn't take anymore. That helped me and my caseload but not the team or the unallocated cases.

Thank you it's really interesting to hear experiences from the coal face so to speak. I do think that many more mature students should be encouraged to qualify though.

Can I ask, if you were called out to visit the same child, say 5 times in a row, and each time they were heavily bruised, malnourished and you could tell they were frightened by their demeanor - is there no facility to just say to the parents 'Right, that's 5 strikes. You're out.' No quibbling. No excuses. And the child is removed pending more investigation?

Do you think this case will bring more people forward to train as child protection social workers?

My worry is that it will put people off entering the profession, and will make the social workers we do have more likely to leave. It's not easy to live with the fear of what could happen if you make a mistake; a tragedy like this just increases that fear.

@JeanBodel

Do you think this case will bring more people forward to train as child protection social workers?

My worry is that it will put people off entering the profession, and will make the social workers we do have more likely to leave. It's not easy to live with the fear of what could happen if you make a mistake; a tragedy like this just increases that fear.

The covid turned supply chain turned social work experts will move on soon enough and sadly it will all be forgotten. I doubt it will encourage many people to join a profession that's always groaning at the seams.

is there no facility to just say to the parents 'Right, that's 5 strikes. You're out.' No quibbling. No excuses. And the child is removed pending more investigation?

Police can remove children for 72 hours if they are at immediate risk of harm. Social workers can make an emergency application to court for removal that can be heard same day. However social workers don't have legal powers to remove children without a court order.

heavily bruised, malnourished
Yes, you can seek emergency orders to remove dc, the police have stand alone emergency powers and social workers can make emergency applications to court.

@MrsTerryPratchett

Years in related fields here.

The lost important thing is to encourage and nurture circuit breakers. In every abusive family which isn't one any more there is a circuit breaker. Either a woman who doesn't let an abusive man into her house or a man who decides the violence of his father won't be repeated in his house. And yes, there are female abusers (as in this case) but the vast majority of family violence is male in origin or partnership.

Don't make a relationship a goal for women. We are taught it's better to have any man than no man. Support single mothers, make it a great thing. Make it financially possible. Make it a celebrated thing. I can't tell you how many men go on and on about being single dads because it gets them kudos but women are supposed to be ashamed.

Support women's charities, women's businesses and women's health. Happy, healthy women with choices make better ones.

Male circuit breakers need support too. Good intervention in schools when we see issues. Throw love and support at the bullies and arseholes. Lots of male role models and stop idolising men in the media who do terrible things. You hurt someone, you don't get in the TV any more.

Housing. When people aren't forced to be in housing with each other or stay there if they're abused, it's more dangerous.

And have eyes on the kids at school who aren't OK. There was a thread about drug dealers parents on here and everyone was saying their child wouldn't be friends with the kids. Mine would. She wouldn't be at their house! But at mine the child would bewelcome.

Kids need unpaid, friendly, concerned adults.

Yes, to all this.

Catipuss going purely by the stats which demonstrate that the majority of under graduates are still from fairly middle class background, I would hazard that many graduate social workers are MC. I don't think psychometric tests would necessarily be a bad thing to determine a candidate's suitability for the role, especially in something as arduous as child protection.

@NynaeveSedai

is there no facility to just say to the parents 'Right, that's 5 strikes. You're out.' No quibbling. No excuses. And the child is removed pending more investigation?

Police can remove children for 72 hours if they are at immediate risk of harm. Social workers can make an emergency application to court for removal that can be heard same day. However social workers don't have legal powers to remove children without a court order.

Thank you. I didn't realise that the police can remove a child of their own volition, so to speak, but a SW has to get a court order. I find that bizarre. Would it make a difference if the SW had the same power as the police to remove?

We always found the police would work with us, a bit grumpily sometimes but they would always help.
We had decent relations with the CP police officers.

It really, in the vast majority of cases the police remove the child to social work who then need to find a place of safety for them. If I didn’t want to leave a child in an unsafe situation I’d call on police colleagues anyway , and they’d pass the child to me so it’s really 6 and 2x3.

If things are that bad, it’s handy to have early police involvement anyway because they’ll be involved in the joint CP investigation and can provide weight to the immediacy of the concerns that merited immediate removal - which is helpful when applying to court to secure the removal on a longer term.

This a taken from Social Work Tutor Facebook page and captures some of my thoughts better than I could articulate. Some food for thought...

"Social workers are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

The death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is harrowing and there is no shying away from the fact that there were ‘missed opportunities’ to intervene in the run up to his murder.

He was seen by social workers who dismissed bruises as accidental, family concerns were not acted upon, and more credence could have been given to allowing him to live with a woman whose own children had been removed from her care.

Those are missed opportunities and we should not hide from the fact that there will very likely be significant failings identified in the serious case review into Arthur’s death.

But, even if failings are shown, that still doesn’t mean the entire social work profession should be castigated and criticised for failing to protect children from harm.

Firstly, for every child who dies after having had social work involvement there are many thousands more whose lives have been saved by social workers. Yet these stories are seldom told and the press have little interest in this good news.

Secondly, social workers cannot act upon a whim or remove children from parental care based on a gut feeling alone. There has to be an evidence-base, there has to be a threshold met, and there has to be agreement from parents or a court order. Social workers have very little power in themselves.

Thirdly, social workers are overstretched, overburdened, and under-resourced. They can have up to 40 children on their caseload at once and have to make hour-by-hour decisions on whose needs to prioritise at any given time.

None of this makes up for the death of Arthur, or Baby P, or Victoria Climbie, or Daniel Pelka, or any of the other high-profile child deaths that are held up by the media as a sign of failings and ‘lessons to be learned’, but they do add context to the task social workers are faced with.

If we are truly serious about protecting our most vulnerable children then we need to support social workers, not attack them.

We need to welcome people into the profession, not scare them away.

We need to invest in more social workers, lower caseloads, and better support services, not another review that tells us what we already know.

Public and political support is critical to safeguarding children. Social workers cannot be called ‘child snatchers’ or be accused of ‘stealing children’ for adoption bonuses at the same time as also being accused of not intervening soon enough.

It is one or the other- we either lower the threshold for intervention, support social workers, and invest in the service, or we don’t.

We can’t have a better system without better support. It is as simple as that.

Social workers can’t continue to be damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

We have already had years of negative stories in the press.

We have already been subjected to review after review which have promised ‘lessons will be learned’.

We have already faced a negative public and political image.

None of this has worked. None of this has helped.

Social workers need to be built up, not broken down.

Social workers need to be supported if they are to make a difference in the world."

Amen to all this.

@SWLouise 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏