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?

@manysummersago not in this case, no but to huge numbers of families in difficulties yes. As for results, you'd have to wait at least a generation to get a the data. And they would need to be one of a whole number of interventions. Easy access to mh services being one of them. This is a woman who seems to have been in serious need of heavy duty mental health support. Or better drug treatment services. So many things that would help.

Singingtherapy
Hopefully not the one where she says children in foster care get abused

True re results but they did start in the late 90s so we are more than twenty years down the line. The problem with any form of intervention and support is that people have to want it, and overwhelmingly, these people don’t attack their children.

BertieBotts
I often think about this and it must be hundreds of thousands.
My foster sons mum was left in a really unsuitable home. As a result has suffered terrible mental health issues.
If you add up how much has been spent throughout her life on benefits, housing benefits, medical interventions, free nhs treatment and now her son is in care costing thousands each year.
By not funding social services properly it is a false economy. I the long run it costs us so much more.
It would take years to fix the broken system but in years to come we would reap the rewards.
Unfortunately no one in government seems to want to make that massive initial investment.

I think that if you remove/restrict access to GPs it puts much greater pressure on A&E. Schemes that provide support and allow early intervention when families are starting to struggle or have issues are like primary healthcare, our GPs of social care. They’re there to help at the first sign of an issue and to actively promote healthier family relationships. They offer support and help to parents and their early intervention can stop things from getting worse. Problems can be picked up before they become more serious. Earlier intervention reduces the likelihood of children needing to be removed later down the line.

If you remove access to primary healthcare, as we’ve seen during Covid, you overwhelm A&E. The emergency specialists find themselves dealing with situations that are much more serious and have been going on much longer without intervention. If you take away things like Sure Start you allow problems that would have been picked up on and addressed to develop and fester.

This case is thankfully rare in the level of calculated cruelty of the people involved. Sure Start wouldn’t have prevented this death. Sure Start would have lowered the workload of the social workers who were investigating this case.

No, you're right, there will always be a hard core of abusers that support wont reach. But think how much more time police and social services would have to focus on them if a good section of the rest of their case load were being supported through adequate service provision.

@Peregrina Lock down didn't help though - otherwise the poor boy might have been at school and it might have got picked up. no that’s just a convenient excuse that ironically could play a part in constant more lives. Little Arthur was seen by many , many people the parents fooled SS and the police ignored the photos of physical injuries.

*causing

Pray for these abused kids

Bring back Sure Start, it was brilliant at early identification of families who needed support and crucially, at being the missing link. If you feel targeted by social services (compounded by never having learned good conflict resolution skills) how can you work with them and accept support? It just leads to hostility which helps nobody.

Same with Health Visitors - a generation ago they had enough resources to visit all new mothers so no one felt that they were being singled out.

Lockdown most certainly made things worse for this little boy, but no it's not the only thing of course, or we wouldn't have had Maria Colwell (which is now nearly 50 years ago), Victoria Climbie and all those other tragic cases.

[quote IncessantNameChanger]@SafeguardingSocialWorker well it seems you two excuses to go back write up that every thing was fine and close the cases both within a hour each. Win win for you.

That isnt how it works in my county. You could not close a case by someone not opening a door.

What you can do in my county is cancel enough meetings at the last minute that parents start to actively avoid you to come off radar. Then you can say they are refusing to engage. Try it. It might make your job more rewarding again.

Clearly there needs to be national policy to follow.

Btw I cant write national policy. I cant recruit civil servants and I cant write you a check so to be clear I cant do anything to change anything.

What I could do for you would be ignore any concerns I see. But I'm never going to do that.

However as a parent of a child who has a disability SW who does nothing and has nothing to offer on a personal level I am actively off radar and on the books but very invisible. Reading this thread has reminded me why my own disabled child is safer invisible and not seen at legally required times. My child is being failed but everyone else wins.[/quote]
By 'push back' do you mean social workers with unmanageable workloads should just refuse to see too many children?
So say they feel they can cope with 10 children, just sign any others off and accept they can't help them?

I'm sure all social workers know that understaffing and unmanageable caseloads mean they can't keep children safe.

I was severely abused as a child.
I permanently shake all the time now as as adult.
I am also a bit mentally impaired due to being severely isolated and severely abused.
I am often described as weird, strange, odd. But it is because my brain did not develop properly in an extremely abusive environment.

I have PTSD every day. I jump in fright all the time in my sleep.
I wake up every day in emotional torture, thinking about the past and how my mother and father and my father's girlfriend cruelly and sadistically abused me.

I am 37 and I often don't want to live. The abuse is over now but I wake up every morning and relive it in my head. I am in so much emotional pain every day, it is a struggle to keep going.

I woke up this morning and I said "please God don't let me live another 50 years of this, I can't bear this emotional pain anymore" .

It is so easy when you are an adult to abuse a child. Alot of them think it is fun. But when you are the child. When you are a soul that grows up in severe abuse, and you have never experienced love or kindness, it affects you for your whole entire life.
I have attempted suicide twice so far. My brother is the same. He grew up with the same abuse I did. Both of us are a mess. He says to me that he has nothing to live for.

May God release me from some of my emotional suffering. Please. I can't do this anymore

And may we all treat children better

@Cattipuss

Don't vote for the tories who have been eroding public services for many years?

I'm not big on politics but I'm not convinced Labour would be any better. They're too busy worrying about other things to care about children's welfare, or that of certain other vulnerable groups.

I think we can protect children a lot more and hopefully we will

@PoddingtonPea21

One common factor in all these cases is social services and the police and decisions not to act.

Flame me, I think they need to be held legally accountable for death by neglect of duty. Until that happens we'll see it again and again.

Agree. There are some amazing social workers, but there are also some awful ones who would rather save face than save a child.

It all comes down to money in the end, doesn't it.

If we want more GPs and HVs, it costs money.
If we want universal services like Sure Start, it costs money.
If we want Social Workers to have small caseloads, to be able to respond to all reports, to spend time with and get to know children & families, to really offer long term support and to stay in their jobs long enough to be effective, to recruit high calibre workers, it costs lots of money.

Calls to prosecute/string up individual policemen or social workers are cheap but pointless.

When it comes down to it, people don't want to be taxed. They don't want the "nanny state". They don't want to be told how to raise their children and they definitely don't want social workers to have the right to enter their homes and interview or examine their children based on allegations!
People don't vote for that. They vote for the Tories with promises of low taxes, small government and the state refusing to support single parents, disabled people, people with drug and alcohol problems.

If a political party said vote for us, we will raise taxes, tax the rich, put a social worker in every school, make health visitor services mandatory, give social workers right of entry into private homes - would they win an election?

Look at society as a whole? Is there a culture of doing the bare minimum, just to get to pay day? Too many people in the wrong jobs enjoying their positions of power but do they truly care? Empathy tests for anyone wishing to work with children.

....not convinced Labour would be any better.

Maybe not, but few of them would be flaunting how much more money they were making from other jobs, while making cuts which hit those of us on more modest incomes the hardest.

For example - they had to be shamed into making free school meals available during the holidays by a footballer.

I don’t think it does all come down to money. That’s always the answer (apparently) - more money, more input, more support. It isn’t.

@manysummersago

I don’t think it does all come down to money. That’s always the answer (apparently) - more money, more input, more support. It isn’t.

People seem to be focussed on social workers not spending enough time on this case though - how do we gain more social worker hours?

@manysummersago

There is more personal culpability for the protection of your money than there is of children

That’s because removing children from their parents is an act of extreme cruelty which should only be done in cases where abuse is proven. And that’s the problem.

For a child of this age, I'm co fused why they couldn't just talk to him. Take him away from his family somewhere secure, after they had evidence of abuse.

Ask him what his home life is lie etc. And reassure him he won't be in trouble, he's in a safe place.

I'd fully support this even if it means one of my children fall over in the playground and are questioned away from me.

Whoever dealt with Arthurs case failed him,

Nellie - I can quite see that the answer to have more social workers is no bad thing, but by the same token, the ones employed have to do their jobs properly. It doesn’t matter how many social workers there are if they aren’t doing what they need to.

I'm not big on politics but I'm not convinced Labour would be any better

I am. Having taught under a labour and a conservative government, things were much better for struggling families under labour-Sure Start was very effective round my way and there were lots of different initiatives, groups and support we could signpost children and families to. All of these things made a massive difference.

@manysummersago Have you read anything from current and ex social workers on this thread?

Even discounting other issues, the simple maths of a child protection social worker devoting their attention to say 10 complex cases, rather than the 30+ many say they have on at once will of course lead to a better focus on individual children and families.

Ditto high quality appropriate AND accessible residential accommodation to be available for use rapidly.

So of course resource and funding has high implications for child protection.

Many in this county want (or expect) a Roll's Royce service on second hand banger money - this goes for ALL public services.

@PasstheBucket89 Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, I think is mainly being talked about here. A warning though, it’s a really heart breaking case.