Will lessons really be learnt after this tragic child abuse case?

[Tolkienista]

The horrific case of baby Preston Davey sickeningly abused by his adoptive parents (a teacher and his partner) concluded in a guilty verdict in court yesterday.
The details are too traumatic to contemplate the awful end of this child's life.
Once again the age old phrase "lessons will be learnt" has been quoted and I have to say, will they?

I know life is extremely complicated & I'm in no doubt that the killer of Preston was manipulative, cold hearted and extremely secretive in covering up his abuse of this defenceless little child.
I guess that because abuse generally takes place behind closed doors, child abuse will sadly always be a part of our society.

Utterly utterly tragic.

I don’t know the answer, it’s an horrific case. All that society can do is notice and care about these children and always report.
I was talking to my son (adult) last night and he said to me.. Do you remember when I was at school and you were always wondering where food you had brought had disappeared too?
He said.. That was me, there was a boy in my class who’s house I went into once on the way home to use his toilet and his mum was passed out surrounded by needles (heroin addict) He felt sorry for the boy so would take him food.
He said he remembers at school everybody knew.. Kids and teachers, apparently the neglect was blatantly obvious.
I never met this boy and had no idea about his situation (my son didn’t tell me because he thought he’d have gotten in trouble for going into the house) but why an earth was he left in that situation, how many more like them?!? It’s tragic, this would have been 10 years ago but still.

There’s a public statement released by Social Work Scotland last week highlighting the issues with lack of emergency placements including on occasion social workers taking children home. You may not believe it but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Yes, there will be lessons learned, but they will need funding and resourcing. There will always be depraved predators unfortunately, thats why we need Children's services. This particular predator, had all the tools to manipulate the system, as a safeguarding lead he knew the vocabulary to use, to cover the crime.

Surely any injury to an adopted child should immediately flag a very serious review by social services.

And perhaps we should accept that men very rarely want to look after young babies, and it’s inherently suspicious for a man to seek access to a child that doesn’t have the capacity to talk. Perhaps male-only adoptions should be restricted to children age 4 and over, when it’s possible for a social worker to investigate problems through play and conversation.

I don’t think any lessons need to be learned- everyone in social care knows what the issues are that lead to these situations. The issue is that no one can fix those issues due to lack of funding, lack of staff and lack of foster placements.

I work adjacent to social care. Parents, carers, school staff etc are constantly berating their social workers because they aren’t answering the phone or calling them back. But literally every social worker has a full case load and the ones who don’t call back are usually dealing with emergencies that take up all of their working time. Is it acceptable that people aren’t hearing back quickly? Absolutely not. Is it happening because the social workers are lazy or useless (as people tell us)? Also absolutely not.

I am afraid errors of judgement will continue to be made. ie small children will be placed with unsuitable people. And, checks will continue to allow the unsuitable people to be the parents.
To be effective as a social worker I believe you do need to be a bit savvy. For want of a better expression. To know when someone is just giving you a load of old baloney by way of answers.
I hope it is no longer the case but there used to be a premise that if a child could be kept in the family then that was the thing to do. I hope that has been ditched.
The thing to do is to place the child where it is safe. People point at studies done etc showing removing a child is traumatising. I cannot believe it would not, in many instances be more traumatising than remaining with ‘the family’.
Sadly there will be people who have children who are not fit to be parents. There will be step parents who are not fit to be looking after a child fathered by another. There will be women who put their new partner first and try to ignore that. There will be people who abuse the poor child, yes.
It needs to happen less frequently. People involved need to pick up the signals and not throw it over the fence to another organisation for responsibility. People need to question and not worry about offending.
The child is the priority.

@LetMeGoogleThat these men had been through a rigorous selection process. It isn’t especially easy to become an adoptive parent. I wonder if there’s an element of complacency involved when an adoptive parent has been recently vetted, because how could someone so awful have passed through undetected and been awarded the responsibility of raising a child? And a partner who turned a blind eye too.

Preston's adoption wasn't complete, so he was still a LAC by Oldham, so there will need to be a serious case review.

Clearly not rigorous enough.
I do wonder what weight was given to the fact he was a ‘teacher’. I suspect far too much.
And perhaps assumed to be upstanding and safe around children. Clearly he wasn’t. At all.

Social workers do need to be very savvy, they need to see beneath the presentation of parents, test out things to see when they’re being lied to and be able to challenge, while maintaining a relationship with families. For every case like this there are a hundred parents saying they feel blamed or under suspicion by social workers, and under unjustified scrutiny. It takes time and a lot of experience to know when to push, when to support and when to reduce involvement safely.

There are social work teams where the most experienced practitioners is 2 years qualified, or less. We can’t get decent practice placements for students because there’s no one there to supervise them, team managers are 4 years out of university, because there’s no one else to do the job. If we don’t stem the training, recruitment and retention crisis nothing will change. Hiving off parts of the job to unqualified staff actively undermines the work we do.

All the reviews in the world won’t change the landscape unless there’s a fundamental shift in the professional landscape.

Sadly, people that groom children are incredibly good at it, they clearly were also grooming Children's services too. From the coverage I have read, the partner didn't turn a blind eye, but actively took part in the abuse.

When was the last time we saw any positive coverage of social workers? In in drama they are demonised, but it's an incredibly difficult job, that most of us need to eventually walk away from, due to burnout. The case that broke me, was trying to get 4 children accommodated at 11pm on a Saturday night, it was an impossible task but I could get the 3 dangerous dogs removed. That said enough for me to walk.

I don't believe babies should be adopted by two men. But I doubt that lesson will be learned.

This. Medics are required to make decisions about the likelihood of an injury being accidental or not often under pressure and with no obvious indication that it wasn’t an accident. I can understand if hospital doctors did give the adoptive parents the benefit of the doubt because “well, they’ve obviously been thoroughly and extensively assessed through the adoption process, and have regular contact with social services who surely must not have any concerns about them, so I find that reassuring.”

Honestly I’m not sure there are any lessons to be learned beyond the ones which are raised every time a case like this hits the news and which are published in the case reviews - that there’s not enough investment in social work and that many excellent social workers who would like to be able to practice thorough professional curiosity aren’t able to do so because they haven’t the resources, support, or time.

He would have had the same checks as any adopter despite his job because they are required before the adoption can take place. Predators are good at hiding, we know that and that is why they go undetected. They dont have red flags on their foreheads.

Sadly true. The mantra is “predictable or preventable “. It’s not always possible to prevent evil people from harming or killing children. The police have said there was no evidence found to suggest a previous interest in sexual abusing or harming children for either of these two individuals.

I don’t know about going home with social workers but there was an item on woman’s hour a couple of months ago about the rapidly rising number of children placed in illegal, unregulated settings because there was nowhere else.

hope it is no longer the case but there used to be a premise that if a child could be kept in the family then that was the thing to do. I hope that has been ditched.

On the contrary, this is absolutely the fundamental principle of child permanency planning. Why would you think this should be ditched? And believe me - we are 'savvy' and the more experience we get the more 'savvy' we become - there are always accomplished liars and abusers who can deceive people. It's impossible to prevent that completely.

Do you also think that the 3 times he was taken to hospital and then released back to these men was a right wing conspiracy theory?

People knew something was wrong. Heads need to roll but they never will.

How do you think a social worker should have intuited that these men were paedophiles? No policer record, no complaints but children or parents at the school, squeaky clean, plausible. What 'rigour' was not applied?
I have worked with two male social workers who turned out to be child abusers. Nothing would have given anyone reason to suspect them.

Lessons will be learned should always be publicly specified, not least because people have lost trust.

I don't think you can prevent a case like this happening only identify it earlier and stop it going on as long/ reaching the point of murder.

This man was so scheming and so determined, he is intelligent so will have known that he would be caught and he would go to prison and he will die a horrible death in prison, yet he was still compelled to do it, and I'm not sure how you stop someone like him. If it wasn't that poor baby, it would have been another, maybe a niece or nephew. He certainly isn't bothered about the consequences.

I thought my post would have made the reason for removing children from unsuitable families was clear ?
The trauma of removing them would in some cases be far less than leaving them there. I have watched programmes in disbelief that some children are left with some families. Who frankly are not able to parent them at all.
I suspect sometimes the reason they are left is because there would be far too many of them to be removed.
Also, having read reports of some visits done etc, some of you may be savvy but not enough of you are. You read of people who leave without seeing a child. You read of workers who it comes across as scared of the parent. Sometimes I expect with good cause. But haven’t planned a visit around that fear. Or considered how scared the child must feel.
You are right you will never account for all those who deceive people completely. But too often I am afraid the system is deceived.
I find it a bit alarming that the confidence in the approach currently taken is so strong. It would, I think be suitable to question ‘ are we really doing this right’. Rather than state everything is fine and we carry on as before. It clearly isn’t fine.

Without knowing them ( thankfully), or the process they went through it is difficult to say where it fell down. But it clearly did.
When interviewed there may have been signs then, or certainly after they had him that all was not well.

What I meant was the fact he was a teacher, more and perhaps too much weight was given to his job. And yes, of course he would undergo the checks others do. At least I hope so. But I did wonder whether his job gave him some sort legitimacy that say, if he said he worked in a hotel would not.

So, no. Not if it requires the super rich to pay taxes instead of super yachts (which pollute the world)

I think that’s being really unfair. I’m sure most people are like myself, and are VERY happy to pay more tax if it directly results in increases in child protection staff or more midwifery services. However, no one wants to pay more tax as the reality is, it wouldn’t be spent on this. It will be utterly pissed up against a wall or go on pay rises for the pollies. So, no, no one wants to pay any more tax, thanks.

I’m not rich by the way, just trying to address the ‘it’s because people won’t pay more tax’ angle, and especially ‘those rich people’. Rich people are not stupid, they know any increase in taxes won’t make one little bit of difference to things like this, unfortunately, so why kick them over it?