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 suspect you are right. There are far too many inadequate parents for too few social workers.
And too many who are young and inexperienced.
I am with the Princess of Wales when she advocates that parenting should be taught at school. Obviously, very basics. But even that is something.
These children need our very best care.

I didn’t realise the adoption wasn’t completed. So then it does sadly sound like there should have been better supervision and red-flagging when there was a broken arm. Toddlers don’t often break limbs. So that means we need better social workers, which means they need to be less over-worked and better trained and better paid so we recruit talent.

Beyond that I don’t think there are always “signs”. I don’t think it’s reasonable even to expect social workers - with all their training - to have some miraculous sense of the evil hiding behind a well-presented facade. Time and again that has proven impossible.

Maybe for every young adopted child there should be a third party guardian whose job it is to be objective and watchful. Perhaps a regular foster carer who randomly but frequently takes the child for a break. People who work with kids would notice odd behaviour in a child they had come to know well - and might notice knocks and bruises and behaviour changes.

I think something different has to be done. Whatever it costs.

Wished I hadn't read about this case. I can't get that little boy out of my mind. Even when he had some respite from the abuse he would have been utterly terrified. Some of the details in this case are so sickening- they enjoyed abusing him, this is not a case of a parent losing control & harming a child. This was systematic, calculated torture.
I've never supported capital punishment but could make an exception here. This sweet angel did not stand a chance.
It's small consolation that their time inside will be hellish.

I am unable to disagree with this.

Unless a child is on an order social workers have no legal right to insist on seeing the child. We use all our skills and creativity to gain access to the child but ultimately we can’t demand a child is presented and parents have many reasonable sounding ways of preventing access. And yes social workers may well fear parents. I’ve had workers stalked in the community, defamed online, personal information made public, and assaulted by parents - it can be very frightening to work with some families. While that all forms part of the assessment for the child, social workers are human and are often not protected effectively because we still need to work with families productively.

Most people have no concept of what’s involved in child protection social work, the constraints we work within and the level of risk we carry which is pretty unique amongst other professions.

Well there is one thing that could use changing. The legal right for social workers to insist on seeing a child. A simple enough request. And not one that should be threatening unless there is something to hide. I am astonished that social workers don’t already. Whoever looks after social workers in England needs to look at this. Quickly. It seems to be governed by two bodies which sounds like a mess waiting to happen.
And you should be supported with people who are intimidating. Absolutely.

I'm not sure anyone is agreeing the current state is right, but with over 100k LAC in the UK, and decades of underfunding, is anyone surprised? Would you want to work in this field? Carrying a case load of hundreds? Zero reporting on the positive cases, fragmented services? No singular reporting system across agencies, police boundaries, LAs and NHS trusts? People that want to hide, will hide and that has been the case for years. Look up ContactPoint and how long ago that was, there was a need then and a need now, but it will always come back to funding and sadly, victims like Preston are the ones paying.

The law would need to change for that to happen, it’s not in the gift of the social work regulator to change. Social workers involvement with families always needs to have a legal basis, we can’t just pitch up and involve ourselves in the lives of families without good reason. I can’t see any politician championing a legal requirement to present children to social work - only the courts and police currently have those powers.

"lessons will be learnt"

Listening to radio 4 coverage there were a few - I think three occasions when injuries where in front of HCP and yet they accepted explinations.

I'm surprised by this my experience and most other parents I know if one off injures clearly accidental get a lot of questions and follow up.

I don't think there were questions about adoption process that seemed to have been followed to letter.

I wonder if they got more leaway with injuries because he was a teacher and they been through adoption process - assuming that both those come with checks which they do. I'm not sure how you'd stop those assumptions going forward - but perhaps flagging this case in any safegaurding training would help in future.

It is a trite phrase then these days engenders cynical repsonses.

It’s not simple really. Why should the authorities get to see whatever child they want? What if they came round 20 times a day demanding to see yours? What if they demanded time alone with them?

its ok to make these ideas through the lense of abuse but what about the 99% of parents who don’t abuse their kids- why should they lose basic human rights?

I also disagree the threshold should be lower for removal. The injuries to Preston before his death would already meet threshold for a family involved with SS. If his grandmother had presented him at the hospital with multiple incidence of breathing difficulties having never had an episode, and a broken arm, it would already have been enough.

The issue is the blind trust. It was really unprofessional the way some social workers spoke to these adoptive parents like theyre mates theyre supporting. They’re supposed to be safeguarding and monitoring.

Also unusual bruising patterns and something else that was unexplained. People had a bias of trust towards these men.

I agree

We moved after birth of one child and I ended up with a HV who used to just turn up and demand to see the kids with vauge threats of going further if I didn't comply - she deemed move enough to make me vunerable despite no-one esle having concerns.

It was very stressful - and she got nasty when I was out of house trying to get us settled in new area and she'd just turned up and I'd not been in. I went to their clincis - joined groups so kids were seen by other adults and she still did it though it got less had to complain in the end.

I got told on here that with nothing to hide it shouldn't be an issue but having someone turn up on their timetable stop how long they wished and fuck what you need to be doing is very stressful.

People had a bias of trust towards these men.

I think that's the issue and how to prevent it in future - not easy TBH.

No lessons ever seem to be learnt, doesn't matter what has happened and there will always be a next time.

There will always be a next time, because there will always be a small minority of people who want to harm children and who are very skilled in finding ways to do that.

Lessons absolutely are learnt, and it's sadly impossible to eliminate all risk and all incidences of murder of a child by caregivers. If you think services can reduce these incidences to zero you don't understand risk, probability and human nature.

Well someone should be able to change the law n relation so it.
There must be a policy lead somewhere ? If not that is a huge issue.
And in developing the policy of course you look at what you want it to achieve and how it will work.

Be rational. Any law developed would set out the circumstances and parameters. They would have to have reason to require to see them.
It would be a good thing to do. And help social workers. And possibly safe a child’s life. That, to me is worth doing.

The obvious lesson is that two men shouldn't be adopting babies.

This wasn't even the first time something like this has happened with two men.

But that lesson will not be learned.

I would imagine red flags were overlooked because he was a teacher and because they were a male, gay couple. People choose to ignore things so as not to offend or seem 'unwoke' (hate that expression but peri brain can't think of a better alternative).

This was a very difficult case, as the couple were convincing both on paper and in person. They looked like ideal adopters. They were intelligent and certainly aware of the safeguarding concerns that those in child protection would be looking for, and could adapt their behaviour accordingly. It takes a great deal of skill to see beyond the surface of all that. Social workers certainly need extensive training to be able to do so, but I wouldn't call being fooled in these circumstances a "failing".

There have been past cases where outcomes genuinely would have been different if professionals had done their jobs properly - Asiah Kudi, Baby Peter - but this is more nuanced. I'd like to hear more about the bruising and why that wasn't followed up further.

Social work is incredibly challenging and under resourced. A lot of parents are incredibly well informed about their rights and happy to tie up professionals in complaints when they are challenged and there are many forums including MN that advise on how to get professionals off their backs. Look at the outrage expressed when authorities try to regulate home education which was what happened to Sara Shariff and how she slipped under the radar. Nobody trusts experts and very happy to criticise when they get it wrong, but when something like this happens everybody’s up in arms demanding that something should’ve been done by services that no one‘s prepared to pay taxes for.

I think you can accept social work is challenging, that it requires more resources and still seek to improve process and systems, even law.
It doesn’t have to follow that you are in one camp or the other. I am in both.

That’s what we already have in place- that’s what you’re saying isn’t good enough