To think gullibility is a bad qualification for child protection

[friday16]

Or, to be charitable, thinking the best of people.

In the aftermath of the Peter Connolly case, we were repeatedly told how the mother was a clever, plausible, manipulative woman who was able to twist professionals around her finger. Then we saw video footage of her, and saw a dishevelled, incoherent mess with a long history of mental health issues: the precise opposite of the elegant, cool deceiver. This was not American Psycho.

Now in the Daniel Pelka case, we are asked to believe that no-one could have seen through the mother's story that "Daniel's dramatic weight loss was due to a rare genetic disorder". Not a teacher, not a social worker, not (ffs) a consultant paediatrician. We then hear a recording of the 999 call, and (again) it's an incoherent woman who can barely speak English. How was she able to spin a subtle and coherent web of lies which fooled all the terribly clever professionals, when she couldn't string a sentence together?

What exactly did the school report, and to whom?

We have to remember that the PC case printed a change in the law and policies.

It has to be noted that neighbours and the public will always have more background information than SS, but often don't want to get involved, it is the involvement of family and neighbours that save many children from a life of misery.

We still minimise child abuse, as we do with most Domestic Abuse.

Friday, the assumption waste by what was explained by the patents, given their limited English.

They accepted the explanations and I think the group mentality of " if something bad is happening, it would be being dealt with" clicked in.

The school didn't report, but as said a CAF should of been used and would of shown up the abuse.

Agreed, Birds.

I think school staff in particular need to be more well-versed not just in behaviour which may point to abuse, but to the prevalence of abuse, so that they do not have to make a massive leap of faith to believe that the parent they know so well is abusing their child. CP training in schools is still woefully inadequate, IMO.

A child stealing food should always, always ring massive alarm bells.

It wouldn't of been the Statement route to start with.

A Common Assessment Framework (CAF) would of linked all professionals involved with the family, so the school would of known instantly that no health condition existed and it would of gone down the Child Orotection route.

As said, people did not use what was available and didn't do their jobs properly, based on school policies.

homehelpme both of these cases were not about type one and type two errors, they were about the failure of the system to collect data in time to provide a picture, or a pattern of concern.

Given that people very rarely report anything about anyone without feeling extremely anxious, any concerns should be taken extremely seriously and should be recorded.

I see this with families with medical conditions all the time. The schools assume the doctors are in charge, the docs the SS, the SS the police etc etc. They DO NOT COMMUNICATE until it's got to an extreme situation after the damage has been done.

I hope that when these abused children grow up (those that are still able to) they sue the pants off these institutions that hide behind their tick-box mentality.

Friday, the assumption waste by what was explained by the parents, given their limited English.

So where did the statement that it was PWS (by name) come from, the parent or the school? None of this seems to be in the public accounts, so I'm presuming that people have some additional information. And if the claim was PWS, not some random "genetic condition", why did a paediatrician (who, unlike a primary school teacher, can be expected to know about it) not immediately twig that the symptoms the child had just didn't match?

But well-trained school staff would have been rightly sceptical as to DP's scavenging for food being attributed to any medical condition.

Prader-Willi is a popular choice among random self-qualified experts.

My daughter was diagnosed with it by a Paediatric registrar because she was overweight (not hugely). She was overweight because she could hardly move to burn up the calories. She could hardly move because she was very ill.

She's OK now.

Plausibility to the teachers would come from the fact that there are well-known conditions which cause children to overeat. It was a good lie because it was one lay people could believe based on general knowledge.

As far as we can tell from the SCR the school viewed Daniel's mother as adequate. They do not properly explore why the school made this assessment, but there are some indications of why: In the context of having 3 children including a young baby, a difficult relationship (it isn't clear how much they knew about the DV) and being a non-native English speaker she mostly got the children to school on time, in clean clothes with their lunch. The older child Anna was doing well and making friends and was protective of her younger brother.

So you have an adequate mother providing an unusual but not wholly implausible account of why her son is losing weight.

The true explanation, that she and her partner were deliberately starving him to death and poisoning him with salt is much much rarer than these genetic disorders. As far as we can tell the school never contemplated this possibility. The other likely possibility - that children look malnourished because their families don't feed them adequately out of neglect instead of a policy of deliberate starvation would have been implausible because the older child was fine.

Prader-Willi is a popular choice among random self-qualified experts.

Ah, I didn't know that. Rather like @oldandrew's account of a teacher deciding that a child had Turret's Syndrome (sic)

I think the review of the DP case is very thorough and does address the issues that still exist, even though they were highlighted in the Monroe Report nearly two years ago and after the death of PC.

The explanation of how it was allowed to happen, is clear.

I think that as well as system training, the training of teachers and health professionals should be looked at again.

In recent years they have dropped out of the Child Abuse/information sharing/ CP route, whilst doing their BA.

There used to be case scenarios given and groups of student teachers/ SW's and HCP's used to come u with ideas of how to handle what was happening and what to share.

I think every institution that hosts a large number of children public in it, whether public or private, supermarkets etc, should have someone trained in CP as a matter of course in the same way as they have a Fire Safety officer and a First Aider.

I think that the individual, regardless of job title to be able to report what they are not happy with is a good idea.

My DD (17) had an incident in her Nursery which the manager attempted to ignore, until my DD threatened to phone the police herself (even though it would of meant the sack). It was then dealt with as it should of been, but if my DD was a different personality, or sloppy, it wouldn't of been addressed, which ultimately could of put a child at risk.

Plausibility to the teachers would come from the fact that there are well-known conditions which cause children to overeat. It was a good lie because it was one lay people could believe based on general knowledge.

OK. So why was it also plausible to a paediatrician who was asked to investigate his mysterious weight loss? In what world would PWS be an explanation of weight loss? Paragraph 2.4 of the SCR: the school referred him to a GP and the community paed, via the school nurse. How did "and his mother claims he has a genetic condition" not get communicated at that point? Wouldn't it be the heart of the referral? Paragraph 2.6, the paediatrician ascribed his weight loss to "a medical condition". Which one? Not, surely, PWS?

I think every institution that hosts a large number of children public in it, whether public or private, supermarkets etc, should have someone trained in CP

Whether that's a good idea or not, schools are full of people who have purportedly been trained in child protection, and there are designated child protection roles within the SMT of every school. And here we have paragraph 2.5 (my emphasis):

"Daniel also came to school with bruises and unexplained marks on him. Whilst these injuries were seen by different school staff members, these were not recorded nor were they linked to Daniel’s concerning behaviours regarding food. No onward referrals were made in respect of these injuries. At times, Daniel’s school attendance was poor and an education welfare officer was involved."

Passedgo, schools do, every LA has to follow national CP policies, what happened was that it wasn't followed.

Every organisation does, in theory, people just need to do what they are supposed to.

If anyone has ever been to a consultant about their child, then gone to a different department or back to the GP, they may recognise that paperwork is often SIMPLY NOT FORWARDED. This is a massive, massive error.

And how often have you been with a consultant who sits reading your child's papers IN FRONT OF YOU and you then explain what's been happening (because it's quicker) and they close the file and listen (and believe) every word you say.

NHS has so much to answer for here, and in many many other cases. My friend was an ambulance driver and he was told that you 'don't get involved, if there are issues it's up to social services'. Although that was a few years ago, the NHS is a dinosaur when it comes to change.

Birds I haven't read the report but it does appear that the teachers in this case were doing that thing where they fuss about concernedly but do not actually doing anything that would make a difference.

I half-heard an expert on Radio 4 news who was very critical of the report - she said the author/s hadn't talked to the staff directly involved with Daniel (I think she meant the teachers, for instance) and had approached it with the benefit of hindsight, rather than trying to see things as they appeared to the teachers and other professionals at the time. The expert had done a major review of child protection after ANOther scandal and it sounded as if she thought this report was inadequate.

You cannot Blame the NHS, there has been concerns put forward, since the "At Risk" register was abolished, about the inability to link education and health into Child Protection.

A fortune was spent on new information sharing software, but it was known that it wouldn't be adequate.

Each department has their role and that is why CAF's were created, so someone would be co-ordinating the whole process.

It was only at a LAC meeting, that we all ( SS and the Head) realised that the child in question was the one on camera that was turning up to school during closing times, because they felt safe there. Had the Head had the ability to report on a linked system, we would of worked that out whilst the child was still on a CP plan. The child had to cross a rail track and main roads to get to the school, so just by luck wasn't injured, or killed.

Edam, from what I understood, some people want direct explanations from staff members as to why they didn't do what they should of, whether that will then turn into a witch hunt, is in question.

If you look on this forum alone, stents don't like school interference and think that schools should be about education, al

Sorry, education alone and not the whole child and what is happening in their lives.

I don't understand this reasoning, seeing that most people do not want to report Child Neglect and tend to just isolate the child who isn't clean, doesn't invite other children to their home and has nits etc, who else is going to step in, if not the school?

I see in here the recommendation to cut off relatives that are abusive etc, with no thought for the child living with that adult.

I'd be interested to find out whether concerns were reported internally, to the Safeguarding officer in line with school policy, or whether they were not reported at all. Was it one person- the safeguarding officer- who made the decision not to report to SS, or did a number of staff fail to report?