To think we need action on child protection

[stargirl1701]

The details of the latest cases have been horrifying. There seems to be no answer from any quarter as to how to stop this happening again. Funding is obviously an issue as both social workers and health visitors have unsustainable case loads.

I wonder if what is also needed is the view of the ordinary person. Do police officers and social workers become numb to their constant exposure to horror? I know my own reaction to the bruising on both Arthur and Star: it's clearly not a normal childhood bruise pictured on either child. I say that as parent of 10 years and a primary school teacher of more than 20 years experience.

The Children's Panel system in Scotland uses lay members effectively. These are volunteer roles in which enhanced PVG status is required. Do Child Protection referrals need to be assessed by a panel like that rather than be left to judgement of the over-stretched social worker team? Volunteers serve for 3 years in a local area outwith their own. The last recruitment campaign garnered 2000+ applicants.

We need a new approach. It is madness to carry on with a system that is so clearly failing to ensure the safety of vulnerable children. More funding would obviously help but there does seem to need to be reform of the system.

@Bagamoyo1

I’m a GP so I’ve seen a fair number of child protection cases in the past 25 years.

The problem is primarily money in my opinion. Social workers are overstretched, they have too many on their case load, and the services they can refer to (parenting classes, Sure Start etc) have been cut. I believe there is also a shortage of foster carers.

Another issue is fear of litigation. We all watch our backs more than we ever used to. I know that if I spot what I think is a safeguarding issue, make a referral, but I turn out to be wrong - then the family can complain about me. At best that involves me in literally days of work responding to a complaint. At worst I lose my job.

I also think the population as a whole has a responsibility. So often on here someone will post that they saw a mother manhandling or smacking a child, and they ask if they should have said something. More often than not, the replies are “keep your nose out, you don’t know what’s going on in the mother’s life, she might have mental health problems”, as if this is a get-out-of-jail-free card. I think if people were publicly shamed for mistreating kids then they might think about their behaviour a bit more.

This. And we need mechanisms to share best practice. Mumsnet forum? Anything! Meaning the best course of action to get things done. If Arthur's grandparents went to hospital to document what was happening instead of calling the ss he might ve been alive today. She didn't know.

I think there's likely to be very few people on here qualified to answer the question.

What we don't know is how many successful interventions were made in the time we've heard about these two sickening cases.

There was a teacher who commented on one of the threads about the tragedy of little Arthur, that the problem with the system is that anyone with a duty of care for a child's well being, also simulataneously has their hands tied.
They have to get consent from the parents before they can speak to another professional about a child. So if a teacher is worried about a child they can't just phone up the health visitor or school nurse without first getting the parents permission.
The fact the abuser gets warned before any action is taken is useless.
Social workers can't physically examine a child with out parental consent. It's all backwards.
I saw a teacher say she had reported her concerns for a student multiple times, including for having ligature marks around his neck. And still nothing is done.

Money is an issue but isn't the care/fostering system also an issue.

Such poor outcomes for any children, maybe down to money but also this not being a societal priority.

I wouldn't encourage removal of children from parents per se but the current ethos appears to be keep children with birth parents at all costs, for a multitude of reasons, one of which being terrible outcomes of those removed.

It doesn't have to be this way, some Scandinavian countries have far better outcomes for removed children, social workers are then more prone to remove children and consequently hold more power over parents who need to buck their ideas up.

It seems like through fear of unnecessary removal and poor outcomes, SS have had all their powers curtailed to such an extend they need parental cooperation and obviously these awful people aren't keen to cooperate.

@Japingjaponica

These things happened in the first, most severe lockdown. We are now only just finding out what happened when at-risk children were away from schools and locked up with abusive parents. My friend who was a social worker had her impossible caseload DOUBLED during that lockdown, buckled under the pressure and left. It was unprecedented times. Of course I'm not justifying the absolute horror of it.

It's not just lockdown. It's been a huge issue before. The loss of schools during lockdown has meant that eyes on kids reduced massively and referrals increased (because schools can't see the kids, not necessarily because the actual abuse has increased, though statistically it has). Increased referrals in an already broken system is not going to make matters worse.

Yes, social workers do get hardened (you can't continue in the job if you don't) but we also know that we don't have the resources to help them all - I don't mean placing kids in foster care, I mean supporting mother's out of abusive relationships, supporting families to end the cycle of abuse they're stuck in, basic parenting classes, cooking classes, household management etc. Its the system that is broken.

My mother said years ago there should be a tv/news public health campaign about how hard parenting can be. They have them in other countries (Brazil had them in response to a spike in child prostitution). We need a really honest vocal public conversation about it. Actually warn our young people about the pressures of parenting- drugs- alcohol- show us all and scare us all about what a huge commitment it is to bring up kids. It isn't the responsibility of the state to come in when things are disastrous; it is a societal responsibility to talk openly. I see on mumsnet so often people talking about parents hitting/abusing kids. This is everywhere

In many of the cases of child murder the social services had been involved and chose to believe the parents when they lied about the injuries. How many times was baby P visited? So IMHO its the incompetence of social workers rather than cutbacks in funding that were to blame

Considering how low her mother's IQ was and how vulnerable she was apparently why the hell was Star even left with her without weekly supervision?!

@Notbluepeter

:There was a teacher who commented on one of the threads about the tragedy of little Arthur, that the problem with the system is that anyone with a duty of care for a child's well being, also simulataneously has their hands tied.
They have to get consent from the parents before they can speak to another professional about a child. So if a teacher is worried about a child they can't just phone up the health visitor or school nurse without first getting the parents permission.
The fact the abuser gets warned before any action is taken is useless.
Social workers can't physically examine a child with out parental consent. It's all backwards:

This isn't true and it's actually an argument I have had with children's services a number of times in my professional life. Risk trumps consent for statutory agencies. It's a falsehood that needs dispelling quickly. It's also why we see potential child protection cases closed at CIN because the parents wouldn't engage. Of course they won't!!

@JurgensCakeBabyJesus social workers do need consent. They can in exceptional circs withhold from a parent what a child has said, if telling the parent puts the child more at risk. Similarily a professional can refer in without telling the parent in exceptional circs, but the responding SW has to tell the parent a referral has been made.
Legally parents can refuse for a child to be seen. That's rare, but tbh mainly because most parents we work with wouldn't know their right to do that. There is a legal route we can go down in an emergency.

In our area, there is no service that works with perpetrators of domestic abuse, unless it's through probation. There are none at all if the perp is a woman. No services to support woman who have previously had a child removed. Parenting classes are online only. Family support is time limited, 6 one hour sessions a week as standard, 12 max. There is zero support for teenage domestic abuse. Huge waiting list for camhs. 6 month + for lower level counselling (children) no free counselling for adults. Very difficult to get a refuge even when someone feels ready/able to leave. No alcohol support service except for AA. Drug service is time limited and only focused on the adult recovery journey, not really any awareness of the family. Many sure start centres were closed 5 years ago and weren't replaced.
All of these services have been decimated due to austerity. Social services can't support families in a vacuum. And that's before you consider caseloads.

I don't believe social workers are hardened to abuse. I don't think they get enough time to understand what is happening, time with the children, and don't want to dig too much as they can't afford for another case to blow up (in terms of workload) Referrals are often closed after one visit, how much can you pick up in an hour?

I am a CP social worker and have been for nearly two decades. There will be reviews and enquiries into what went wrong for these children and the recommendations will be the same as previous enquiries. These have never been acted on because they will cost money. The cuts to local authorities, who are responsible for child protection, since this government have been in power have been huge. Add onto that cuts to education, benefits, mental health and drug services etc. Child protection does not exist in a bubble. We also only get recongnition when it goes very wrong- none of my colleagues expect adulation but we are vilified, as an example, compared to nurses and health care professionals.

Of course there is bad practice, but there is also a lot of good work going on against the odds which means cases like this are thankfully relatively rare. Of course one is too many and most of us feel and underlying dread that despite all our best efforts this could be a child on our caseload.

Case loads are far too high and to be honest there is little understanding amongst the general public what safeguarding is and how things work. My large LA is one of the better ones and we are apparently 'outstanding' but worker satisfaction is at an all time low and senior management are apparently been shocked by this. Having recently taking the time to check in (virtually) with us after being conspicuously absent throughout lock down they had no idea how bad things are on the frontline. They were expecting a meeting where they would tell us how great various initiatives are and quickly ended it when frontline workers raised concerns about the lack of investment and prioritision in grass roots social work.

The fact is, a social worker, despite being the person who knows the child and family best, has little autonomy. We are inspected by Ofsted and therefore the focus from senior management is on the things that are measured by ofsted. And money. I will work very hard to prevent children being in care but sometimes this is unavoidable. However, there are several layers of management who will not agree to care proceedings because it costs money and they are rated on the number of children who are looked after. This usually results in a massive delay for these children who experience more harm and end up being removed in crisis to unsatisfactory placements.

Each week we get a list sent around of admin tasks/paperwork not within timescales. Of course record keeping is important but these days about 70% of our week is taken up with this due to complex systems and workflows which is not used by those who designed them. This time should be spent with children and families. Oh, and they have got rid of allocated team admin workers during lockdown, expended the size of the area we cover and reduced the number of social workers on teams.

@Ironingtsunami sorry maybe I wasn't clear, I fully understand a SW has to notify parent of a referral, my point was that as part of a statutory body I and my team are frequently told we can't refer in without parental consent, which is nonsense. I don't have it to hand but there is a paragraph of legislation we quote time and time again , escalate to management, call professionals meetings and all of a sudden they realise actually we can refer in without consent because of risk of serious harm. This causes weeks of delays, referrals being rejected and having to be re written because apparently you can't just re open a referral. It's all red tape nonsense that leaves children at risk. I have worked with some excellent social workers but they are becoming fewer and farther between, the good ones burn out and go, which leaves a constant rotation of those seemingly permanently off sick, newly qualifieds who are over their heads and those who without ridiculous staffing shortages probably would've been managed out a long time ago. I manage a multi agency team in a specific area of risk and have two former social workers on my team, they are fantastic but just couldn't work within that system anymore. It's broken.

@Bagamoyo1

I’m a GP so I’ve seen a fair number of child protection cases in the past 25 years.

The problem is primarily money in my opinion. Social workers are overstretched, they have too many on their case load, and the services they can refer to (parenting classes, Sure Start etc) have been cut. I believe there is also a shortage of foster carers.

Another issue is fear of litigation. We all watch our backs more than we ever used to. I know that if I spot what I think is a safeguarding issue, make a referral, but I turn out to be wrong - then the family can complain about me. At best that involves me in literally days of work responding to a complaint. At worst I lose my job.

I also think the population as a whole has a responsibility. So often on here someone will post that they saw a mother manhandling or smacking a child, and they ask if they should have said something. More often than not, the replies are “keep your nose out, you don’t know what’s going on in the mother’s life, she might have mental health problems”, as if this is a get-out-of-jail-free card. I think if people were publicly shamed for mistreating kids then they might think about their behaviour a bit more.

I posted on here once that I saw a father hit his child on the way to school. I intervened and reported it to the school.

I was given loads of abuse for it. I’d do it again and again.

Ah I see what you mean. I don't think we help ourselves to be honest; we used to have a problem with professionals wanting to refer in without a parent knowing because that professional 'doesn't want to impact their relationship' (which is a cop out in my view, part of being a good professional is being able to have those difficult conversations with parents)

From that it has been really pushed that its a standard expectation that professionals need to tell a parent that they're referring in. Which if it's a general concern about say, draconian parenting, or a parent not coping, or a child's behaviour ringing alarm bells, is fine.
If it's because of something immediate or because a child has alleged something against a parent then of course a referral can be made without seeking parents consent first. It's really sad but I've known allegations against parents not to progress to charges on the basis that parents were wrongly informed, and challenged the child before the child could be interviewed by police.

I believe some social workers turn a blind eye to abuse. I've seen it both personally and professionally. We are in the utterly bizarre situation in the family court atm if a mother claims domestic violence in the home she is often threatened with reversal of residency. Fathers parental rights trump all and children are not listened to. I know it's not always men but the majority of cases are.

The system is utterly broken

If the 'system' is broken, while we try and fix it should we not start addressing as a society quite brutallly. We used to have Tufty Road Safety crossing ads on tv. Instead of the vacuous shite we have in the ads lets replace them with some serious alerts about kids safety- make people aware and shamed. Scare if we need to! Really deter people of all sectors, class, creed for having kids they cant cope with. A proper health campaign. They do it in other countries.

We needed to take action over 10 years ago with baby p .. we didn’t and there’s been far too many of these cases. We need more funding, life to mean life and we will need to take protecting children as a priority. There’s nothing more important in the world than this issue and we all watch and do nothing, we need protests we need petitions and we need to stop abusing social workers when things go wrong. Because we’re all guilty of allowing this to go on for too long.

Oh and vote for people that don’t take away funding from the most vulnerable in society.

And also a complete ban of kids on social media. I cant help but think it is the modern equivalent of ' oh its a domestic'. Massive smokescreen and dangerous.

Funding for what @Hertsgirl10 ? Why not really dissuade the general population for stop having loads of kids and really scare the shit out of people that do and abuse them? More and more social workers dont stop absolute fuckers from reproducing and killing their kids.

Also I'm no Tory - never voted for them in my life. But I work in this area and to say the government and d fe isnt sinking cash into this is rubbish. They are. There is money, there are resources. It is the rot in society and parenting that I cant stomach

It won't change until voters pressure MPs to safeguard children properly. The amount spent on children's services is a disgrace, and this will keep happening without a lot more funding and massively lowering thresholds for removing children from abusive parents.

@Bagamoyo1

I’m a GP so I’ve seen a fair number of child protection cases in the past 25 years.

The problem is primarily money in my opinion. Social workers are overstretched, they have too many on their case load, and the services they can refer to (parenting classes, Sure Start etc) have been cut. I believe there is also a shortage of foster carers.

Another issue is fear of litigation. We all watch our backs more than we ever used to. I know that if I spot what I think is a safeguarding issue, make a referral, but I turn out to be wrong - then the family can complain about me. At best that involves me in literally days of work responding to a complaint. At worst I lose my job.

I also think the population as a whole has a responsibility. So often on here someone will post that they saw a mother manhandling or smacking a child, and they ask if they should have said something. More often than not, the replies are “keep your nose out, you don’t know what’s going on in the mother’s life, she might have mental health problems”, as if this is a get-out-of-jail-free card. I think if people were publicly shamed for mistreating kids then they might think about their behaviour a bit more.

@Bagamoyo1

That rule needs to go for a start!
How can people that aren’t doing anything wrong, want to report or complain about someone that is just looking out for their kids? Like Doctors don’t have enough to do than cause trouble for people for fun? I’m sorry that you have to be so careful.

I think all parents need to understand that if anyones suspicious about anything to do with their child, they need to accept not everything is about them but if we all are suspected as a standard then the ones that are suffering won’t slip through the net so easily.

It is going to carry on happening. I have friends who are terribly worried about their grandchild, they are going to court to gain access but social services seem unable to do much. They are getting to the stage where there is nothing more they can do as social services have no powers.

Ok I will say it again - women, when does it start being a societal problem.? When do we start raging about the fact we dont want perfume ads on tv and buses but want parent ads? When do we give a fuck about children being plastered on social media?when do we start really raging aboit porn addled men ? When do we stop blaming this underfunded group of social workers? When do we shout out and say to our communities STOP FUCKING HAViNG KIDS. All of them! Rich , poor, any colour or age.

@JHMJHM

Funding for what *@Hertsgirl10* ? Why not really dissuade the general population for stop having loads of kids and really scare the shit out of people that do and abuse them? More and more social workers dont stop absolute fuckers from reproducing and killing their kids.

@JHMJHM

The current gov are doing the best they can at capping people into poverty at the moment, I don’t think large families are responsible for child abuse, child abusers are.

Anyway do you really not understand why funding is a huge issue? Unfortunately people abuse kids, motioning is a deterrent for that they will keep doing it.

The cuts from all of the child services is making it very easy for these monsters to do these things to children and get away with it.
You don’t understand just how much has been cut, or how many social workers leave the jobs for being underpaid and over worked, taking on many cases that should be taken by other social workers that can’t be employed because it’s not affordable due to cuts.
Another thing is the final decisions are made by managers that don’t actually meet these kids, I truly believe that there needs to be an extra service to help the load for social workers.
More needs doing not just stopping people have large families.