To not understand how councils can have awful things happen to children in their care?

[SoWhereIsTheElusiveWorkman]

I was gutted to learn of the death of Casey Louise Horrocks tonight. She was a thirteen year old girl from Manchester who was in the care system.

I am really at a loss and angry as to how councils, as corporate parents, can have children end up in danger.

There is so much wrong with the care system, and no one gives a shit so it doesn’t get fixed.

www.communitycare.co.uk/2023/02/02/care-review-lead-government-must-go-further-and-faster-in-response/

Not a clue? I know a lot of children have been abused while in the care of councils/social work yet non have been convicted of neglect

Its like 13-15 year old girls are fair game to many perverts/ monsters

And many others turn a blind eye, imagining they're cheap rather than damaged and unprotected

Turns the stomach

That is disgusting. How can they screw it up so badly?

How can they let them out of their sight?

Because their hands are heavily tied. They can't lock them up.
They can't stop them walking out.

Being in care doesn't mean being locked up, or being accompanied by a member of staff at all times.

I've not seen anything in the media yet about the circumstances of her being with this person. So probably best that we wait to find out if there were any errors of safeguarding or whether she was just out and about like any other teenager in the school holidays.

They need love. Care and love.

Anyone who treats them in a sexual way should have the book thrown at them.

Finding 13 year olds, especially damaged ones, sexually attractive is repugnant.

They should have been protected.

Without a loving family who has instilled self belief, a nurturing environment and ambition, I dont know how much hope there will be for said protection.

The family unit should have been there for them

If the girl wasn't in care would you be blaming her parents for this? It's a huge tragedy but as far as I am aware there is no one suspected as responsible other than the arrested 16yo. Safeguarding reviews always happen if a child know to social care dies unexpectedly. That's not to say that there couldn't be improvements to the care system but for all we know this girl could have been with a loving foster family.

The whole care sector is falling apart but until everyone accepts a tax increase to employ more staff and pay higher wages, it won't improve.

Just recently where I stay, a fully qualified Social Worker was physically attacked by a client who was recently out of prison. He ended up back inside but that was the final straw for the Social Worker who decided to walk away from her 20+ years in the sector.

Social Workers do an incredibly hard job and are always the first ones blamed when something goes wrong, that doesn't help with staff retention either as morale is rock bottom, people must be mad to sign up for that line of work.

They still have to go to school and they're not prisoners.

My daughter's friend grew up in the care system. I won't go into details because its her life and story but it was very difficult for them to keep her safe.

They did. But she constantly.absconded and engaged in very risky behaviours when she did.

The only way they could have prevented this would have been for her to have 121 constant supervision from the moment she woke up to the moment she went to bed in a lcoked room.

Amd she was just one damaged child in the system. They are so under resourced that they simply can't do this.

My daughter is currently at university training to be a social worker precisely because she wants to make a difference and improve the lot of people like her friend. And that's why everyone who becomes a social worker goes into it. But it's just another broken system.

You can’t lock teenagers up without significant legal intervention.
Regardless of whether their legal parents are the state or not.

I'm going to take a mad stab in the dark the OP has never personally been anywhere near the care system.

What job do you do OP?

I have been a foster carer for many years and in recent times I am sad to see that the system most certainly does not care about the children in care - always prioritising money over children, often paperwork over children. There are of course excellent social workers who do care, but they do not last long.

After another priest committed suicide here because … reasons … a bloke said to me in despair “when will it stop?” I told him “it never will”. He looked at me and I had to tell him that the Church was full of men and it’s men that commit these crimes, not priests. As long as there are men on this earth, crimes against children will be committed.

Do you have a teenager? Do you ever let them out of your sight? If they really wanted to go out how would you legally stop them? Residential care workers do incredible work in some of the hardest circumstances with the most vulnerable young people. You think the system is crap, step up and come and work in it, make it better. I’m guessing you won’t.

And if you do, people would be crying from the rooftops about how children are being locked up when they're not the criminals, quite rightly.

Secure settings do exist to try to mitigate risk, but the risk has to be huge, it has to be evidenced that on release from the secure setting the risk will remain lowered (impossible to say) and it has to be for the shortest amount of time possible
In addition there simply are not vacancies, you can wait months and months and months for a placement, sometimes never getting one.
Many children are not considered by placement as suitable for a secure setting because they want to work with children that they can effect change with, if they feel that they cant do this with a young person due to other issues, they wont offer a placement.

The reasons are broad and not helped by criticising 1 group of people. Children in the care system have often initially not been cared for appropriately by their parents or extended family, hence the reason they remove them, which is an absolute last resort.We don't know her whole history, but by the time she was removed she will have already gone through significant trauma, likely to lead to long term emotional harm, and her ability to evaluate safe choices likely impaired as these adverse childhood experiences can affect brain development. Even if she was making risky choices, it's really limited what any carers can do, she can't be locked up unless committed a serious crime. Social workers are so stretched, their impact is very limited.

Then the influences of social media, peers and school, the failure of the police to prevent a known risk from re offending. Possibly many other factors too.

Of course the people concerned give a shit. The problem is lack of money, lack of care homes (not enough money available and there are always complaints when a new one is proposed), the care homes that do exist are not prisons and children can get out if they have a mind to, lack of foster parents and, it would appear, a general breakdown in society and community. Social services are fighting a losing battle but to say they don't give a shit is a vile insult..

Until we're prepared to spend the money on social workers and the care system as a whole it's going to keep happening. It's at the point of collapse, staff are overworked with too many cases each.

A young lad taken into care recently had to move 85 miles away because that was the closest place with a bed for him.

It's not the fault of those trying to work in an underfunded and overburdened system who are at fault. It's the system itself.

Money and perception is a huge issue. If we invested more in early years, education and parenting support we wouldn’t have as many children in care. But then a lot of people who supposedly care about children moan that money is being spent on those feckless children and their families.

If conditions for foster carers were better we wouldn’t need as many care homes.

If children were appropriately supported post adoption fewer adoptions would fail, and its likely more children in care would be adoptable.

Teenagers in care are extremely vulnerable, particularly those who are in homes, they’re extremely traumatised and often find comfort in the chaos they are accustomed to. As they’re in a home rather than with foster carers it is harder to notice patterns of behaviour.

Children in care rightly aren’t prisoners, traumatised teenagers are often drawn to chaos as they look for someone who “gets’ them, they’re also fairly obviously vulnerable to the average person, so it doesn’t take much for the wrong person to spot them.

Then they turn 18 and far too many people see them as wasters, so unsurprisingly the cycle often continues.

It's parents who do this children not council or social services, parents who should never have had kids but society is not allowed to say that in case a parent takes offence and yes I am angry parents let this happen

How predictable that this becomes an opportunity to bash social care before anyone even knows what’s happened and how she got to be in that flat.

Children can’t be locked up to keep them safe just in case. They are entitled to have a life and safeguarding doesn’t/shouldn’t mean a deprivation of their liberty unless in very serious and specific circumstances.

Quite rightly, we don’t know anything about this child, what her history is and how she came into care. We don’t know what she’s experienced and how this has impacted her, whether she has been a victim of child exploitation or has run away to meet a boy.
An investigation will look at these things but we don’t have a right to that information right now when there’s people grieving for her and an active police investigation.

What a stupid comment. They are out and about just like any other teenagers. You sound very naive op.

Young kids need love and attachment that does not typically happen in care homes where young social care workers are sometimes too young to even have children the ages of the children they are looking after. Sometimes they are early twenties looking after later aged teens. Children without that attachment are vulnerable to looking for an outlet for it in other ways and there are scores of predatory men out there willing to abuse that.