To think we need a complete re-think of child protection?

[Feelingoptimistic]

Like many others, I have been thinking a lot about the Baby P case. What I completely fail to understand is why no one did anything earlier. Have we all become too PC? Is it considered ok for children to live somewhere where there is dog poo on the floor?
This morning I just read this:

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/11/child-deaths-baby-p

The thing is that in most of these cases the death of the child follows months of abuse and neglect - so there is an opportunity to spot what is happening and prevent it. I think we need a system of consistent monitoring of children and early intervention when things don't seem right.

'So basically the only people who are wanting to stay in the job are either saints or people who are just happy to collect the paycheck because its more than asda are paying '

Sunds right; I was considering it but the flak I got from people- on hee, relatives, all sort- was incredible! ENough not to put me off, but to sideline me into something else. probably an awfullot of more experienced women and men like me as well, I would bet.

I'm both a beleiver that the system is woefully under provided for and that the interest in these cases makes the point that it is unusual.

Social work is under funded and under valued
A lot of social workers are recruited from abroad - Eastern Europe and Africa, becasue no one from the UK wants to do such a difficult job.
I dont have a problem with working with them at all, but I find it depressing that Social Work is such a poor career choice for British schol leavers.

I'm a , although no longer in Children and Families.

Money is the issue. Children and families has a set budget. Taking a child into care costs an unbelievable amount of money, both in terms of paying for care and in terms of SW hours. So you can only take the very worst cases into care, otherwise the service runs out of money, and has no budget left when a serious emergency comes up, leaving a child in danger. So it doesn't matter that a SW can see that a situation will get worse, or is potentially dangerous. Management only lets you step in when the crisis has occured, and its too late to do more than use a sticking plaster.

Society expects SW's to assess complex situations on limited time spent with a family, because caseloads are high and teams understaffed. Training is meant to be continuous, but becomes a low priority when everyone is overworked. Morale is at rock bottom, because day in day out, you see children and want to pick them up and run, but you have to walk away and leave them.

Everyone, from management, to the families, to the public tells you its all your fault, which leads to workers having to spend the bulk of their time filling in paperwork to show the world that the council was doing its best, instead of actual work with children, which is what you trained for.

I have a first class degree, but went into this poorly paid career because I wanted to do something that matters. And I couldn't stay working in Children and Families because it is soul destroying. I work with adults now but will always be sad that I couldnt do what desperately needs to be done.

Rant over. Sorry!

I'm a SW

what a shame poohba!
Children need people like you!
I too worked in Child Protection - Police
and people used to sya ' oh it must be so stressful'
It was - but not dealing with the children,
The stress came becasue there was so much of it, because I felt so under valued, because the CPS rarely want to prosecute...
It knocks it out of you.

Thankyou Sixty.

In answer to the actual post, I don't think we need to overhaul the system. I think that as a socciety we need to decide that Child Protection is important and fund it accordingly. Give the system the money it needs to function, and then look at what works and what doesn't.

And the media needs to stop vilifying SW. Fail to remove a child and you are as bad as a murderer. Remove a child and you are an evil child-snatcher. In any other profession, mistakes are made. Can you imagine the pressure of a job where, with huge responsibilities, and tightly controlled budget, you recieve death threats for making a mistake. No SW wants to screw up - because they care about these children, and they have to live with their failures. But they are human and under enormous stress. The fear you live with for the children you work with is bad enough without adding to it.

Absolutely poohba
What could be more important?
But you only have to see the level of importance that chief officers give to CP.
because it's not a performance indicator - given very short shrift,

Exactly.

Something that shocked me during training; Teachers, who spend more time with children than any other professional, don't receive any child protection training (in Scotland anyway, maybe different in England)No one tells them how to spot signs of abuse. How can it be everyone's responsibility if we don't even train teachers?

The Courts also, where I now work, don't see it as a priority, allow offenders to plead to lesser charges in domestic cases for the sake of a speedy conviction, which ties SW hands.

Thats if it gets as far as court...
The referrals we get from schools are few and far between andnot great at that.

Oh for a crystal ball to tell me which children in crappy families are being abused more than we realize from those who are not.

My local SS dept is massively understaffed, they literally cannot get people. Not surprising given the pasting SW get from the media in the rare cases it all goes wrong. A SW told me just last week that they are so short staffed locally they look through referrals to see which cases they can close without even seeing the children. My only amazement is that there is not a Baby P in the papers every day.

JP I fear you are probably correct
Every case in the media makes me think there bit for the Grace of God..

poohba, teachers in scotland most definitely do have to have child protection training.

IMO it's the area of "neglect" and "emotional abuse" that is the most problematic to get through the courts - despite possibly/probably being the most damaging to the children.

They grow up into Baby P's mother.

If you went to court saying there was dog poo on the floor and the parents were not giving regular meals/washing the children/putting sheets on the bed and the like you'd be laughed out of court.

And if social workers removed children who were living in circumstances like these they'd be pilloried in the media.

Don't let anyone you care about be a social worker.

What role does homestart play in supporting families, particularly in the area of neglect that gagarin describes?

Teachers definitely get CP training in England. As do governors.

bs bviosuly not famillies where a child is being removed but actually my HS (I was an orhganiser) actually did a fair bit of holding work for SS. Way against our remit and I didn't usually find I was able to put a volunteer in so had to do it myself (usually as a weekly holding visit / assessment whilst I kicked off) but yes I helped manage some very complex caseloads indeed that included neglect, violence etc.

if you didn't, you'dlose your SS funding.

Which actually we did anyway so now they're not there but heck, goodness knows how SS cope with even less people in the mix.

(BTW do remember that homestart and surestart are different; I'm sure you do but many don't realise that and I used to get grief about Government targets etc when actually we were more of a mentoring charity.
Though my job title was home start sure start org, so heck that ain't confusing then.

It all sounds like really good work, peachy. Are you saying homestart is no longer?

I was wondering whether homestart is/was successful in teaching parents how to be better especially those with learning difficulties or who never had proper role models.

Agree that much more money and attention needs to be funnelled into child protection.

As a retired social worker with over 30 years experience I was heartened to read that social workers are shedding some light on the problems in child protection.

People who criticise sws "incompetent twats" I read on one postsimply have no idea of the realities of working in child protection. As many others have said the real problem lies in the fact that SSD are hugley under resourced as are many other public services. Successive govts just do not want to put the money in to properly resource the service.

The other thing though is that however much money is poured in and however many procedures are written, while ever there are so many horrendously damaged people out there who are parents, it will never IMO be possible to completely eliminate risk.

I get so frustrated at the way in which the media jump on the social workers in these cases, and there is barely a mention of the doctors, paediatricians, health visitors, police etc who have also not spotted the signs of abuse.

Also of course and as others have mentioned, there is a complete misunderstanding amongst the public the sws make the decision about taking a child into care, whereas this is not the case. It is the courts that make these decisions and these days a sw has to go to enormous lengths to prove to a court that they have done everything possible to keep a child at home before a Care Order is granted.

On top of all this, I gather that since Laming's report after Victoria Climbie that sws are now spending up to 80% of their time completing the computerised records he introduced. How crazy is that?

Small wonder that all SSDs nationally are struggling with recruitment problems (especially into child protection) and are trying to run a service with increasingly large vacancy rates. It is a nightmare really and why woud anyone want a job in child protection.

My sympathies to all sws out there struggling with huge case loads and trying to cope with the stress of wondering if someone on your case load is being abused.

To the people who "wonder why something can't be done to stop allthis" - please try to understand the difficulties and stop condemning social workers.

BS our homestart closed and a few others I have learned on here, but its run as a franchise based system so most are still going strong.Absolutely I would say they were very successful as a whole at preventing famillies make that step down from struggling to collpasing- sometimes we 'just' held things but very often we made signiicant improvements; just from what I have seen we were esp. good with parents with LD, multiple births, where a disability ahd been diagnosed in the child or adult, or PND. We also worked with a few famillies throughout the illness and death of a aprent from a terminal disease and though they weren't my famillies, I understand the volunteers helped significantly.

A report out when I worked there stated that for every £8 spent on HS it saved SS £80. I don't doubt it.

In September I am applying for alpces on both PGCE and SW courses; it's the only way (aplying) I can get within the Uni course and find out for certain which path I want to follow. PGCE will be mroe ractical for me as a mother of disabled kids (holidays etc) but I still can't forget some of the famillies I met who ahd been let down every step of their lives and were still battling strong. Or indeed the news that this morning a man is in court for murdering his 4 month old baby just miles from where I live.

NanaNina good post

Froma different angle we have been 'let down' by SSd over our boys (both ASD) but I don't feel any bitterness to the individual SW's, just the way the system works.

There's a thread in Chat atm about handing over repsonisbility for DLA payments to SW's, which will not only mean that a significant number- I would randomly guess from MN experience up to half- of famillies with a disabled child won't be able to claim through alck of SSD input, but that workloads will increase even more.We have a child on HR and one on MR< and we ae both registered as carers 9though DH lsoes that when he goes to Uni next month, he also works PT). Apaprently the Attendance Allowance change is up before parliament in a few moths, so anyone concerned about SSD workload might like to find the thread and sign the petition (titled something like IS there anyone out therre- SN needs your help)

My DP was on a protection order as a child, he was taken to live with his grandparents after his mother decied to move in with a well known pedophile he suffered years of abuse at the hands of his mother and her "partners" when she finally got him back and nothing was donae about it becuase she would move counties every few months to avoid the social services and DP's fathers who desperatley wanted custody (sp?) of him.

Another story -

My friend was in hospital last week, she is 39 weeks pregnant and has gestation diabetes and the baby is huge, she has one 4yr old with SN and a 2yr old as well, her husband smacked the 4yr old bottom (i suppose quite hard) after he kicked my firend in the stomach and a nurse witnessed it and now the husband is in custordy with the police and the children are in forster care. Im not sure if thats the full story or not but i guess it shows that the SS are doing thier jobs.

One only has to look at the Daily Mail (spit) or similar rags. SWs are routinely portrayed as either incompetent paper-pushers or evil child-snatchers depending on outcome.

The SW that was primarily involved with my family was (on the whole) very good but horribly overworked. It was also notable that no support or assistance was offered that would've cost SS any money. We also had some minor dealings with other SWs who weren't anywhere near as good.

I don't know if anyone above has mentioned this, but if we are asking sw to remove children living in neglect from their homes, an awful lot more of us are going to have to be willing to be foster carers. Proper foster carers, that is, families, not people running a business that is little more than a hostel. There's no point taking them out of the frying pan into the fire.

And I'm sorry but in the wake of our family's experience dealing with the social workers we've been allocated for a long series of foster placements, I'd want to see a lot of reform before money is pumped in.