What were the catalysts for high levels of safeguarding in the UK from 2000 onwards?

[TheTERFnextDoor]

As we are sadly aware, some parts of transgender ideology are eroding at the strong safeguarding policies schools, charities etc have in place.

I'm in my thirties. Growing up, we knew that we could phone Childline, talk to our teacher etc if we had welfare concerns. However, I'm interested in what events prior to my generation led to such measures?

I think once the backlash starts against gender, there will hopefully be stronger safeguarding measures put in place as a result. So what happened before this, to give us what we had in the 00s/ 10s?

Soham, which led to Bichard and a complete overhaul of the criminal records process. Also resulted in statutory Safer Recruitment processes that are in place in schools today.

Baby P is another.

Every piece of safeguarding legislation we have comes from tragedy.

I expect the Lucy Letby enquiry to lead to more.

Victoria Climbie

So ham murders

Victoria Clombie was the case that led to the Every Child Matters initiative which was about services working in a more joined up way.

Before the DBS, a CRB check was created, intended to take over from a list of offenders that was supposed to be checked before hiring teachers. It was a clunky, ill-designed, half-hearted process. Until 2002, a few months after it was started up, when a school caretaker murdered two 10yo girls at the school where he worked. He was a violent man known to the police, and was suspected to be a serial sex offender, but they had not taken any action. He had applied for the job a year earlier, using an alias.

It was such a shocking case that it triggered the CRB checking process to be rapidly improved and become obligatory for anyone working or volunteering with children.

The little girls were Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

following with interest. really interesting thread OP.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/transgender-applications

Currently all you have to do is, well nothing. If you are transgender, which is undefined, just leave your historical name off the application and all they say is that you 'should' contact them to let them know.

Because dodgy ex criminals are well known for their honesty.

Anyone who thinks there are high levels of safeguarding in the UK I am afraid is very much mistaken.

Dunblane was the big change in gun licences but it was pre2000

Soham introduced national police database and CBS checks.

Following the Saville Scandal, two large scale investigations.

2014 saw investigations into paedophilia in England's boarding schools (approx 50% are thought to have harboured them) although no new laws were introduced. Scotland's review is still ongoing.

Maria Colwell, who was brutally murdered in the 1970s.

Lots of important cases.

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2007/01/10/what-have-we-learned-child-death-scandals-since-1944/

https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-protection-system/history-of-child-protection-in-the-uk

Yet through all that there still isn't a joined up national database and children's historic concerns are lost simply by moving areas and parents not declaring where they are going / previously lived.

Every piece of safeguarding legislation we have comes from tragedy.

This, basically. The safeguarding framework we have today is 'lessons learned' from every horrific case of child abuse you have heard of and many others which never made the headlines.

The speed at which we are going backwards and lessons are being forgotten is truly frightening.

The enquiries into the deaths of Maria Colwell, Tyra Henry & Jasmine Beckford led to the 1988 Working Together & 1989 Children Act that are still the foundation of our current safeguarding laws. Then in the late 80s there was the Cleveland abuse scandal where children were removed from parents on the say so of a few doctors - some of the cases subsequent enquiries showed there were no cause for concerns. In the 1990s we had the Satanic abuse scandal in the Orkneys where children were removed from their families in dawn raids on the basis of false information.

All of this - terrible child deaths & reactive removal of children on flimsy evidence showed the importance of working together - of building a picture of a child's life via everyone who knows the child so that proportionate decisions about a child's safety and future are made in light of evidence and the law. The state makes a poor parent and children in care do poorly in terms of all life measures. But, as we still see from the deaths of Logan Mwangi, Arthur Labinio-Hughes, Star Hobson and countless others, children are still abused and murdered by those who should love and care for them and at times the state must intervene.

So it's unforgivable to see these these complex issues being currently manipulated by some for their own ideological ends - we know it won't end well and the casualties will always be children.

Every piece of safeguarding legislation we have comes from tragedy.

This is so so sad. Why is it we / society cant ever act in advance. Terrible to read the names again of the poor children who died in such horrible circumstances.

This might be of interest https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-protection-system/history-of-child-protection-in-the-uk

Sarah's Law is named after Sarah Payne, who was murdered age 7 in 2000.

Esther Rantzen started Childline in 1986 after the death of a child who starved to death, locked in a bedroom.

Dunblane.
The parents fought for disclosure checks on people working/ volunteering to work with children.
The man who did it was kicked out the Scouts but able to set up his own boys youth club.

As well as the tragedies that spurred action, which there had also been plenty of for decades before, one of the most important factors in bringing about more safeguarding legislation was female representation in parliament. Until the late 90s, women made up only a fairly token number of MPs, but the Labour landslide in ‘97 brought with it a doubling of female MPs to over a hundred for the first time. This, in turn, forced the Conservatives to be open to female candidates (it's a pity that the Conservative’s comfort with female leaders hasn’t pushed the Labour Party in the same way) and has lead to more and more women in parliament. And with those numbers came the ability for women to bring up matters that are generally more important to women than men - in particular domestic and sexual violence against women and children.

Obviously there are plenty of failures too, but I don’t think it’s conceivable that a parliament that was 90% male would have passed the sort of safeguarding legislation we’ve seen in the last 20 years. When you hear female MPs from the 90s talk about the way it changed when more women were elected it’s quite jaw dropping to realise what they worked through and how their voices (and those of the female citizen’s MPS represent) were stymied by male domination of the House.

Maria Colwell is the first child abuse case I remember hitting the headlines in 1973. The social worker involved was described as seeing the parents as her clients rather than the child.