Children will remain at risk - until we’re told what risk is
By Alasdair Palmer - Telegraph
In spite of clear evidence that he had been subjected to violent abuse in his mother’s and stepfather’s care, social workers in Haringey decided that it was safe to let Baby P stay with them. Social workers in Kirklees in West Yorkshire decided it was safe to let Shannon Matthews stay with her mother Karen - who then organised Shannon’s kidnap and imprisonment.
How could the officials involved make such abysmal misjudgments? One answer has already been offered: because they were following Government guidance that children should, if possible, be kept with their families. Shahid Malik, the Justice Minister, has said that we need a “debate” about the validity of that guidance. Others have insisted that the lesson of the Baby P case is that more children need to be taken into care.
It is not a view shared by the many thousands of parents who feel their children have been wrongly taken from them by social workers. No one knows how many of the more than 35,000 children taken into care in Britain last year were wrongly removed: by law, the details of each case are secret.
Very occasionally, however, examples of patently unjustified action are uncovered in the Court of Appeal. Earlier this year, the court ruled that the conduct of officials from East Sussex Council in forcibly putting a child up for adoption was “disgraceful… [their behaviour] was an abuse of power, and wholly unacceptable”. While no one knows how many children are wrongly taken from their parents, we do know that the consequences of being taken into care are almost universally dire. The vast majority of children emerge without any formal educational qualifications. Many end up homeless, as drug addicts, criminals or prostitutes.
So what are the circumstances that justify taking a child into care? The Government rightly insists that decisions should be taken “in the best interests of the child”. The threshold for removal is that the child will be at risk of “significant harm” if allowed to remain at home.
What counts as “significant harm”? Astonishingly, in the hundreds of pages of advice the Government has issued on this question, there is nothing which gives a meaningful and precise definition of that phrase. The result is that “significant harm” has as many different definitions as there are social workers. The Government advice states, for example, that “significant harm” includes “emotional abuse”, which is defined as “the persistent emotional ill-treatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent effects on the child’s emotional development.” What kinds of treatment will have such “severe and persistent effects” is left unclear.
Result? The gaping definitional hole is filled by social workers’ own judgments and decisions on the matter. Those have ranged so widely that “emotional abuse” has been taken to include both being too indulgent with your children and not being indulgent enough. Moving your body in the “wrong” way in front of your children has been called “emotional abuse”, as has feeding them too many grapes - which may sound too ludicrous to be true, but each of those examples is taken from a report by a social worker alleging “emotional abuse”. And last year, more children were place on the “at risk” register for suspected “emotional abuse” than for any other harm except “neglect”.
The lack of clarity about the nature of “significant harm” has two malign effects. One is that social workers spend an enormous amount of time investigating families where there is actually no threat to children at all. Social workers often complain that their case load is too high, but the main reason is the amount of time devoted to children who do not come near any reasonable definition of “significant harm”. Because they investigate so many children unnecessarily, social workers miss those who really are at risk. If the vulnerable are to be protected, resources have to be targeted at cases where there is serious, clear and present danger. While the definition of “significant harm” remains so nebulous, that cannot happen.
The second effect is more insidious: it becomes impossible for the authorities to identify whether social workers are doing their job properly. If the Government cannot define clearly or precisely what it means for a child to be in danger of “significant harm”, how can inspectors distinguish between appropriate investigations and those that are an unjustified intrusion into family life?
The short answer is that they cannot - until after a disaster happens. When Baby P is beaten to death, it is suddenly obvious that something has gone dreadfully wrong. But, up until that point, thanks to the elasticity of the notion of “significant harm”, everything that social workers do can be seen as falling under the legitimate investigation of threats.
Ofsted, the organisation responsible for inspecting social services, gave Haringey’s department a “three-star rating” in its inspection before the circumstances of Baby P’s death were apparent. After those circumstances had been made public, Ofsted decided that Haringey social services were “very seriously” defective. Why? Because inspectors have no criteria for assessing the validity of the judgments that social workers make. Inspectors can only assess their compliance with procedural requirements - and in Haringey, that seemed to be good.
It is nearly six years since the same council’s social services department was excoriated for its “unacceptable” performance in the case of Victoria Climbié, the eight-year-old girl who was being tortured to death as social workers closed her file because they thought she was not “at risk”. Baby P died for precisely the same reason that Victoria Climbié did: social workers judged that neither faced “significant harm”. Not one of Haringey’s inspections helped social workers to recognise “significant harm” before it was too late.
The same pattern is replicated in a less drastic form in social services departments across Britain. It explains why the inspectorates seem incapable of improving their performance. In the interview he gives to this newspaper today, Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, pledges to embark on a major reform of social services. If he is serious, he will have to address the issue of what constitutes “significant harm”. Until that notion receives a clear and effective definition, the same mistakes will be repeated. Child deaths will continue to take place under the noses of social workers. Children will continue to be wrongfully removed from parents who love and care for them - and social workers will increase rather than diminish human misery.
By Alasdair Palmer - Telegraph - Children will remain at risk - until we're told what risk is
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On 7th Dec 2008 at 05:55 AM Teresa said...
This has got to be one of the most sensible and worth reading articles I have read in a newspaper in a very long time.
It reflects what many careleavers have been saying for years and sadly we have been ignored.
Alasdair has captured the system as it truly is and he deserves an award for a reporter who is listening and understanding the true nature of whats going on.
Ed Balls could do with this man giving him some advice eh!
I welcome the day careleavers, survivors and those like Justice for Families are taken seriously and our voices heard.
Ed Balls needs to listen to those who have been failed by the system such as careleavers because no text book can ever teach the social workers what our experience can.
If they were to drop thier old hat social branding of us they might actually learn something worth while that will not only enable them to do a better job but also help them actually prevent children dying or being abused.
I would be interested to see...
a social worker v a careleaver who has survived those failures and abuse and see who can spot the child being abused out of 5 families.
I can bet it will be the careleaver.