The news of the day undoubtedly comes from Community Care whose survey of 1,000 children’s social workers in England found that more than 40% had experienced management pressure to reclassify child protection cases as ‘child in need’.
More than a third were reported to have felt pressure to
return looked-after children to their birth families, with about three-quarters
of these believing that the reason was saving money.
Surveys like this should never be brushed aside, as I
thought some of the comments from Government and elsewhere tended to do. This
survey is congruent with other data we have about the child protection system
in England, which appears to be dealing more and more with more cases, with fewer resources.
That could be a recipe for disaster.
