A study by Andy Bilson and Katie Martin at
the University of Central Lancashire has found that more than 20% of children
born in 2009-10 were referred to children’s services in England before their
fifth birthday. Half of those referred were suspected of being abused or
neglected. Child protection investigations were carried out in the cases of 5%
of the children.
Bilson is quoted as saying:
“Children’s services are under considerable
pressure to investigate more mainly because of government, media and public
responses to child deaths and an Ofsted inspection regime that is covering its
back…. Social workers are swamped by this growing tide of investigative work
leaving little time to support victims and help families overcome the problems
leading to referral.”
The authors conclude that the scale of
statutory involvement and the growing focus on early investigative
interventions results in “a considerable proportion” of families suffering “high
levels of suspicion, fear and shame”. And that this is done “…without evidence
that the individualised, investigative approach is effective in preventing
further harm.”
These findings are deeply concerning. Absence
of longitudinal data (e.g. in government statistics) does not allow year on
year comparison, but there must be a strong suspicion that reaction to tragedies
such as Baby Peter and Khyra Ishaq, and the relentless pressure on services not
to make mistakes, has resulted in unwelcome net-widening.
One of the most important performance
indicators of a child protection system seems to me to be how accurately it
identifies children who need to be investigated and how well it excludes those
that do not. Put another way, a test of the system is how well it minimises the
number of false positives. Just as
medics are concerned to spare people from unnecessary operations, procedures
and invasive tests, so those of us in child protection should be constantly
trying to avoid unnecessary investigations.
Of course, if we do not monitor how well we
are doing in this regard it is no wonder that we don’t do very well. Bilson and
Martin are to be congratulated for starkly laying out the facts on this issue.
Hopefully those in authority will now put in hand collecting and publishing
this kind of data on a routine basis.
