Jillings – at last

It is truly shameful that it has taken twenty years to publish the Jillings Report into institutional child abuse in North Wales.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/08/jillings-report-north-wales-child-abuse

Some of the abuse that the report details dates back nearly forty years.

Of course there are all kinds of human tragedies that lie behind the words of the report. And no doubt justice has been denied to many. But my main concern is what appears to have been an endemic knee-jerk response from all sorts of agencies and individuals; namely that when things go wrong, ranks are closed and the truth is brushed under the carpet.

Can you imagine us tolerating the same sort of thing happening after an air crash? What would the public reaction be if we were told that a report on the safety of a particular plane or airport was not going to be published, for legal reasons. It would sound like something out of the old Soviet Union. It would be intolerable.

We should all be intolerant of secrecy and obfuscation about child protection failings. Without an open culture in which things going wrong, or appearing to go wrong, are reported and investigated, failings in systems will never become public and solutions will never emerge.

Of course that does not mean that individuals have to be identified. There are any number of ways in which individuals can be protected, if the need arises, and people wishing to report institutional abuse, especially the victims, need to know that they will protected personally if that is required.  

Inspection, inspection ....

There has been a lot of comment on inspection this week.

I was very pleased to hear the head of Ofsted, former head teacher Sir Michael Wilshaw, finally agree to multi-agency child protection inspection. I expect he has come under pressure to change his mind, with virtually everybody else thinking it is a good idea. Why we have to wait for them until 2015 is beyond me!

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/articles/05/07/2013/119309/multi-agency-child-protection-inspections-to-start-in.htm

Then there was what seemed to me an interesting and useful suggestion from Andrew Webb, the President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. Rather than giving one word, headline-grabbing judgements, Webb suggested that Ofsted inspections of child protection should give ‘a narrative verdict’. This would, he argued, reflect the complexity of the safeguarding system.

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/articles/05/07/2013/119307/one-word-ofsted-judgements-ludicrous-says-top-childrens-director.htm

I think that idea is simple and sensible – so it probably will never be put into practice!!

Neglecting neglect - in Ireland

The report of an independent review of the management of child neglect case in three parts of the Republic of Ireland has reached some uncomfortable conclusions, according to the Irish Times.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/report-criticises-hse-child-protection-services-1.1449718

Most worryingly the review found that some social workers “… lacked understanding of the deep and long-lasting impact of neglect, while some seemed fixated on keeping children in families where neglect was occurring”.

I have to say that I personally don’t know many social workers who are unaware of the consequences of severe neglect. But what may be happening in Ireland, and elsewhere, is that the priorities of agencies and the operation of the legal system shape workers’ perceptions and responses.

If you believe that you are not going to get the necessary resources from your bosses to deal with a particular case, or if you believe that the courts will not make orders in certain situations, then it would not be surprising if you ended up tolerating behaviour that should not be tolerated.

I believe that the neglect of neglect will not be addressed simply by providing additional training for social workers. A strategic cross cutting approach is required, targeting not only front-line service providers, but, among others, members of higher management, legal staff and judges.

To SCR or not to SCR, that is the question??

I’m sure I can’t be the only person to be thinking that process seems to be triumphing over purpose.

According to Children and Young People Now heads of local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs) have been instructed to inform the new panel of experts if they decide not to conduct a full serious case review (SCR) following a serious incident. It seems that the experts will ask for details and may overturn the decision.

Let’s just hope that all this doesn’t become some centre versus periphery bureaucratic tiff, with regulations being waved and procedures cited.

The PURPOSE should be learning to make children and young people safer, not producing more reports. Simply producing a Serious Case Review report in itself does nothing. It’s the thinking and the understanding and the sharing that result in learning. These are things not well covered by regulations.

A Slap on the Wrist?

I’ve commented on Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) decisions before - http://chrismillsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/name-shame-blame.html - in that case because I felt that discipline was an excessive response.

Now I am reacting to another case in the opposite direction - http://www.hpc-uk.org/mediaandevents/pressreleases/index.asp?id=658 

A panel of the HCPC Conduct and Competence Committee heard that a social worker was with others outside the victim’s house shouting abuse. Apparently she was heard to shout out threats to kill a victim inside the property. As a result she appeared in court and was convicted of a criminal offence.

One report states that she was heard to shout “baby murders” - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351562/Social-worker-suspended-12-months-screaming-baby-murderers-outside-couples-house-threatening-kill-them.html 

The HCPC panel concluded that the social worker’s behaviour was “wholly unacceptable, unprofessional and deplorable conduct and brings the profession into disrepute”. They can say that again!

The panel expressed the view that this type of bullying behaviour called into question her suitability to remain in social work, but then decided the most appropriate action was to suspend her from the Register for a period of twelve months!

Sorry, perhaps I didn’t hear that correctly. Twelve months = one year = 365 days = over in 2014 and back to work. Surely not!

Two horrific cases

Two horrific cases have recently hit the news. 

I predict that the tragic death of two-year-old Keanu Williams in Birmingham will result in an important Serious Case Review (SCR) Report

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/25/rebecca-shuttleworth-jailed-son-murder

The chair of Birmingham's safeguarding children board, Jane Held, has said: “It is clear from this trial that professionals in the different agencies involved missed a significant number of opportunities to intervene and take action."

Also we need to look out for the SCR Report on the death of Daniel Pelka in Coventry. http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/daniel-pelka-like-concentration-camp-4313168

This case has some eerie echoes of the Khyra Ishaq tragedy.

Anyone who tells you that the same mistakes don’t keep happening has got it wrong!!  

The Answer to Oxford

We will have to wait for the report of the Serious Case Review to get a clearer picture of what went wrong in the Oxford grooming sex case. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-23079649 

I expect that there will be a lot of pundits calling for better information sharing and more integrated working, but the truth of the matter, I suspect, is that the cause of the tragedy was that the girls were not listened to when they should have been listened to.

I think the Children's Society’s Matthew Reed has it about right. He is quoted by the BBC as saying that professionals and agencies need to “… change their attitude to vulnerable, exploited teenage girls, who are being routinely dismissed as ‘troublesome’ or ‘promiscuous’ or as having made life style choices”.

We should all be thinking long and hard about how we can make it easier and safer for children and young people to report abuse and to seek help and support. And we should be asking children and young people to help us in designing services. Current bureaucratic approaches – ‘referrals’ and ‘investigations’ and ‘enquiries’ and ‘assessments’ – probably cut no ice with vulnerable young people. What they need is people they can trust to deliver appropriate help.

Some years ago I co-authored a report about ‘information sharing’. We titled it “I think it’s about trust … “ because that is what one of our respondents (a teenage girl who had suffered abuse) told us. [1]

We need to design services that children and young people trust more. That’s the answer to Oxford.

[1] Zoe Hilton and Chris Mills ‘I think it’s about trust’: the views of young people on information sharing. London: Office of the Children’s Commissioner, September 2006 – to download a pdf, Google ‘I think it’s about trust’ and follow the link.