There is a report of a case in The Australian concerning a two year-old New South Wales child
called “Peanut” (a nickname) who died at home as a result of physical abuse.
Some striking facts are revealed by this report:
- Members of child protection staff spent more than 40 hours recording decisions to take little or no action in this case in their computer system
- Despite fifteen separate referrals, only four hours were spent talking to the family, mostly by phone
- What is described as a “new prioritising regime” resulted in the child being misclassified as being a low priority case
Child protection workers in Britain will recognise familiar
themes here. The Integrated Children’s System based on the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need was made the basis for local authorities’
computerised child protection recording systems. It proved time-consuming and
difficult to use. Information was difficult to enter and difficult to retrieve.
The system was widely criticised.
Research by Broadhurst et al provides an insight into how these “… faulty design elements at the front-door
of children’s local authority services…” actually have the opposite to the
intended effects. They do not make children safer and they distract workers
from interacting with the family by introducing new and unwelcome bureaucratic
tasks.
Some may believe that we have moved on in the last few
years. But I see little evidence that the kind of bureaucratic thinking that
underpins systems like ICS, and its counterparts in other parts of the world,
has been replaced with approaches that are actually supportive of practice.
Complex decisions cannot be made by algorithms, but by experienced and
knowledgeable workers. Good situation awareness is not achieved by simply
having more information, but by having the right information. Effective communication
does not come from completing fields in a database; it comes from interacting
with other people and understanding what they say.
