Munro Report

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the publication of the review of the child protection system by Professor Eileen Munro. Her excellent report is thoughtful, well researched and based on extensive consultation. She makes the strong point that the responses to the terrible deaths of children in recent years have shaped the existing child protection system. She identifies four driving forces and says:

“These forces have come together to create a defensive system that puts so much emphasis on procedures and recording that insufficient attention is given to developing and supporting the expertise to work effectively with children, young people and families.”

I agree with her conclusion that there should be a move from doing the right thing procedurally to doing the right thing for the child.

Professor Munro points out that her recommendations are not a quick fix but should be seen in the context of changing the system while putting in place the knowledge, skills and professional expertise to enable professionals confidently to exercise their judgment to do the right thing. Judging whether a child should be removed from their family because there is an unacceptable risk to their life or well-being might be necessary in a very complex family situation. It might follow months of concern, intervention and meetings with parents and other agencies. Assessing the risk to a child relies on many agencies working together to do the right thing. I absolutely agree that over-reliance on procedures does not help make such decision making effective. As she says, procedures can be followed in a way that is technically correct but so inexpert that the desired result is not achieved.

What is the right thing for the child? In my early years as a social worker I supervised a family—a single mother who was an alcoholic and who had a seven-year-old child. The bond was close. The problem was that the mother’s drinking took the form of drinking bouts, often resulting in blackouts, during which she was unable to supervise the child in the home. The child had taken to wandering outside the house at night and his attendance at school was suffering, but there was no question of his suffering any direct harm from the mother. When sober, she provided good parenting and the child responded to it, but no amount of intervention or exhortation could stop her drinking and instead she retreated into a tissue of lies to hide the extent of her problem. I use that example to illustrate the complexity of judging what is the right thing to do, as levels of risk are not easy to assess and must be balanced against positives for the child in an existing relationship and the outcomes of any actions on their long-term welfare.

I was particularly interested in the report’s chapter on sharing responsibility for the provision of early help, particularly early in the emergence of a problem. I entirely agree with Professor Munro that preventive services will do more to reduce abuse and neglect than reactive services and that the co-ordination of services is important to maximise efficiency.

As chair of the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, I would like to offer some comments on the child protection system in relation to children who are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation while missing from home or care. Sadly, many children and young people go missing from children’s homes. For them, it has already been decided that they cannot be safeguarded and protected at home. We are their corporate parents and they are in our care, and I was pleased that the Minister referred in particular to our responsibilities as corporate parents.

More than 100,000 children run away overnight each year. Readers of the Manchester Evening News were stunned to read recently that there were 11,819 police reports of children going missing in Greater Manchester last year. Of those, 2,281 cases related to youngsters aged 11 or younger. Another shocking figure is that half of those cases related to children living in care, with more children disappearing from the 43 children’s homes in Stockport than in the rest of Greater Manchester put together. We know that running away is an important indicator that things are not right in a child’s life. One in five children who run away will be harmed and many will become involved in the things that worry parents and society the most—drugs, alcohol and falling prey to sexual predators. I pay tribute to the recent Barnardo’s report, “Puppet on a String”, which highlights those issues.

I welcome the Government’s recent announcement of an action plan to tackle child sexual exploitation and think it is important that it focuses on both running away and child sexual exploitation, as all the research shows that the two issues go hand in hand. I will be interested to hear the results of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre’s current investigations on recent cases of sexual grooming. One of the problems is the collection and analysis of data and assessing the risk to children individually and in the wider community. I hope that the work being undertaken by CEOP will help to develop a risk assessment framework for incidents of children going missing that could form the basis of effective inter-agency work. Local safeguarding boards have an important role because they are in a unique position to monitor how effective local agencies are in addressing the problem.

When the Minister considers recommendation 6 in Professor Munro’s report, I would like him to take on board the child protection issues in relation to runaway children. I firmly believe that if we can reduce the massive number of children and young people running away and going missing, we can reduce the number at risk from violence, drugs, alcohol, sexual exploitation and grooming.