Child Protection

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak today and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for bringing the debate to the Chamber.

I am aware that much of today’s debate has focused on the protection of children from sexual abuse, but I would like to highlight some of the generic failures in our child protection system, as it is those failures that often lead to the poor detection of such abuse. The question of how to protect our children from significant harm has troubled successive Governments since the abhorrent murder of Maria Colwell. Sadly, the fact that her murder was followed by that of Victoria Climbié, Peter Connelly and more recently Daniel Pelka indicates that, despite the best intentions, the system can never be infallible; nor can it account for the horrors of human action.

Children have a wealth of professionals involved in their lives, and child protection is very much in the public psyche, yet opportunities for intervention and successful safeguarding are often missed because social workers, police, teachers and health professionals are operating in highly bureaucratic, constantly restructured and underfunded services to such a degree that they inherently retreat into their own cultures and service demands, instead of fostering good, robust multi-agency practices.

The constant scapegoating and poor image of the social work profession has also permeated the minds of the public and the wider agencies to such a degree that social work knowledge and expertise are often undermined. Each decision a social worker takes as a lead professional has to be ratified and agreed by a number of other professionals, some of whom have not even met the child concerned. It is easy to see how children go unnoticed in such an adult-led agenda. All too often, the result is that social workers have to placate courts and other professionals, and meet management targets, to such a degree that children are not seen as frequently as they should be, and as a result are hurt, injured or, in extreme cases, murdered. The lack of communication between agencies was cited as a contributory factor in the deaths of Maria Colwell, Victoria Climbié, Peter Connelly and Daniel Pelka. Maria was murdered in 1973, and Daniel in 2013. The tragedy is that, despite 40 years having passed, the reasons cited for their untimely deaths are still the same.

Lord Laming’s inquiries into the deaths of Victoria and Peter resulted in the Labour Government introducing the Children Act 2004, the “Working together to safeguard children” document and the “Every Child Matters” White Paper. In early 2010, Professor Eileen Munro was asked to review child protection procedures. The recommendations in all those reports are largely sound, and are ones that most professionals would subscribe to. The difficulty each time has been that the implementation has not matched the vision, and the progress on the recommendations has been incredibly slow.

The inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group on social work published this year states that

“the social work picture is one of deteriorating, not improving, children’s services departments, excessive bureaucracy working against, not in support of practitioners, IT systems that are not fit for purpose, dangerously high caseloads for too many social workers, low morale and concerns about a disconnect between the reform agenda and those on the frontline”.

Since 2010, the system has been further weakened by Government cuts to a number of organisations that would have been able to alert services to potential abuse and offer another layer of monitoring for the high-level cases in which children are at extreme risk. The Munro review recommended more preventive services, yet those services are disappearing under the same Government who asked for the review.

In a time of unprecedented local authority cuts, the reality is that of shifting thresholds. For some children who are deemed at risk, cheaper options are being touted—options that would maintain them in the home in a risky environment, as opposed to the high-cost option of placing them in foster care, where they would be safe.

What worries me further is the uncertainty over probation services. Multi-agency public protection arrangements are forums that manage high-level offenders, including child-sex offenders and those who pose a risk to our children. The Government’s plans for probation are unclear. Concern has been expressed to me that, among other changes, multi-agency public protection arrangements might be outsourced to different areas of the country. That would mean a child-sex offender, perhaps in my constituency, being monitored from Leeds. That would be unacceptable and would place children at high risk of harm.

Child protection is about early intervention. The first three years of any child’s life are the most vital to cognitive and motor development, yet Sure Starts that specialise in that area are being closed across the country. Studies completed by Professor Harriet Ward of Loughborough university highlighted the incongruence between the rights of the child and those of their parents and carers, and the lengthy court processes that can delay pertinent decisions regarding a child’s welfare in those early years.

The principle in the Children Act 1989—maintaining a child at home or in the family unit—is well meaning, but has often in practice resulted in chronic and long-term neglect being overlooked. I have witnessed first hand the devastating effects of children being maintained at home for too long, being in limbo in foster care and awaiting adoption. Sadly, at times, the window for adoption, if that is deemed the best outcome for a child, has closed while their case has been locked in care proceedings for too long. I therefore welcome the news of proposed changes to the public law outline, which will ensure swifter conclusion of care proceedings, although I am concerned that the Government do not grasp what is happening on the ground.

Most local authorities and courts, in anticipation of the change, have been working towards swifter conclusions within the impending proposed 26-week time limit, but I suggest that the majority of authorities will struggle to do that. The average time given by the courts for a parenting assessment is 12 weeks, and assessments for wider family members can take just as long. I wonder whether that rushed decision making has worsened the situation of the children in those authorities that have achieved those time scales. I would be interested to see the repeat cases that come back into the court arena.

A 26-week time scale might be achievable in isolation, but when most social workers are operating with difficult IT systems in bureaucratic, target-led, underfunded environments with case loads beyond safe levels and reduced legal support, all these changes are doing is increasing pressure and leaving social workers with less time to do what they are trained to do—work effectively with children and their families.

Simple, clear systems and less paperwork, backed up by sound legislation that accounts for the fluidity and reality of working in an environment that is not static and recognises that not all children fit one box, as well as a halt to the onslaught of cuts, would go some way to easing the pressures in our child protection system and minimise the risk of further tragic harm being done to our children.

I would like to leave this thought with the Chamber: how many times as Members of Parliament do we truly see the results of the child protection legislation we pass? This is a closed and specialised area. I have seen it at its best and at its worst. Now I am in this place, I hope to contribute to making our child protection system the best it can be, so that we can minimise the chances of further harm being done to our children.