How social workers fail in 4 out of 10 serious cases
SOCIAL workers have been condemned for failing to rescue vulnerable children from abuse and neglect . A damning report by the Care Inspectorate found appalling failures in almost half – 40 per cent – of the cases examined, including shoddy recordkeeping and a lack of continuity of care.
The body carried out a study of Significant Case Reviews (SCRs), inquiries held by local authorities and other public bodies when children die or are abused.
It found that ‘neglect of children persisted in some cases over years’ despite the ‘extensive’ involvement of social services and the NHS.
The study found that, in eight of the 20 cases examined, there was ‘lack of consideration, or use, of appropriate legal measures to protect children in the face of a lack of parental co-operation or progress in implementing change’.
The disclosures follow a series of child protection tragedies and concern that in some cases councils are failing to publish SCRs in full. An SCR uncovering serious systemic faults following the murder of Fife toddler Madison Horn was published only in summary form this month.
Matt Forde, national head of service for children’s charity NSPCC Scotland, said: ‘SCRs have a vitally important role in improving child protection in Scotland and the report from the Care Inspectorate highlights significant weaknesses in how SCRs are carried out.’
The Care Inspectorate said the ‘long-term consequences of chronic neglect, often coupled with abuse, left some children and young people in fractured living circumstances and relationships, without the resilience they needed to take their place in the world’.
It said: ‘Effective engagement with families, robust assessment and meaningful intervention are critical to changing this picture for children in the future.’
In addition, ‘sometimes professionals in the child’s support network did not share concerns or could not agree on a course of action, and nothing was changed as a result’.
This highlighted the need for work to ‘increase staff confidence in contributing to multi-agency child protection meetings and to effectively support and challenge each other’.
In a number of cases, ‘incidents were each treated in isolation rather than as part of a bigger story’. In two cases, services had ‘sought to remove supervision requirements [on children] just before the events leading to the SCR when this was contrary to documented levels of concern’.
There was also a ‘clear need for improved accountability through ensuring accurate records of child protection meetings’.
Seven SCRs noted ‘start-again syndrome’, when ‘staff failed to take into account the past history or had a simplistic view of the case’. This is ‘more likely to happen without continuity of staff’.
Almost all of the children and young people involved in the 20 cases reviewed were known to child protection services.
Two of the infants who died were subject to child protection registration under the category of neglect and another three cases were subject to child protection registration for neglect in the past.
Scottish Tory education spokesman Elizabeth Smith said: ‘Social workers do a tremendous job under very difficult circumstances.
‘It’s not possible to stop every significant incident, but it’s right the Care Inspectorate tries to learn lessons from previous incidents.
‘We all know there have been examples of failings, and we need to do everything possible to stop these happening again.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said it was reviewing the child protection system and would make recommendations by the end of 2016. The spokesman added: ‘We will ensure the recommendations within this report are fully considered as part of that review.
‘We are committed to ensuring that our child protection system is the best it can be for those children who require that intervention.’
‘Weaknesses in how reviews carried out’