Child D and his foster parents were all let down by system

SHERIFF Bicket describes Dawn McKenzie’s death as “unique amongst foster carers”.

Most social workers say something similar. Foster carers are sometimes injured by the children they care for, but deaths are unheard of, and it can be the case that some foster carers harm the children in their care.

Sheriff Bicket makes limited recommendations – only three major ones. These are the call for more training in crisis prevention for first-time foster carers of older children, the need for changes to the way foster carers are matched to suitable families, and better provision of information about the child who is being placed.

Other than that he largely reiterates the findings of the previous serious case review, carried out by Colin Anderson.

But the report sheds considerable light on what happened to Child D before he was placed with the McKenzies. His experiences, tragically, are far from unique.

Born in 1998, he lived with his mother and her partner in a flat in Sighthill, one of six children.

By the time he was taken into care in 2008, aged 10, the boy had been on the child protection register for nearly five years, because of concerns about neglect, aggression and the state of the house. Child D had complained of being bitten by a rat, and slept on a trampoline.

In care, two previous foster placements had been significantly disrupted and plans by his social worker Stephen Lorimer to find D and his siblings a permanent family were regularly delayed. The FAI about the factors behind this: “These include the ending of the children’s first placement which was due in no small part to the hostility shown to the then foster carers by [D’s mother and her partner]; the turnover of social workers for a variety of reasons including the hostility of the birth family to them, the workload that Mr Lorimer was expected to carry, which was extensive and in fact excessive.”

Social workers told the Sheriff they had difficulty persuading Children’s Hearings of the need to take the children into care.

The placement of Child D with the McKenzies was rushed.

Sheriff Bicket was unable to draw any causal link between these various organisational failings and Mrs McKenzie’s uniquely awful death.

However social workers, children’s panel members, foster carers and children in care will all recognise the ways in which Child D was repeatedly let down, and through this, the McKenzie family were let down too.