Force focused on improving child protection, claims leading officer
THE DEPUTY Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police said officers “took it personally” when inspectors criticised them for failing to protect vulnerable children and they are now working to make the necessary improvements.
Mabs Hussain’s comments came after Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published a damning report last month, following an inspection of the force’s child protection services.
In its report, HMICFRS described the standard of investigations into cases of children at risk of harm as “poor” and said officers had failed to look for some children who had gone missing from care homes.
Inspectors also found “little evidence” of the force working effectively with other agencies to protect vulnerable children and identified several cases where officers “poorly assessed risk”, including one when a child at risk of sexual abuse was left unchecked for six weeks.
Deputy Chief Constable Hussain said the force “absolutely accepts” all of the report’s findings and it takes them “incredibly seriously”, when he spoke at a public accountability meeting yesterday.
“Nobody who comes to work for North Yorkshire Police wants to come to work to do a bad job,” he said.
“We’ve got lots of great people at the organisation and we take it personally – the fact that we may be letting children down.
“It’s quite emotional for our staff and it’s fair to say when the report first landed there was a huge amount of disappointment that we have let children down.”
He said all of the officers “wanted to know what they could do to make things better” and the force is now implementing a “comprehensive” improvement plan, known as Gold Strategy, which has 12 objectives.
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Lindsey Butterfield told the meeting the force has already made several improvements, to address concerns raised by inspectors.
She said the force is providing additional training, to improve officers’ understand of child sexual exploitation and changed the way it records information about sex offenders to ensure it is more accessible to frontline officers.
The force has also updated its approach to responding to reports of missing children, so call handlers do not mistakenly downgrade calls from “immediate” to “priority” and officers have more information about each child’s background and circumstances, she added.
Chief Constable Lisa Winward said: “This is not about responding to an inspection, to tick a box, to get a better inspection outcome. The whole purpose of us being here as a public service is to keep our communities safe and, more importantly, prevent them from coming to harm.”
She added: “I would like to reiterate my most sincere apologies to any child or any family here in North Yorkshire and the city of York who feel they haven’t received that high standard of service that we want, as a police service, to provide in such important circumstances. We are committed to the utmost importance of protecting children.”
North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Zoë Metcalfe, who hosted the meeting, said the inspectors’ report is of “extreme concern and disappointment”.
We take it personally – the fact that we may be letting children down. Mabs Hussain, Deputy Chief Constable of North Yorkshire.