Child Protection on Trial in Wales

Child protection in Wales operates within a system which is not conducive to good practice. Since 1999, when the Welsh Government was established, Labour has been in control and responsibility for Children's Services has remained with the Minister for Health and Social Services. During this period the language of 'child protection' has been replaced by that of 'safeguarding'. One of the consequences of this has been a large increase in the workload of Children's Services. Unfortunately, there has also been a growing sense of unease about social work practice and concerns that children's social workers do not always intervene effectively in situations where a child is at risk of physical violence within the family. The deaths of Elsie Scully Hicks and Logan Mwangi have revealed shocking failures to protect children in Wales.

Instead of responding to genuine public concern about child protection practice the Welsh government has simply brushed aside criticism of the way that services are currently delivered. There seems to be a misguided belief that its policies have been a success. There is no recognition that these changes have contributed to a loss of clarity and focus on child protection matters. Radical change will not come from politicians in the Senedd who have an ideological belief that child protection social work is intrinsically authoritarian and ethically unsound.

The social work profession has a strong commitment to incorporating social justice principles into practice and embraces its role as advocate on behalf of families who need services. However, in reality social workers are often faced with resource constraints and there may be little the social worker can do to raise living standards and address concerns about housing, education, crime and anti-social behaviour in the community. However, the professional response to an immediate need presented by the family can obviously provide the opportunity for social work practice that is collaborative and has in the background an idea about the need for a longer-term process of supporting vulnerable members of the family who appear to need help.

All this implies that the response of agencies to children thought to present 'safeguarding' concerns is generally driven by an idea that the family may need supplementary services from a social worker without realising it themselves. However, if the parents are unaware of any form of personal need, or inadequacy, they may respond defensively to a visit from a social worker. Obviously, the potential for collaborative work with the family will vary enormously and this means that social workers often need to think creatively about how to proceed. The safeguarding duty of the social worker will shape the kind of help given and the need for more specialised help may need to be considered. However, it would be wrong to claim that the current problems are simply due to a lack of resources. A good way of improving child protection practice is to recruit and retain social workers who have sound professional judgement and ensure that any weaknesses in their practice are quickly identified and corrected.

In Wales there has been insufficient recognition of the primacy of statutory duties under the Children Act 1989 and the Adoption and Children Act 2002. The child protection duties of local authorities include a key investigative role for social workers under Section 47 of the 1989 Act - a legal duty to make enquiries when there is reasonable cause to suspect a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm and, if appropriate, to conduct a formal investigation. The competence with which this stage is handled will crucially influence the effectiveness of subsequent work with the family. Unfortunately, the arrangements for gathering Social Services Statistics are only concerned with measuring the effectiveness of support services. Important data on child protection practice, such as the number of section 47 investigations, was not collected until recently and this area of social work practice was not subjected to formally structured analysis or feedback.

In 2016 the death of Elsie Scully-Hicks, who at the age of 18 months old was murdered by her adoptive father, revealed that there had been a reluctance on the part of social workers to take the necessary protective action. After Elsie had a series of injuries and her leg in a plaster cast this should have rung alarm bells. She was technically a 'protected child' under the Adoption Act but a formal investigation was not triggered. The officer chairing the statutory review believed the placement was satisfactory and allowed the adoption to go ahead. A Child Safeguarding Practice Review into this case was published on a website but after a period of 12 weeks was removed. This removal of Reviews from public viewing is wrong because it means that the next generation of social workers cannot easily gain access to lessons learned in the past.

The tragic death of Logan Mwangi has once again exposed serious weaknesses in the system. However, the first minister, Mark Drakeford, who trained as a social worker and was Professor of Social Policy and Applied Social Sciences in Cardiff, has shown no interest in addressing the concerns about social work practice raised by this case - such as the inappropriate decision to remove Logan's name from the child protection register. Sadly, opposition parties have also failed to give the issue the attention it deserves.

The lawyers who advise on legal proceedings often seem to think that child protection is simply a matter of interpretation of the law. The social work skills of understanding human behaviour and using social work knowledge about child development is sometimes insufficiently developed and integrated into legal thinking about thresholds for intervention. When cases are presented in court judges sometimes complain about the poor quality of the assessment and the lack of a well-reasoned argument in support of the application. It is essential that the practice framework for court reports should be informed by a good understanding of all the factors within the family that have the potential to expose a child to the risk of abuse and neglect. Obviously, reports from the local authority and guardian ad litem are crucial in assisting the court in reaching a sound decision.

The past two years have presented social workers with enormous challenges arising out of the Covid pandemic. Families have been under greater stress and agencies needed to adapt quickly to ensure that they continued to fulfil their statutory duties. The disruptive effect on schools meant that many children suffered stressful experiences and some may have been exposed to risks that were difficult for social workers to monitor. It was almost inevitable that child protection practice would face problems during this period and this would put some vulnerable children at more serious risk.

In the case of the teenager Craig Mulligan, found guilty of the murder of Logan Mwangi, his circumstances were more complex because he was both a victim and an abuser. Society is presented with an almost impossible task when considering an appropriate response to a child as troubled and challenging as Craig. Although he had been diagnosed as suffering from Autism and ADHD it is unclear whether social workers paid sufficient attention to other aspects of his personality, such as his violent tendencies. The psychology of violence in childhood can be difficult to understand but Felicity de Zulueta suggests that the notion of 'violence as attachment gone wrong' can offer some insight into the need for appropriate interventions with very troubled young people such as Craig [see link below]. Councils need to recognise that the absence of a coherent practice framework for intervention with deeply troubled and dangerously out of control children and young people is putting a huge strain on all agencies, particularly children's services and schools.

While many children's social workers in Wales have a reasonable grasp of their task when working with children with complex needs and at greatest risk, it is the Labour government in the Senedd that has made their job more difficult. It has deliberately re-framed social work as child welfare and allowed the profession to abandon its rich heritage of child protection knowledge and expertise. There are now serious dificulties in recruiting children's social workers and too much responsibility may be put on newly qualified social workers. Recent scandals have had a damaging effect on the image and status of the profession.

The social work profession must take the lead in improving child protection practice. Social work cannot claim to be a profession if it is failing to give children's social workers a broad theoretical framework for good practice that leads to balanced decision-making and interventions that are effective in preventing abuse and neglect. This requires more than the search for evidence of what works. Instead, it requires strong leadership that is informed by a sound understanding of the considerable body of child welfare and child protection knowledge that already exists and an expectation that social work interventions should only be carried out by practitioners with sound professional judgement.

Hilary Searing