Social work practice in Children's Services is under intense scrutiny following the deaths of two children - two-year old Ethan Ives-Griffiths in Wales in August 2021 and ten-year-old Sara Sharif in England on 8 August 2023. Both children had been subjected to a shocking level of sadistic cruelty within their family. Several members of their families were later found guilty of the murder of their child. Ethan had been placed on the child protection register shortly before his death but Sara, at the time of her death, was not the subject of a child protection plan. These cases reveal flaws in the current safeguarding approach. A clearer focus on child protection would give social workers a better understanding of the circumstances in which a child rescue intervention is required.

In Flintshire Ethan was correctly identified as a child at risk and made the subject of a Child Protection Plan but Covid made it difficult for the social worker to gain entry to the home. The Child Practice Review is due to be published in the new year. Ethan was obviously powerless due to his young age. However, he was described as a child with an independent spirit. His mother and his grandparents hit him, but when they did, he was said to be defiant and even laughed. The adults in the family had talked about 'wanting to break him', according to the judge in their criminal trial. However, when entry to the home was refused and social workers and the health visitor were denied access to Ethan they could have obtained an interim order from the Family Court. This would have given them the powers to remove him from home and have him medically examined.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review on Sara Sharif has now been published by Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership. At the time of Sara's death she was found to have suffered multiple and extensive injuries. Shortly before her death Surrey Children's Services had been informed of these concerns about Sara and other children in her family who suffered unexplained bruising, bite marks, burns and scratches. However, the concerns about Sara and her siblings were simply put on record and it was assumed the family could be monitored by the routine 'triangulation' of information (i.e. the sharing of information between agencies).

Social work academics have for decades noted the intricate and delicate balance required in assuring children’s safety and in respecting parents’ freedom to care for children as they see fit. The notion of 'safeguarding children' is now the primary model of practice taught to children's social workers during their training. However, social workers need to have confidence in their professional judgement and a sound understanding of how to make appropriate use of their statutory powers. Sometimes the question of whether the threshold for a 'child protection' intervention has been crossed has to be considered. Flintshire Children's Services had correctly decided that Ethan should be the subject of a child protection plan. In Surrey children's social workers did not regard Sara as a child 'at risk of significant harm' shortly before she died. However, it would be unfair to put the blame on social workers. It is the whole system that is at fault.

The 'safeguarding' approach assumes that relationship-based work with parents can help them to function better in caring for their children. This approach is based on humanistic values and pragmatic notions of what would help the child and the family. It is essentially one of protecting children, enhancing their welfare and meeting the needs of their primary carers. However, there are some families who are so dysfunctional that they cannot be engaged in constructive work of this kind. Some adults have a flawed component to their personality that affects their capacity to understand their child's need for a loving relationship. Some also have an unconscious need to take control in relationships and to fight against authority figures.

Sara's parents, Olga Domin and Urfan Sharif, married in 2009 and had a son in 2010. The first time that the family became known to Surrey Children’s Services was in the spring of 2010 when there were police concerns about the neglect of a child, who was 3 years old at the time. There was no further action. Soon afterwards Urfan was arrested for assaulting Olga and an unspecified child. Olga alleged that Urfan tightened a belt around her neck, locked her in a room, and took her phone. She also said that he once tried to set her on fire and poured oil on her but was stopped by her cousin.

In August 2012, serious concerns were raised at a review child protection conference and a decision was made to explore the possibility of initiating care proceedings. Sara was born on 11 January 2013 in Slough, Berkshire and was immediately put on a child protection plan. After a week with her mother in hospital, Sara was placed into foster care, with parental visitation allowed three times a week. She was returned to her parents under a supervision order in September 2013 and all three children were put on a child protection plan.

In 2015 the couple separated and later divorced, with Sara initially living with her mother and older half sibling. The local authority applied to the court for a care order. The children’s social worker had remained very worried about the risks posed by father and set out evidence of abusive behaviour in a social work statement to the court. The final outcome of the court was that Sara and her sibling should remain with their mother under a supervision order and father should have supervised contact. In May 2015, a care order was made for Sara’s older half-brother by parental consent, permanently removing him from the family. This was accompanied by an agreement that father’s contact with Sara and her other sibling was to be supervised and he was to attend a domestic abuse perpetrators programme. Any unsupervised contact was only to be allowed with the agreement of the local authority and father gave an undertaking to the court not to threaten or pester Olga or to contact her except in relation to contact arrangements.

In November 2015 the care proceedings concluded with a Child Arrangements Order granted to the mother, Olga Domin, then living in Hampshire and a 12-month supervision order in respect of Sara and her sibling. As with the previous proceedings, Sara and her sibling became subject of a child in need plan. Once again the local authority applied to the court for a care order. However, the final outcome of the court was that Sara and her sibling should remain with their mother under a supervision order and father should have supervised contact. The supervision order for Sara and her sibling lapsed in November 2016.

The father remarried and his wife gave birth in 2016. Due to all the past concerns about father a strategy meeting was held. A child and family assessment was carried out and a child protection conference took place in 2016. In May 2019 father and stepmother applied for a child arrangements order for Sara and her sibling to live with them. On the 8th October 2019 the judge granted the order. Stepmother or another family member was to supervise contact with birthmother as agreed between the parties, preferably fortnightly. The order meant that stepmother also gained Parental Responsibility for Sara and her sibling, but importantly birthmother did not lose it. After the order was made Sara gradually lost contact with her mother and older half sibling. In January 2017 the child protection plan ceased and subsequently Sara and her siblings' case was closed to Surrey Children’s Services.

Sara started wearing the hijab to school in 2021. She was an attractive and likeable child who never questioned why she was the only person in the family who had to wear a hijab. In June 2022 Sara’s class teacher noticed a bruise under her left eye on the cheek bone and Sara said it had been caused by a younger sibling. The poor quality of the social work response suggests that a 'safeguarding' approach was taken and the need for a 'child protection investigation' was not recognised. In hindsight it can be seen that the parents went to extraordinary lengths to cover up the truth.

It is now known that Sara's father would regularly punish her with violence in response to what he regarded as her bad behaviour. Some children are fearful of telling anyone outside the family about the ill-treatment they are suffering at home because they want to hang on to what little they are getting within the family. It is possible that she felt constrained by her fear of the consequences if she had spoken to anyone about her ill-treatment at home. After her father removed her from school to be home-educated she was rendered even more powerless. All this raises difficult questions for social workers about how to balance cultural awareness with their moral obligation to protect female victims within the family. It is crucial that they are able to recognise when a child is being battered to death within the family.

The Review on Sara expresses concern about the lack of use of section 47 strategy meetings and inquiries. In recent years there has been a sustained re-conceptualisation of the section 47 duty and insufficient training for this important social work task. The National Child Safeguarding Review Panel in England has drawn attention to national systemic difficulties in how strategy discussions, section 47 enquiries and child protection planning are undertaken. Children's social workers need to be able to respond confidently to child protection concerns, establish what has happened and find out whether the child is safe. However, this would require a new practice framework. Inevitably, this would be resisted by some out of concern about what they would regard as the authoritarian drift of social policy.

Children's Services need to ensure there is sufficient capacity in social work teams to offer families the help they need and to keep them under surveillance. However, there is a small group of families characterised by a high level of violence and a range of other concerns about poor parenting and the disturbed behaviour of their children. The problems in these families are often deeply entrenched. The approach of children's social workers to these families requires a sound understanding of their legal powers and duties. There also needs to be a stronger focus on the development of social work skills in work with children on a child protection plan and in carrying out comprehensive risk assessments. Essentially, all this requires an organisational culture which understands the difference between 'child protection' work and 'safeguarding' work and knows when to make appropriate use of legal powers.

Hilary Searing

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