The Myth of Family Support in Child Protection

Children's social workers struggle to integrate family support into child protection work. Courses are producing social workers trained in 'safeguarding' who do not have the knowledge and skills for statutory child protection work. The issues they are expected to address are often very complicated but this may not be apparent to an inexperienced social worker trained to get alongside the family by appearing friendly and non-judgemental. The child protection system went off track when social work re-conceptualised child protection work as informal support work - with a loss of clarity and focus on child protection matters. Although there is plenty of positive work going on it usually happens despite the current organisational arrangements, not because of them.

The deficiencies of the 'safeguarding' model have been shown in a recent family court hearing Re: Wolverhampton City Council v JA and another 2017. Social work intervention with this family, which commenced ten years before, failed to protect the children from significant harm and the court had the difficult task of considering the long-term care needs of two emotionally damaged girls, aged about 13 and 12. Mr. Justice Keehan carefully examined the often confusing evidence and concluded that the girls were: 'subjected to sustained and prolonged sexual abuse in their father's and mother's homes over a period of years. They were further subjected to physical abuse by their father. They were failed to an exceptionally serious degree by those whose duty it was to protect them: their father, their mother and their grandmother.'

There are many questions arising from this case. Why were social workers so seriously lacking in the necessary skills to detect child abuse and emotional neglect? How reliable were the risk assessments? How effective were managers in ensuring that interventions complied with statutory child protection duties and official practice guidance?

During the court hearing an unfortunate situation arose. This occurred when the judge asked the CAFCASS guardian to ascertain the wishes and feelings of the 13 year old girl about giving evidence in court. The guardian became confused about her role. She failed to interview the girl herself and allowed totally inappropriate questioning of both girls by the children's solicitor. The judge subsequently took both the guardian and children's solicitor off the case and they were replaced. It is clear from this that lessons must be learned about social work practice in dealing with concerns about suspected abuse of a child. In particular, social workers should know how to interview children who may be victims without contaminating the evidence - in accordance with the guidance in 'Achieving Best Evidence' (Ministry of Justice 2011).

The fact-finding hearing, which lasted 16 days and required 12 barristers/lawyers, raises further questions. The vast amount of public money spent on lengthy court proceedings could have been avoided if children's services had developed a clearer focus on fact-finding, particularly with regard to risk, over the previous ten year period and not forced the court instead to assume responsibility for fact-finding. As a consequence staff from a nursery and school were required to attend the hearing as witnesses and undergo tortuous cross-examinations which lasted four days. This was deeply offensive because the nursery and school had given both girls a great deal of support over the years and the staff had been diligent in carrying out their child protection responsibilities.

The core facts in this case can be summarised in the following way. The mother and the father began a relationship in about 1996 and married on 21 July 2002. They had two daughters, X born in 2004 and Y born in 2005, and separated in 2007. The father remained in the matrimonial home and the mother went to live with her own mother. In August 2007 an anonymous referral was received alleging that the children were suffering sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect and an initial assessment was undertaken by the local authority. In hindsight it seems that this was a missed opportunity to detect the risks to the children in this family.

On 17 January 2008 the father issued a residence application in respect of both children. This was followed by a counter application made by the mother on 3 April 2008. On 13 July 2008 the allocated social worker filed a section 7 report for the purposes of the private law proceedings in which she noted no concerns about the children in the care of the father, to whom both appeared to relate well, and recommended that no order be made and that the existing shared care arrangement continue.

When X was four the school felt that something of great significance had changed in her over the summer holiday of 2008. She would scream when she went into the toilet; she was not the compliant little girl she had been in the term before and she would often say she did not want to go home. This reluctance was mostly in respect of going to her father's home but was, with the same reaction and behaviour, sometimes expressed in going to the home of her mother and maternal grandmother. She also began to show sexually inappropriate behaviour. At the same time the younger girl, Y, was complaining that her nappy hurt her when it was changed at nursery. During the course of the joint investigation the father's contact with the girls was restricted to supervised contact. On 20 October 2008 an initial child protection conference was held and the girls were made the subject of child protection plans under the category of sexual abuse. In November 2008 the police investigation was closed. The parenting assessment of the parents recommended that the children should remain in the care of the mother.

Both girls had learning difficulties. They attended a school which was for children with learning difficulties and/or behavioural problems. During their time there they made repeated disclosures to members of the teaching staff or support staff and there were incidents of both girls exhibiting sexualized behaviour. The judge firmly accepted that the evidence provided by members of staff from the nursery and school about X and Y was truthful and accurate.

On 26 June 2009 the child protection plans came to an end and the children were made the subject of child in need plans. In July 2009 the children's contact with the father was reported to be positive and no further signs of inappropriate sexualized behaviour had been reported. On 23 March 2010 the private law proceedings concluded with a shared residence order being made in favour of both parents.

In February 2014, X and Y were taken into foster care under a section 20 arrangement after their father, and another man whom their mother was suspected of being in a relationship with, were arrested for raping another girl, CD. Because of the lack of charges against the mother, the girls were returned to her care, with the support of their maternal grandmother on 20 March 2014.

On 14 June 2016 Wolverhampton children's services made applications for care orders on X and Y and they were taken into foster care after mounting concerns about inappropriate touching and other abuse by their mother's two former partners and their father.

On 20 April 2017 the criminal trial of the father, mother's two former partners and other adults commenced. The trial heard that two of the men had been accused by CD of organising and charging money for her serial sexual abuse by a considerable number of men, including the father and mother's former partner. The father was found to be mentally unfit to plead but he was not discharged; the jury was required to return, not verdicts against him, but rather findings of fact. Subsequently, the family court judge concluded that the girls had been abused over a number of years by their father and two other men with whom their mother had been in relationships.

Further details about the family circumstances are as follows. The mother accepted that she had lied on repeated occasions and was said to be a deeply unsatisfactory witness. The grandmother was also a completely unsatisfactory witness. She sought to portray herself as an over protective grandmother and latterly as a joint carer but she was neither. From the evidence of the maternal grandmother and the mother it is clear that over a period of very many years a succession of men who were not relatives were permitted to live at the house with the mother, the grandmother and the girls.

This case illustrates the processes within a dysfunctional family with loose sexual boundaries which can lead to vulnerable children being sexually exploited. The importance of family dysfunction in the understanding and management of families with histories of incest has been studied extensively by Arnon Bentovim [1]. His approach is informed by systems thinking and examines the family patterns of relating and how they become organised around the abusive experience so that changes are difficult to achieve. Secrecy is at the core of their situation with no-one in the family talking about the family secret. A mother's helplessness and inability to cope with the situation is another factor. Also, the victims' feelings of loyalty to the parents mean they do everything to keep the family together. Working with these families can therefore be very challenging.

Bentovim also applies systems thinking to the professional system and offers useful insights into why these families can produce a sense of helplessness in children's services. The emphasis should be on the social worker engaging the parents in ongoing work and getting close enough for honest discussions about the children's developmental needs and the establishment of clear boundaries between adults and children. It may also be possible to engage with the children so that their voices are heard. However, social workers in Wolverhampton seemed to think there was little they could do until a criminal investigation was completed. As a consequence the problems in this family remained deeply entrenched, low levels of service were provided and efforts to monitor the children's safety were not sustained.

Some of the weaknesses in child protection practice seen in this case are common and widespread. For example, there may be a standardised response to suspicions of sexual abuse focused on the joint effort to obtain evidence from alleged victims without recognising the duty to also test the truth of what the child says. Also, social workers often seem to under-estimate the possible risks of emotional harm from the mother. When a perpetrator is out of the household there is sometimes a naive assumption that the mother will protect the children and social work intervention terminates too quickly.

The child protection plan, which integrates family support into child protection work, should be recognised as an essential social work tool for working with children at serious risk, particularly when dealing with 'core abuse' (physical abuse, sexual abuse and chronic neglect). A stronger commitment to improving social work practice under a child protection plan is urgently needed to improve the reliability of risk assessment and ensure that children are effectively safeguarded.

To summarise, the organisation of child protection work needs to undergo radical change. The absence of a coherent practice framework for child protection work is a major cause of stress in social work.

Hilary Searing