Monthly Archives: September 2018

Introducing…. The Good Social Worker.

16 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Researching Reform, social work

≈ 48 Comments

A directory featuring reviews of social workers by service users around the country has just been published.  The Good Social Worker is designed to help families and children going through child protection proceedings find caring and committed social workers in their area. The guide is the first of its kind in the UK.

Child rights campaigner Michele Simmons collaborated with Researching Reform to create the new directory, which includes a section for families to search for recommended social workers by location, and a Reviews section for parents and children who want to leave positive feedback about a social worker. The Tributes section allows service users to celebrate retired or deceased social workers, and was added after past service users got in touch with Michele to offer feedback about social workers who had helped them during childhood.

Michele invited families across social media to share positive experiences they had had with social workers, in order to develop a list of professionals that other families could be signposted to, within their areas. Michele received over 200 replies. The Good Social Worker was then created to house that list and encourage other service users to share their feedback. The directory currently features around 30 social workers who have been recommended, sometimes by more than one family. Several social workers who were nominated could not be added to the list, as they had either left social work or were no longer registered with the HCPC.

In May of this year, Researching Reform spoke with Social Work England Chair, Lord Patel, and invited him to consider the use of feedback sites to help inform and improve social work around the country. Historically, feedback sites have not been embraced by the child protection sector, despite a growing demand for such forums.

Service users who would like to submit a review can use the directory’s online form,  and will need to include the following information:

  • Your full name and email address
  • The name of the social worker/s;
  • Which area/s of the UK the social worker practices in, including the name of their council;
  • The time period you engaged with them, and;
  • Feedback about your experience.

All reviews and comments are checked before being published. Service users who want to remain anonymous can send in feedback and also request that their names are not published on the site.

Michele Simmons hopes the new guide will incentivise social care professionals and give families a better understanding of their case workers:

“The Guide offers significant benefits for social workers, parents, children and grandparents. For Social Workers who really try their best to help families, being featured in the directory will be like a badge of honour. For parents and relatives, it will be a place where they can find help and reassurance about whether they have a good social worker on their side. I’m already confident the list will grow.”

Researching Reform’s Natasha Phillips, says the directory acts as a gateway to good practice:

“Finding exceptional professionals in any sector can be difficult, but this becomes incredibly important in a child protection context, where the decisions being made can change a child’s life forever. The directory allows parents to find those people. It also celebrates great social workers, and gives the sector the opportunity to focus on what these professionals are doing right, and to adopt those practices.”

You can find the Good Social Worker at goodsocialworker.com, and the site can also be accessed from Researching Reform’s Menu, under GSW.

 

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Councils REQUIRED BY LAW To Prioritise Placing Children In Need With Family Or Friends.

14 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Family Law, Foster Care, Researching Reform

≈ 11 Comments

A story published in Community Care today, highlights an important point of law which we often share with families we assist: councils must try to place children in need with family members or friends before they consider sending children to live with foster carers or in children’s homes. Placing children in need with relatives or friends is sometimes referred to as Kinship Care.

Section 22C of the Children Act 1989, requires that all local authorities must try to place children with either a parent of the child in question, or someone who has parental responsibility for that child. There is a very specific order which councils must follow when looking at placement options, and family members and friends of the child are at the top of that list.

The only exceptions which allow councils to deviate from that list and skip straight to the second cluster of options is where placing a child with family or friends would not be consistent with that child’s welfare, or would be impractical in some way. The difficulty here lies not only in whether the decision maker, here that’s the council, is impartial, but how, or whether, that decision has been recorded and made available.

Should the council feel that family members and friends are not suitable options, they are then required to consider the following placements, in this order:

  1. An individual who is a relative, friend or other person connected with the child and who is also a local authority foster parent
  2. A local authority foster parent, who is not related to the child
  3. A children’s home
  4. Other arrangements which fall under this section.

Equally important is Section 22(8), which says:

(8) The local authority must ensure that the placement is such that—
(a) it allows the child to live near their home;
(b) it does not disrupt the child’s education or training;
(c) if the child has a sibling for whom the local authority are also providing accommodation, it enables the child and the sibling to live together;
(d) if the child is disabled, the accommodation provided is suitable to that child’s particular needs.

However, the compulsory aspects of S.22(8) are seriously undermined by S.22(7)(b) which explains that:

In determining the most appropriate placement for the child, the local authority must, subject to [F5subsection (9B) and] the other provisions of this Part (in particular, to their duties under section 22)… comply, so far as is reasonably practicable in all the circumstances of the child’s case, with the requirements of subsection (8).

The piece in Community Care gives details about a Freedom Of Information request which asked councils across the country whether they were engaging in Kinship Care, and how many kinship placements they had made in the last year. The request found that less than 1 in 5 of the 124 councils that answered had used kinship arrangements, with as few as 11% of children taken into care initially placed with friends or family, in the 2016-17 financial year. The FOI request was made by law firm Ridley & Hall, who also discovered that only 4,758 out of 27,791 children were initially placed with relatives or close family friends.

Speculation over the reasons behind these figures include the view that initial assessments of family members and relatives are taking place but with little to no success, while others are suggesting the real issue is that kinship engagements are not being actively promoted in some councils. Other, more complicated factors may also be at work, like councils’ continued preference towards foster placements and the often drawn out and complicated assessments needed, to see if family and friends are suitable placement options, which councils are keen to avoid.

Running against the clock to fit child protection cases into a 26 week window also incentivises councils to choose faster solutions, like foster care, where agencies and individuals have been previously vetted and are ready to go. The fear of placing children in situations where they could be at risk of harm, regardless of whether a risk exists or not, is also likely to be a factor in councils’ reluctance to place children within family settings, with the threat of judicial reviews and massive fines often clouding child protection decisions.

Still, the law is clear. Families and friends must be considered FIRST, before a council can go ahead and start looking at foster placements and care homes, so don’t be shy to quote Section 22C, and to ask that proper process is followed.

RH FOI

 

 

Corporal Punishment – The Latest Developments.

14 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Corporal Punishment, Researching Reform

≈ 1 Comment

At Researching Reform we are passionate about ending corporal punishment around the world, and humbled to be a member of The Global Partnership To End Violence Against Children.

The Partnership features a large network of countries, government officials, organisations and academics who share information with one another, and our Round Up this week comes from this collective, which is headed up by Professor Joan Durrant. 

Sperius Eradius, who was thirteen, died in Tanzania after being beaten at school by a teacher. His death has caused an outcry amongst the country’s child welfare campaigners, who are now urging the government to end the use of corporal punishment in schools. No call though, seems to have been made to end corporal punishment at home. Tanzania is one of a small number of African countries where corporal punishment is allowed in every setting. Tanzania’s President John Magufuli, has also publicly stated his support for caning children.

Equally worrying is the re-instatement of corporal punishment in Georgia, after a school in Hephzibah sent consent forms to parents to allow the use of paddling as a form of punishment for students.

Reports from CBS news suggest that about 100 parents sent back the forms, while one-third gave the school consent to paddle their children. Paddling is currently allowed in several states in America, including:

  1. Wyoming
  2. Colorado
  3. Arizona
  4. Kansas
  5. Ohio
  6. Idaho
  7. Indiana
  8. North Carolina
  9. South Carolina
  10. New Mexico
  11. Florida
  12. Kentucky
  13. Missouri
  14. Texas

Dr Tracie Afifi, who is a member of The Global Partnership To End Violence Against Children, recently spoke to the CTV news channel to explain how corporal punishment negatively affects children. The interview has been viewed over 2,000 times.

Both in America and the UK, an adult slapping or hitting another adult, is illegal. Notwithstanding the context of self defense, that act is still considered illegal if:

  • The adult being hit is related to the hitter
  • The adult doing the hitting feels somehow justified by their actions
  • The adult being hit can’t speak, or experiences partial awareness due to a disability

And that last point is incredibly important. If a person was being prosecuted for hitting a vulnerable adult, that would not be viewed as a mitigating factor, but an aggravating one. To take the view then, that hitting a child is somehow an exception, flies in the face of common sense, and all that we consider important and urgent about the law. 

There is absolutely no rational justification for hitting a child. 

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Is It Legal For Social Workers To Use Social Media To Spy On Families?

13 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in Consultation, Researching Reform, social work

≈ 22 Comments

A new survey published by Community Care is asking child welfare professionals to get in touch and offer information about how they are using social media to monitor families.

The survey features eight questions:

1. What is your role?

2. Do you use social media?

3. Have you ever used social media to look at a service user’s profile?

4. Have you ever used social media to look at a service user’s profile, with a view of gathering evidence?

5. Are you aware of the guidance from the Office of Surveillance Commissioners (now the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office) on the covert surveillance of social networking sites by public authorities?

6. If you are aware, are you confident with your understanding of the guidance?

7. Are you confident you know the rules around using social media as part of a case?

8. Do you know who in your organisation to ask to explain the rules around using social media as part of a case?

In September 2017, the HCPC published guidelines, along with a series of case studies to help social care professionals understand the do’s and don’ts around social media use. The guide came off the back of Researching Reform’s call to the President of the Family Division to issue legal guidance for family professionals in March of last year, after we published information about social work professionals using the internet to track down parents in care proceedings. 

In May 2017, we also published research which showed that social workers in America were unsure of how to use social media in a child welfare setting, with over half of social workers surveyed saying they thought it was permissible to search for a client online.

The researchers discovered that:

  • Over half of the workers (58%) reported that searching for a client on Facebook out of curiosity was acceptable in some situations and 43% reported that they had done this.
  • Over half of workers (53%) stated that it was acceptable in some situations to search for a client on Facebook that the agency would like to locate, such as a missing parent and about half (49%) had done this.
  • 61% of the child welfare workers stated that it was acceptable in some situations to search for a client on a site like Facebook when the information might give insight into client risk factors and close to half (46%) had done this.
  • About 65% of the child welfare workers reported that it was acceptable in some situations to search for a client on a site like Facebook when conducting a child welfare investigation or assessment and about a third had done this.

Community Care’s survey follows similar lines, though it is less robust than the US report above, which was published in December 2016.

If you’d like to take the survey, you can do so here. 

SocialMedia

 

 

 

 

The Buzz

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Researching Reform, The Buzz

≈ 2 Comments

The news items that should be right on your radar:

Many thanks to Dana for the last news item.

Buzz

Call To Create A Universal Intervention Threshold For Children In Need

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in child welfare, Researching Reform

≈ 4 Comments

Anntoinette Bramble, chair of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board has called on the government to produce a working threshold for councils across the country, which would clarify their duties in relation to children in need.

The call came after Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, warned that there was widespread confusion over council’s responsibilities as local authorities cut back services in order to keep running.

In an interview with Public Finance magazine yesterday, Longfield said:

“There needs to be clarity around what the statutory minimum requirement is… There are many hundreds of thousands of children who are deemed to be in need who we know are not getting any form of discernible support…The consequences of them not getting support could be catastrophic.”

Bramble also spoke with PF:

“I think you do need more clarity around those statutory requirements as the level of intervention and thresholds is different across councils and it would be helpful if we had a universal threshold.”

Bramble went on to say that cutbacks were causing services to become “reactive” rather than preventative, meaning that councils were trying to preempt ongoing financial challenges by slashing budgets for services.

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Question It!

10 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by in Domestic Violence, Researching Reform

≈ 2 Comments

Welcome to another week.

The latest figures on domestic violence incidents occurring around major football tournaments suggest that there has been a significant rise in domestic abuse around the time of this year’s World Cup. 

The key stats:

  • More than 60 incidents were reported after England’s semi-final defeat by Croatia, compared to the highest figure of 24 during Euro 2016.
  • Around 1,340 of the total 1,487 football-linked reported incidents (90%) were in relation to England’s seven games between 14 June and 15 July.

A study published in February 2018 argues that football is not responsible for the increase in violence, and suggests instead that the matches are a symptom rather than a cause of underlying behaviours.

One of the co-authors, Dr Nancy Lombard,  who is a Reader in Sociology and Social Policy at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: “All stakeholders had concerns about the reliability and implications of data suggesting a causal link between football and domestic violence and abuse.

“Participants highlighted concerns about the existing evidence and the need to view violence and abuse as a pattern of ongoing behaviour, which cannot be reduced to an incident associated with a particular event such as a football match.”

Whilst the researchers were unable to find a link to the sport and domestic violence incidents, football culture could be to blame. British football fans have cultivated a reputation worldwide for hooliganism, which has come to be known as The English Disease. While incidents of violence amongst British football fans have decreased over the years, an alarming number of fans who are considered highly dangerous remain active. 

Our question this week then, is just this: what do you think causes a spike in domestic violence during football matches?

DV Football

 

New Sentencing Guidelines For Child Cruelty Offences To Come Into Force

06 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in child abuse, FGM, Researching Reform

≈ 5 Comments

Guidelines published today by the Sentencing Council set down new sentencing rules for child cruelty offences, as well as failing to protect girls from the risk of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The new protocols will come into force on 1 January, 2019.

The guidance covers three separate offences:

  • cruelty to a child;
  • causing or allowing a child to die or suffer serious physical harm; and
  • failing to protect a girl from the risk of FGM

The guidelines come three months after the Justice Committee released a report in which the parliamentary group made several recommendations, including the addition of two further offences:  causing or allowing a child to die or suffer serious physical harm, and failing to protect a child from the risk of FGM. The report also offered a range of aggravating and mitigating factors to be taken into account when sentencing offenders for child cruelty and FGM related crimes, which appear to be reflected in the new guidelines.

Sentencing Council member Mrs Justice Maura McGowan, gives her thoughts on the new guidelines in the Council’s press release:

“Child cruelty offences vary greatly. They can range from a one-off lapse of care which puts a child at risk of harm to a campaign of deliberate cruelty which leads to serious injury or even death. This new guideline will help ensure sentences that reflect what the offender has done and the harm to the child. It states for example that cases involving very significant force, or multiple incidents of serious cruelty should always be treated as being in the highest category of culpability. The guideline will also assist sentencers in cases where the offender has also been the victim of abuse from another.”

CCDG

Top Child Welfare Bodies – Government’s Social Care Guide Riddled With Serious Errors

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in child welfare, Foster Care, Researching Reform, social work

≈ 11 Comments

An open letter to Children and Families Under Secretary Nadhim Zahawi published on 4th September, and signed by 50 leading child welfare and social work organisations in the UK, urges the government to withdraw several statements it has made in a guide on the care system.

The letter was posted on child rights charity, Article 39’s website and has been sent to Chief Social Worker for Children and Families, Isabelle Trowler; National Director for Social Care, Ofsted, Yvette Stanley and HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey.

The guide, which was published on the government’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme microsite, in June, features several interpretations and recommendations on current statutory guidance with a view to improving good practice and outcomes for families and children, which the government says have been checked by lawyers and policy makers.

Social work bodies, child welfare charities, child rights focused law firms and criminal justice organisations who signed the letter, are concerned that the guide is inconsistent with the law relating to the care system and that it exposes more councils to judicial review cases.

The organisations involved have highlighted seven questions thrown up by the guide, which they say have been incorrectly answered by the government:

  1. Can we have one social worker for children and foster carers when a child is in a stable, long term placement?
  2. Can a Personal Adviser take on the role of the supervising social worker for foster carers, where the young person is staying put?
  3. Can supervising social workers visit less frequently in stable and long term placements?
  4. Can social workers visit less frequently than the normal six weekly basis in stable and long term placements?
  5. Do we always have to conduct an independent return home interview?
  6. Can we integrate the Youth Offending Team assessments within a looked after child remand assessment?
  7. Does an Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) have to chair Child Protection conferences where their looked after children’s situation is being assessed?

Significantly, much of the criticism seems to stem around what appears to be a government sanctioned reduction in professional involvement, which would directly impact the engagement and interests of many of the bodies and individuals who have signed the open letter. The letter’s closing remarks also don’t inspire much confidence that this latest development is about the welfare of children involved, with some references to how the guide might impact children poorly as a result of the government’s recommendations in the body of the letter, but no emphasis at all on child welfare in its concluding paragraph.

The full list of signatories is added below:

The Aire Centre
Article 39
Association of Independent Visitors and Consultants to Child Care Services
Association of Lawyers for Children
Association of Professors of Social Work
Association of Youth Offending Team Managers
Become
British Association of Social Workers England
The Care Leavers’ Association
Children England
Child Rights International Network
Coram Children’s Legal Centre
Coram Voice
ECPAT UK
Family Action
The Fostering Network
Howard League for Penal Reform
Independent Children’s Homes Association
Just for Kids Law
The MAC Project (Central England Law Centre and the Astraea Project)
Nagalro, Professional Association of Children’s Guardians, Family Court Advisers and Independent Social Workers
National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC)
National Association for Youth Justice
National Association of Independent Reviewing Officers
National IRO Managers Partnership
NYAS (National Youth Advocacy Service)
Parents Of Traumatised Adopted Teens Organisation (The Potato Group)
Refugee Council
Social Workers Union
Social Workers Without Borders
Southwark Law Centre
UNISON

Dr Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England 2010-2015
Sir Al Aynsley-Green, first Children’s Commissioner for England 2005-10; now visiting Professor of Advocacy for Children and Childhood, Nottingham Trent University
Wendy Bannerman, Director of Right Resolution CIC
Jay Barlow, Napo National Vice-Chair
Liz Davies Emeritus Professor of Social Work, London Metropolitan University
Anna Gupta, Professor of Social Work, Royal Holloway University of London
Pam Hibbert OBE
Ray Jones, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, Kingston University and St George’s, University of London
John Kemmis, former Chief Executive Voice, NAIRO Patron and Article 39 Expert Panel member
Dr Mark Kerr, Managing Partner, The Centre for Outcomes of Care
Jenny Molloy, Author, Adviser and Trainer
David Palmer, Lecturer in Criminal Justice Services, University of Northampton
Peter Saunders, Founder NAPAC
Mike Stein, Emeritus Professor, University of York
June Thoburn CBE, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, University of East Anglia
Dr Nigel Thomas, Professor Emeritus of Childhood and Youth, University of Central Lancashire
Judith Timms OBE, Founder and Trustee of the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) and a Vice President of the Family Mediators Association
Jane Tunstill, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, Royal Holloway, London University

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