New Social Work Regulator To Take Over In December

12 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social work

Social Work England (SWE), the new body set up to take over from the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) which regulates social workers in the UK, will take over on 2 December.

SWE, (which is pronounced ‘swee’), will be responsible for ensuring that social workers are registered, regulating the social work profession and overseeing fitness to practice complaints.

Lord Patel, who is SWE’s Chair, told Researching Reform last year that he was concerned about the number of social workers inside the sector who were practicing without the necessary qualifications, and said the overwhelming majority of complaints received by outgoing regulator the HCPC came from the social work sector.

SWE has its work cut out. The registration process is not water-tight, and current loopholes allow individuals to practice as social workers without being registered, and without the necessary skills.

Because registration with SWE is not mandatory for every individual providing social care, the exact number of social workers engaging in care work in the UK is not known. This knowledge gap also dangerously affects the regulator’s ability to monitor the quality of social work being carried out.

Care workers can also exempt themselves from registration by avoiding the use of “protected titles” like “social worker”, and using unprotected titles instead. This phenomenon is hugely concerning because some of the titles which are unprotected include senior positions that require a deep knowledge of social care and years of experience.

Lord Patel addressed our concerns over the registration process when we interviewed him, explaining that he would like to see a more robust registration system for care workers inside children’s care homes. Patel also set out a list of initiatives he hoped to implement while acting as Chair for the new regulator. Patel said he would like the government to implement the following:

Engagement Officers in each town which service users could meet with to discuss concerns;
An online forum for service users to get and share information and offer SWE feedback on its proposals;
Thorough data collection across the sector, to better inform social work practice and raise standards across the country;
Raising the standard of social work through courses, university degrees and CPD training;
Monitoring and maintaining practice standards with a website or portal for social workers and local authority teams to set down what work has been carried out during the year;
Addressing the lack of complaints procedures relating to care workers, who engage in social work inside children’s care homes but who are currently not regulated by any independent body – Lord Patel is considering creating a sub-body to deal with these complaints and make sure they are recorded. At the moment, the law does not require regulators to respond to these concerns;
Finding a way to quantify care workers – Lord Patel estimated that there were currently over one million care workers.

We wish SWE luck.

Councils Using Alternative Orders to Remove Children from Parents After Judicial Push Back on Care Applications

14 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social services, social work

≈ 21 Comments

Councils are increasingly turning to other types of court orders to remove children in child protection proceedings after senior judges warned social workers that care applications should only be used as a method of last resort.

The development was revealed by new Cafcass chief Jacky Tiotto, during an interview with Children and Young People Now (CYP Now) magazine.

According to Tiotto, there has been a marked increase in requests for orders for deprivation of liberty, secure accommodation and emergency protection during child protection proceedings.

The finding raises serious concerns about whether social services are making false allegations around service users’ mental health in order to remove children from parents.

Emergency protection orders are only to be used in the most serious circumstances and give councils the right to remove children from their parents if there are concerns around child abuse. These orders can also limit a birth parent’s responsibilities towards their child.

Secure accommodation orders allow councils to place children in residential placement units where they can be stopped from leaving, and have been criticised by judges and other legal professionals because of the way in which they impact human rights like freedom of movement. These orders are usually only used in cases where there appears to be a risk of gang violence, child sexual exploitation and child trafficking.

Deprivation of liberty orders have also gained international media attention because of the way these orders impact children’s human rights under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and are closely linked to secure accommodation orders.

Care applications however, dropped more than 5% from last year.

The drop has been attributed to a shift in social work practice, which now requires social workers to look at care applications and adoptions as the last port of call, rather than the first option in child protection proceedings.

Several senior judges have published judgments relating to child protections cases in order to raise awareness around the need to keep children with their parents wherever possible. The judgements were also made public to confirm the law and policy in this area, which makes it clear that removing children from parents must only happen if all other avenues have failed and only if that removal is genuinely in the best interest of the child in the case.

Despite the warnings, child protection professionals, perhaps desperate to keep their jobs as budget cuts continue to squeeze councils, now appear to be looking to other orders to secure removals.

Tiotto told CYP Now that Cafcass would be working to find out the reasons for the unusual rise in the different types of orders:

“What’s been understood from that drop in care applications is that the public law system is less busy – but it isn’t.

“Behaviour is changing in terms of what [orders] people are going into court for and we need to understand why that is.

“We will be prioritising work to understand that.

“I think in enough authorities people are looking for different solutions for children that may not be public care.

“I’d be surprised if that’s not what we find when we look at the data.”

There is clearly a conflict of interest in a social work organisation taking on this task, and we would like to see an independent body reviewing the data.

Whatever research is conducted though, the investigators will need to look at:

The life of these cases and whether these orders ultimately lead to children being permanently removed from their parents at a later stage,
The cases involved and the kind of evidence gathering that’s taken place,
Which courts these cases are being heard in, paying attention to Court of Protection applications (a Court which remains largely closed off from the public) and;
The internal management issues facing each local authority engaged in placing submissions for these orders.

Child Protection Sector Harms Children’s Mental Health.

12 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by Natasha in child welfare, Researching Reform, social services, social work

≈ 6 Comments

A report by the Children’s Commissioner on children’s experiences inside the care system highlights the appalling way in which children are being treated, and evidences the serious emotional harm the sector is causing these children.

The report, which is 14 pages long and features 22 children and young adults aged between 9 and 21, offers extracts from interviews in which children and young adults describe how the care system treated them and how that treatment made them feel.

While there are a few good experiences shared by children (most of which stem from support given by individuals outside of the care system), the report makes for a read which is both embarrassing and deeply troubling.

The most concerning revelation comes from several children in care who explain that the lack of proper care inside the system directly damaged their mental health, highlighting once again that the child protection system is causing tangible harm to the children it is supposed to be looking after.

One example given was that a change in social worker caused children to have to relive past traumatic events, because they had to talk about their past again.

An exceptionally high turnover in social workers around the country means that children are often having to relive painful past experiences – including the act of separation itself – multiple times.

Despite the volumes of research available on how to look after children, and the very obvious knowledge gaps inside the child protections system – which existed long before austerity – children are also still being left to languish on their own, separated from their siblings and moved sometimes hundreds of miles away from anything familiar to them.

The same tired themes of stability and mental health feature in this document, themes which have been clearly labelled and identified a thousand times over, in child welfare campaigns, scientific data and pioneering social work.

This report is not insightful, or trail blazing, but it is worth sharing the quotes from the children who took part in these interviews, because every one of their voices matter.

You can access all of the quotes published, here.

Below are a selection of quotes which we think broadly capture the key sentiments of the children interviewed. Please read all of them, if you can:

“[Social services] don’t do enough to guarantee the emotional wellbeing of that child, and the psychological wellbeing, it can have a big impact on kids because there’s all that stability gone. … It can have a lot of psychological damage on a kid, and you get the kids acting out, you get kids being rebellious, going off and doing drugs, and they turn down paths, and get involved with the wrong people, and I feel like, a lot of the time, that can be prevented. If they just put more measures in place to make sure kids really understand why this is happening, it’s not their fault, and I just feel like a lot more should be offered, like counselling definitely.” (Female, Care leaver)

“My behaviour got a bit uncontrollable [when moved placement to another town]. It’s because I still wasn’t given the help I want, I needed… Like I needed therapeutic help and I didn’t get it. And then when I moved to [new town following another placement move], I finally got it … It [therapy] made me get rid of all my anger … I haven’t kicked off as often as I used to.” (Female, 13)

“I probably cried myself to sleep each night, the first week.” (Male, 17)

“I was worried a lot at the time. Because it was unknown to where we would be going, how it would be like.” (Female, 16)

My social worker, I ask her so many times, what’s going to happen in my future, I’m really scared. I want to know what’s going to happen in my future and she’s just, she can’t be arsed to talk about it.” (Female, 15)

“But the more you move to different places and then the more you just get used to it … It’s just [breathes out], it’s just tiring … I don’t know how to explain it, you do literally feel tired, you hear it and it’s just like [breathes out] go back to bed.” (Female, 15)

“I think it [moving placements] just had an impact on … how I act, how I controlled my emotions. If I felt angry now, I’d just hold it in but then I would just lash out.” (Female,16)

“I was going through a lot of instability at the time… and I was making decisions that I probably wouldn’t rationally make normally, like running away from school and things like that. Yeah, they well and truly were [due to the instability], and it I guess it was a coping mechanism.” (Male, 17)

“Well they just said that he’s getting adopted to North England. That’s all I’m now allowed to know. … When she told me that he was gone, I just broke down… It was hard, I would cry every single day at school. I’d get taken out of lessons because I just couldn’t cope with it.” (Female, 18)

“I was out of school for three weeks rather than two, because the woman we was given to help me find a new school didn’t really do her job properly… I understand that she’s busy with loads of other people, but she left me and my mum on a voice message for a whole week, then a second week. We gave her a call and we actually got through to her and said, OK, we said to her, oh what’s happening, why haven’t you found a school yet, haven’t you found a school yet or are you just ignoring us, and she said, well I haven’t found a school yet, let me, just give me time. And she left us for another week.” (Male, 16)

“I didn’t meet my new social worker for quite a while, and then I met her a couple of times, and then I got another one. And it’s just like, well I only saw you three times and you’re already leaving, am I that bad? And it just makes you feel like you’re worthless, you’re not valued, and you’ve done something wrong all the time. It also makes you feel like you’re not important to them, and they don’t want to be with you, they don’t want to work with you, they’re just doing it because they have to. So it just makes a real downer on the young person, it makes them feel like, have very low self-esteem and low confidence in themselves.” (Female, 17)

Council Punished For Child Protection Report Citing Assumptions as Fact

23 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social work

≈ 5 Comments

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has ordered a council to apologise to a grandmother and pay a total of £400 for its poor handling of a child protection case.

The complaints body, which investigates council misconduct, found Lancashire County Council guilty of maladministration and service failure, which included errors in paperwork, assumptions made by staff that were reported as fact and failures to organise meetings.

The grandmother said that the process had left her feeling frustrated and demoralised.

Four areas were identified in the complaint, each made up of several incidents:

Incorrect names and details added to records – which still do not appear to have been corrected;
Social workers failing to make several child protection visits;
Multiple failures to separate assumptions from fact;
Multiple failures to send minutes of child protection meetings in time, causing the grandmother distress.

The council was ordered to pay £100 for the inconvenience caused and a further £300 for the distress the grandmother experienced because of the council’s failings.

The latest decisions published by the Ombudsman highlight an ongoing trend in complaints by parents around adoptions and foster placements, despite the Ombudsman not being able to rule on such cases.

Complaints centred around false allegations by councils, unprofessional social work reports, data breaches, failures to follow the law and procedure, and inappropriate placements for children.

There had been an initial dip in the number of complaints after Researching Reform wrote a post explaining the Ombudsman’s inability to investigate care orders, but the lull was short-lived and could suggest that parents are turning to the complaints body out of desperation.

This week’s complaints and the decisions made by the Ombudsman can be read here.

Carer Claiming to be a Social Worker calls Tweeter a “Sick F*ck”

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social services, social work

≈ 8 Comments

A man, or woman, on social media who claimed to be a social worker called a tweeter a “sick fuck” after a heated exchange over an incident in which a six year old boy was pushed off a balcony at the Tate Modern by a 17 year old boy. The teenager blamed social services for his actions.

Carer Raavi Gupta (Raavi can be a man or a woman’s name) also said that he/she did not have the necessary qualifications to practice as a social worker but had been acting in the capacity of a social worker for over a decade.

Gupta engaged with the tweeter after he posted an article about the incident, initially telling the tweeter to stop blaming social services for the crime.

Social media users were quick to join the conversation around whether or not social services had been partly responsible for the teenager’s violent behaviour.

One tweeter said, “He can blame whoever he likes but we all know he is to blame. However if he was a dangerous schizophrenic or mentally ill he should not have been on a trip to the Tate. Safety of majority comes first. Eye witnesses report his behaviour was odd for some time.”

Another tweeter added, “Apparently he was with ‘carers’. Your point re his odd behaviour is important, as you would have thought that ‘professional’ eagle eyed security staff would have noted that and questioned it…. Regardless of witnesses, nobody really knows the historical content….”

The exchange between Gupta and other tweeters became more aggressive after one social media user accused Gupta of having treated vulnerable families poorly and incorrectly suggested that social services were not experiencing budget cuts:

“Your victims are out there recording everything, you are quite right to be extremely concerned, I wasn’t aware of any cuts? The last I heard there was more money being pumped in.”

Gupta replied, “My victims? I’ve spent my life helping people you sick fuck.”

The unprofessional outburst was noticed by several tweeters.

Gupta went on to call another man “a racist right-wing nut job,” after a tweeter said social workers were dangerous people.

During the outburst, Mr Gupta admitted that he/she did not have the appropriate qualifications to act as a social worker. Gupta also tweeted that he/she was making decisions “way above my pay grade” and then told social media users that if they were “vaguely decent” they should campaign for more investment into social services.

Another tweeter went on to the social work register to try to find Raavi Gupta but was unable to see the name on the list, further implying that he/she was not a qualified social worker. Raavi Gupta may not be the carer’s real name.

Researching Reform reached out to Raavi to ask which council they worked for. We did not receive a reply.

Under current law and policy, people can practice as social workers without registering with Social Work England, the regulatory body which oversees social work practice, as long as they use informal titles which are not protected.

This loophole allows unqualified individuals to care for some of the most vulnerable people in England, and makes it extremely difficult to identify and prevent potentially life-threatening conduct.

Many thanks to Eugene for alerting us to this development.

Report Finds Kinship Care Offers Children More Stability Than Adoption

06 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by Natasha in child welfare, Researching Reform, social work

≈ 4 Comments

A new report published by the Nuffield Foundation says that placing children with appropriate family members when parents can’t look after them offers children greater stability than alternatives like adoption and fostering.

The report also says there is an urgent need for research on how best to ensure safe and positive contact with birth parents and a child’s wider family.

The Foundation is calling on the government to reform Special Guardianship, which allows for children to be placed with relatives or individuals with whom the child already has a good relationship.

In their report, the Foundation calls for more research into outcomes for children placed with Special Guardians, and says children and young people’s views must be explored when developing this form of care.

The Foundation also suggests that the sector needs to change the way it works:

“We conclude that special guardianship continues to be an important permanence option ‘for the right child and the right family’. But for this to be so, the system as a whole must operate in a coherent, timely, evidence-informed way and this requires changes in mindset, regulations and protocols.”

The study also revealed that children who are being cared for by Special Guardians have better educational outcomes at key stages 2 and 4 than looked-after children.

The Nuffield Foundation’s report offers a set of recommendations to enable Special Guardianship orders where appropriate, which include the following suggestions:

Strengthen and resource the pre-proceedings phase of the Public Law Outline to identify and work with family members who might become long-term carers for the child.
Ensure that prospective special guardians complete preparation and training to an agreed statutory minimum.
Assessments should not be concluded until sufficient preparation has been completed.
Develop the skills and knowledge of children’s social workers in family placement as a priority.
Ensure that the local authority agrees a plan with the prospective special guardian about the assessment process.
Establish a robust protocol that ensures that the prospective special guardian has – or develops – a significant relationship with the child, including day-to-day care of the child, and that this forms the evidence base for the making of the Order.
Ensure that prospective special guardians receive full information about the meaning, significance and responsibilities of the relevant legal Order in both the immediate and long term.
Ensure that the timetable for concluding care proceedings within 26 weeks is complied with or that an evidenced-based timetable for an extension is agreed.
Ensure that a support plan is based on a comprehensive evidence-based assessment of need.
Ensure that support services are available locally that comply with the Special Guardianship Support Regulations 2005.

Adverse Childhood Experiences Are Not the Answer for Policy say Child Welfare Experts

12 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by Natasha in child abuse, child welfare, Researching Reform, social work

≈ 4 Comments

A thought provoking post on the Social Policy blog questions whether Adverse Childhood Experiences-based policy is really serving the best interests of children.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) refer to child abuse and stress experienced within the home.

ACEs are often used to inform policy and social work practice particularly within child protection, but the authors of the post argue that the indicators used are volatile and completely ignore external factors like poverty and inequality.

Instead, ACEs have traditionally focused on the family and as a result policy has tended to target, and blame, parents who are often struggling with dynamics not of their own making.

The post also talks about the use of algorithmic-based decisions to try to decipher who is at risk and the inherent problems with a tick-box approach.

The piece, which was published in full this month on Cambridge University Press’s Social Policy and Society section , is a must read. The authors, Professor Sue White, Professor Rosalind Edwards, Professor David Wastell and Professor Val Gillies offer some very important thoughts, including ones like these:

“ACEs form a chaotic and unstable knowledge base. This leads to problems with the explanatory weight that can be placed on ACEs. For rigorous tracing of causal inputs through to effects, ACEs need to be a clearly defined set of experiences. But the various definitions of ACEs do not form a cohesive body of definitive evidence and measurement.

Rather they are a shifting range of possible abuses and dysfunctions with inconsistencies in claims about severity, timing and duration.

For instance, common family circumstances such as parents’ divorce or separation, whether amicable or occurring when a child is 7 months or 17 years old, are given the same ACE dose weighting as exposure to domestic violence.

This chaotic approach leads to a great deal of overclaiming, often with over extrapolations from small effect sizes. And there is no attention to the influence of subsequent ameliorating or exacerbating influences, such as extended family support networks or being subject to racism and hate crime.

Interventions, which are frequently franchised ‘slices’ of particular models, are predominantly directed at mothers as primary attachment figures for children – either as a cause of their children’s ACEs, or as a buffer against, and solution to them. The conditions under which mothers bring up their children are skated around.

ACEs form a poor body of evidence for family policy and decision-making about child protection. Coupled with the chronic lack of services and family support in the UK, it is unclear what purpose producing individual ACE scores serves save perhaps to warrant rationing decisions.”

You can follow the professors on Twitter: @RosEdwards2, @ProfSueWhite, @ValGillies and @ProfDaveWastell

“Working with families means collaborating with rather than controlling them.” – New Research

22 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by Natasha in child welfare, Researching Reform, social services, social work

≈ 7 Comments

Many social workers and their managers believe so strongly that an authoritarian approach to child protection is right that they not only feel comfortable trying to control families going through child welfare proceedings but also advocate strongly for such practices, according to research published by Dr David Wilkins, a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Cardiff University, Assistant Director of CASCADE, and project lead at the What Works Centre which assists regulatory body Social Work England.

The paper argues for an inclusive form of social work, where families feel empowered and safe. Dr Wilkins explains, “Working in a participatory way with families means, at the least, seeking to collaborate with rather than control or unduly influence them.”

The research, which was published in 2017 in the British Journal of Social Work has been uploaded onto free research site Academia, and was co-produced with Charlotte Whittaker, the curriculum lead at social work training school The Frontline.

Charlotte is responsible for developing the teaching, learning and assessment of a practice model called motivational interviewing (MI), which Psychology Today describes as a practical, empathetic, short-term counselling method which helps people find the internal motivation they need to change their behaviour while taking into account how difficult it is to make life changes. It is this form of counselling that the research paper focuses on.

Dr Wilkins’ research highlights positive social work practices using MI which have made a difference to families’ lives while also pointing out the dangers of trying to control and coerce parents during child protection proceedings. The research also calls for ground-level reform within social work as well as structural reform to make sure that social workers can put children and families at the heart of their practice.

Parents reacted to the research on social media. One mother told Researching Reform:

“My Cafcass officer doesn’t collaborate on any level. She won’t even contact me directly. She does it through my solicitor costing me more money. Having been in a controlling relationship I definitely feel I have stepped straight into another with her.”

It’s incredibly important to point out that we don’t tolerate coercive behaviour in almost any other context – all we need to do is look at current legislation which prohibits people from using controlling behaviour in a relationship to get what they want from each other. We call that kind of conduct abusive because we know it damages adults, and children.

The paper is a must-read for anyone working with families in a child protection setting, and for families too who have either experienced the child welfare system or are going through it at the moment.

The research is also an important reminder that coercion never resolves an issue as families are never fully on board with an idea they haven’t engaged with or feel any agency towards. It traps families inside a cycle which sees them return to the child protection system over and over again.

This kind of control also creates a deep and lasting mistrust of social workers and the sector.

The research makes several interesting observations about social work practice:

“Participatory principles such as collaboration, empathy and the right to self-determination are embedded in many of the codes of ethics that underpin professional social work practice (BASW, 2012; Levin andWeiss-Gal, 2009). Unsurprisingly, almost all the workers we spoke to believed they embodied these principles in their work (or said they aspired to even if they were not always able to achieve them). And yet our analysis of observed practice suggests that many workers find it hard to acknowledge parents’ feelings, to respect their choices or to draw on their expertise. In discussion with these workers, we found that, whilst they could explain what principles such as collaboration and empathy meant in theory, they found it more challenging to describe how they might be shown in practice.”

Dr Wilkins is part of a growing group of social workers who believe that working collaboratively with families is essential to excellent social work practice and that the system is there to serve families and children. Researching Reform agrees with this view.

You can follow David over on Twitter at @David82Wilkins.

Government Plan To Keep Children Out of Care Fails to Target Inadequate Councils

15 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social services, social work

≈ 6 Comments

The government has launched a project which aims to keep children out of the care system. The £84 million initiative will target councils with the highest numbers of children in care across the country, but will not include bids from failing councils.

The project comes at a time when the child protection sector is seeing unprecedented levels of children in care.

Up to twenty councils will receive a share of the £84m set aside for the “Strengthening Families, Protecting Children” project over a period of five years. The project offers three programmes designed to improve the safety and stability of vulnerable children and to reduce the need for families to access services. Selected councils will implement one of the three featured programmes.

Three ‘early adopters’ have already been chosen to test the project and will begin implementing the programmes in the Spring. The selected councils are Darlington, Cambridgeshire and Middlesbrough.

Only councils with an Ofsted rating of ‘requires improvement to be good’ can make bids for the funding and take part in the project, making the project’s aims questionable. The current ratings offered by Ofsted are Oustanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate.

The What Works Centre for children’s social care will evaluate the success of the project sometime after 2024, but as the project will not be allowing councils with an inadequate rating to join the programme, arguably councils in most need of the support, it is unclear what use the evaluation will be in assessing the viability of the programmes in the project.

The Department for Education’s press release offers more detail on the programmes being offered:

Leeds Family Valued: working with the whole family unit and any support network to encourage long term changes at home that keep children safe, working with families rather than imposing measures on them. Independent evaluation of the project’s impact on the target population shows that between 2011 and 2017, Leeds reduced the number of children on children’s services Protection Plans by nearly 50% (974 in 2011 down to 515 in 2017).
Hertfordshire Family Safeguarding: creates teams consisting of mental health practitioners, domestic abuse workers, probation officers and children’s social workers to strengthen the bond between couples, support fathers and male partners to prevent violent behaviour. Evaluation shows this resulted in a 39% reduction in the number of days children spent in care, for cases allocated to the safeguarding team, a 53% drop in in hospital admissions for adults in that family, and a 66% reduction in contact with the police.
North Yorkshire No Wrong Door: creates ‘hubs’ where young people at risk of going into care get targeted support to cope with the multiple issues they face, including lack of accommodation or contact with the police. Independent evaluation showed the programme saw a 38% fall in arrests of individuals involved during the first 18 months of the programme and a 57% reduction in A&E visits.

The launch of the project coincides with the Children Act 1989’s thirtieth anniversary.

The press release can be read here.

The criteria for entry onto the project can be found here.

Ofsted’s Local Authority Children’s Social Care reports can be accessed here.

Many thanks to Michele Simmons for alerting us to this project.

Social Workers Spying On Families Are Breaking The Law

22 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social work

≈ 26 Comments

Social workers in the UK are breaking the law as they spy on families through Facebook, The Times reports this morning. Social work professionals are also setting up fake social media accounts to spy on parents and children.

A study carried out by researchers at Lancaster University found that social workers were failing to adhere to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). The Law allows government investigators including social workers to view a citizen’s social media accounts once, but thereafter requires the actor to get permission for repeat viewing or continued surveillance.

The Times explains that the social workers observed in the study did not seek out this permission. The researchers concluded that the behaviour showed an “apparent lack of awareness or conscious disregard of Ripa”.

Describing one of the recorded incidents from the research, The Times said:

“At one meeting, discussing a mother who was deemed a high risk to her baby, a social worker asked a colleague: “Do you spy on Facebook?”

The colleague answered: “Oh, yeah, I’m a big fan of Facebook stalking and [our manager] always comes in when I’m looking at it, she thinks I’m on Facebook all the time. I’ve got a fake Facebook account and I have to be very careful with the families that I don’t reveal something I’ve seen on Facebook.”

The Times reports that four months later the children were removed from the family and that the social worker involved had checked Facebook on the morning the children were taken to “gauge” how the mother was feeling.

The findings have concerned the researchers who have identified legal concerns through the study: social workers are clearly breaking the law to spy on families.

The practice of spying on families through social media has been around for at least two years and may be aggravated by judges who are unfamiliar with legislation like RIPA. In 2017 this site wrote about a judge who gave social workers the green light to search for families through Facebook.

Justice Holman took the view that it was appropriate for child welfare professionals to use the social media platform to track down missing parents – but did not offer any information about RIPA or the need to contact police in the first instance, who are tasked with locating missing persons. Social workers do not have a duty in law to track missing members of the public.

Researching Reform also shared research from America which offered alarming insight into how social workers were using the internet to spy on families with no regard for the law. The report concluded that while social workers found the internet useful for work, they were unclear about how it should be used in a child welfare setting.

Other concerning observations from the report show a real and urgent need to address the profession’s behaviour around investigating families:

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.

After Researching Reform called on the then President of the Family Division Sir James Munby to issue guidelines for social workers in the UK, guidance was published in September 2017 by the social care ombudsman. The guidance is a step in the right direction but remains incomplete.

Exactly one year later in 2018, online magazine Community Care published a survey asking social workers if they thought spying on families through social media platforms was legal. The outcome of the survey is not known.

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