Councils Need Parental Consent For Child In Need Assessments, High Case Loads No Excuse for Incompetence – Government Ombudsman

02 Monday Mar 2020

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

Councils seeking to carry out ‘child in need’ assessments must get parental consent first, and must also explain to families that such assessments are not mandatory, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (the Ombudsman) has confirmed.

Crucially, the Ombudsman also made it clear that heavy case loads are never an excuse for poor practice in child welfare cases.

The complaint which gave rise to the Ombudsman’s investigation involved a mother (Ms J) who had sought out counselling services, but was later threatened with a safeguarding investigation by the council.

The counsellor the mother was seeing suggested she contact her local authority to see if she could access the counselling through them, so the council could pay for the service.

The mother felt coerced into accepting the suggestion by the counsellor, who subsequently referred the mother to Hackney Borough council on the grounds that she suspected one of the children was at risk of harm from the mother and requested the council engage with the family.

The request was made in a referral letter which was not shared with the mother, so she did not know the content of the letter at the time.

After Hackney Council received the referral letter, it decided to carry out an assessment on the family. The mother asked for a copy of the letter on two occasions, but it was not sent to her.

When the mother finally received the letter, she was concerned by its contents, which she said were incorrect.

At no time was the mother told that the assessment, which had been carried out under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, was not mandatory.

Under Section 17, councils have a legal responsibility to safeguard and promote a child’s welfare, and to promote wherever possible their upbringing by their families.

The mother then discovered that the assessment required her consent and was not mandatory, when the council sent her a letter intended for another family facing the same investigation.

To make matters worse, the mother said she was told she should press ahead with the assessment in order to “clear her name” and get closure. Feeling enormous pressure to continue on, she agreed.

The manager claimed he did not say this, but the Ombudsman took the view that he did, concluding that “on the balance of probabilities, however, given her strength of feeling Ms J would not have wanted to continue unless she felt the assessment would exonerate her.”

What follows next is even more appalling.

An officer came to the mother’s house to interview her son, and wrongly assumed the child was 6, instead of 4 which was the child’s actual age. He then asked the mother why her child was still in pull-up pants at night even though this would not have been unusual given his age. The officer also appears to have misunderstood the child, who had divulged information about an assault at school. The mother said her child was visibly shaken after speaking with the officer. Once a second meeting had taken place, the officer said there would not be a safeguarding investigation, and left.

The ombudsman found several failures by the council in this case.

The council was wrong to tell the mother the assessment under Section 17 was mandatory – the mother was never required to comply, rather she needed to give consent. If the mother did not want to give consent, the investigation should not have been carried out.
The council was wrong to tell the mother that doing the assessment would “clear her name” – she should have been told that refusing to continue with the assessment would not lead to any further action.
The council should have made sure that its details about the child were accurate before sending out an officer – knowing a child’s age is fundamental. The council blamed a high case load for the error, but the Ombudsman did not accept that as an excuse, saying, “Officers should conduct their work to a high standard irrespective of their caseloads.”
The officer should have made sure she understood fully what the child had said before leaving the house.
The council should have asked the mother to return the copies of the letter she received in error and investigated the data breach (sending the mother a letter intended for another family) when the mother complained about the incident.

The Ombudsman ordered the Council to do several things, including:

Changing its procedures so it ensures parents are asked for consent, where appropriate, prior to assessments.
Ensuring that social workers ask for appropriate information about a family prior to scheduling an assessment.
Being clear about what the council will provide after information is requested about a referral and periodically quality manage the response.
Considering whether the information the council provides for Stage One complaint responses is sufficient.

The mother was awarded £450 for her trouble, and offered an apology by the council.

The Working Together To Safeguard Children document, which councils must engage when dealing with child welfare cases says the following, which is worth highlighting:

“All practitioners should aim to gain consent to share information, but should be mindful of situations where to do so would place a child at increased risk of harm. Information may be shared without consent if a practitioner has reason to believe that there is good reason to do so, and that the sharing of information will enhance the safeguarding of a child in a timely manner. When decisions are made to share or withhold information, practitioners should record who has been given the information and why… When you gain consent to share information, it must be explicit, and freely given.”

Further reading:

Child Protection Experienced Families Invited To Launch Event For “Parent Partnership” Scheme

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by Natasha in event, Researching Reform, social work

≈ 13 Comments

A government-funded social work teaching body is launching an initiative to improve child protection in England and Wales, by including parents with experience of the child protection system.

The project will hold its official launch in Birmingham next month, at an event which it hopes will attract families who have been, or are currently inside the care system.

The Social Work Teaching Partnership West Midlands (SWTP) has created what it calls a “Parent Partnership Programme” which aims to develop “a more supportive, collective and compassionate approach to child protection”, according to the event’s invitation page.

The event will act as the official launch for the scheme, and will feature the experiences of professionals working with parents who have been in the care system in the United States, information on how parent partnership can reduce the need for children to be in care, as well as develop better support for families, and how to foster better cooperation between parents and social workers.

The invitation says that some of the speakers at the event will include parents who have experienced the child protection system. Additional speakers confirmed are Professor Andy Bilson, a spokesperson from ATD Fourth World, and members of the Camden Family Group Conferencing and Southwark Parents Panel.

The event will feature speeches, interactive workshops and a decision making panel.

The organisers are actively encouraging families to attend this event, as well as social work managers and practitioners, with a view to developing the parent partnership scheme further once the launch has been held.

The Social Work Teaching Partnership West Midlands is one of 23 accredited social work teaching bodies funded by the Department for Education to raise the level of education and training for social work students.

The 23 partnerships incorporate 113 councils, 54 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and 32 private, voluntary and independent (PVI) partners.

SWTP West Midlands is made up of local authorities, children’s trusts, NHS trusts and universities.

The Partnership also has a newsletter it sends out, which can be subscribed to through Coventry City Council’s E Mail Alerts Service.

Teaching Partnerships were set up in 2014 to improve social work education, and an evaluation of their impact is set to be published by the Department of Education in March 2020.

An interim report was published in July 2019, which found that while cooperation between social workers and academics had improved in some cases, the sector continued to face ongoing challenges.

The scheme’s launch takes place on Tuesday, February 25 in Birmingham’s Old Library, from 10am – 4pm.

You can access the invitation and register to attend here.

Leading Social Work Body Publishes Human Rights Handbook

16 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by Natasha in Human Rights, Researching Reform, social work

≈ 2 Comments

Welcome to another week.

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has published a human rights handbook to familiarise social workers with the law.

The BASW decided to produce the handbook to coincide with Human Rights Day on 10th December, and it offers a summary of human rights legislation in the UK, how human rights engage with social work in both adult and child cases, and the impact of Brexit on those rights.

While the handbook makes a valiant effort at explaining how austerity and poverty should never be used as justifications to breach families’ human rights, the guide also glosses over important human rights issues within child protection, and seems to offer ways to bypass those rights rather than protect them.

Part 2 of the practice guide begins with a look at the human rights laws applied in social work and section 6.2 offers advice on which rights apply in children and families cases.

A dedicated ‘case example’ page which highlights forced adoption in the UK, called “Dispensing of Parental Consent to Adoption”, refers to the practice of forced adoption as ‘controversial’, which is astounding.

Forced, or non consensual, adoption, is very rarely used by other countries around the world and is considered to be an inhumane and unnecessary practice. An established body of research also bolsters that view.

Forced adoption is no longer seen as controversial by experienced academics, politicians and campaigners in this field. It is seen as a phenomenon which breaches the human rights of children and families without good reason.

Although the section explains the need to choose non consensual adoption as a method of last resort, and also outlines the conditions in which a child can be removed from their parents, the segments dealing with child removal are sparse and don’t paint an honest picture of the real human rights challenges within the practice.

For example, the guidance does not at any point highlight the human rights concerns with the way in which UK social workers currently justify removal, a process which has been seen as an increasingly important human rights issue, while a growing number of children are being returned to their parents by judges in the family courts.

The open admission by the sector that much of the policies and working guidelines are not evidence-based, meaning that social work practice is to a very large extent not backed up by science or data which suggests that doing something a certain way is in fact the right way, poses enormous human rights questions.

Another gaping omission in the practice guide is the use of covert surveillance on social media platforms, by social workers. A spike in child welfare professionals using platforms like Facebook to spy on families and children has been particularly concerning, after a study carried out by Lancaster University confirmed that social workers were breaking the law by accessing users’ personal information.

And the link offered, which should take readers to the BASW’s (very brief) guide on how social workers should use social media in a professional context doesn’t work – you can find the right link to the document here.

Are we being unfair? Take a look at the handbook and tell us what you think.

New Social Work Regulator To Take Over In December

12 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, social work

≈ 4 Comments

Social Work England (SWE), the new body set up to replace 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.

Further reading:

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

≈ 7 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.

Further reading:

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.

Further reading:

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

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