It is really sad to learn that some Local Authority services for children are stopping or cutting back on services for children and families. The UK is entering a period of financial restraint never known before and there has been a rush to cut services but there is an opportunity even in these challenging times.  There are creative ways to safeguard actual delivery to children and their families.

Public services could join together to work in a collaborative and seamless way.  Separate management structures could give way to economies of scale. A well trained professional service does not need to focus on expensive layers of control. The human relationship between staff and families is the critical point of service.  It is also the part of service where management control actually has least influence.  Since it relies almost entirely on the quality of the interaction, it can be continually improved and enhanced by staff development.  This would allow more people to be employed in direct work with children and their families, within a small integrated management structure. This model would also allow the Local Authority Children’s Services to take a more creative and inspirational approach towards  guidance and quality control.

Managing cultural change is never easy.  It requires vision and leadership.  It is true that public service is complex but that is exactly the reason to simplify it.  It has grown complex by incremental change rather than radical change.  All of which has added layers of heirarchy and consequent complexity.  It creates a situation where people need to be employed to interpret what needs to be done rather than being enabled to provide innovative change.

Aid agencies, the military, airports and transport links and many other services manage complex and difficult situations everyday.  Taking Childrens Services to a new level in these new times requires people with exceptional strategic and visionary skills  who can instigate more imaginative action. They exist – let’s engage them.

A review of the final Report by Graham Allen, July 2012

Early Intervention is now the new mantra. The methodology for how services to children are delivered  is to be transformed from crisis intervention to, working with children just as soon as the signs that all is not well are spotted.

This is an exceptional report in the field of social policy. Firstly since it brings together the work of Eileen Munro, Frank Field and Clare Tickell to provide an integrated approach. But particularly since it is a cross-party development, and it sets out a possible different source of funding. It is, therefore the blueprint for fundamental change in the way  services to children and their families are to be delivered.

It will require of professionals a greatly enhanced level of skill in recognising the physical and emotional signs of deprivation and abuse. There can be little doubt that those working with children and their families will want to spend more of their time working intensively with children. But,I would suggest, that there will be some concerns. Some will take to this way of working, because they have always worked in an intensively perceptive and sensitive way.  There will be others that believe that they have these skills, but perhaps do not – and this, no doubt, will not be easy to accept.  For others they will be deeply uncomfortable with this intense professional relationship building. Perceptive and deeply analytical skills training will be necessary.

Managers need professional leadership skills to work with staff to support and understand  how best to guide the change.  For some time it has been possible to avoid the deep professional understanding required of the emotionality of children and families.  This will no longer be the case.

Further Reading:

Early Intervention: Smart Investment, Massive Savings

“Pupils feel exceptionally safe and secure because they know that staff have their well-being at heart and are always prepared to listen, help and take action.”

This quotation is taken from the OFSTED Section 5 Inspection report, published in January 2009, which judged Hillside First School to be a “Good” school. At this time, Nigel Leat had been working as a teacher at the school for nearly 15 years and it is likely that he had been systematically sexually abusing children in his care for 12 of these.

Whilst we await with interest the publication of the Serious Case Review into Leat’s activities, it is already clear that warning signs about Leat’s “tactile” approach to young girls in his class were ignored and that he was apparently warned that these might “leave him open to accusations of improper behaviour”. There seems to have been a fundamental gap in the understanding of school leaders about their safeguarding responsibilities, the ways in which dangerous professionals exploit such opportunities and a belief that “It couldn’t happen here”.

Thankfully, predatory paedophile activity in education settings is rare but it is nonetheless devastating for children, parents, colleagues and the credibility of the institution.

Despite OFSTED’s findings, Hillside First School was not operating as a safe organisation because;
• Leat was able to identify and exploit gaps in their safeguarding systems,

• Any staff code of conduct that might have been in place seems not to have applied to Leat – he pushed boundaries and was not challenged,

• Leat was trusted absolutely by his managers and most colleagues,

• He created opportunities for unsupervised access to individual children and groomed his targets over a very long period,

• He used the classic devices employed by paedophiles to isolate children and used guilt, blame and shame to ensure their silence.

The key to effective safeguarding is awareness and collective responsibility for professional standards and ‘whistle blowing’. Until these are routinely addressed in whole-school training and fully understood by Governors and School Leaders, the Nigel Leats of this world will continue to pose a risk to our children and schools.

Community Care last week carried a piece reflecting the view of some social workers that their managers do not possess the skills to supervise and advise them.  This links into comments in the Munro Final Report that ‘managerialism’ has taken hold within some children’s services.  That, internal pressures to fulfil the managerial tasks of budgeting and allocation of resources, have come at the expense of inter-personal skills and staff support has been a casualty of that process.

This also links to other reported stories within the ‘caring services’ where bullying and harassment have become endemic within service.  It is important to state that motivating and supporting staff is a major responsibility of management.

The development of professional expertise, an open learning culture and a consultative supportive approach is the way ahead.  Social Work is created from and by human relationship.  There is no other way.

There seems to be a concern around that nothing is going to happen regarding Professor Eileen Munro’s Final Report. To be clear. Nothing has changed as yet.   All statutory guidance still applies.

Work is underway at the Department of Education to find the ways that the reports produced by Clare Tickell, Frank Field and Graham Allen can be brought  together, so all these important social policy initiatives can make a coherent package of reform.

A statement regarding progress will be made during the summer months. The government has accepted the need for change.

I  read many Serious Case Reviews, because its is part of my job at CR&A to look for what is not being understood in society regarding safeguarding children.  Nevertheless it never fails to surprise me just how many people just don’t realise that safeguarding children means every adult being mindful and alert to what they see and experience in day to day life.  Something is not working regarding the widespread dissemination of this information.  We certainly cannot know, what ‘we don’t know we need to know’ !

If we think about the many opportunities that ordinary people have, going about their daily jobs to come into contact with children, this is how many opportunities we have to make sure children are being cared for. This does not mean only Children’s Social Care. Consider it: there is the postie, the people we invite into our homes to fix stuff, deliver stuff, environmental health officers, housing officers, all the people that deliver stuff from our shopping trips. So we just need to keep aware.  We can ALL be the eyes and ears for children in vulnerable situations.

If you are concerned, the next step is to inform Children’s Social Care/the Police/the GP, Children’s Safeguarding Board. You can do this anonymously if you feel you have to, but always do something.  You may well have the well-being of a child in your hands.

Catherine Rushforth & Associates will always help you if you believe a particular child or children are being harmed and want to know what to do next. We give advice on this matter free to anyone.

Sources:

Working Together to Safeguard Children 2010

Department for Education website

I have been spending some time looking at Ofsted Reports where services have not really understood what safeguarding means.  Interesting to see that one large local authority with considerable provision for services for children has failed to understand the safeguarding agenda.  It has some areas of deprivation but substantially it is a ‘well-off’ authority and is a local authority of some professional status.

It understands child protection well enough but not the concept of “keeping children safe”, so services for children “looked after” and children “ in need” and the actions required to ensure their safety have been shown to be inadequate and as such,  poorly understood.

They are of course, not the only local authority to have their services to children deemed inadquate. The lesson for every provision providing services to children, whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors, is that it is necessary to understand exactly what safeguarding entails. There are actions that need to be taken to check that as individuals you are not resting on your laurels by thinking your provision is OK.   The task is to ask yourself how do you know your own practice is really up to date?

Not Sure? Have a look at our free Factsheets.

Children’s Minister, Tim Loughton, has reassured workers that he expects “no significant changes” to safeguarding and child protection duties. This includes Section (s) 47: Section 17: Section 20: He reiterates that Professor Eileen Munro is to recommend ways that safeguarding and child protection can be improved and made stronger. Concern had been expressed by local authority social workers following a review by DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) into the duties and responsibilities on local authorities.

A recent Panorama programme, Britain’s Missing Dads reported on feckless fathers and asked, do benefits for single mothers prevent fathers having a role? It is somewhat more nuanced than that. Some fathers could not, nor ever could, get involved with their children. If your own father did not, for whatever reason, become a warm and participative parent, you yourself may not have a clear emotional view of what fathers can bring to life. The issues are intergenerational.

Two outstanding independent reports, Early Intervention: The Next Steps (Graham Allen) and The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults (Frank Field) both make the case in a most cogent way for what needs to change. The fact that they have cross party support is a credit to the work of Ian Duncan Smith, both his understanding and personal commitment. Both are recommended for early adoption by the Cabinet Social Justice Committee (Ian Duncan Smith).
These reports outline both the depth of the inter-related issues, the social and economic benefits to be achieved by adopting the model and the methodology and route to implement systems in a swift and comprehensive way.

So its great that these issues are being publicly raised. However what seems to be lacking is positive leadership that shows what the future might hold. A different way of working, for sure, but perhaps Childrens Services could explore more effective ways of working with families. Maybe even the type of work that attracted people to work with children in the first place? We expect our families to make a leap of faith to work with us, isn’t it about time that we use courage ourselves to believe in what we can do in a new way ?

Christine Morgan

A few weeks ago I delivered safeguarding awareness training to governing bodies in two schools. As ever, I was heartened by the enthusiasm and willingness of these groups of volunteers to give of their own time in a role where acknowledgement and acclaim are in very short supply: often after being cajoled into this role.

I was also struck by two thoughts:
• Just how much legal responsibility is placed in the hands of governors
• How little preparation governors are generally given for these responsibilities – as a relatively new governor myself, I can speak here from personal experience.

Safeguarding responsibilities encompass just about every area of school policy, from premises security and lettings through to the curriculum and recruitment practices. The significance of safeguarding for governing bodies was further enhanced when the inspection framework for schools changed in the autumn of 2009 and safeguarding became a limiting judgment*. Then, in January 2010, schools acquired the obligation to have at least one panel member who has successfully completed the Children’s Workforce Development Council’s ‘Safer Recruitment’ workshop or on-line programme, for every school interviewing panel.

Under the new framework, all governors are expected to have an understanding of their safeguarding responsibilities, to promote an ethos of positive practice and to ‘own’, review and scrutinise safeguarding processes across the school. The critical questions being, How do you know that it’s happening? and, How can you evidence this?

CR&A training programmes for governors explore the origins of the safeguarding agenda, describe the duties which are overseen by governors, cross-reference safeguarding to other relevant polices, clarify DfE and OFSTED expectations and describe ways in which governors can apply the standards of a “safe organisation”.

* Limiting Judgement: If a school is judged as unsatisfactory on safeguarding they cannot pass inspection however good the rest is.

John Guest