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Messages from Serious Case Reviews
Patrick Ayre
Department of Applied Social Studies
University of Bedfordshire
Park Square, Luton
email: pga@patrickayre.co.uk
web: http://patrickayre.co.uk
Learning from enquiries
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it
(George Santayana)
Plus ça change Every child matters & Keeping children
safe
Jasmine Beckford, Kimberley Carlile, Tyra Henry & Victoria Climbié, Lauren Wright and Ainlee Walker,
Doing the simple things well
Serious Case Reviews
Held when a child has died or suffered serious harm and abuse or neglect suspected
Aim to identify lessons to be learned
Action plan drawn up
Serious Case Reviews
A panel of senior managers drawn from key local agencies
Final report normally written by an experienced external consultant
Examine management reviews prepared by each agency
Serious Case Reviews
Produce overview report and action plan
Executive summary of report becomes a public document
Learning from Past Experience Major themes from SCR reviews of the 90s:
Inter-agency working Limited inter-agency co-operation and service
integration, especially child and adult services Poor communication both between agencies
and within agencies Health services and child protection: variable
levels of knowledge, especially among GPs and those in adult mental health service
Learning from Past ExperienceCollecting and interpreting information Importance of comprehensive family
assessments, especially male figures Need for medical evidence to be
considered within the overall context Receiving, interpreting and dealing with
referrals Understanding thresholds, especially the
importance of neglect and emotional deprivation and the need to accumulate evidence
Capturing chronic abuse
Judging the impact of long-term abuse is an essential component of any assessment but how well do we do it?
Judgements subjective and prone to bias
Intangible: Difficult to capture and compare
High threshold for recognition
Neglect is a pattern not an event
Capturing chronic abuse
Judging the quality of care is an essential component of any assessment but how well do we do it?
Judgements subjective and prone to bias
Intangible: Difficult to capture and compare
High threshold for recognition
Neglect is a pattern not an event
Our image of assessment
A ssessm ent
The reality of assessment?
A ssessm ent
Capturing chronic abuse
Judging the quality of care is an essential component of any assessment but how well do we do it?
Judgements subjective and prone to bias
Intangible: Difficult to capture and compare
High threshold for recognition
Neglect is a pattern not an event
The pattern of neglect: atypical
The pattern of neglect: typical
Intervention Intervention
The pattern of neglect
'G ood enough' level
Intervention Intervention
The pattern of neglect
Intervention Intervention
'G ood enough' level
Intervention ceases
The pattern of neglect
What we would hope to find
T h r es h o ld f o rin te r v en tio n
SEXUAL
ABUSE
PHYSICAL
ABUSE N
EGLECT
NEGLECT
NEGLECT
What we found
T h r es h o ld f o rin te r v en tio n
SEXUAL
ABUSE
PHYSICAL
ABUSE
NEGLECT
NEGLECT
NEGLECT
NEGLECT
What we found
Chronic abuse and the principle of cumulativeness Incidents scattered through files
The problem of proportionality
Acclimatisation
Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them Professionals think that when they have explained something
as clearly as they can, the other person will have understood Parents’ behaviour, whether co-operative or uncooperative, is
often misinterpreted Not enough weight to information from family friends and
neighbours Not enough attention is paid to what children say, how they
look and how they behave Attention is focused on the most visible or pressing problems
and other warning signs are not appreciated When faced with an aggressive or frightening family,
professionals are reluctant to discuss fears for their own safety and ask for help
Information taken at the first enquiry is not adequately recorded, facts are not checked and reasons for decisions are not noted.
In Cleaver, H, Wattam, C and Cawson, P Assessing Risk in Child Protection, NSPCC, 1998
Information handling Picking out the important from a mass of data Interpretation Distinguishing fact/opinion; too
trusting/insufficiently critical Mistrusted source Decoyed by another problem False certainty; undue faith in a ‘known fact’ Discarding information which does not fit First impressions/assumptions
Department of Health (1991) Child abuse: A study of inquiry reports, 1980-1989, HMSO,
Learning from Past Experience
Decision-making Need for shared decision-making,
especially in respect of not taking action or case closure
Moving from data collection and sharing to strategic discussions and clear plans
Planning a co-ordinated response across professionals and agencies
Learning from Past ExperienceRelations with families Dealing with hostile families or those
who withdraw Lack of awareness of the impact of
domestic violence on children and their safety.
Seeing the child as the client, focusing on his or her protection and not being distracted by other problems or by adult or sibling concerns
A child centred approach
The purpose of assessment is to understand what it is like to be that child (and what it will be like in the future if nothing changes)
Learning from Past Experience (2002)
Geographical mobility: breaking contact Common understanding of what triggers
an assessment of need or risk of significant harm?
Information sharing and confidentiality Better identification of children
vulnerable to abuse Understanding the process of change in
public services
ANALYSING CHILD DEATHS AND SERIOUS INJURY THROUGH ABUSE AND NEGLECT (2003-5)
‘Hard to help’ young people
Hesitancy in challenging
Hostile and ‘difficult to engage’ families
‘Start again syndrome’.
Very young children physically assaulted known to universal services or adult services rather than children’s social care
Well over half: domestic violence, or mental ill health, or parental substance misuse
“Hard to Help”: The complexity of the challenge
Young people may be Victims, Perpetrators Parents Any combination of the above
but have the same right to be safeguarded as any other child.
The background
“The reviews showed that state care did not always support these young people fully and that they experienced ‘agency neglect’” Brandon and others (2008).
The young people
Adolescence marks start of serious problems for many children:
– Onset of mental health issues– Family conflict– Drug use, offending– Sexual activity– Running away
The young people (Brandon and others)
History of rejection, loss and, usually, severe maltreatment
Long term intensive involvement from multiple agencies
Parents: history of abuse and current mental health and substance issues
Difficult to contain in school Typically self-harming and misusing
substances, often self-neglect
The young people (Brandon and others)
Numerous placement breakdowns Running away, going missing Risk of dangerous sexual activity
including exploitation Sometimes placed in specialist
settings, only to be withdrawn because of running away
The young people (My experience)
Long involvement, but not always intense Sometimes few placements, but all wrecked
by the young person Common factor that local services just did
not know what to do with them. ‘By the time of the incident, for many of the
young people, little or help was being offered because agencies appeared to have run out of helping strategies’ (Brandon and others, 2008).
The response
Reluctance to identify mental illness and suicidal intent (CAMHS)
Failure to respond in a sustained way to extreme distress manifested in risky behaviour (sex, drugs, suicide attempts)
Arguing between agencies about responsibility and thresholds
Reasons for running not addressed adequately
The response
Running away leads to discharge [More generally, does rejection of
services lead to total abandonment?] Age used as a reason for not imposing
services No proper assessment of competence;
allowed/forced to choose; [Dealing with incidents but failing to
recognise patterns]
The obstacles
Hard to get a purchase on the system Wrong children, wrong adults (Ayre, 2000) Lack of off-the-shelf resources The limited resources are poorly
coordinated and integrated Government targets not child centred or
child driven Different agency agendas and mutual
misunderstanding; falling down the gap
The solutions?
Biehal (2005) recommends adolescent support teams in the community [but is that enough?]
The complexity of the challenge requires flexible collaborative, individualised responses built around the young person
Learning from recent SCRs
Information drawn from:
About 30 Serious Case Reviews and expert witness reports undertaken in local authorities around England since 2003
A ‘review of reviews’ undertaken for one authority
Learning from recent SCRs
Key areas of concern
Assessment practice
Response to overload
Communication and collaboration
Child protection meetings and conferences
Case management
Assessment Practice Great disquiet over assessment
practice Failure to give sufficient weight to
relevant case history Facts recorded faithfully but not
always critically appraised Guidance and thresholds
Assessment Practice
Use of trained staff
Assessment of male carers
Maintenance of a wholly child-centred approach
Formal assessment of risk (How do you do a risk assessment?)
Risk assessment The dangers involved (that is the feared outcomes);
The hazards and strengths of the situation (that is the factors making it more or less likely that the dangers will realised);
The probability of a dangerous outcome in this case (bearing in mind the strengths and hazards);
The further information required to enable this to be judged accurately; and
The methods by which the likelihood of the feared outcomes could be diminished or removed.
Response to overload
Acclimatisation at individual and agency levels
Lack of a strategic multi-agency response
The Child Safeguarding System (nominal)
The Child Safeguarding System (actual?)
Collaboration and communication
Communication generally found to be good but…
Communication with hospitals
– Referrals
– Medical reports
Mental health or drugs issues
Mental health or drugs issues
Working on the same case but not working jointly
Mutual incomprehension and misunderstanding
False expectations and assumptions
Abdicating responsibility
Need for ‘interpreters’
Child protection meetings
Attendance at conferences
Protection plans omit objectives and outcomes
Removal from the register
Use of strategy meetings
Proliferation of meeting types
Case management File management: reading, recording
decisions, auditing
Case closure
Chronologies
CP and teenagers
Effectiveness of Emergency Duty Teams
Training
General disquiet over the level of training in child protection
Specific training for children's services and mental health workers
Enhanced training for conference chairs and or independent professionals
Interagency training to cover the roles and priorities of the key agencies
References Brandon M. et al (2008) Analysing child deaths and serious
injury through abuse and neglect: What can we learn?; London, Department for Children. Schools and Families
Falkov, A. (1996) A Study of Working Together Part 8 Reports: Fatal Child Abuse and Parental Psychiatric Disorder, London: Department of Health
James, G. (1994) Study of Working Together Part 8 Reports, London: Department of Health
Owers, M., Brandon, M. and Black, J. (1999) Learning How to Make Children Safer: An Analysis for the Welsh Office of Serious Child Abuse Cases in Wales, University of East Anglia/Welsh Office
Sinclair, R and Bullock, R (2002) Learning from Past Experience: A Review of Serious Case Reviews, London: Department of Health
Learning from Public Enquiries
The unholy trinity following cp tragedies:
aggressive public pillorying of agencies; ever more detailed recommendations resulting
from public enquiries; increasingly intricately wrought practice
guidance from central government
CLIMATIC CONDITIONS
Climate of fear
Climate of mistrust
Climate of blame
HOW DID WE GET TO WHERE WE ARE NOW? This history may create a system: excessively concerned with identifying and
eliminating danger rather than promoting well-being and undertaking treatment or therapy.
excessively concerned with procedures and process rather than with objectives and outcomes.
defensive, reactive and concerned with the collection of evidence at the expense of the assessment of need and proactive, co-operative, preventive provision.
Trusting procedures
Procedural proliferation
Blaming and training
The myth of predictability
Procedures as a net to catch problems
Procedures as a net to catch problems
Procedures as a net to catch problems
Procedures as a net to catch problems
In itiateaction 1
Tak eaction 1
Tak e ne xt action
As s e s sand e valuateDe cide ne xt
action
Exit s ys te m
Ente r s ys te m Exit s ys te mInitiate
e xit action
Ente r s ys te m
PROFESSIONAL LEV EL
TECHNICAL LEV EL
PROFESSIONAL LEV EL
TECHNICAL LEV EL
Feedforward Control System
Feedback Control System
In itiateaction 2
Tak eaction 2
Controle ve nts
Actions
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