We were victims of childhood abuse in our differing ways and here we'll share something of what happened to us.

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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Abuse Investigations: 'too often the child's voice was lost'


Child protection has been under the spotlight following the failure of social workers in the London borough of Haringey to prevent the abuse and death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly in 2007.
The first review of his death was rejected as unsatisfactory by Ofsted and a second was commissioned. Both were published in full earlier this week.
Child's views
Ofsted automatically carries out its own review of inquiries into these very serious cases of child abuse.  Inspectors said some reviews had "insufficient consideration" of the child's individual views and needs.   
The report said: "Too often the focus on the child was lost; adequate steps were not taken to establish the wishes and feelings of children and young people, and their voice was not sufficiently heard."
Inspectors said the professionals involved had not been challenging enough.
"The statements of parents or others in the family should not have been accepted at face value; individual professionals and agencies should have questioned their own and others' views, decisions and actions; and there were shortcomings in the supervision and intervention by managers."
Ofsted also found eight of the reviews took more than two years to complete - the majority were completed in under a year.
However, the quality of serious case reviews is improving: of the 147 serious case reviews inspected, 62 (42%) were judged to be good, 62 (42%) adequate and 23 (16%) inadequate.
Last year, of the 173 reviews covered, 40 (23%) were judged to be good, 74 (43%) adequate and 59 inadequate (34%).
'Encouraging'
Chief inspector Christine Gilbert said it was encouraging that more reviews were being judged good, with fewer reviews inadequate.
"The case studies highlight the complexities of the situations which social workers and others are responding to. In undertaking these reviews, agencies have been able to reflect on what happened and learn from their experience," Ms Gilbert said.
Serious case reviews are carried out by bodies known as local safeguarding children's boards, who oversee the work of various agencies involved in child welfare, including social services, education, health services and the police.
Chairman of the Local Government Association's Children and Young People Board, Baroness Shireen Ritchie, said: "Councils are working tirelessly to improve how they identify and protect children at risk from neglect and abuse, and an outside perspective does help.
"When things tragically go wrong they need to be examined. There is important work to be done within the police and NHS as well as at a local government level, and Ofsted also has a role to play in making things better."
This is an extract from a longer article here.

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2 comments:

FreeFox said...

Aye, the feelings of kids and teens are never "sufficiently" heard. Grown-ups always think they know better. Sometimes it just seems to be that nature of things.
But I must say, I've been to few places where peeps are so hostile and scared of kids as in the UK.

PS: Like the pic. :)

Anonymous said...

Yes - thanks for the pic - I left a message on your blog when I realised that you'd got it there!

In the UK there has been a vilification of men by women as child abusers who are not to be trusted. Gay men were smeared good and proper by some of the tabloid press but it's now illegal in this country to come out with bile like that, so it's calmed down.

But even people like Childline's Esther Rantzen has said that this fingering of men as the baddies has all gone too far and the balance needs to be redressed. Good to hear since she seemed to be in the forefront of condemning us a while ago!

But that may well be the reason. There's an appallingly low proportion of men teaching under 13s in our school and this MUST be changed.

Thanks for your comment.