Safety online for children

There have been a number of recent reminders about the need for careful supervision of children's online behaviour. It seems timely to think about it with lots of children probably getting iPads and smart phones for Christmas.

Shocking images and videos have been found on YouTube videos designed for children. These include disturbing, violent or sexual contents that pop in when children search for suitable material - for example, Peppa Pig dentist producing images of Peppa Pig being tortured. Content on kids' YouTube is not curated or pre-screened by humans. We have also recently heard again about paedophiles using live streaming to access children and tricking them into sexual acts or exposure over the internet. There are particular risks to children and young people live streaming and making themselves vulnerable to whoever may access them in this way. 

This reminds us that the responsibility for safety on line of children remains with the parents or carers and nothing can be assumed to be safe. We also need to be alert to these risks in delivering safeguarding training to staff working with children

Developments in Deprivation of Liberty law

Deprivation of liberty remains a confusing area of law. There have been two recent developments.

In relation to 16-17 year olds, the previous judgement on "D" was overturned on appeal by Munby. It may go to the Supreme Court so may revert back. At the moment, the position is that for 16-17 year olds being deprived of their liberty and incapacitated, parents can now consent. If young people are in care, legal advice should still be sought. D was accommodated but young people on care orders presumably will still have to go to the Court of Protection.

The other development is a further delay to the new scheme. We already knew nothing was happening legislatively until 2019 and it is now being tied in with the changes to the Mental Health Act. The review of this is due to report Autumn 2018 so we will see no substantial changes in the next couple of years. The Government is meant to be looking at ways to ease the pressures of DoLS on local authorities. 

Whose welfare is first in difficult decisions about children?

The debate in the media about Charlie Gard showed a fundamental misunderstanding of how we view children in UK law. Thankfully, we don't view them as the possessions of their parents and parental views are important but can be challenged.

The situation Charlie's parents were in was of course terrible and agonising. We can all feel for them. The baby was only alive since Christmas because of artificial breathing and feeding and excellent care. The view of the hospital was the baby was suffering and there was no hope of an improvement in his condition which may warrant prolonging the suffering. This awful conclusion must be drawn many times a week across the country by skilled clinicians.

The only difference with Charlie was the parents did not accept that decision and challenged it in the courts. The court's only determinator is what is in the baby's best interests and welfare. The decision of the court at each stage was that Charlie's suffering needed to be ended as he was not going to improve. The reason the matter became prolonged was that sad fact that the parents could not accept this. Trump, the Pope and some aspects of the media did not seem to understand the court's role or where parental decision making ends.  The Court decided that prolonging Charlie's suffering in order to let the parents follow a theoretical possibility of improvement was wrong. This is exactly the court's role: to put the child's welfare before any other considerations.

Wood review of local safeguarding children boards

There has been a fair bit of publicity about the Children and Social Work Act 2017 with the changes to the professional journey of child care social workers. There has been far less comment about the implementation of the Wood review on Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and Serious Case Review (SCRs).  There will be no legal requirement to have a LSCB but there will be a requirement instead for safeguarding partners to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The partners are the local authority, Clinical Commissioning Group and the Police. 

SCRs as we now know them will cease. There will be about 20 cases of national importance reviewed by a central body - the Child Safeguarding Review Panel. All the other cases will be subject to local child safe practice reviews. These are meant to be low key and the reports will go to the central body. It will be interesting to see whether this does end up being less bureaucratic and repetitious. 

The Victoria Climbié Enquiry

Today's Radio 4 programme The Reunion focussed on the Victoria Climbie Enquiry. It was good to be reminded 17 years later of the harrowing story of this child's 10 months in London that led to her death. As Lord Laming said, "there were failures at every level of every organisation".  Most of the discussion on the programme was thoughtful and helpful. However, as usual the discussion focused towards the end on making sure this doesn't happen again and there was passing reference to Peter Connolly. The Panel were asked if social work is better now at protecting children. There was a naive optimism in the Panel. Laming talked about meeting some inspirational social workers.

Although I agree on that point, the day after local government elections and heading towards a likely Tory victory in June, it is clear that many of the aspects that allowed agencies to fail Victoria are worse than ever. Social workers are amazing but are working under immense pressure with decreasing resources. Schools are left with monitoring families who 17 years ago would have been allocated to social workers. Bureaucracy and form filling takes even more social work time. With more rounds of local government cuts ahead, addressing child protection effectively will take more than inspirational social workers.

Dubs resettlement scheme ended by Commons vote

It's shocking that the Dubs refugee arrangement has quietly been ended with very little debate. The commitment to take 3000 young refugees has ended, with only 350 being brought into the country.

The Government has blamed the strapped resources of local authorities which implies they are not a direct result of the extreme cuts to public services which are affecting all provision by councils. There is a legal challenge to the decision on the Dubs refugees in the high court 2-4 May. 

Child Protection - Information Sharing Project (CP-IS)

CP-IS is a new data sharing system that is being piloted in certain areas. The idea of it is that it will provide very brief information for unscheduled medical appointments e.g. A&E, walk-in centres, out of hours GPs, paediatric wards, maternity units and ambulance services. The information shared is only for children on a CP plan or look after children.

This is a good development but it is still extraordinary how little data is available if a child crosses local authority boundaries. Of course safeguarding adults is even more woolly and there is no CP-IS equivalent for adults.

Deprivation of liberty safeguards delayed

The proposed legal changes to the deprivation of liberty (DOL) safeguards have been put off until at least March. In the context of Brexit, the Government clearly don't see this as a priority. With the incredible pressure on adult social care at the moment, the streamlining of DOLs does seem like a big priority for local authorities.

Also, we have yet another version of the Care Act Statutory guidance to get to grips with - it is a shame it is such unhelpful and unclear guidance compared with Working Together to Safeguard Children from harm.

Local Authority funding

The care system is in crisis because of cuts to local authority (LA) budgets accompanied by increasing costs of employing staff. Even the best care homes are struggling with this and have to charge considerably more than LA's can pay to make any profit. This means we have a residual poorly funded system for those who have to rely on LA funding.

There are homes and domiciliary providers that no social worker would wish to place their relative in but they have no choice because of the agreed funding limits. Until we sort out social care, the NHS will struggle as older people have more admissions with accidents and dehydration and then stay in hospital longer because services aren't there for them on discharge. 

Football sex abuse allegations

Why is everyone so surprised about the football sexual abuse scandal? We know how paedophiles work and they will always be where children are.  The combination of much sought opportunity for the child and the power of the coach are an obvious opportunity for paedophiles.

We have seen the same process in churches and celebrities. Other sports will follow on. The important issue is we don't lose sight of the fact that although sexual abuse is terrible, half the children on a child protection plan are there for neglect. Neglect doesn't make good headlines but causes long lasting damage too.