Lack of leadership in soicial services

I didn’t see Newsnight and had read the Arthur had told his teacher once that his daddy was going to kill him. Once I’d enough of course but if this was something he repeated and it didn’t lead to a s47 investigation, well I feel sick

Trisher
but it is society and the system of austerity some voted for that failed to protect him.

How do you square that with all the children that died under a labour government? No austerity measures then. Poor Victoria Climbie died in unimaginable circumstances. SW’s involved then but it took a taxi driver to take one look at her in the back of his taxi and decide she was going to hospital. Labour council as well.

But these sort of tragedies happened before all the recent cuts in funding.

They said on Newsnight that Arthur constantly said at school that his father was trying to kill him. If this is true I see here not just a failure of SS but a complete failure of communication between the people involved with him.

trisher I understand that his teacher did report her/his worries to Social Services as did a grandmother and uncle who also reported their concerns to the police.

Warning signs were missed despite that for whatever reason.

Arthur was failed and as a result suffered months of torture and a dreadful death by a callous, evil, manipulative woman who fetched her mobile phone and filmed him dying.

I've no doubt there will be a litany of "lessons to be learned" from this.
Blaming cuts just isn't good enough.

maddyone

The government didn’t kill Arthur.
The social workers didn’t kill Arthur.
The father and step mother killed Arthur.

Out of interest, somebody out there must know, are the numbers of children killed by their parents and care givers really dependent on which government is in power? It seems unlikely to me, but what do I know!

Yes the father and his girlfriend did but the authorities failed him, resulting in these two evil people torturing and killing him.

That's why social workers are employed in child protection roles.
Child protection!!!

I agree with others that those who should have protected Arthur failed to protect him. I understand his teacher reported the concerns to Social Services, or reported them in all probability to the person in Arthur’s school who was responsible for the safeguarding of children. Where did the system fail then? The teacher responsible for safeguarding? The Social Services? The individual social worker who was responsible for Arthur? The police who were alerted by Arthur’s grandmother? The government for closing Sure Start Centres? Children have been killed by their parents or care givers forever it seems. Every time there is an inquiry we are told that lessons will be learned, but they never are learned.

tickingbird

Trisher
but it is society and the system of austerity some voted for that failed to protect him.

How do you square that with all the children that died under a labour government? No austerity measures then. Poor Victoria Climbie died in unimaginable circumstances. SW’s involved then but it took a taxi driver to take one look at her in the back of his taxi and decide she was going to hospital. Labour council as well.

When Victoria Climbie was killed a number of initiatives were introduced after an enquiry Climbié's death was largely responsible for the formation of the Every Child Matters initiative; the introduction of the Children Act 2004; the creation of ContactPoint, a database that held information on the contacts of the various childrens' services with particular children (closed by the 2010 Coalition government); and the creation of the Office of the Children's Commissioner chaired by the Children's Commissioner for England.
The Every Child Matters policy can be read here assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/272064/5860.pdf
But don't read it unless you have a strong stomach. The standards which are proposed, the provision necessry the desired out comes are hard to take. SureStart Centres, increases in CHAMs, no children in B&B accommodation by 2004. It simply shows that Arthur's death might have been prevented if these things had happened

When you look back nothing has changed since the tragic death of Maria Colwel. ( 1973)
That was the first public enquiry I remember into the death of a child.
I had the most awful row with a social worker friend. I know it wasn’t her fault but I was so angry I wanted someone to blame and she was right there in the firing line.
We got over it.

Calistemon, yes, his teacher did, quite rightly, report the concerns.

When teaching, I worked according to the guidelines of the 'Every Child Matters' initiative and the Children Act 2004. - both directly due to the investigation of Victoria Climbie's death.

It was a realisation that everybody should share all information, however little (police, social workers, schools and healthcare) the 'joined up' thinking and response to any suspicion of abuse that often creates a complete picture of the situation.

The ContactPoint project began then too (the government database designed to hold information on all children in England). What happened to that? It was closed by the government of 2010.

Baby P was found to have been failed by multiple agencies, including the doctor who didnt examine him because he was "cranky" or some such word.
He had a broken back!
He also had multiple injuries new and old - he was underweight - the only time he improved was when he was looked after elsewhere for a short while.

Where were the people involved in his care??

Asking his "mother" to write an essay about her dreams and aspirations.

Can you please stop berating social services and accept there has been yet another collective failure here? Now the responsibility really is multi-agency. He was 6 years - so which Head Teacher and year group teacher failed him? Which GP let him down? Which members of the public touched on the sides of this tragedy and did nothing? The whole way of working is fraught with bureaucracy and there are so many potential loopholes. No worker can go to their Manager and say they have a bad feeling about a case. Not these days anyway.

Who is berating social services?
The facts haven't been made available yet, so that would be pointless.
There is nothing at all wrong in asking where the multiple agencies involved in this little boys life were, and I shall continue to do so.

Trisher

Thank you for the warning because I don’t have a strong stomach for such things so although it is of interest to me I won’t read it as there are some things I’d rather not have in my head.

The members of the public that did something didn’t get anywhere because the sw that visited found ‘no concerns’. What are members of the public supposed to do? They report to social services or the police. It’s about time children were seen on their own and properly checked.

tickingbird

I’d just like to make it clear I’m not blaming individual sw’s. It’s the system and it’s inability to change. The department needs a complete overhaul from the top down whether it likes it or not.

I admit to no knowledge of how social services departments function but I’d suspect you are right based in my experience of how education works i.e. too much bureaucracy and complicated administrative procedures, too many clients (students) per SW (teacher) combined with cutbacks in resources

tickingbird

Trisher

Thank you for the warning because I don’t have a strong stomach for such things so although it is of interest to me I won’t read it as there are some things I’d rather not have in my head.

When I read it tickingbird I found it very upsetting. It brought back how much we seem to have slipped backwards. When ECM was written there was a sense of belief that things would improve and children would be better cared for. The things that haven't happened, the things we know are now worse, the unachievable targets, it's all very depressing.

Thistlelass the headteacher and head of year were not necessarily the ones who were responsible for safeguarding in Arthur’s school. It has been reported that his class teacher reported concerns about Arthur. The teacher would have reported the concerns to the teacher in charge of safeguarding in his school. Every school has one person who is the named person in charge of safeguarding. This person may, or may not, be the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, or another teacher, but that person is then responsible for contacting Social Services about the child causing concern.

Schools were closed when Arthur was being abused. He didn’t return to school when they began to operate, and subsequently died on 16th June 2020. I have long said that schools should not be closed. That his school was closed almost certainly was a large factor in Arthur’s bullying, torture, and eventual death. Schools are safe places, often the safest place, for children who are being abused.

maddyone

Thistlelass the headteacher and head of year were not necessarily the ones who were responsible for safeguarding in Arthur’s school. It has been reported that his class teacher reported concerns about Arthur. The teacher would have reported the concerns to the teacher in charge of safeguarding in his school. Every school has one person who is the named person in charge of safeguarding. This person may, or may not, be the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, or another teacher, but that person is then responsible for contacting Social Services about the child causing concern.

Schools were closed when Arthur was being abused. He didn’t return to school when they began to operate, and subsequently died on 16th June 2020. I have long said that schools should not be closed. That his school was closed almost certainly was a large factor in Arthur’s bullying, torture, and eventual death. Schools are safe places, often the safest place, for children who are being abused.

Schools were never closed for vulnerable children. Of course many of them didn't attend, but the closure of schools can't be held entirely responsible unless you take into account the fact that teachers were managing a huge workload trying to provide education for some children in school, online provision for those who could access it and other ways of learning for those without the technology. Along of course with coping with illness. and abscences because of covid.

Trisher I know. You’re completely correct in that schools were never closed for vulnerable children. However it seems that Arthur didn’t attend. I know teachers were dealing with a huge workload, but in the school I worked in, the TAs were managing much of the load, in particular with the vulnerable children. I worked in an area where we had large numbers of vulnerable children, so the system was well equipped to function even in normal times. Other schools may have struggled with this. Our TAs actually visited the homes of vulnerable children and encouraged the parents to send them to school. Perhaps this didn’t happen in Arthur’s case, I don’t know. What I do know is that much of this ill treatment occurred in lockdown and Arthur was not attending school. We also knew that domestic abuse was much more prevalent during lockdown and Arthur was abused at home, in the domestic setting.

maddyone

Trisher I know. You’re completely correct in that schools were never closed for vulnerable children. However it seems that Arthur didn’t attend. I know teachers were dealing with a huge workload, but in the school I worked in, the TAs were managing much of the load, in particular with the vulnerable children. I worked in an area where we had large numbers of vulnerable children, so the system was well equipped to function even in normal times. Other schools may have struggled with this. Our TAs actually visited the homes of vulnerable children and encouraged the parents to send them to school. Perhaps this didn’t happen in Arthur’s case, I don’t know. What I do know is that much of this ill treatment occurred in lockdown and Arthur was not attending school. We also knew that domestic abuse was much more prevalent during lockdown and Arthur was abused at home, in the domestic setting.

Gosh you have TAs! Let me guess you are somewhere in the south and you have a Tory MP. TAs are like gold up here if you are lucky you get to share one. I wonder why you imagine a TA making a home visit would have manged any better than a social worker to uncover what was going on? Solihull where Arthur lived suffered huge cuts to education.

trisher I imagine that TAs might have been more successful in getting Arthur into school because the social workers weren’t actually doing home visits during lockdown. I think your attacks on where I live and who my MP is are irrelevant.
By the way, I’ve been retired for some 9/10 years, but I know what was happening in my previous school because I’m still in touch with many of my ex colleagues.

And another by the way, my cousin lives in the north and was a TA in a northern primary school for many years before she retired. My mother, now 94 years old, was also a TA in a school in the north for over thirty years. It is completely untrue to claim that only the south, or areas with a conservative MP, had or have TAs. In any case, the provision of TAs is down to the LA, the school headteacher, or the authority that runs the school. Maybe those in your area think TAs are a waste of money.

I’m in the north west, all schools have TA’s, many of them expected to teach if a class teacher is absent.

Schools were open for key worker and children identified as ‘vulnerable’. Arthur wasn’t classified as vulnerable so wouldn’t have had a place. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that vulnerable children weren’t taken to school - many of them missed a lot of school pre pandemic.

Quite right Iam64 (about the TAs) but in fact Arthur wasn’t taken back to school when lockdown ended, and the other children returned to school. It was one of the reasons that we had a learning support unit set up in our school when I was teaching, and it was staffed by TAs, and when children didn’t come to school, often a TA would visit the home to establish why the child wasn’t in school. The non attenders were often the more vulnerable children.
I can’t imagine why Arthur wasn’t identified as a vulnerable child, if that’s the case. His teacher had raised concerns about him, his grandmother raised concerns to the police, his uncle also raised concerns. His attendance at school was spasmodic. All these red flags and someone decided he was not vulnerable. Who?Why? That’s what I’d like to know.