'England's children's reviews address modest organisational issues, not massive capacity problems'

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 22 June, 2022

The month of May saw the publication of two national, government-commissioned child protection-related reviews in England: The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (IRCSC), led by Josh MacAlister, and Child Protection in England: National Review into the Murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (CSPRP).

The reviews were prompted by concerns over practice in relation to children and young people known to children’s social care, or in care and those subjected to especially serious, if not fatal, abuse or neglect.

I will not provide an in-depth analysis of these reviews. Rather, I am interested in scrutinising the relevance and value of these two reviews by locating them in a broader and more meaningful practice and policy context.

To start, however, it is helpful to set the scene by describing some of the key features of each of the reports.

A tale of two reviews

I would contend that what we have is ‘a tale of two reviews’. The CSPRP has been operational since 2018, and its members have considerable and diverse experience in child protection. Although its role is quite narrow and it works with the Department for Education (DfE), it is generally seen as independent and its work - including the National Review – seems to be generally well regarded.

The MacAlister review, by contrast, was mired in controversy from the outset and this controversy has only continued with publication of its final report. When it was first set up, the review was criticised for its lack of independence from government (including claims of a “chumocracy”), insufficient social worker involvement and its short timescale.

It is also interesting to note the tone of the two reviews. The CSPRP’s report strikes me as much more informed, considered and – quite frankly – professional. Critically, it makes a point of recognising that “there is good evidence that, every day, many thousands of children are protected from harm by conscientious, committed and capable social workers, police officers, health, educational and many other professionals”.

The MacAlister review comes across as simplistic and highly negative. Outcomes for children and young people are reported to be “unacceptably poor” and “stubbornly poor”; families are said to be in need of “more responsive, respectful, and effective support” and “much higher levels of meaningful support”; and children’s social care is described as “rigid and linear”.

There are two specific points in the MacAlister review that I take issue with. These concern “investigations” into suspected child abuse or neglect, and children and young people in care.

MacAlister argued quite vociferously in his interim report The Case for Change that children’s social care initiates too many such investigations, and that too many children and young people are taken into care. There are many commentators and bodies that have made similar claims. However, all of these critics should be more cautious, as their implication – that there exists some sort of objective measure as to how frequent these interventions should be – is erroneous.

Indeed, children’s social care regulator, Ofsted, challenged MacAlister’s view that there were too many child protection investigations - and he appears to have softened his line on this issue in his final report.

Also, in light of the fact that prevalence surveys show the large majority of abuse and neglect never becomes known to any agency, a strong argument can be made for far more investigations. Similarly, children are taken into care only in the most extreme circumstances and sometimes not even then. I have, in my research, become aware of a number of children - particularly those experiencing severe neglect - who should, I believe, have been taken into care but who were not.      

And it has to be accepted that had Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson - and many hundreds of children and young people like them - been investigated “more” and/or taken into care, then they would have been spared severe abuse and neglect, and would be alive today.

The need to get the balance right between too many and not enough investigations has raged on for decades. There will always be a need for ‘unnecessary’ investigations - better described as ‘enquiries’ - because child abuse and neglect is often hidden and hard to prove.

Moreover, social workers are very apprehensive about getting things ‘wrong’, which can fuel a tendency to over-investigate. This practice can be criticised, but it will be extremely hard to change while the media and politicians are so ready to condemn social workers and others when they make 'mistakes'. 

In addition, some of the arguments in the MacAlister review are quite odd. This includes the recommendation that social work managers and academics do direct work with children and families to keep them rooted in practice.

Firstly, I find it hard to believe that managers in children’s social care have the time for these additional tasks. And, secondly, I am somewhat incredulous at the idea that what is needed to address the profound difficulties facing the system and child protection is bringing social work lecturers – however skilled they might be - into practice.

It will do little to help practitioners “work with a smaller number of children and families” and have “more available time”.

A revolution?

Implicit in the commissioning of each of the reviews was the idea that they would highlight, and then lead to, major changes in part, or to all, of the child protection system. Both the government and MacAlister described the IRCSC as representing “a once in a generation opportunity” to “reform” and “reset” children’s social care.

Now that they are published the reviews have, indeed, called for what their respective authors perceive to be profound change. The IRCSC has demanded a “revolution in family help”. The CSPRP has stated that “the way that we approach child protection in this country needs to change fundamentally”.

It might well be that many of those involved in child protection would likewise welcome “radical” change but what, exactly, does such dramatic change look like according to the two reviews?

For the IRCSC, this change consists largely of an assortment of new roles (expert child protection practitioners; and regional improvement commissioners); new teams (family help teams), new bodies (a national practice group; regional care cooperatives; a reform board; and a national data and technology taskforce); new plans (child community safety plans; and family network plans), and personal and professional learning and development initiatives (early career frameworks; knowledge and skills statements; a leadership programme; and a national children’s social care framework).

The recommendations of the CSPRP are, by contrast, much narrower. Indeed, the panel believes that there is only one principal reform that is needed to child protection in England:  the establishment, in every local authority, of multi-agency child protection units, comprising integrated and co-located teams staffed by experienced child protection professionals from CSC, health and the police.

Its other recommendation relate to strengthened multi-agency leadership and accountability; better multi-agency co-ordination and system oversight from central government; the development of new national multi-agency practice standards; substantial and frequent inspection of local area child protection practice across all agencies; and the creation of a “new ministerial group” to ensure central government, “with other stakeholders”, takes a clear leadership role “setting and overseeing implementation of child protection”, including “these new arrangements”.

It might well be that some of the recommendations from each of the reviews are of value. It might also be the case, though, that other recommendations – especially any that involve new spending – will be kicked into the political long grass with the intention that they will, in time, be forgotten.

I do not feel these recommendations will bring about a “fundamental” change in child protection, let alone a “revolution”. Rather, I see the recommendations as representing potentially important but nonetheless relatively modest changes in the way in which child protection is done.

The wider policy context

Profound change is required if children are to be much better protected, but this needs to be in terms of the conditions under which agencies operate and specifically their resourcing. A potent and wide-ranging insight into this need is provided by a series of surveys among social workers published only this year.  

Community Care’s annual survey among child and family social workers in England found that the caseloads of one third of participants had increased “a lot” over the “past year”, with full-time case-holding practitioners having an average caseload of 26 - well above the recommended number of 12-15 cases.

More than half said their cases had also become “much more complex”, due in part to the “lack of early help”, and there being “less support for children and families from other agencies’. Over one third reported that their workloads were “completely unmanageable”. Respondents pointed out that these various pressures were undermining the quality of their practice.

When asked ‘what would most improve child protection in England?’, by far the most cited factor in a Community Care poll this year among social workers was 'lower caseloads for child protection social workers’ - being put forward by 63 per cent of participants. The next most common cited factor was ‘setting up expert multi-agency units to handle all child protection cases’ – this being suggested by only 16 per cent of respondents.

The DfE’s own workforce survey showed that 15 per cent of children and families social workers left their posts in the year ending 30 September 2021 and that there was a 17 per cent vacancy rate, with 16 per cent of positions being held by agency staff.

Similarly troubling findings are contained in the first annual membership survey conducted among social workers from across the UK by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW).

Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of participants said they were unable to complete their work within their contracted hours, with 96 per cent of these individuals having to work additional hours and 93 per cent of this group not receiving overtime pay.

Asked to identify the three ‘biggest challenges to you in your current (or most recent) workplace’, those that participants cited most frequently comprised the ‘demands of administrative tasks’ (51 per cent); ‘adequacy of staffing levels’ (51 per cent); ‘workload demand’ (47 per cent); and ‘access to resources for the people I work with’ (43 per cent).

And, finally, a survey carried out on behalf of the Social Work Union, BASW and LBC Radio discovered that almost all (97 per cent) of social workers believed that vulnerable people would be better protected if caseloads were lighter.

Nearly one-half (48 per cent) of social workers had raised concerns about cases where they believed appropriate action was not taken and approximately two-thirds (65 per cent) of respondents stated that their mental health was suffering because of their work.

It should be acknowledged that all of the participants in the above surveys were self-selecting and may not, therefore, be representative of all social workers.

Also, nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of social workers in the BASW survey ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ with the statement ‘I am happy working in the social work profession’.

The fact that many social workers are able to sustain their positivity in the face of these pressures does not alter the fact that there are profound problems that need profound solutions - solutions that are not provided in the two reviews. It is, I believe, fair to say that there is a crisis in the ability of the system to respond to child abuse and neglect. However, this crisis is not in social work alone.  

A quick internet search will show that virtually every other public service - including the judicial system, the NHS, policing, the prison service, the probation service, and schools - has been described recently as being in “crisis”. It is very likely that the ability of each of these services to undertake child protection work is being affected adversely as a result of its being in crisis.

According to Nursery World magazine, over 1,300 children’s centres closed in England between 2010 and 2019. Action for Children found that the rate of closures was highest in the most deprived local authorities. It also revealed that the number of children using children’s centres fell from 2.2 to 1.8 million – a decline of almost one fifth - from 2014/15 to 2017/18 alone. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that for every 1,000 children, opening a children’s centre prevents 5,500 hospital admissions among 11-year-olds; an association that is even stronger in poorer areas.   

The number of full-time equivalent health visitors in England in 2021 stood at 6,595 - a 36 per cent decrease since 2015. Research by Caroline Fraser (and colleagues), from University College London, showed that a substantial proportion of all children with a ‘safeguarding vulnerability’ (22 per cent) or in care (29 per cent) did not appear to have received their two to 2.5-year universal health visiting review or any other health visiting contact around this time. Fraser and her colleagues suggest that the failure to monitor these children is due, in part, to the shortage of health visitors.

School nurse numbers have declined from 2,984 in 2010 to 2,047 in 2021, a reduction of 31 per cent. The Children’s Commissioner for England, in a survey of 775 school nurses in 2016, found that child protection accounted for a “substantial” part of their work but also that they were not able to spend enough time with children – a situation that is likely to be even more acute now. School nurses felt that thresholds for support were too high, such that some children were being left at risk.

In a recent major study of child protection in schools in England, Mary Baginsky and colleagues, from King’s College London, found that tensions could arise between school, and social care staff owing to their different expectations regarding thresholds, not only for child protection, but even for early help, interventions. This resulted in school staff sometimes having to take on, in effect, a social work role with children and families.   

An insufficiency of resources within the police has meant that its examination of relevant digital devices in suspected child sexual abuse cases (CSA) is very incomplete and also severely delayed. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) revealed in a report last year that the Metropolitan Police Service has a policy of allowing only two, or in special circumstances three, devices from any investigation to be examined in one of its digital forensic hubs “irrespective of how many devices contain indecent images” of children”.

HMICFRS warns that "this may result in unmanaged and missed risk in terms of first-generation images and abuse in a family being identified”. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that there could be delays of up to 61 weeks in some police services before digital equipment was examined.

The NSPCC reported this year that there had been a 25 per cent reduction in the Ministry of Justice budget from 2010/11 to 2019/20, resulting in court closures, reductions in court staff numbers and an end to virtually all specialist young witness schemes.

These cuts took place at the same time as a dramatic rise in demand, with the police in England and Wales recording 57 per cent more CSA offences in 2019/20 compared to 2014/15. The NSPCC’s research found that the average time taken for a CSA case to reach court had increased by five months over the last three years, and now stands at a truly shocking 22 months, The National Audit Office warned, in 2021, that the backlog of cases in criminal courts was severely affecting victims, witnesses and defendants. 

The ability of public services to respond to abuse and neglect has, in short, been severely undermined by almost 13 years of austerity measures, with these cuts taking place at the same time as markedly increasing demand. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced the austerity programme in 2010, and it is this programme that has resulted in swingeing cuts to the finances of children’s social care and other public services.

Successive Conservative governments have argued that austerity was necessary as a result of the 2007/8 economic crisis and the subsequent recession. Many believe, however, that austerity is also driven in large part by the Conservative’s desire for a “smaller state” and its belief that, in general, public services would be more effective and efficient if they were run by the private sector and voluntary organisations.

There are no indications from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that there will be a halt – let alone a reversal – in these cuts. Indeed, Rishi Sunak stated, in March, that “the first call on any extra resources . . . [would be] . . . lower taxes, not higher spending”.

Some of the recommendations from the two national reviews, if implemented, may improve child protection but, I fear, only in relatively modest ways. Child protection does need radical change, but this will come about only if the government ensures that the organisations involved are properly resourced and social workers are not crippled by unmanageable caseloads.

It must also reverse years of cuts to support services to families and truly ‘level up’ by tackling high levels of poverty and inequality that put some families under intolerable pressure.

Until then, many children will continue to suffer gross abuse and neglect, and some even die, when this could otherwise have been prevented.

Bernard Gallagher was a residential social worker in children's homes before pursuing a career as an academic in the social sciences. His specialist area is child protection, but he has also studied domestic abuse and victimisation. He now works as an independent researcher and writer