Multi-agency child protection investigators in every local authority proposed by review into Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes tragedies
Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 26 May 2022
Investigative multi-agency child protection teams consisting of social workers, police and health professionals should be established at every local authority in England.
The call comes from a government-commissioned national independent review launched into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, aged six, and Star Hobson, aged 16 months, both of whom were known to services.
The report into the two tragedies by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel noted weaknesses in information sharing between agencies, missed opportunities and a need for “sharper specialist child protection skills”.
It says: “These are not new issues; the recur across the reviews of serious incidents that the panel sees on a fortnightly basis.
“They come up in all analyses of serious case reviews and thematic practice reviews; and they have featured in all previous injuries into child deaths.”
The review maintains this is because multi-agency arrangements for protecting children “are more fractured and fragmented” than they should be.
It says: “It is our contention that the way the child protection system in England is designed currently does not give professionals the best possible opportunity of succeeding at this very difficult task.”
It adds: “The child’s story is often held by multiple people in multiple places” making it hard to get a clear picture of what “life is actually like for a child”.
The review says child protection in England “needs to change fundamentally” backed by investment to create specialist expertise.
Its key recommendation is the formation of co-located ‘multi-agency child protection units’.
The report says: “These teams will be staffed by professionals with the highest levels of child protection expertise and experience and will see the key child protection agencies of the police, health and social care working together seamlessly as a single team.”
The units should be backed by new multi-agency practice standards for child protection and the establishment by government of a national Child Protection Board.
The report stresses it is not advocating for a separation of child protection work from the rest of children’s social care.
It sees the new units as working “hand-in-hand” with family help teams proposed in the Independent Review into Children’s Social Care (IRCSC) published this week.
Specialist staff within the units would connect with the new post of ‘expert child protection practitioners’ which the IRCSC says should be located within every family help team.
In its initial response, the British Association of Social Workers welcomed the “overarching conclusion” of the safeguarding review panel, adding: “We need to see a cultural change, where professionals can quickly and effectively communicate and trust each other.
“The recommendation for multi-agency child protection units could be part of the answer but not enough detail is known about it yet, and it will certainly need new funding to establish.”
However, Professor Ray Jones, who is leading a review into children’s social care in Northern Ireland, said the findings put too little attention on the context of practice.
“The impact of Covid and lockdowns are mentioned but then largely dismissed. Ignored too is the context of cuts, commercialisation and castigation of workers.
“They have cumulatively undermined those who work with children, made arrangements for joint working even more difficult, and created overwhelmed workers where the priority is to close work down quickly so that they can take on the new work flooding their way.
“This review lacks historical perspective. It fails to allocate any responsibility to the government for more than a decade of deliberately damaging the public services which help and protect children.”
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi said he would be immediately setting up a new child protection ministerial group “to champion safeguarding at the highest level across government".
He said: "There remain some very hard questions to answer about how we protect vulnerable children."