The invisible man

People of a certain age might recall of fictional character, The Invisible Man. Well, it turns out that there is such a character in child protection as well. And he may be the more dangerous person.

I have been involved in assessment cases where I have become aware that the mother I am assessing is in a new relationship. When I have raised this, I have been told that the new man isn't important because he is not a legal guardian. Yet, there have been cases where the "invisible" man was dangerous. I think of Baby Peter and Victoria Climbie in the UK as examples as examples where the new but invisible or unassessed men presented real risks.

The NSPCC in the UK has just released a brief summary of their review of the hidden men. What is important is that they note the positive and negative role that men can play in the lives of children. When a child may be at risk with the mother, for example, the father may, if properly assessed, constitute another placement option.

But, when there are concerns, it is vital that the man come out of the shadows. How might this happen is complicated by privacy legislation. Professionals working with the man may be reluctant to disclose to child protection when there is an absence of clear understanding about the nature of the relationship he has with children and the risks he may pose. The professional may feel that they lack a mandated reporting situation as they may have only limited knowledge.

Equally, a women entering a new relationship may have many needs that are being met that she does not wish to place at risk. He may provide a sense of being cared for or loved. He may also bring needed financial resources. Keeping track of collateral sources of information (other family, the children, biological fathers, schools) may result in disclosure that there is new male in the picture.


The new relationship needs to be assessed. It should not be seen as automatically bad or good. Rather, it should be understood. What might the man bring that could support or detract from the safety and care of the children?

Basic social work tools such as genograms, encomaps along with being inquisitive can allow information to come forward. The big deal is getting to know and assess current partners, former partners who may still be involved with the children as well as biological fathers. What can they bring or do the children need protection?

The study results can be found at this link

Seth Ireland Death Sees an Important Jury Decision

Seth Ireland, seen in the photo below, died at the hands of his mother's boyfriend LeBaron Vaughn. Child protective services in Fresno California had received numerous calls about this child. They investigated but they could not find anything wrong according to news reports.

However, the father of Seth, Joseph Hudson, brought a civil liability action against CPS. Yesterday, the  jury awarded him $5 million dollars and Seth's step brother $3.5 million (US dollars). The jury appears to have found that CPS did not follow more than a dozen protocols and had also failed to investigate in a timely fashion.

There are many implications for child protection arising from a decision like this. Front line workers need to be aware that the quality of their work can be subject to intense external scrutiny with liability implications. Many have thought that CPS was immune to lawsuits for their work, but this may be changing.

That workers could be subject to intense public scrutiny is not news - consider the Phoenix Sinclair inquiry presently underway in Manitoba; the recent review of St. Andrew's Hostel Katanning in Australia as well as the Baby Peter case in England.

But front line social workers are the ones who may bear the brunt of public scrutiny, it is the funders of child protection services who should have the heaviest magnification on their decisions. They want increased effectiveness for decreasing dollars. You cannot expect that front line workers can be consistently meeting paperwork, face to face time with clients, investigation time lines and good case management if resources and funding are limited. As budgets continue to tighten in jurisdictions around the world, it will be harder and harder for front line to meet expectations.

This discussion cannot be complete without thinking about the highly complex reality of child protection investigations. People are able to successfully hide what they are doing for many reasons, such as:

• they can effectively lie;
• children can be too afraid to tell the truth;
• parents move making it hard to follow them;
• these families can be isolated making it hard for eyes in the community to see what is happening;
• families counter suspicion with plausible explanations;

Workers, often faced with huh caseloads will make miss cases for these and other reasons. No child protection system can eliminate child deaths. However, what the Seth Ireland case does do, is say that accountability will still exist and doing it right may matter when public scrutiny is brought to bear. Each time a child dies when CPS is involved, public scrutiny can be increasingly expected.

Should social workers at the Phoenix Sinclair Inquiry have anonymity

Justice Ted Hughes has been asked to conduct a public inquiry into the death of Phoenix Sinclair. She died in 2005 when social workers took her out of her foster home and placed her back with her mother. According to  Canada.com:

According to evidence in the first-degree murder trial that led to life sentences for her mother, Samantha Kematch and her stepdad, Karl McKay, Phoenix was frequently confined, shot with a BB gun and forced to eat her own vomit. 

We have seen how social workers who appear to have made mistakes in a child protection case can be vilified in the media. Those involved in the management of the Baby Peter case in England were dragged through the press and scapegoated and judged harshly by the media.

In the case of the Matthew Vaudreuil case in British Columbia, social workers felt targeted by the Gove Inquiry. Some may have suffered for years from the experience.

Too bad critics might say. They might argue that if you fail in your job, then the public has the right to know. Yet, social workers are often trying to manage case loads that are too high; cases that are very complex; resources and budgets that are limited and political agendas that children should be reunited with family as often as possible (the family preservation agenda).  A child kept away from family unnecessarily is a tragedy - a child returned and killed is one also.

RCMP officers in the Robert Dziekanski case in Vancouver (when he was killed by a Taser incident) were not granted anonymity before they were found culpable.

The majority of professionals who make mistakes in their work are not dragged into the media. Public inquiries might be a different kettle of fish because government has purposely set up a process for the public to find out what went wrong.

There are many examples of public inquiries where the names of social workers have been made public and many where they have not. The argument in favour is that the public have the right to know - but do they need to know the who? What perhaps they really have the right to know is what happened.

The goal of a good inquiry is not retribution. Rather it is an attempt to find ways to avoid repetition. Good inquiry seeks to understand but to get there, participants need the freedom to really talk about what happened and why. If the participants fear the consequences, then open discussion is unlikely . Rather, protection of self becomes the goal.

Justice Hughes must decided how best the truth will come out. 

Exaggerating, Lying, Stealing Children?

Two stories that appeared in newspapers thousands of miles and continents away present a disturbing picture of how some families have experienced child protection. To what extent they are or are not accurate is difficult to tell. They do present, though, an image of child protection that should cause some serious reflection.

The first appeared in the San Jose Crime Examiner in California. This article suggests that children are badly treated in foster care and refers to the ABC news report I wrote about recently. In dramatic prose, the author goes on to suggest:

Oftentimes, a parent will be investigated by a child welfare agency under a false report or when a mandated reported from school, the hospital, or daycare against a parent. This often sets in motion a set of events that is not only traumatic and terrifying for the child, but also traumatic and terrifying for the family.

The first and often wrong response is to violate the family’s civil rights, and remove the child from the home oftentimes without a warrant, court order, or validated reason. Then they will kidnap, hide, and continue to abuse the child into submission by interviewing, confusing, and twisting the situation to make it fit their view of things.

If the child is adoptable, they will find a home where adoptive parents are waiting and the social workers will promise that they can adopt this child as soon as they terminate the parental rights, without fully investigating the initial claims of abuse. Oftentimes, courts refuse to listen to the parents and punish and sanction them needlessly, all while placing gag orders to cover up these crimes. There are plenty of cases nationwide to prove this is so.

This is certainly not my experience with most social workers and other mental health professionals. In general, I have found that they genuinely seek to find a solution for the child that is in the best interest of that child. Regrettably, there have been cases where I believe that the professional has not been honest but these moments have very much been the exception and not the rule. This is the opposite of what the California article suggests.

Certainly, there is economic pressure on child protection systems which undermines the ability of social workers to do a top notch job. Case loads are too high and the funds needed to properly support families are scarce and shrinking. Society seems unwilling to pay for the child protection system it should have.

A story coming out of the United Kingdom in the Express suggests that social workers are under pressure to exaggerate details of a case. This allows cases to have higher levels of intervention and helps child protection authorities to reduce the risks of having another Peter Connolly case which saw a very high profile death.

These stories also remind us of the very difficult balance between supporting families so that children can continue within them and protecting children from harm that arises in some families.  Critics of child protection also miss the responsibility of the family to provide at least a good enough environment for their children.

It is worth considering the criticisms in these stories as a way to reflect upon what is good practice.

The effect of a high profile death

The case of Baby P in England continues to have a long term effect. While there is no question that Baby P's death was a horrible and no child should die in such circumstances, it is his legacy that is of note. Since his death, there has been a growing number of cases reported to child protection cases in the UK.

The latest numbers come out of Wales. "There were 2,700 children on the child protection register in March 2010, an increase of 31% from 31 March 2009, the Welsh Assembly Government figures found. The figures show an even more marked rise on statistics for March 2008, eight months before the Peter Connolly case hit the headlines, when 2,320 children were on the register." (Source: BASW news, December 1, 2010).

What is perhaps most interesting is how again we see the link between child protection concerns, particularly neglect, and poverty. A report reviewing child protection in Wales, From Vision to Action, notes that while social workers are often overwhelmed with caseloads, and budgets from governments often more limiting, there are powerful societal trends at work. "...the From Vision to Action report by the Independent Commission on Social Services in Wales which points to a calculation that 51% of looked after children in Wales live in the 17% of neighbourhoods identified as the most deprived (BASW).

The Welsh report wisely notes that budget cuts in services to vulnerable populations will lead to some long term costs. "Retreating into core services and away from prevention and collaborative improvement would undo gains made in recent years and would quickly become unsustainable" (p.6).

One of the more delightful insights from the Welsh report is how the bureaucratization of child welfare (often a response to high profile deaths) is counter productive. "Current assessment systems for adults and children are overly-bureaucratic, too concerned with process, poorly served by IT and do not assist professional judgment about risk" (p.7).

I am very struck by a quote in the Welsh report that puts into context the world in which services and programs for children and families operate: “ People want a life not a service” (p.27). If we are busy serving the bureaucracy and protecting it,how well do we really serve clients?

Welsh report:
Pearson,G., Jones, J.,Williams, R.H. & Robson, P. (2010). From vision to action: The report of the independent commission on social services in Wales. Downloaded December 2, 2010 from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3522570/ebulletin/wales-visiontoactionenglish.pdf