Jail Time for Social Workers?

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is raising the notion of social workers facing jail time, perhaps up to five years, for failing to protect children from sexual abuse. A summary of the proposal is covered by  Community Care. One can easily see why this idea has come forward in the UK. Recently, there have been very high profile cases in which social workers failed to protect children from large scale abuses. A serious care review in Oxfordshire has shown that workers had knowledge that would have allowed them to protect girls.

There has also been the recent case of Rochdale where there have been multiple victims. But the story of sexual abuse in the UK has been a relentless story in the media. There is the recent conviction of former rock star Gary Glitter for sexual abuse several years ago. The Jimmy Savile case in the UK has shown a profound pattern of sexual abuse over many years with hundreds of victims. Savile, a former BBC pop music icon had access to children in many places.

In Australia, a Royal Commission continues to hear story after story of those in authority who failed to act to protect children when the information was available that something was wrong. There too, the stories seem relentless.

In the UK, the public must be weary of the ongoing media coverage of how children have not been protected by child protection - Victoria Climbie, Daniel Pelka, Baby Peter, Khyra Ishaq - and these are only the recent ones. Confidence in the ability of child protection to do their job can only be fragile given these stories. They must be asking what's wrong?

It is in this environment that Cameron raises the idea that social workers could face jail time for being wilfully blind to the risks that children are facing. It could be an idea that can gain public traction easily. Yet, is it the right thing?

Such as approach fails to ask some very key questions:

1. There are many other professionals involved such as police, doctors, health care, teachers - how will they be held accountable?
2. There are questions of caseloads - what can a worker be expected to do with caseloads of 20-30 oe even higher?
3. There is leadership - what is the role of supervisors, managers and community leaders?
4. There is training - have front line workers been given the training needed to see what is going on. Sexual abuse is a specialized area but front line workers are generalists.
5. Inter agency coordination is essential but it remains one of the key areas of difficulty.

The approach also fails to recognize how often these investigations are inconclusive. Very few cases go sexual abuse have physical evidence. It takes quite skilled investigators to work through these cases. Are we putting such skilled workers in place?

There is also the consideration that this may act to drive social workers away from child protection which is possibly the most complex and challenging form of social work. The turnover rates are high meaning that seasoned, skilled workers with this sort of specialized knowledge are not plentiful.

I can well see why Cameron (who may also be facing an election soon) can find this proposal appealing. It may not be the best way to go, however. But his concern is valid while the solution may not be.

Child protection's inconvenient truth: Is Daniel Pelka an example?

Media in the United Kingdom are swarming around the death of Daniel Pelka. He was four years old at his death at the hands of his mother, Magdelena Liczak and step father, Mariusz Krezolek, . They have now been convicted of his murder. He was starved and treated cruelly for at least 6 months prior to dying.

Daniel Pelka

The media reports are slowly leaking into Canada, although they are not creating the sensation that even a casual reading of UK papers suggests is going on there.

There is a serious case review in the matter, but its publication has been delayed until next month. Apparently the SCR panel learned information in the trial that it must now consider. That, in itself, is a fascinating statement suggesting that those working on the case had information gaps. At this point, it is not clear the child protection had a significant, or even any role in the family. The case is, none the less, highly reminiscent of many cases such as Jeffrey Baldwin, Victoria Climbie, Khyra Ishaq, Logan Marr and so on. Here in Canada, we have another tragic case subject to a public review that has just finished up. This is the case of Phoenix Sinclair. It will be several months before we hear what the commissioner, Justice Ted Hughes has to say.

In all of these cases there are valuable lessons to be had on child protection practice. These cases highlight the ways in which case management and interventions can go wrong. They also help us to see the sorts of common errors that occur. It is those errors, in particular, that need avoidance.

Cases such as these raise the delicate balance between protecting children and preserving families. The challenge with these cases is that they inevitably result in several things:

1. A scapegoat will be sought. In Daniel's case, the politicians are already doing this;
2. In some fashion, a politician will also state that the protection of children is paramount and that they intend to get to the bottom of this so it will not happen again;
3. New procedures will be introduced, manualized and bureaucratized; 
4. New training will be recommended; 
5. Social workers will become wary and fearful of making a mistake; and
6. Another child will die.

I am reminded of the article by anthropologist  China Scherz in the United States who looked at how social workers try to put into place good judgement while also trying to manage that balance between protection and family. She looked at the introduction of actuarial tools to help better identify risk. Her article is well worth reading. What one concludes is that there is a real risk that we create what looks to be science (e.g. actuarial tools, structured decision making processes, formal assessment processes) which mask the reality of child protection in science. It is a false mask.

While I am a supporter of these various types of tools, there is still the reality that a front line worker is going to have to make decisions from that information - leave the child in the home? close the file? remove the child? offer services? Scherz's article shows that this still is a very individual decision that a worker must make, and that there can be a wide variance in the ways that workers see a case.

There is no way to remove the worker and the personal decision making from the work. Workers bring training, experience and, yes, beliefs into the day to day interaction with families. No matter how much structure and science you try to wrap around that, this truth remains.

Which leads to the inconvenient truth in child protection - mistakes will be made, children will be subject to further abuse and maltreatment that might have been avoided if a different decision was made, and a small number of children involved in child protection will die - but most will not.

To expect perfection in child protection is unrealistic. Let these tragic cases continue to serve as educational opportunities so that the common mistakes can be highlighted and the highly unusual errors can also be brought to light.

Reference:

Scherz, C. (2011). Protecting children, preserving families: Moral conflict and actuarial science in a problem of contemporary governance. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 34 (1), 33-50.