Liz Davies |
tumblog for www.lizdavies.net |
http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Croydon-circumcision-campaigner-caught-child-porn/story-15866127-detail/story.html
Vernon Quaintance has been convicted. He was head of the Gilgal Society a group which supported the practice of male circumcision.
www.norm-uk.org is a group which campaigns against the practice of male circumcision and their website provides a wide range of information about this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129073/Phil-understood-mother-abandoned-Only-unearthed-doomed-love-bigotry-decision.html
This article, by journalist Eileen Fairweather, describes Phil’s search for information about his birth mother and the brutal circumstances in which he was separated from her care.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/28/03/2012/118112/fear-over-plans-to-slaughter-child-protection-guidance.htm
It seems that the Committee responsible for the revision of Working Together guidance has reduced this document from 390 pages and a number of supplements to just 60 pages and rumour has it that it may even be further reduced to just 10 pages. The release of the consultation document has been delayed until May.
This guidance was first published in 1988 and there have been numbers of revisions which extended the guidance based on the findings of serious case reviews and research (1991, 1999, 2006 and 2010). The guidance provides national consistency in policy and practice and forms the basis of local protocols. I remember the late 70s and early 80s when there was no such guidance and practice varied widely across authorities and different agencies making the protection of children very difficult indeed.
The guidance is detailed but it needs to be because protecting children is a complex and skilled process. Many practitioners who refer to this document cannot access child protection training and supervision and they rely on the information provided.
Eileen Munro in her review cited the need for a reduction in bureaucractic procedures and more emphasis on professional judgement. However, she was in the main referring to the assessment procedures and made little reference to the multi agency investigation of child abuse. She made reference to an article by Professor Nigel Parton which provided a historical overview of the working together guidance and made reference to the increase in length of the document over the years. He recommended a pocket version for practitioners and an easily navigable web version. He did not recommend changes to the investigative protocols.
A page cutting exercise by civil servants under government directive will have very serious consequences for the safety of vulnerable children. There must be every effort made to challenge this development.
http://www.cypnow.co.uk/news/1115564/bbc-social-work-film-prompts-calls-early-police-support/
This is a summary of an article written by Mark Williams Thomas and myself in criticism of the BBC documentary about social work.
• Your article (Nurse jailed for killing baby by force-feeding through jug, 12 November) noted that, although Diamond was taken to see doctors, she was not on the “at risk” register. Diamond was born mid-2009, more than a year after the child protection register had been abolished – so there was no register for her name to be on. After April 2008, vulnerable and abused children no longer gained the protection that was so effectively afforded by this specialist and high-status multi-agency protocol.
Very few children who died from abuse had gained the protection of this protocol. Like Victoria Climbié they had often been defined as children in need of services but not in need of protection from harm. There was no co-ordinated child protection plan to keep them safe.
Professor Eileen Munro, in her recent review of child protection, did not mention this cornerstone of good practice and saw no need to recommend the introduction of a national “signposting” service. However, Waltham Forest Local Safeguarding Children Board, in the serious case review relating to the death of Diamond, quite rightly recommend that Munro should revisit child protection protocols and their impact on the quality of investigation and risk assessment. The return of the child protection register should have been a clear priority of the Munro review. The register enabled a proportionate multi-agency professional focus on children identified as at high risk of harm. It also provided an essential alarm system to the emergency services which is now so often lacking. If Diamond’s name had indeed been on the child protection register, professionals would have been working within a strict formal process which had been tried and tested over many years, and this may well have saved her life.
Dr Liz Davies
Reader in child protection, London Metropolitan University
http://content.iriss.org.uk/goldenbridge/exhibition/think.html
This website traces the history of the child migrants from scotland children’s homes to Canada.
on of Children
Perry Snow, clinical psychologist, explains the eugenics arguments for and against migration:
“The British organisation regarded them [the migrant children] as a valuable exportable, breeding stock that could improve the quality of the Canadian gene pool. At the same time they did not want them in England [sic] because they believed that they were tainted by their family origins. Canadians welcomed them only as cheap labour, but believed that these children carried inherited physical and moral deficiencies.”
It cost £15 to send a child to Canada - a one off cost. It cost £13 per annum to keep a child in care.
Diamond died age 10 months in the London Borough of Waltham Forest in March 2010.
Her mother had force fed her and was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of her daughter in October 2011. The Review clearly exposed that the child protection enquiries had been subsumed as part of the core assessment process which had an impact on the quality of the child protection investigation and risk assessment. The ICS system of recording impacted on the case because there was a lack of chronology particularly linking the history of Diamond to that of a sibling.
The health visiting service, where there was no longer an 8 month check applied universally, and the lack of a personal health visitor highlights the impact of cuts in this essential service which endanger vulnerable abused children. Also when there is a child protection enquiry the lack of access to the child’s health record, which is now personally held by the parent, interferes with the ability to analyse the detail of the case.
There were three Section 47 strategy meetings but no minutes of any of these were available to the review. There was a lack of emphasis on interviews with the older children and a lack of forensic focus.. the police CAIT team also came under criticism. The SCR team advise that Munro is asked to revisit the importance of child protection investigation given the emphasis in policy on child in need assessment protocols.
The Guardian reported (12.11.2011 p9) that Diamond, although taken to see doctors, was not on the ‘at risk’ register. The child protection register (it hadn’t been called the at risk ’ register for many years) was abolished before Diamond was born. How could her name had been on the non-existant register? WHEN WILL THE GOVERNMENT LISTEN AND RESTORE THE MOST IMPORTANT AND EFFECTIVE CHILD PROTECTION PROTOCOL - THE CHILD PROTECTION REGISTER? Munro in her review did not mention the word Register at all. She included in her report an Appendice about the need for a National ‘Signposting’ Service concluding that she saw no need for it. If Diamond’s name had been on a register she may well have gained effective multi agency protection. The GP would have been included in a skilled and specialist forum and information would have been collated and analysed enabling a proteciton plan to be made. Research has shown that where such plans are in place children rarely die from abuse.
The review highlights the need for staff to undertake training in child protection specifically in Section 47 investigation of significant harm (Children Act 1989). Sadly these courses, once routine in authorities, are now rarely in place. But some of us have been pointing this out for a long time.
http://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/larger/2011_10_21_executive_summary_child_w_v4_-_final.pdf
Stuart lost his appeal yesterday and he has asked that UK campaigners should contact their MPs to request their support of John Hemming’s early day motion.
Two main websites for Jersey care leavers ;
http://ricosorda.blogspot.com/
http://voiceforchildren.blogspot.com/
EARLY DAY MOTION
Mr. Hemmings EDM. (2370)
“That this House notes the imprisonment of Stuart Syvret; believes that the public authorities of the island of Jersey do not operate in a manner compliant with the requirements of the European Commission of Human Rights(ECHR), there being overt and significant overlaps and contaminations between the legislature, executive and judiciary; further notes that Her Majesty’s subjects in Jersey are not protected by effective checks and balances, and that there has been the political repression of former Chief Police Officer, Graham Power and former Senator Stuart Syvret; further notes that, notwithstanding the responsibility the Secretary of State for Justice has for good governance and Convention Rights in Jersey, the island’s authorities are permitted to repress opposition activists, and that the Secretary of State for Justiceand Jersey’s Lieutenant Governor have failed to act; further notes that successive governments of the United Kingdom have committed this nation to securing real democratic freedoms and the rule of law in other jurisdictions, yet in the British enclave of Jersey on the United Kingdom’s very doorstep, ordinary powerless people are oppressed by an entrenched oligarchy; and calls on the Secretary of State for Justice to appoint an independent Commission similar to that which investigated corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands, to investigate the conduct of Jersey’s public administration and to urgently bring the protections of the ECHR to Her Majesty”
Stuart Syvret, former Senator in Jersey was jailed for ten weeks on Wednesday 2nd November 2011.
He has always supported the survivors in Jersey and has spent many years exposing the exploitation of children on the island. Messages of support should be sent to:
Stuart Syvret (K Wing)
HMP La Moye
Rue Baal
St Brelade
JE38HQ
