By Charlotte Webster-
Swindon Safeguarding partnership is under criticism after an agency social work manager neglected a five-year-old was admitted to hospital so severely malnourished and dehydrated that professionals believed her life could be at risk.
A number of failures in local children’s services’ involvement with the girl’s family, including not acting on ongoing alerts and referrals, or challenging her parents and keeping inadequate records have been exposed as evidence of inadequacy. Other agencies also missed opportunities to share information or escalate concerns at key points.
The Care Act 2014 requires every local authority to set up a Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB), whose main objective is to assure itself that local safeguarding arrangements and partners act to help and protect adults in its area who meet the criteria for safeguarding. The local authority lead for the Safeguarding Adults Board in Swindon is the Director of Adult Services.
Efforts by The Eye Of Media.Com to obtain a response from David Haley, the Corporate Director Children’s Services were to no avail.
CRUCIAL INFORMATION
The assistant team manager handling the case who should not have been doing so in the first place – “ignored crucial information” and held a “falsely optimistic view of parental motivation and level of cooperation”, according to the investigation. In addition, the investigation concluded that the manager in charge should not have been handling the case.
The review found that despite a five year old child being concluded to have suffered neglect, there had been no work done with the young girl or her siblings.
The social worker was reported to the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and was suspended for misconduct that “exposed service users to a serious risk of unwarranted harm” at a tribunal in October because of a two-year failure to record supervisions, as well as for not keeping records in the child’s case. Unsurprisingly, she refused to co-operate with the review process.
Child Q’s mother and stepfather were jailed in October 2018, for six years and four years and three months respectively, for neglect.
PREMATURE
The child was born prematurely, weighing just 1kg, in September 2010 and experienced health problems from the outset. In July 2014, she and her siblings, who were well-known to agencies and already involved with Swindon council under child in need (CIN) procedures, were made subject to children protection plans because of neglect. Issues included the state of their family home, poor school attendance, unexplained injuries and housing and financial problems.
Swindon’s children’s services were restructuring during the period of review . The assistant team manager, who was being overseen by another temporary manager took on the child and her siblings’ case after another social worker left in December 2014. According to standard practise, managers do not take on such cases.
“The [assistant team manager]’s stated intention to allocate to a social worker as soon as possible did not materialise,” the serious case review noted. That same month, the child was taken to hospital by her mother due to diarrhoea and vomiting for a week. Yet, doctors discharged her without apparently considering that she was on a child protection plan, and no contact was made with children’s services.
In January 2015, a review child protection conference (RCPC) took place at which a newborn sibling of Child Q was also made subject to a plan.
“Ongoing concerns were recorded by [speech and language therapists], [health visitors] and nursery staff regarding child Q’s hunger, non-attendance at nursery and overall condition, during the period January to March,” the serious case review found. The child and all her siblings were stepped back down to CIN level in March 2015, with their case being closed and referred to family support in August.
REFERRAL IGNORED
Worst of all, despite an anonymous referral in June reporting serious concerns about the child’s well being , no action was taken by social services. The assistant team manager dismissed the report as “malicious”. This incident formed one allegation in the subsequent HCPC tribunal, though the panel found there was not conclusive proof the assistant team manager had breached safeguarding procedures.
Shamefully, the assistant manger ignored concerns expressed by school staff who visited the child’s home after the child’s absence from school became alarming. Instead of investigating the actual problem, all the assistant did was to insist to the child’s mother by phone that she took him to school or face child protection procedures .
HOSPITALISED
The child was hospitalised a few days later weighing less than 11kg and taken into care. Frontline practitioners, from health and education, interviewed during the investigation acknowledged that Child Q’s large family posed a complex challenge for professionals involved. But they also expressed “significant frustrations” with how the situation – including concerns they raised – was handled by Swindon children’s services.
“Practitioners described the escalation of their concerns following the RCPC in January 2015 and a subsequent meeting with the [assistant team manager] and [their] manager as a significant moment that reinforced their view that the parents’ views were allowed to dominate decisions without sufficient corroboration,” the review said.
OMISSIONS
Omissions in relation to written reports went unchallenged by the conference chair. Furthermore, there were no records made of core group meetings in early 2015, or CIN meetings between March and August after the children were stepped down. Failures on the part of other agencies worsened an already bad situation. Health visitor failed to keep adequate records, making it difficult for failings in the system to be compensated
A Swindon council spokesperson described the case as “appalling” and said the local authority fully accepted its findings and recommendations, including around child protection procedures, direct work with children and managers holding cases.
“The council’s children’s services department was in a very different place to what it is now when the neglect of Child Q took place four years ago, with soaring numbers of cases, high caseloads and a lack of management oversight, which is well described in the SCR,” the spokesperson said.
OFSTED
Swindon was rated as requiring improvement after an inspection in 2014, but more recent inspections last year revealed the decline of services with the authority needing to take swift action to improve the identification of risk and management oversight of child protection cases. However, Swindon was rated good earlier this year, after inspectors praised the quality of leadership under director of children’s services, David Haley, in driving practice improvements.
A spokesperson for Swindon Council told The Eye Of Media,Com that added that a lot of improvement had resulted from the serious case review.
“Since this case we have implemented a neglect framework as well as a training and development programme for staff across agencies so that there is a consistent approach to recognising and responding to neglect,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with our partners to improve our practice and ensure we provide the best possible service to children and families.”