Lack of leadership in soicial services

Trisher, hard work chucked down the drain, fits with my angst about safeguarding constantly re-inventing the wheel.
Maddyone is right. Lockdown didn’t protect Arthur. One primary school I know well had 11 children taken into care over July and august. These children were ‘vulnerable’ but inevitably not taking up their places. Only the action of the school in visiting led to them being protected.
Without wanting to dramatise, I suspect many posters have little idea just how desperate the situation on safeguarding is.

Lockdown protected many people in society, but it did not protect Arthur. Lockdown may well have been the reason he is dead. Schools are safe places for abused children.

trisher I have said nothing at all about any authorities, neither Conservative nor Labour, nor have I discussed cuts in services, which may well be relevant, so please don’t accuse me of that. I simply said TAs are employed in the north and the south according to the wishes of headteachers, LAs, or other authorities in charge of schools.
However my main point has been, and continues to be, that had Arthur been in school, his bruises would have been seen, his condition noted, and he might have still been alive today. But he isn’t alive today, and he suffered appalling tortures, during the time he was not in school.

I remember it being used Iam64 I think I'd just assumed things were still being implemented. When I retired I chose to move away from education into other areas, reading it now just brought home how much hard work has been chucked down the drain and how we have slipped further back. Arthur may have been killed by his parents but he and thousands of other children have been let down by this government.

Trisher, every child matters was one of our key documents. I could scream or weep at the constant re-inventing of the wheel in safeguarding.
My posts feel like im constantly repeating the devastating impact of 11byears of austerity

Sorry Iam64 but the idea that the huge cuts to all services either isn't happening or that it hasn't caused a huge amount of damage to children makes me very cross. I'm also still reovering from reading the Every Child Matters document. Such a lot of things have been lost, so many children are slipping through the net once again. All those broken promises

No need to be so combative trisher. My point was TAs are being exploited and children let down by misuse of TAs. It was a fear many of us expressed when TAs first arrived and another occasion when being proved right is no consolation

Iam64 if schools are expecting TAs to teach then they are obviously employing TAs and getting rid of teachers.
maddyone this government cut funding in Labour MPs areas far more than in Tory ones. In fact of the 18 Tory constituencies to benefit and get more funding 13 had MPs who were in the cabinet www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/savage-tory-cuts-education-hitting-20844584
As I said Solihull was one of those to suffer most cuts.
It's not "completely untrue" that Labour areas suffered more cuts than Tory ones. The evidence is there. And if their budget is cut no LA can continue to fund schools adequately. TAs or teachers are cut as Iam64 says when TAs are there they are frequently doing a teacher's job, because they are cheaper.

A social worker.

Quite right Iam64 (about the TAs) but in fact Arthur wasn’t taken back to school when lockdown ended, and the other children returned to school. It was one of the reasons that we had a learning support unit set up in our school when I was teaching, and it was staffed by TAs, and when children didn’t come to school, often a TA would visit the home to establish why the child wasn’t in school. The non attenders were often the more vulnerable children.
I can’t imagine why Arthur wasn’t identified as a vulnerable child, if that’s the case. His teacher had raised concerns about him, his grandmother raised concerns to the police, his uncle also raised concerns. His attendance at school was spasmodic. All these red flags and someone decided he was not vulnerable. Who?Why? That’s what I’d like to know.

I’m in the north west, all schools have TA’s, many of them expected to teach if a class teacher is absent.

Schools were open for key worker and children identified as ‘vulnerable’. Arthur wasn’t classified as vulnerable so wouldn’t have had a place. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that vulnerable children weren’t taken to school - many of them missed a lot of school pre pandemic.

trisher I imagine that TAs might have been more successful in getting Arthur into school because the social workers weren’t actually doing home visits during lockdown. I think your attacks on where I live and who my MP is are irrelevant.
By the way, I’ve been retired for some 9/10 years, but I know what was happening in my previous school because I’m still in touch with many of my ex colleagues.

And another by the way, my cousin lives in the north and was a TA in a northern primary school for many years before she retired. My mother, now 94 years old, was also a TA in a school in the north for over thirty years. It is completely untrue to claim that only the south, or areas with a conservative MP, had or have TAs. In any case, the provision of TAs is down to the LA, the school headteacher, or the authority that runs the school. Maybe those in your area think TAs are a waste of money.

maddyone

Trisher I know. You’re completely correct in that schools were never closed for vulnerable children. However it seems that Arthur didn’t attend. I know teachers were dealing with a huge workload, but in the school I worked in, the TAs were managing much of the load, in particular with the vulnerable children. I worked in an area where we had large numbers of vulnerable children, so the system was well equipped to function even in normal times. Other schools may have struggled with this. Our TAs actually visited the homes of vulnerable children and encouraged the parents to send them to school. Perhaps this didn’t happen in Arthur’s case, I don’t know. What I do know is that much of this ill treatment occurred in lockdown and Arthur was not attending school. We also knew that domestic abuse was much more prevalent during lockdown and Arthur was abused at home, in the domestic setting.

Gosh you have TAs! Let me guess you are somewhere in the south and you have a Tory MP. TAs are like gold up here if you are lucky you get to share one. I wonder why you imagine a TA making a home visit would have manged any better than a social worker to uncover what was going on? Solihull where Arthur lived suffered huge cuts to education.

Trisher I know. You’re completely correct in that schools were never closed for vulnerable children. However it seems that Arthur didn’t attend. I know teachers were dealing with a huge workload, but in the school I worked in, the TAs were managing much of the load, in particular with the vulnerable children. I worked in an area where we had large numbers of vulnerable children, so the system was well equipped to function even in normal times. Other schools may have struggled with this. Our TAs actually visited the homes of vulnerable children and encouraged the parents to send them to school. Perhaps this didn’t happen in Arthur’s case, I don’t know. What I do know is that much of this ill treatment occurred in lockdown and Arthur was not attending school. We also knew that domestic abuse was much more prevalent during lockdown and Arthur was abused at home, in the domestic setting.

maddyone

Thistlelass the headteacher and head of year were not necessarily the ones who were responsible for safeguarding in Arthur’s school. It has been reported that his class teacher reported concerns about Arthur. The teacher would have reported the concerns to the teacher in charge of safeguarding in his school. Every school has one person who is the named person in charge of safeguarding. This person may, or may not, be the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, or another teacher, but that person is then responsible for contacting Social Services about the child causing concern.

Schools were closed when Arthur was being abused. He didn’t return to school when they began to operate, and subsequently died on 16th June 2020. I have long said that schools should not be closed. That his school was closed almost certainly was a large factor in Arthur’s bullying, torture, and eventual death. Schools are safe places, often the safest place, for children who are being abused.

Schools were never closed for vulnerable children. Of course many of them didn't attend, but the closure of schools can't be held entirely responsible unless you take into account the fact that teachers were managing a huge workload trying to provide education for some children in school, online provision for those who could access it and other ways of learning for those without the technology. Along of course with coping with illness. and abscences because of covid.

Thistlelass the headteacher and head of year were not necessarily the ones who were responsible for safeguarding in Arthur’s school. It has been reported that his class teacher reported concerns about Arthur. The teacher would have reported the concerns to the teacher in charge of safeguarding in his school. Every school has one person who is the named person in charge of safeguarding. This person may, or may not, be the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, or another teacher, but that person is then responsible for contacting Social Services about the child causing concern.

Schools were closed when Arthur was being abused. He didn’t return to school when they began to operate, and subsequently died on 16th June 2020. I have long said that schools should not be closed. That his school was closed almost certainly was a large factor in Arthur’s bullying, torture, and eventual death. Schools are safe places, often the safest place, for children who are being abused.

tickingbird

Trisher

Thank you for the warning because I don’t have a strong stomach for such things so although it is of interest to me I won’t read it as there are some things I’d rather not have in my head.

When I read it tickingbird I found it very upsetting. It brought back how much we seem to have slipped backwards. When ECM was written there was a sense of belief that things would improve and children would be better cared for. The things that haven't happened, the things we know are now worse, the unachievable targets, it's all very depressing.

tickingbird

I’d just like to make it clear I’m not blaming individual sw’s. It’s the system and it’s inability to change. The department needs a complete overhaul from the top down whether it likes it or not.

I admit to no knowledge of how social services departments function but I’d suspect you are right based in my experience of how education works i.e. too much bureaucracy and complicated administrative procedures, too many clients (students) per SW (teacher) combined with cutbacks in resources

The members of the public that did something didn’t get anywhere because the sw that visited found ‘no concerns’. What are members of the public supposed to do? They report to social services or the police. It’s about time children were seen on their own and properly checked.

Trisher

Thank you for the warning because I don’t have a strong stomach for such things so although it is of interest to me I won’t read it as there are some things I’d rather not have in my head.

Who is berating social services?
The facts haven't been made available yet, so that would be pointless.
There is nothing at all wrong in asking where the multiple agencies involved in this little boys life were, and I shall continue to do so.

Can you please stop berating social services and accept there has been yet another collective failure here? Now the responsibility really is multi-agency. He was 6 years - so which Head Teacher and year group teacher failed him? Which GP let him down? Which members of the public touched on the sides of this tragedy and did nothing? The whole way of working is fraught with bureaucracy and there are so many potential loopholes. No worker can go to their Manager and say they have a bad feeling about a case. Not these days anyway.

Baby P was found to have been failed by multiple agencies, including the doctor who didnt examine him because he was "cranky" or some such word.
He had a broken back!
He also had multiple injuries new and old - he was underweight - the only time he improved was when he was looked after elsewhere for a short while.

Where were the people involved in his care??

Asking his "mother" to write an essay about her dreams and aspirations.

Calistemon, yes, his teacher did, quite rightly, report the concerns.

When teaching, I worked according to the guidelines of the 'Every Child Matters' initiative and the Children Act 2004. - both directly due to the investigation of Victoria Climbie's death.

It was a realisation that everybody should share all information, however little (police, social workers, schools and healthcare) the 'joined up' thinking and response to any suspicion of abuse that often creates a complete picture of the situation.

The ContactPoint project began then too (the government database designed to hold information on all children in England). What happened to that? It was closed by the government of 2010.

When you look back nothing has changed since the tragic death of Maria Colwel. ( 1973)
That was the first public enquiry I remember into the death of a child.
I had the most awful row with a social worker friend. I know it wasn’t her fault but I was so angry I wanted someone to blame and she was right there in the firing line.
We got over it.