The outcome of an investigation (Serious Case Review ) that has been ongoing for two years has been published this morning, revealing that children in one Isle of Wight family were not protected from “significant sexual, physical and emotional abuse”.
This included one of the children say during the case conference that the father had taken money from a non-family member to have sex with the child.
The details of the investigation are very disturbing to read. Rather than us trying to resummarize what the report says, we’ve embedded it below, along with the recommendations and action being taken to avoid a repeat of the failures.
The independent chair of the IOW Safeguarding Children Board, Maggie Blyth, said:
“This case spans almost two decades with multiple incidents of abuse within a single family. What happened to the victims is extremely upsetting and could have been prevented.
“The failure of the authorities to work together, coupled with the dysfunctional nature of the family and intimidating and challenging behaviour of the father meant the abuse continued for many years – which was unacceptable.”
No action taken
The report reveals that despite suggestion of sexual abuse being investigated by Police and/or Children’s Social Care many times, over decades, the conclusion was always ‘no further action’.
Those involved with the case during or subsequently to the review included, Isle of Wight Council: Children’s Social Care; Education; Youth Offending Team; Hampshire Probation Trust; Hampshire Constabulary; Isle of Wight NHS Trust and the Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group.
A conviction
The publication of the report has been delayed in order to avoid jeopardising a police investigation.
The report states,
There was eventually a conviction in relation to a number of offences against a child subject of this review.
Authorities fearful of father
The family involved were clearly very challenging for the authorities to work with. One police officer said he and his colleagues “felt in real danger”.
Staff have told the Serious Case Review how daunting it has been to work with the family.
Paternal complaints about staff have led to several staff being changed, which had another undermining effect on their confidence in working with this challenging family. Staff have felt a degree of fear in face of such challenging and aggressive responses. A Police officer noted that he “felt (the father’s) volatility and anger were such that I felt in real danger, as did my colleagues”.
The Conclusions of the Serious Case Review
Full details can be found in the Report embedded at the bottom of the article. Below are the conclusions.
Could one or more of the children have been protected earlier?
The Review concludes that the answer to this is ‘yes’.
Regardless of the difficulties in proving specific allegations, there were many indications of serious dysfunction within the family.
The fact that young children even had the language to make certain of the allegations, the frequency with which there were serious concerns, the behaviour of the children, the non-cooperation of parents, the failure by parents to protect children from abusers, the lack of change, and the chaotic, sexualised, violent nature of life for the children, all warranted intervention at an earlier stage.
In the absence of action through the criminal courts, earlier use of care proceedings should have happened.
Why did this not happen?
Section 5 [of the review] analysed this in detail. In summary, the reasons, at the time, included the following:
- The intimidation perceived by staff from the father to some extent paralysed objective analysis, and limited challenge by agencies
- There was insufficient assessment of parenting skills, and a varying understanding across agencies of risk factors
- Insufficient weight was given to the lack of parental change and cooperation, and the father’s inability or unwillingness to protect the children
- Too much focus was given to the presenting problem of the day, rather than assessing the long term well-being of the children
- On a number of occasions when serious allegations were unsubstantiated for court purposes, there should nevertheless have been multiagency discussions to considered the implications for children
- Too many of the investigations were single agency, and CSC took an approach where if there was insufficient evidence for a conviction they also did not intervene
- This led to CSC frequently closing the case, when the overall evidence was of an unchanging or worsening situation where the children were at risk emotionally and/or physically and/or sexually
More consideration could have been given to why, after investigations had found insufficient evidence, children repeated allegations of abuse by relatives, especially given the risk to the children in doing so- Escalation arrangements to resolve disputes between agencies were not then sufficiently well-defined or used
- The degree to which there was undue optimism in CSC, regardless of the evidence, suggests supervision and case review processes were not sufficiently robust
- There was not a shared understanding between clinicians, and between clinicians and CSC, on the importance of social/environmental factors in extreme behaviour disorder
This list explains why opportunities were missed but these are not the root cause, which lies in the system within which the staff worked and the degree to which that provided sufficient preparation, support, supervision, and management of staff working with the most challenging of families, and had sufficiently robust interagency working. Improvement lies in making sure the system within staff work operates effectively.
What would need to happen to protect more quickly children in the future in a similar position?
The Staff Group wanted it to be clarified in this SCR that any change would not just benefit children referred in the future, but current families with chronic, not improving, situations where there is a similar need to take a long term and less event based perspective.Generally the answer lies in training, supervision and management being robust enough to ensure that good practice is followed and that the specific issues highlighted by this Review have been or are being addressed.
To address a similar situation, the approach would need to be less event-based and more focussed on the long term well-being of children.
It would require the meaning for children of repeated ‘no further action’ referrals to be considered.
It would need a level of resilience nurtured in staff which would be able to deal with the pressures from an aggressive parent/s, and a degree of challenge that would be appropriate to a long term non-improving situation.
It would need supervision and management processes that are able to identify where there is undue optimism, and where assessments remain similar despite changing circumstances.
It would need strong interagency relations where professional views are respected and heeded, and a good process for resolving disputes.
It would also need clear processes for multiagency discussion of the overall progress of families and childcare that does not necessarily need to be linked with a specific referral.
There have been a number of improvements since this case, and each involved agency has provided the SCR with a note on progress to date.
Update 12:54 – Added second para about payment for sex, following CP report being published.
TAKE NOTE: The privacy of the children involved is protected by the Courts. Please DO NOT LEAVE ANY COMMENTS THAT MAY IDENTIFY THE FAMILY, their location or schools attended by the children.
