The partner of Tyler’s mother, Elvis Lee, was today jailed for life for his murder. His mother, Stephanie Whelan, was found guilty of causing or allowing his death and will be sentenced at a later date. The serious case review found ‘numerous missed opportunities to help Tyler’.

Commenting in the wake of the convictions, BASW professional officer, Nushra Mansuri, said the issue was about more than one “single tragic case”. She explained: “The circumstances detailed in this case are appalling and we must learn lessons from it. The sad reality, however, is that we are looking at a situation whereby our child protection service is operating near breaking point. No matter how good the social worker, we cannot escape the fact that due to austerity measures, and sustained under-investment for years before that, talented and dedicated workers are being continually asked to do more with less.

“These are the most vulnerable people in our society and we simply cannot afford to put their lives at risk, we need a sustained governmental commitment to funding this vital area of practice.”

The review, produced by the Peterborough Safeguarding Children Board, detailed a ‘concern that no professional ever saw him [Tyler] in the family home’ and pointed to the failure of multiple child protection procedures, including the absence of a child protection plan. Social work assessments were deemed ‘very poor’ and ‘below basic procedural requirements’.

The author of the SCR, Ron Lock, former regional head of child protection services at the NSPCC, commented: ”It was concerning that there were occasions when child protection procedures were not followed and when established processes, such as strategy meetings, were sometimes dealt with in an ad hoc way. Inter-agency communication was also incredibly poor. “

The trial at Cambridge Crown Court heard that Tyler died following his fourth admission to hospital with blunt force traumas, thought to be caused by a series of kicks, bites and punches administered by Mr Lee.

The Association says the scorecards, which ministers insist are aimed at speeding up the adoption process, will put speed above quality and fail to recognise the complex issues involved in adoption work or the barriers presented by an overstretched legal system.

Commenting on the scorecards, BASW professional officer Nushra Mansuri said: “We speak to adoption social workers all the time who say they feel demoralised and let down by the government’s posturing on adoption. Local authorities cannot be compared like for like across the country, because they each have different populations and resources.

“What’s more, this policy of prioritising speed fails to acknowledge the increasingly complicated lives that children, even very young infants, have faced before entering the system. Clearly we want children in safe and supportive placements as quickly as possible but we must not risk increasing numbers of adoption breakdowns when the government doesn’t even have a clear handle on how many placements end in failure. A failed adoption will only worsen the outcomes for vulnerable young people, so the onus on speed is worrying.

“As highlighted by an Ofsted report in April, social workers are well respected by adopted parents for their valuable contribution to proceedings but they are working alongside a family courts system that is desperately overstretched and unable to work as effectively as children in the system need it to.

“As such, a lot of the delays are a result of issues that are not within the control of individual social workers. Instead of empowering social workers by giving them the support they need to help more children, and instead of aiding a creaking court system, the government continues to distract from the real issues. The idea behind these gimmicky scorecards must surely be to help reverse its declining opinion poll ratings as it manifestly has nothing whatsoever to do with improving adoption performance.”

The launch comes after a consultation period held throughout February, during which The Scottish Association of Social Work (SASW – part of BASW) outlined its concerns about wholesale restructuring of health and social care.

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The HPC decided this week that although it has no immediate plans to scrap the student register when the General Social Care Council (GSCC) closes at the end of July it is not committed to maintaining that register into the future. Instead it is to look into alternative methods for regulating social work students. These are likely to centre on applying similar standards to social work education providers to those it currently places on the training institutions for the other professions it presently regulates. The move, which could see universities being made to carry out criminal conviction checks on social work students and highlight any concerns about a student’s character, is to be discussed at a meeting in June.

Having repeatedly raised concerns about any move to discontinue the present registration arrangements, whereby the GSCC maintains a register of qualified and student social workers, BASW again emphasised its serious concerns at any development that could make it harder to ensure that students were fully accountable for their work with the public.

Commenting on the HPC’s decision, BASW’s chair Fran Fuller said: ”We are disappointed that the HPC continues to reject the need for students to be properly regulated in the same way as their qualified counterparts. Currently social work students have to register and adhere to the GSCC codes of conduct, which makes them accountable for their actions from the moment they register as social workers and, to some extent, protects the public when students are on a placement working alongside vulnerable people who need services.

“I am pleased the HPC has not taken any immediate steps to end the registration of students when it assumes responsibility from the GSCC but remain concerned at longer term plans and at this tentative proposal to put more onus on education providers in future.

“Universities do, of course, try to address misconduct issues via their own procedures but all too often they are not able to understand the complexities of social work and social work practice, so there remains a clear role for a regulator.

“Even leaving aside the difficulties of universities policing students on placements, there are other, similarly complicated issues associated with students who are terminated from social work degree programmes – how will it be possible to track these people and ensure they are not able to re-enter social work training? Social work students often work in isolation, alongside service users, which puts them apart from students who belong to other HPC registered professions.”

Quite rightly many people are examining how this legislation could affect service users and carers, but let us consider social workers. The context of this Bill is that social care is ‘broken’ and ‘dysfunctional’. How does that feel to those of us who have worked and are working in the field of adult social care, and who, despite very difficult circumstances have managed to do some very good work, helping people to come to terms with their difficulties and working together with them and their family and carers to gain the best possible quality of life? Well the words ‘kick’, ‘in’, ‘the’ and ‘teeth’ come to mind.

There is much that needs to be sorted out in the world of adult social care, a great deal of it at the systemic level. One of the main issues for me is that social workers should have a greater role in working with individuals and families when care and support is needed, rather than our role being eroded, as has happened in recent years – something that is now being accelerated by the cuts. We should be working in a framework that supports us, with resources and options available for us to share with service users, as well as a consistency of support that puts an end to the notion of a postcode lottery.

Combined with a straightforward and transparent system, we should be able to enable people to make informed choices about their lives. We should be given time to build relationships and support people properly rather than using a crude tool designed to assess need and aimed squarely at restricting service availability.

Next up, we should have good supervision and training to help us begin to understand the situation of a range of people with disabilities and health problems such as progressive illnesses, Alzheimers and other forms of dementia, terminal illnesses, and other difficulties around safeguarding concerns.

We should be given professional autonomy and enabled to put our knowledge skills and values to good use, to the benefit of service users. We should be heard and respected by our managers at all levels because we want nothing more than the best for our service users and those around them.

It is likely that the Bill will include a section on social work and social workers. BASW worked together with the College and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) on a summit for adult social work at the end of last year which was attended by civil servants involved in the Bill, and we will continue to work on our own account and with others to make sure the valuable role of social workers in this field is acknowledged and fostered.

There is good and bad in the Bill and we will be commenting on the details in the future and responding to consultations drawing on the views of BASW members, but let us not lose sight of the need to safeguard social work interests, which are absolutely bound up with those of service users, and ensure, ultimately, much better service provision for those in need.

The story emerged from a Daily Mail story, on 7 May, headlined ‘Scandal of the babies parents won’t adopt because they’re called Chrystal and Chardonnay . . . and the social workers who won’t let them change their names’. It centred on a ‘whistleblower’, a member of an adoption board who cited the instance of a baby called Chardonnay who, the anonymous source suggested, ‘will struggle to be placed’ because social workers won’t let the name be changed.

BASW professional officer Sue Kent said the story was hugely overstating the potential significance of the issue. “The idea that an unwillingness to change adopted children’s names is the cause of delay is just silly,” she argued. “As an adoption order replaces the child’s birth certificate there is always the opportunity to change the name but quite rightly most adopters respect the child’s identity and the only thing they can often salvage from their childhood with their birth family – their name.

“This article focuses on the adults concerns, as opposed to the child’s emotional welfare, and recognition of their need to feel a valued individual at the point of adoption. A baby at the age of one will usually respond to their name and identify with it. Children whose names have changed in the past have often gone back to find out their birth names and it is not unusual for them to revert back to it when able to do so.”

The source in the Mail story indicated, however, that the issue was a major problem for would-be middle class adopters. The source stated: “In the past few years it has become standard practice for social workers to recommend that the birth name be retained, a suggestion which is then rubber-stamped by the judge at adoption.”

The source added: “Changing the name is something adoptive parents almost always want to do, especially if they already have birth children of their own. Naturally you want a new child to blend in with your existing family – but will Chardonnay ever fit in with Henry, James and William? No.”

BASW’s Nushra Mansuri offered a stinging attack on the article’s implication that children from poor social circumstances “should be ‘cleansed’ of their backgrounds, rescued by their social betters and be able to offer a ‘blank canvas’ for their adoptive families”.

A frustrated BASW member contacted the Association to add her views to a story which was subsequently picked up elsewhere in print and broadcast media. “What we need to focus on is helping adopters understand that supporting a child’s longer term stability and permanence with them is about looking to preserve and appreciate aspects of their past. The name is one which should be preserved.”

Sue Kent pointed to Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the right to an identity, and emphasised that “many adoption breakdowns have been seen to be associated to identity confusion”.

She continued: “There has always been, and remains, the scope to include other names to enable adopters to embrace their belonging to the child and vice versa but research shows that children’s emotional resilience is better promoted if they are able to make sense of their past and understand the dilemma their family were in that resulted in them coming into care. Sometimes the dilemma is a difficult story to tell. Not doing so can result in a child regarding the issue as personal, as if it was because of them and who they were that they had to be adopted.

“A change of name may well lead to the creation by the child of a self-inflicted story of blame and rejection for being themselves.”

Please click here for Iain Armstrong’s presentation slides.

Please click here for the Structured Advice Tool PDF which was shown during Iain’s presentation.

Please click here for Sarah Galvani’s presentation slides.

Please click here for Deryn Bishop’s presentation slides.

Please click here for Donald Forrester’s presentation slides.

Please click here for James Morriss’s presentation slides.

Trevor McCarthy had two lots of presentation slides, please click here and here for those. For a copy of the Personal Professional Planning Handout, click here.  For a copy of Trevor’s bio with links to the NICE publications, click here.

Please click here for Wulf Livingstone’s presentation slides.

Commenting following sentencing of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring and reports that England’s children’s homes have recorded 631 incidents of girls being sold for sex during the past five years, Hilton Dawson, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, said:

“The convictions in Rochdale, compounded by these statistics, indicate the shocking scandal in UK children’s homes where, despite examples to the contrary, too many teenagers are insufficiently supported through difficult periods in their lives. The neglect and run down of this sector by successive governments and local authorities, has consistently undermined good professional practice and led to failures to support some of our neediest children.

“BASW has repeatedly emphasised the need for a recognition that child protection services should not only focus on young children. Despite shocking examples of the abuse of young children, such as Baby Peter Connelly and Victoria Climbié, which have rightly reverberated around the system for years afterwards, we can’t have a system whereby older children and teenagers are written off in resource-starved children’s homes and left vulnerable to such predatory groups of men.

“The government and local authorities should listen to social workers who have long been shouting for multi-agency workable protocols to protect such young people. We need dedicated political will to spread the message about how to notice the signs of sexual grooming and abuse across all communities, to parents, young people and all agencies who come into contact with young people.

“Social workers are being stretched too thin, and more staff are needed. There should be better communication between the police, health professionals, social services, and schools so that children can be better protected from such serious harm and encouraged to live fulfilled and positive lives.”

The expanded awards for 2012, after a highly successful 2011 event in the House of Lords, this year cover 16 categories, with an overall ‘Social Worker of the Year’ award chosen from amongst the individual winners. BASW is among the organisations co-supporting the event and the Association is again sponsoring the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The deadline for nominations is 5pm on Friday 31st August 2012.

To enter the Social Worker of the Year Awards 2012, visit www.socialworkawards.com and download an entry form for your chosen category.

The Social Worker of the Year Awards are open to individual social workers and social work teams working in England. All nominees must be fully qualified and registered with the GSCC.

The awards will be judged by a panel that includes some of the most prominent figures from across the sector. Along with Professor Eileen Munro, author of the government commissioned inquiry into child protection, the panel includes Andrew Flanagan, chief executive of the NSPCC and Baroness Sally Morgan, former advisor to Tony Blair and now chair of Ofsted.

Further information can be found by visiting www.socialworkawards.com

Information about two important events is now available to members.  We  hope as many of you as possible will be able to attend.

Seminar
The SASW Annual Members Meeting Seminar will take place on Wednesday 16 May and is on the theme of Re-abling the Social Work Profession.
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Annual Meeting

The Annual Members Meeting Seminar will be directly followed by the by SASW Annual Member Meeting, which will begin at 5.00pm.
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SASW annual report 2011

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Scotland Committee nominations 2012

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