Local Authorities, Safeguarding, and abuse of children

Last month saw the reporting of two devastating cases involving the murder of a child by their mother and their mother’s boyfriend or new partner.

In the case of Eli Cox, aged just 5 months, it is reported that Police were called to the home weeks before Eli’s death, and Kent County Council confirmed the family was known to them. A serious case review is now under way to establish if his death could have been prevented by the authorities.

In the case of Ayeeshia-Jayne Smith, she was just a couple of years old when she was murdered by her mother. The serious case review has recently been completed by the Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Board and says professionals should have been more “inquisitive”.

The report when on to state:

“The birth father himself admitted to the review author that whilst he had many concerns about his ex-partner’s behaviour, the people she associated with and her reliance on alcohol, at no time did he anticipate that she would fatally harm their daughter”

The mother and child had previously lived in Derbyshire, and had been in continued contact with social services at Derbyshire County Council. The mother, Smith, was found guilty of murder, while her boyfriend Matthew Rigby – who was not Ayeeshia-Jayne’s father – was found guilty of causing or allowing the child’s death. The report described the couple’s relationship as “volatile” and noted that police were called to several domestic incidents between them.

One of the key findings said there was “little recognition” of the role that Rigby and Ayeeshia-Jayne’s biological father played in the child’s life, which resulted in “a lack of professional assessment of both the benefits and risks they posed” to the mother and child.

For some time now one of our researchers has been looking at the connections and communications channels that exist (or don’t exist) between local authorities, children’s services, Cafcass, the Police, and any healthcare professionals (GPs, nurses, midwives etc) connected or involved with a child.

But first we must turn the clock back to the death of Victoria Climbie.

In 2000 an 8 year old girl, Victoria Climbie, was tortured and murdered by her guardians. Her death led to a public inquiry and was supposed to herald huge changes to the child protection laws and services across the UK.

During the abuse, Climbié was burnt with cigarettes, tied up for periods of longer than 24 hours, and hit with bike chains, hammers and wires. Up to her death, the police, the social services department of four local authorities, the National Health Service, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), and local churches all had contact with her, and noted the signs of abuse.

However, in what the judge in the trial following Climbié’s death described as “blinding incompetence”, all failed to properly investigate the case and little action was taken.

Climbié’s death was largely responsible for various changes in child protection in England, including the formation of the Every Child Matters programme, an initiative designed to improve the lives of children; the introduction of the Children Act 2004, an Act of Parliament that provides the legislative base for many of the reforms; the creation of ContactPoint, a database designed to hold information on all children in England and Wales (now no longer in operation); and the creation of the post of children’s commissioner, who heads the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, a national agency serving children and families.

ContactPoint was a government database that held information on all children under 18 in England. It was created in response to the abuse and death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié in 2000 in England. Various agencies involved in her care had failed to prevent her death. ContactPoint aimed to improve child protection by improving the way information about children was shared between services. It was designed by Capgemini and previously had the working titles of Information Sharing Index (or IS Index or ISI) and the Children’s Index.

The database, created under the Children Act 2004, cost £224m to set up and £41m a year to run. It operated in 150 local authorities, and was accessible to at least 330,000 users. The database was heavily criticised by a wide range of groups, mainly for privacy, security and child protection reasons. On 12 May 2010 the new UK Coalition Government announced plans to scrap ContactPoint and on 6 August 2010 the database was shut down. From that date the Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007, as amended in 2010, no longer applies.

Following the 2010 General Election the new government (the Conservative-LibDem coalition) scrapped the database as one of their measures ‘to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.

For the purposes of this article our researchers have been looking at the alternatives to Contact Point.

On this basis we have made requests to many Local Authorities as follows:

Here are the responses so far:

Voice of the Child

In a Family Law system designed for combative parents there is no real allowance for the views of children and any understanding of how Family Law ultimately impacts on children most of all.

We speak for the children in Family Law so that, finally, the children have a voice.