WRITTEN ON October 22nd, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Design: user-oriented, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Save Time and Money, What do we want?
A weird thing has crossed my desk. I understand it to be a piece of communication which DCSF has sent out today to all local authorities. In an strangely partisan way, it specifically (and bizarrely, rather unconvincingly) seeks to undermine Tory plans to replace Contactpoint’s universal (unless you are the child of Madonna or an MP) system with a selective system covering only vulnerable children.
Read below for the memo itself. It seems to suggest that decisions about children’s safety and wellbeing are never subjective – if only it were that easy. A key reason for cross-agency case-conferencing is that multiple agencies engaged with a family need to pool their subjective knowledge to try to come to a consensus view on what the right thing to do is. Social services may doubt Mum’s’ capacity to cope or nurture; the health visitor may be concerned about conflict in the home on the weekends when Dad is around; youth justice and education may both argue that the child has made good progress in recent weeks and has achieved a level of stability which might be lost should the child be removed from the home. Decisions on intervention are rarely purely clear-cut, objective, quantitative. They can involve complex ‘gut-feels’ from highly skilled professionals who have to make highly complex judgements.
Anyway… is it not a bit inappropriate for government officials to be sending out something like this (esp to Tory councils)? It makes me wonder how poor the crucial local authority sign-up to Contactpoint is, if the department is at this stage sending rather desperate communications like these.
Above all it’s also pretty inept: I must admit I got confused, and when I read the first paragraph I thought it was arguing convincingly why the Scottish approach makes sense. I suppose the DCSF will have to hope that busy local government officials have time to read all the way to the end….
Views?
CONTACTPOINT – UNIVERSAL SYSTEM VS SELECTIVE SYSTEM
The Conservatives propose to replace ContactPoint with a selective system covering
only vulnerable children, such as those in care, on the child protection register or
with backgrounds of domestic violence. This is similar to the approach being
developed in Scotland – Getting it right for every child – and is more akin to what the
electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF) and the Integrated Children’s
System (ICS) projects are seeking to achieve in England, than it is to ContactPoint.
ContactPoint has a different, wider purpose. It is, principally, about supporting early
intervention for children who need additional services (30% at any one time and 50%
during their lives) and is universal by design.A ‘universal’ system recognises that children move in and out of the spectrum of
need and that it is not possible to predict the need for, or timing of, additional
services. It is much less stigmatising – no judgement is required about who should
be included or not. With a selective system, such as that proposed by the
Conservatives, practitioners may make decisions about the needs or vulnerability of
a child in absence of all of the available information, because they can only contact
and speak to practitioners they can identify and locate, rather than all those known to
be working with the child.Holding records only for children judged to be ‘vulnerable’ would require subjective
judgments about whether the threshold for inclusion on the system had been met
and, importantly, further judgments about when to remove records from the system.
It is proportionate to hold a small amount of information on all children, rather than
continually making threshold decisions about which children to put onto a system
and which to take off.Without ContactPoint, being able to identify and contact others working with the
same child is a frustrating and time consuming process. Practitioners would much
rather invest time in providing services to children, young people and families. A
survey of nearly 3,000 said that, on average, practitioners need to make contact with
other services 107 times a year, averaging 4 hours each time.Universality: in the light of the case of Victoria Climbié
Victoria’s Aunt was claiming child benefit and had registered Victoria with two GPs.
On both counts, Victoria’s details would have been supplied to ContactPoint and so
would have been available to authorised users, regardless of any cause for concern.
Had ContactPoint existed, social workers who came into contact with Victoria and
had looked up her details, would have found that she was known as a child living in
England and was registered with a GP. She would also have been listed in a
Children Missing Education report and her absence from education would have been
followed up by her local authority. Consequently, she may have been placed in a
school, where her condition would have been observed daily and a Common
Assessment may have been undertaken as a result.Victoria was not assessed, by those who saw her as a child with additional needs. It
is questionable whether she would have appeared on a selective system of
vulnerable children.
5 Responses to “DCSF officials attack the Tories?”
Yes – it seems politically inept (in terms of civil serice code). AND professionally inept (in assuming that decision about child protection can be clear cut and mechanised.
Just to pick up on the last two paragraphs:
“in the light of the case of Victoria Climbié…”
It’s worth saying at the outset that Victoria was already known to social services and had a social worker. There is a serious shortage of child and family social workers and unfortunately the social worker allocated had only been qualified for 18 months, and the supervision she was receiving was inadequate. The evidence is that her supervision sessions were taken up largely with administrative tasks, and she did not take her case notes to those sessions. The supervisor did not question this.
“Victoria’s Aunt was claiming child benefit and had registered Victoria with two GPs. On both counts, Victoria’s details would have been supplied to ContactPoint and so would have been available to authorised users, regardless of any cause for concern.”
Since all children’s GP details will appear on Contactpoint, there is nothing here that would have raised any questions. More significantly, a 19-page report from the Middlesex Hospital that actually did raise concerns was not read by the social worker and her supervisor because it was hand-written and difficult to read. It is difficult to see how Contactpoint would have rendered the report legible or prompted the social worker/supervisor to pick up the phone for clarification.
“Had ContactPoint existed, social workers who came into contact with Victoria and had looked up her details, would have found that she was known as a child living in England and was registered with a GP.”
Her social worker already knew this.
“She would also have been listed in a Children Missing Education report and her absence from education would have been followed up by her local authority.”
Both Ealing and Haringey already knew that she did not have a school place.
“Consequently, she may have been placed in a school,”
Given that both LAs where she had lived were already aware that she was not at school, why was she *not* given a place? How would a ‘Children Missing Education’ report have helped, exactly?
“…where her condition would have been observed daily and a Common Assessment may have been undertaken as a result.”
‘May have’? The ‘Common Assessment’ is a lower-level tool to be used by someone who is *not* a social worker. Had one been carried out, it would have preceded referral to social services – *and they were already involved.* If any practitioner suspects there might be abuse, they should not in any case attempt a Common Assessment. It is dangerous on many levels for them to do so. They should follow the procedures outlined in the guidance ‘What to do if you think a child is being abused’ and refer immediately to social services.
“Victoria was not assessed, by those who saw her as a child with additional needs. It is questionable whether she would have appeared on a selective system of vulnerable children.”
But she would appear on the Social Services system because she was already known to social services. She was never ‘lost in the system’ or invisible in any way. There was a catalogue of errors of judgement, and of misdiagnosis. One GP thought that her injuries were symptoms of scabies. When she jumped out of her hospital bed and stood to attention during her aunt’s visits, it was dismissed as some kind of cultural practice. Victoria was French-speaking, but at no stage was she interviewed by somebody who spoke French.
There was no shortage of information about Victoria. There was a chronic lack of wisdom and judgement in interpreting the information that was already available. Victoria’s case demonstrates just how difficult it can be to pick up on abuse. It would be far better to concentrate the limited resources available on retention of experienced child and family practitioners and on thorough investigation of children already known to social services, rather than flooding an over-stretched system with low-level data about every child (up to 50% of the child population) who might need services.
This is a really important contribution to the debate.
I have had it explained to me that professionals can save a lot of time by obtaining details of other professionals involved and so finding it easier to contact them. In all my years of working with professionals I have to say that the lack of contact information was never the reason for lack of cooperation and information sharing accross agency boundaries. And it can never replace professional judgement. Another concern is that entry on the database becomes a substitute for action and judgement. And whilst getting details makes life easier, this is only true if they are correct and up to date, which requires very frequent updating and maintencance. The cost of the system and its maintenance would be better used to provide services to children and their families.
“the englishman” writes to say
inept doesn’t event begin to describe this memo
first snetence. The Child Protection Register was fazed out in april
+ no info on how new private fostering laws applying to VC type cases
Taking this argument to its logical conclusion would mean extending the sex offenders register to everyone because it is tricky to determine the fuzzy lines of who should and who should not be on it. Hang on, they’re already doing that! Now that sounds like a good way to sell the national identity register… 😉