WRITTEN ON October 24th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Terri Dowty’s detailed post on the infamous politicised ContactPoint memo and Victoria Climbie is far too good to be buried in the comments section, where people’s RSS readers might miss it:

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.