Most liked posts in thread: Star Hobson

Of course funding is a valid subject in this case. You cannot ignore the disastrous effects of eleven years of cuts when trying to understand why this tragedy happened. Child protection services in Bradford were once amongst the very best in the country but have been going downhill for years.

I worked in Bradford social services for 32 years. Most of that was in mental health and training unit but the first eight years were at the Eccleshill/Idle Area Office, covering three tough council estates - Greengates, Ravenscliffe and Thorpe Edge. We were supposedly 'generic' in those days but 90% of the work was child protection. Some of that work was genuinely scary. I had alarms installed in my house, paid for by Social Services, because of threats towards me and my family by angry fathers of abused kids.
When I started in 1984, as a newly qualified social worker, I was 28, having come to social work late after 5 years in the civil service. Most newly qualifieds, however, are 21/22, straight from school into uni and then into practice - barely more than kids. When I started, as a Level 1 social worker, I was the only rookie in the office - the rest were at least Level 2 and most were Level 3s with years of experience. I was nurtured by wise old heads, with a relatively protected caseload - allowed to gain experience until I was ready to take on the really heavy end cases. Even then the caseloads were manageable, allowing enough time for discussion and reflection when making tough decisions with lifelong implications for parents and children.

For years now the situation in Bradford Children's Services has been chalk and cheese from the one I experienced. Years of relentless cuts have reduced staffing at the same time that austerity has increased deprivation, and hence demand - Bradford has one of the worst child poverty levels in the country. Poverty and child abuse are inextricably linked. The result has been a recruitment and retention crisis of gargantuan proportions. Experienced permanent staff are like hens' teeth - they've either retired or moved to other local authorities with less challenging social conditions and often higher pay. Bradford used to be one of the highest payers of SW salaries regionally, but those days are long gone, with all the budget cuts that hit Bradford harder than some neighbouring authorities.

The net result is that Bradford child protection teams are full of kids and agency workers and the staff churn is relentless. Newly qualifieds and agency workers arrive and are immediately dumped with ridiculous numbers of heavy end cases with no opportunity to gain experience in controlled conditions. Most of the newly qualifieds leave pretty quickly, having been traumatised by the overwhelming nature of what's asked of them. Many drop out of social work altogether. The agency staff move on to other authorities, having no loyalty to Bradford or desire to work in such unfavourable circumstances. So it becomes a vicious circle because word gets around and the worse the situation gets, the tougher it is to recruit experienced staff or hang on to newly qualifieds long enough for them to get properly competent.

So, yes, obviously there were serious errors made by social work staff in the Star Hobson case. But those errors were almost certainly made by inexperienced staff operating in unacceptably tough conditions. And you can't disentangle the chaos from the economic circumstances that have produced it.
This account from an experienced agency worker just about nails it:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/17/scariest-place-ive-worked-social-worker-recalls-stint-in-bradford?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

So are you advocating changing the entire basis of social work training? All over the country? Or just in Bradford? Being a parent is useful, but it's not the be all and end all.

There's a lot more to social work than just having experience of bringing up kids. You need good literacy skills to write reports for courts, adoption panels etc and case notes that could end up being legally scrutinised; you have to be capable of taking cases to court and giving good verbal evidence under oath and hostile cross examination; you need good advocacy skills to help clients deal with various official agencies; you need to be able to cope with child protection case conferences involving often hostile parents; the ability to work with, hold your own with (and sometimes challenge) other professionals such as teachers, doctors etc, who generally have more status in the system than you; plus the guts to go into the homes of people who emphatically don't want you there and to question and challenge them in often hostile circumstances; etc etc.
Many people seem to think that you just need parenting skills and common sense, but it's a lot more involved and challenging than that and just being an experienced parent doesn't necessarily mean you have all the required skills.

Social Worker is a protected title. It's illegal to call yourself a Social Worker unless you have completed a social work training course approved by the regulator - Social Work England. All of these courses are university based because the job requires a higher level of intellectual rigour than you probably think, for the reasons outlined above.

I agree that getting more mature people into social work is a good aspiration and it's one that has been around for years. But it's easier said than done. People are not queuing up to do it. It requires paying good enough salaries to attract mature people with the necessary skills and intellect into a profession that is badly paid and has low status by comparison to other comparable professions. After 32 years qualified, despite getting extra increments for specialist Approved Mental Health Practitioner training, I retired on £34k per year; not a poverty wage, obviously, but a very poor one for the training, challenges and responsibilities involved.

There is undoubtedly a place for experienced non-professionally qualified people within the child protection system. We used to have quite a lot of them working in council-run Family Centres dotted around the city. Those people (unburdened by the legal and case management responsibilities outlined above) were there to provide intensive work with parents of kids on the Child Protection Register/ at risk of coming into care. Sadly, many of those valuable types of services have been scaled down or cut altogether because of budget cuts imposed by central government.

 

I can't comment on the specifics of this, as I don't know. Apart from obviously, it is hideous.

I am not looking to provide excuses, however, I will flag the huge drop in funding for Children's Services over the past ten years.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/26/childrens-services-financial-crisis-big-five-charities

I've just picked one article at random, but there are plenty of reports out there highlighting this. I know that in Manchester, to save money on pensions etc, there was a move employ agency staff as social workers rather than as employees. This increased the turnover of staff and consequently meant that specific children might have multiple social workers involved. Lots of tacit knowledge was lost between handovers and it increased the complexity of communications between multiple agencies.

Case workloads for children's services were increasing, and have continued to increase, at a time when budgets were being cut. This has continued over the past ten years.

I know some of this because we adopted a child and worked closely with children's services for the best part of three years. I know the strain that our social workers were under at that time.

Of course, in any area of employment, mistakes will be made and some people will not be effective in their roles (for whatever reasons). However, you cannot break the time/cost/quality dynamic. If you stamp down on cost then something has to give.

Similarly, those on the front-line in any role are at the mercy of the systems and processes that they are part of. If those systems and processes are not fit for purpose, then you get poor outcomes.

I agree absolutely that there needs to be a thorough review, but there also needs to be a wider discussion about how we are protecting vulnerable children in our society and what we can do to reduce this need over time.

 

"‘Scariest place I’ve worked’: social worker recalls stint in Bradford | Bradford | The Guardian" https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/17/scariest-place-ive-worked-social-worker-recalls-stint-in-bradford

Cutbacks in social services have lead to astronomical workloads on staff already hamstrung with having one arm tied behind their backs. They are not to blame for this.

 

If it’s there’s one thing guaranteed to make things worse, it’s handing the responsibility over to Serco. Jesus.

 

Easy to blame the social services, pass the buck elsewhere. Where in truth doesn't matter how many supposed red flags they are. The system needs overhauling but also needs properly funding. And with funding needs a system that allows social workers to be able to carry out their work in an efficient and preventative manner.
How about we actually blame the two people whose actions caused the death instead of blaming a service trying to fire fight without a hosepipe?

 

A brilliant, but harrowing post.

I have nothing but respect and compassion for what you do.

 

That scumbag needs to die in there - complete scumbag

Hope she gets seriously attacked in there. She deserves nothing less than a life of hell.

 

No doubt be in a secure area to protect her.
Don't get how evil gets protection from the authorities but the poor victim didn't, it's heartbreaking

 

It is my understanding that 5 times I'll treatment of Star Hobson was referred to Bradford Council children's services.

I understand the director of children's services has quit just before the trial having joined the council in 2019.

Are the council leader and chief executive intending to continue regardless? The statement from Susan Hinchcliffe suggest lessons are to be learned, which quite frankly is an insult, and suggests she doesn't see anyone running Bradford Council as accountable for what has happened.

I notice a full council meeting was scheduled for Tuesday but cancelled as the verdict of the trial came in with "Omicron" cited as the reason it could not take place. One would suggest this full council meeting was cancelled not due to "Omicron" but to prevent difficult questions being asked of those who run Bradford Council.

 

Great post!

 

I'm sure that funding is an issue but 5 separate referrals not been followed up is much deeper than a funding excuse.

 

At some point funding becomes the perpetual excuse.

If something is done badly just throw more money at it and it will be done better is the rationale.

Not for me. This wasn't a time or a man power issue, it a pure incompetence issue and it can't be solved by funding.

The poor little kid in this had an awful life and im delighted the lunatic involved is going to be having a nightmare time of it behind bars but Star deserves better than people conflicting the actual issues that failed her.

 

No one is suggesting that just throwing money at it is enough. Nor that social workers should be exonerated from all blame if they are incompetent. I despise incompetent social workers, and I've seen a few in my time, but that's not the primary issue here.

Even good people make bad decisions when they are stressed out beyond their limits, given unmanageable workloads and have insufficient experience to do the tasks they are being given. You wouldn't ask an apprentice electrician to re-wire a factory with inadequate supervision and substandard tools, but that's akin to what's being demanded of these child protection teams. I've done the job; I know how scary and challenging it can be, even when you have decent resources, experience and supervision. I shudder to think how hellish it must be in the current circumstances.

It's not just child protection services. All social care in Bradford is in crisis. Mental Health and Older People's teams are run off their feet and massively under resourced. It's not a coincidence. The combination of high social deprivation and swingeing budget cuts (much higher than the national and regional average) have created a perfect storm in Bradford.

Outsourcing isn't the answer. There are no private sector companies with the expertise to do this sort of work any better and they'd be more expensive because of the need to make profits for shareholders.

There obviously does need to be a root and branch enquiry into how to improve child protection services in Bradford. But I know from experience that what usually happens is some form of reorganisation - eg going from a centralised hub system to a localised patch system - but that alone won't sort it. It's just shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic.There have been as many reorganisations as I've had hot dinners in the last 40 years and they always end up going back to a system that was tried before and scrapped. And round and round it goes.

Whether you like it or not, money is required for better IT, better pre-school support services like Sure Start, which the Tories scrapped, and to stop the endless recruitment and retention crisis which has gone on for years. They will need to pay over the odds wages to persuade experienced, competent staff and managers, in sufficient quantity to have manageable workloads, to work in Bradford's child protection teams for long enough to turn the failing system around. If they don't do that it wil continue to deteriorate, with further tragic consequences.

 

Has the CEO of Bradford Council who gets paid about £250k a year including pension benefit said a word about the abject failure under her watch. It's not like she has just taken over, she has been there since 2015 and things have got worse.

 

There is a national shortage of child protection social workers. It's a shit job that few people want to do. I did it when we were properly staffed and resourced and it burnt me out in a few years, so I escaped to mental health services - certainly no picnic, but nowhere near as stressful as child protection.

So it's a seller's market and people can therefore pick and choose where they work. You're correct that paying more might shift the problem elsewhere and that was exactly the situation when I started in social work in the mid 80s. In those days Bradford paid two increments more than Leeds, Kirklees, Calderdale and North Yorkshire and quite a few experienced SWs left those councils to work for Bradford. Leeds, in particular, struggled as a result. But, also, Bradford Social Services had an excellent reputation as a well resourced department that protected junior staff until they were ready for the heavy stuff, and had reasonable caseloads, so you had time to do things properly and had a mix of different work, not all screaming high risk child abuse cases.

Contrast that with now. Most teams are running with constant vacancies. Team Managers are sitting on long waiting lists of unallocated cases - many of them high risk. Social Workers don't decide alone to close cases - their managers make the final decision - and the longer the waiting lists the greater the pressure from managers on their staff to get cases closed in order to get the waiting lists down. Long waiting lists also eat up managers' time fielding enquires etc meaning that they often don't give their staff the levels of supervision that are professionally necessary. I seem to remember that an overworked, totally stressed out team manager who wasn't supervising staff adequately was a big part of the issue in the Victoria Climbie case two decades ago.

As well as vacancies, most of the Bradford child protection SW staff are either agency workers, who can leave at the drop of a hat if things get too tough, or inexperienced staff. Those rookie staff get pitched into heavy end stuff much quicker than they used to, because the lighter stuff no longer gets a look in. The pressures are so great that once they get a bit of experience under their belts they move elsewhere.

It's very hard to 'improve working practices' when the job is just constant firefighting, with no respite. Each decision to instigate child protection procedures brings more case conferences, more reports, more court hearings etc, meaning less time to visit other children at risk. So, when there's no slack in the system and you're already working way beyond what you can reasonably cope with, there's a built in incentive to give parents the benefit of the doubt. Mistakes are much more likely to happen when workers are overworked and under pressure to move towards closure and take on new cases.

Social work training is much better and much more fucused than it was when I was qualifying. It's not lack of training that has caused these recent deaths, it's lack of experience, lack of time, lack of supportive childcare services and, most of all, a massive overload of pressure which, once in a blue moon, leads to mistakes.
And it's not just about social work - school staff, health visitors, doctors etc are all under more pressure, leading to less collaboration and breakdowns in communication between agencies, which is a constant theme of previous child death inquiries. Note that the doctor who examined Star - ie the professional who was medically qualified to do so and who had the benefit of a full body examination, unlike the social workers - failed to diagnose non-accidental injury.

The fact is that constant calls for more investigations, more kids on the child protection register, more admissions to care etc just makes the situation worse, leaving less time to deal properly with the genuinely dangerous cases. If you design systems around the miniscule number of worse case scenarios that result in deaths then you make the system worse, not better. The only time that the media ever mentions social work is every few years when there is a tragedy. But there is no such thing as a perfect system. Mistakes will happen very occasionally, but they are outliers, not representative of the successful work that most social workers do for the vast majority of the time. The pressures in Bradford are greater than most, for reasons I've already stated several times. But child protection services are struggling in many other places because of the lack of resources and the zero tolerance of risk approach.

Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, said that “if there is any evidence, any inkling, any iota of harm to any child, that child [should be] taken away immediately”. How utterly ridiculous. Being in care can be horrific for children. There aren't enough foster carers or children's home places and the trauma of being removed from your family, even if it's far from ideal parenting, can be immense and lifelong. How many kids are we going to precipitously remove from home and often wreck their lives, in order to prevent a single child death every few years?

This article sums it up pretty nicely:
https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2021/12/16/the-tragic-deaths-of-arthur-and-star-must-lead-to-a-more-humane-and-supportive-social-care-for-families/

 

Just like the privatisation of Bradford LEA - that went well, didn't it?
And where exactly are these private companies, stuffed full of qualified social workers, queuing up to take on the job? Or are you proposing that we go back to an unqualified workforce? We've seen what a god awful mess the privatisation of care homes has created; now you want to do the same to child protection services?

 

The Chief Exec is not going give up a £250k a year job, so I think it is time she was removed from her post.

 

When I was burgled I didn't blame the police for not stopping it, I blamed the people who did it and a society that brings people up who think it's OK to steal other people's stuff. Yet I know deep down there is nothing I can do to stop it. And i sense this analogy with social services. Cuts in funding, fundamental flaws in the system and a generally badly run department give the footsoldiers on the front line very little chance to effect change. Its very easy in theory to say we didnt want another baby P scenario, in practice it's damn near impossible.

 

What a ridiculous proposition. That's like saying that because Richard O'Donnell fails to prevent a soft goal then we might as well play without a goalkeeper.

The job is not impossible, but it is bloody hard. And in current circumstances in Bradford it's being made a whole lot harder than it needs to be. Yet despite this, incidents like Star Hobson are vanishingly rare. Every year hundreds, if not thousands of kids are made safer by social workers in Bradford despite the disgraceful circumstances they are being expected to work in. Yet you'd disband them because of one exceptional case, would you? There is no such thing as a perfect system. Mistakes are made in all walks of life, but the vast majority we never hear about because they don't result in child deaths.

Social workers cannot control what their clients do. Even if you worked a case so intensively that you visited for an hour, three times per week (which is wildly unrealistic with caseloads of 30+) that would still leave 165 hours per week when the parents can do what they like. If there are obvious facial bruises or other noticeable injuries that have been missed then, undoubtedly, heads should roll. But it's relatively easy for clients to cover up body injuries and put on a show of 'everything's fine'. There are no legal powers for social workers to physically examine a child or require it to be taken for medical examination without getting a court order and to do that you need something more than rumours. Without knowing more about the case I'm not going to either exonerate or condemn the workers involved. But what I do know is that having overworked, stressed out, inexperienced staff and frequent changes of social workers is the ideal scenario for abusers to get away with covering it up for longer than they otherwise would.
You ask how much we have to spend to make it better. I would suggest a similar amount, inflation proofed, to what we were spending in the 80s and 90s, when Bradford had a bloody good child protection service. We are currently spending much less with predictably awful consequences.