Warning over child protection cuts

A care provider criticised for its involvement in the death of a three-year-old boy in the West Midlands has warned that council budget cuts could lead to other vulnerable young people being given inadequate support.

The charity Shaftesbury Young People was one of 14 agencies criticised in a Serious Case Review (SCR) into the death of Ryan Lovell-Hancox, who was murdered by his carers in Bilston in December 2008.

The charity was employed by Wolverhampton City Council to provide support to one of his carers, 17-year-old Kayley Boleyn, while she was coming out of residential care and going on to lead an independent life.

‘Workers scared’

The review said the charity had provided case workers with “limited experience”, “insufficient training” and “no specific social work qualification”.

It said they had missed opportunities to ask direct questions of Boleyn that could have saved Ryan’s life.

The chief executive of Shaftesbury Young People, Karen Wright, who joined after 2008, said she accepted the criticism but warned that council spending cuts meant more staff would be overburdened by cases that they were not trained to deal with.

She said: “Cost cutting is putting staff under pressure. There does come a bottom line and I think we are nearly getting there. I am really concerned about what’s happening.”
Karen Wright chief executive of Shaftesbury Young People Ms Wright said she never wanted to see a child fall through the safety net like Ryan Lovell-Hancox had

She said fewer referrals were being made for residential social care, which typically costs councils twice as much as providing housing support services which also attract housing benefits and central government funding.

The former NSPCC employee said due to cuts, housing support workers without social work qualifications were being asked to deal with people who in previous years would have been judged as requiring residential social care.

She added: “The results of this were seen in the case of Kayley Boleyn.”

A child protection survey undertaken by Community Care magazine in April said 58% of 170 front-line workers had felt under pressure to downgrade their child protection assessments.

It said two-thirds of those were “scared” about the assessments they had made and 83 people said their new classification was “not in the child’s best interest”.

The magazine said budget cuts, increased workloads after the Baby P abuse case, and too few social workers were the main reasons given for the rise in the child protection threshold.

‘Weakest link’

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has said it also has “grave concerns” about the situation.
Baby Peter Connelly BASW said even after the Baby P case child protection in the UK was no better, due to cuts

It said administrative roles were the first to be cut when budgets were reduced.

A spokesman said: “In Baby P’s case, in Khyra Ishaq’s case and now in Ryan Lovell-Hancox’s case, information sharing was the problem.

“If you cut administrators, they are the data inputters. That’s another job for social care workers to take on. There are only so many hours in the day, things are going to be missed and this is already the weakest link.”

“Young people in the care system need specialised support. If we just dump them in general services we are going to see casualties.

“We are three years down the line from the Baby P case but we are not doing better. Yes, there’s been a task force, we had the Munro Child Protection Review recommendations which have been taken up, but the reality is our support services have been cut and it’s a nightmare.”

‘Not forcing people’

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services, (ADCS) which represents children’s department leaders in England’s councils, said it did not recognise any of the claims made by Shaftesbury Young People’s chief executive.

It said “Local authorities are not pushing young people into one sort of provision or another.”

It said councils provided a range of services for 16 to 24-year-olds with different levels of need and part of the councils’ role was to give young people a say in where they lived and what sort of support they required.

It also said it did not recognise the claims made by the Community Care magazine survey that child protection cases were being downgraded.

The ADCS said there was no evidence to support the claims of the BSAW that cuts were affecting social care provision.

It said it was important that high quality, flexible support was offered to all young people using social care services.

Housing support workers should be able to identify and tackle problems early and refer more serious cases back to the council, it added.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said child protection was paramount and ways to free staff from bureacracy had been investigated.

He said: “Ministers are clear that the funding settlement we have announced for local government is challenging but fair. We are not asking councils to do the impossible – in fact we are giving them greater flexibility so they can take decisions, with their residents, on the priorities for spending.”