At-Risk Children Sent Back To Danger

Vulnerable children are being sent home to parents suspected of neglect and abuse because of a chronic lack of foster carers and other accommodation. At least seven local authorities have failed to immediately act on Place of Safety warrants issued by Children’s Panels during the past year. The legally binding orders are intended to force councils to remove young people from their homes for 21 days if they are considered to be in the most high-risk situations. However, it is understood dozens of children have been returned to their parents instead of being taken into care because councils have nowhere to put them. Child-protection professionals are growing increasingly concerned and frustrated over the failure to enforce warrants.

They said some children are spending as much as two months in an “unsafe” environment after a warrant is initially approved before the required resources are found.

Children’s Panel insiders told The Scotsman that the situation has been “getting worse as the months go by”. One source said: “There are quite a number of vulnerable children in dangerous situations – involving chronic neglect, substance abuse and mental health problems – who are not being properly supervised. Some children are going home after hearings when everybody has agreed this child is not going to be safe.

“We are effectively issuing an legally binding warrant to have a child who is not safe put in a place of safety and local authorities are saying, ‘We don’t have the resources’ and putting them on a waiting list.”

He added: “Social workers are attending homes where hygiene is disgraceful, children are not being fed, or parents are heroin-users or alcoholics. Everybody agrees the child needs to be removed but we’re absolutely powerless to do anything. It’s an absolute disgrace.”

The source said that of about 36 Children’s Panel cases in which he had been involved in the past six months, “at least half of them aren’t getting the resources they need”. The problem is blamed on Scotland’s severe shortage of secure accommodation and beds at young people’s centres as well as an ongoing lack of foster carers.

Edinburgh City Council officials admitted that they are currently unable to fulfil their duties to at least four children who are either waiting for foster carers or places at a secure unit.

Glasgow, Aberdeen, East Ayrshire, East Lothian, Inverclyde and Midlothian also confirmed not meeting all of the terms of Place of Safety warrants during the past year. Officials in West Dunbartonshire and Dundee refused to discuss the situation.

The full extent of the problem is difficult to pinpoint because some of Scotland’s 32 local authorities claim they do not collate statistics on whether Place of Safety warrants are delayed or ever implemented.

But one senior children’s and families social worker said: “It’s not unusual for Place of Safety warrants to be renewed once, twice or thrice.”

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said children were always immediately removed from home when a Place of Safety warrant is issued but conceded there had been situations where other conditions “can’t be met at that particular time”.

Unveiling a shake-up in the sector in February, education minister Peter Peacock said Scotland’s £2.4 billion social work budget was not being spent “efficiently or effectively” and red tape was preventing social workers doing their jobs properly.

But Ewan Aitken, Edinburgh City Council’s children and families convener, said additional funding was required from the Executive to ensure vulnerable children were protected.

Danny Molloy, Midlothian’s social work, health and housing convener, added: “Midlothian, like every other local authority, has to work under budget constraints. It is regrettable but very occasionally, we find ourselves unable to meet Place of Safety orders due to lack of resources.”

A spokeswoman for East Lothian Council said: “This seems to be something very much on the increase.”