Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
MONDAY 24 JANUARY 2005
PROFESSOR HEDY
CLEAVER, MR
RICHARD THOMAS
AND DR
EILEEN MUNRO
Q320 Chairman: Thank you very much
for coming to meet the Committee. Richard Thomas, you have a reputation
for being a tough commissioner. Everyone says, "that's a
pretty tough guy, pretty robust; he does not mince his words".
Would this be a good description of your attitude to the information
aspects of the Children Act?
Mr Thomas: I have a reputation
for supporting plain English if nothing else! As Commissioner,
I am responsible for the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of
Information Act. In this area, as Commissioner, my main concern
focuses on the databases that are being proposed to contain information
on every child and young person in this country. I want to start
by making absolutely clear that I yield to nobody in my concern
about children at risk from harm. I would welcome any attempt,
whether legislation, guidance, or practical arrangements, to improve
the sharing of information amongst professionals about their involvement
with a child whose health and safety needs protection. That has
to be my starting point. I do have some concerns to share with
the Committee about the proposal for a network of databases. I
put in a fairly lengthy written submission to the Committee, and
in the last week or so we have shared with the Committee our response
to the DfES consultation paper on this subject of October 2004.
I think the proposed databases raise what I see as four key but
interrelated issues, all of which have data protection implications.
First, which children are we talking about; secondly, how much
information about each child; thirdly, who should have access
to that information; and fourthly, what are the operational aspects?
How will the information be kept accurate and up to date, and
how securely will the information be held? I would be very happy
to elaborate to the Committee, both in relation to the overall
scheme of the 2004 Act, as enacted, the more detailed proposals
recently put forward by the DfES, which are welcome as a step
in addressing the issues, but I continue to have very serious
concerns about the latest proposals coming from the DfES, and
I have some alternate ideas to share with the Committee this afternoon.
Q321 Chairman: Hedy Cleaver, you
have been looking at the Pathfinders and evaluating them. These
are the authorities that have had £1 million to spend on
the pathfinder. You have also looked at some of the others, the
100,000.
Professor Cleaver: You are quite
right that I was responsible for the Trailblazers, as they are
called. That is the research that I have just completed and which
is now published. I would like to start by saying that I thought
it was a very interesting way of the Government exploring how
information-sharing could be supported and improved, because normally
the research that we do is on policies or new procedures, where
often Government people, academics and some practitioners get
together and work something out and it is then trialled. This
notion of trailblazing was very interesting and innovative because
it allowed local authorities—and it was well funded—to
try things out. Having said that, and thinking of summing up the
key issues about databases that came from the research on the
trailblazers, they did have concerns about databases. The key
concerns were whether the system was going to be secure; how they
could get practitioners to use them; and how they would monitor
them. Six of the ten trailblazers went the route of having very
minimal information on these databases. The more complicated they
get, and the more information put on, i.e., flags of concern,
or even the names of the agencies working with the child, you
will have difficulties because agencies like CAMHS or the Brook
Clinic signal more information than you need, and those are the
agencies that do not want themselves to be put on. If you go that
route you will get into all sorts of complications. The research
would suggest the simpler the better, and that you would have
a lead professional whose name should be on there, and they would
encourage information-sharing by passing on information and keeping
the chronology. If you have a very complicated system, not only
will you have problems with making sure that everybody can use
it—are those using the system Criminal Records Bureau checked
and all sorts of difficulties like that—but you may also
have the exact opposite of what the Government wants, which is
not an increase of information-sharing but a decrease in agencies
talking to each other, simply because the practitioners can simply
add information about a child or read some information about a
child which may result in them not bothering to talk, communicate
or meet with those people.
Dr Munro: I have given in evidence
my concerns. The two main points are that in endeavouring to build
up preventive services, which I wholeheartedly support, if we
do not provide adequate funding, then local authorities will have
to take it away from dealing with child abuse cases because they
have a finite budget. I am also concerned at the way that problems
with children's services get discussed; it is as if child abuse
were just another need like any other, and I do not think it is.
For the worker in dealing with the family, it requires a complete
change of mindset towards a more suspicious, challenging attitude.
The good worker needs to be able to move from both that narrow,
suspicious focus on abuse to the broader mindset of discovering
the child's needs and the broader social setting. They are different
processes and different types of assessment, and they should not
be merged because then we would be losing the lessons that we
have developed so painfully over the 1970s and 1980s of how to
deal with child abuse. My second major concern is that in talking
about information-sharing as being a crucial aspect in good work,
people are misunderstanding the mistakes that have been made in
the child protection cases. In the case of Victoria Climbié
there was no shortage of information but there was a shortage
of wisdom of how to understand that information. Giving those
workers even more information would make them less competent than
they were. It is not the answer; it is about improving the workforce.
Chairman: We are learning some lessons
about that in the evidence we have taken already. We were quite
astounded in one area that we looked at, at the number of children
taken into care, which had shot up after the Climbié case
out of all proportion, so there can be a total over-reaction to
that sort of investigation as well.
Q322 Paul Holmes: Professor Cleaver,
obviously it is very early days with the information-sharing assessment
systems that have been introduced so far, but you have done an
initial study of the process of setting those up. Are there any
indications from what you have seen so far that these systems
will improve, or are improving the links between different practitioners?
Professor Cleaver: Definitely
the setting-up of systems is improving the link—whether
the outcome would in terms of the database is not possible to
say yet—but the trailblazers have worked enormously on trying
to improve inter-agency collaboration, understanding each other's
roles and responsibilities and getting people together. It has
to be a continuous, ongoing process; but the process itself has
been very valuable.
Q323 Paul Holmes: Relating to what
Dr Munro has said about the Climbié inquiry, that it was
not a lack of information but a lack of wisdom about how to use
the information, the whole point of the information-sharing system
is to get practitioners working in different areas—police,
health and social services—to know that there are concerns
that other people have. Do you think it will work in that sense?
Professor Cleaver: I think there
is an awful lot of training needed, both within and between agencies.
On another piece of research that I was doing, which is based
in social services, looking at the integrated children's system,
one of the biggest issues that is coming out there is the difficulty
practitioners have in being able to analyse the information they
are given—so supporting Eileen, there is an awful lot of
information, but understanding what it means is a very difficult
task. In social services particularly social workers struggle,
partly because the universities do not always address the issue
of analysis, but partly because social services are under-staffed
and over-worked, and practitioners do not have sufficient support,
because again there are difficulties in line management because
they are under-staffed. That is where the crux of that might be.
Q324 Paul Holmes: In the Climbié
inquiry and in the Matthew Vaudreuil case that we have been looking
at in British Columbia, exactly the same thing was found, in two
children's cases in two different countries. There had been dozens
of different people involved from health and the police and social
services, but they did not realise, or did not know, that there
had been lots of other visits to hospitals and lots of other people
who had been alarmed. The whole point about the information-sharing
system is that you would have a simple flag of concern from the
hospital or from the health services, so that a new social worker
looking at it would be alerted.
Professor Cleaver: My feeling
from the trailblazers study is that it would be better if you
had a lead professional who would co-ordinate all that and keep
a chronology of events, rather than try and get a system to do
it, because you have to make judgments and you have to make sure
that people talk together, rather than just putting up the flag
and not doing anything about it. My preference would be to have
that done by a human-being rather than a computer.
Q325 Paul Holmes: You are indicating
that from your initial studies you do not think it will make a
big difference in outcomes, although it might help in communication.
Professor Cleaver: If you have
a database where you have a lead professional, and you the playgroup
leader have a concern and access the database, having talked first
with the family and asked their permission to access the database;
you access it and find out that there is a lead professional there
and you would then talk to the lead professional to find out who
else is involved. The lead professional would know that for example
the GP has had a concern, and the health visitor has had a concern,
and they would then be responsible for making sure something happened,
i.e., the person who had rung in with the consent could not then
decide that they had done their job and flagged the concern up,
which is always my worry about these things, but people have to
then carry on their responsibility and maybe a meeting would be
called with the parents to work out how best to respond, to get
more information and on you go.
Dr Munro: In Victoria Climbié's
case it was not a question of them not knowing how many other
people had been involved, but not seeing the significance of it.
There was no secret about her hospital visits. The Haringey social
worker knew about the Brent involvement. It was that the brain
cells did not operate.
Q326 Paul Holmes: You both seem to
be indicating that all the effort, money and time that has been
put into setting up this common system, which raises all the concerns
from an information and confidentiality point of view, is perhaps
misplaced because it is trying to tackle a problem that is not
really the main problem.
Dr Munro: Yes.
Professor Cleaver: I do not think
it will stop a Climbié death, but I think it might be helpful
to support vulnerable children to make sure that agencies talk
more at an earlier stage, but child deaths have remained pretty
constant, and we have a problem of knee-jerk reactions and completely
revolutionising everything because another child dies. We could
have done things better; there are no two ways about it; but I
think there will always be children who die, and there will always
be children who slip through the net. The most vulnerable are
likely to slip through a database net.
Q327 Chairman: We certainly found
that in British Columbia. It was an exact parallel to Victoria
Climbié with the Children's Commissioner and the new Act.
There were half a dozen tragedies, so it is not a quick fix here.
In terms of Richard Thomas's view, it would matter to you if there
were a system that cost £1 billion to set up this database,
and £1 billion that could have been spent on other things.
Richard Thomas and his organisation have very great doubts about
having this sort of information on a database. Are we going a
long way down the wrong track here if it costs that sort of money?
Dr Munro: I am not sure how it
will help very vulnerable children.
Q328 Chairman: But that is why it
all started.
Dr Munro: I know!
Mr Thomas: Many of these issues
are beyond my competence, but I will answer in more general terms.
Q329 Chairman: A lot of them are
beyond the competence of members of this Committee. For many years
we have been stuck in the rut of education and skills and this
is all new territory for us.
Mr Thomas: I acknowledge that
many people do clearly believe that databases are necessary and
desirable in this area, but I have to raise questions about what
we are trying to achieve in this area. What are the stated objectives?
One senses a shifting of goalposts in this area, starting with
the original clause 8 of the Children's Bill over a year or so
again, which in turn followed from the Every Child Matters
Green Paper. There were vague statements as to what the databases
were intended to do. That was amended as the Bill went through
Parliament. We had the Joint Committee on Human Rights commenting
on the proposals at that time, and some fairly difficult questions
were raised by that Joint Committee. The Bill was amended and
we now have what is effectively section 12 of the Act. Since then
we have had the consultation paper of October 2004, which I mentioned
in my opening statement. That signals to us something of a shift
inside DfES, away from what I might call the universal approach.
Originally it seemed to be talking in terms of all children, 11
million children, all contacts from professionals where there
is, in rather vague language, a cause for concern, and access
for all professionals. The consultation paper does mark a very
clear shift away from that. It recognises that such an approach
may deter access to vital services in some cases. It recognises
that it may run the risk of omitting the most vulnerable children.
By implication, not explicitly, the DfES paper recognises that
the universal approach would indeed involve excessive intrusion
into privacy, and ultimately undermine both the confidence of
professionals, of the public, and ultimately undermine effectiveness.
It goes right back to asking very precisely what we are trying
to do here. Are we concerned with protecting vulnerable children
who are at risk of abuse of some sort—and we can elaborate
what is meant by that—or are we talking more about—picking
up the jargon this afternoon—more about family support and
the wider needs of children as articulated in the second part
of section 12. The words in section 12 are more concerned with
the well-being of the child and the ability of the child to reach
their full potential. I have concerns, as the Information Commissioner,
responsible for data protection. I went so far in the summer as
to echo some of the concerns expressed by the Home Affairs Select
Committee, looking at identity cards, when they picked up on the
proliferation of databases, where the state in its various guises
is collecting more and more information about citizens, and children
in this case. I used quite graphic language, which was: "Are
we in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society?"
I come back to my opening point: we must be absolutely clear what
we are trying to achieve. We can justify those objectives, but
let us get a system that does just that. Let us not collect information
for its own sake, with all the risks of intrusion into privacy
and the more serious risks where mistakes are made, where information
is not kept up to date. I can share with the Committee examples
that my office has seen in recent years in the childcare area,
where some quite disturbing situations that have come to our attention,
where mistakes have been made or where information has not been
kept up to date.
Q330 Helen Jones: I was struck by
what you said about the Victoria Climbié case, that there
was not a lack of information but there was a lack of what we
call from where I come from "nowse". How would you improve
social work training? Let us face it, that this is a terribly
difficult job, sometimes done by young men and women with little
practical experience to draw on when they first start their work.
If we really wanted to protect vulnerable children, and move of
the database, how would you improve the training?
Dr Munro: One area that I would
look at is whether the recent efforts to improve it have been
inadvertently harmful. I am thinking of the proliferation of paperwork.
I am wholeheartedly in favour of encouraging a more structured
approach, of encouraging recording, and a form of paperwork is
essential and it is the right path to go down. However, we have
got very clumsy tools at the moment, and one of the very big dangers
I can see is that with things like the assessment of need frameworks
and the common assessment frameworks, if you give them to an inexperienced
worker and you do not give them the kind of reflective supervision
that encourages learning, they will use them in a very mechanical
way and they will never go beyond using them in a very mechanical
way, because they never learn to develop the skills to get the
feel of a pattern of family interaction and get the overall intricate
picture by having the kind of supervision that makes you stop
and reflect on what happened, what you missed, what you could
have interpreted differently. You learn by deliberately trying
to learn; it does not happen by chance. We are underplaying the
role of that kind of professional development in the day-to-day
work of social workers, and turning it much more into a clerical—"have
you done the form?" kind of job.
Q331 Jonathan Shaw: Professor Cleaver,
following on from Richard Thomas's question about what we want
to achieve from this database, in your review of the trailblazer
areas, what were staff telling you about how effective or not
the database was, and whether it was useful at all?
Professor Cleaver: Very few of
them had started using databases, so the information is rather
poor. They had only just started their trialling of the whole
system, and some had not started at all by the time I had finished
it. One of the interesting things that came from, not the database
itself, but as a pro, was that not only did they learn much more
about each other, and there was all this stress on understanding
what each other did, but also that the referrals to social services
were more appropriate once they used the common assessment. Most
used the common assessment, and the common assessment reflected
in all but one case the assessment framework. It is crucial that
if we are going to have a common assessment it does reflect it,
because if we want electronic transfer of data we cannot start
re-inventing. The use of the common assessment was well understood
across the agencies, so they did not have to start explaining
all the terms. That work had already been done to some extent,
so they took advantage of it.
Q332 Jonathan Shaw: You said there
was a problem for social services understanding all the information
that they received, due to under-funding and staff shortages.
Do you think that is the case right across the board?
Professor Cleaver: You mean other
agencies, or across the board in social services?
Q333 Jonathan Shaw: You said that
social workers do not understand the information because they
are under-staffed.
Professor Cleaver: It is not so
much that they do not understand the information—
Q334 Jonathan Shaw: I am picking
up these sweeping statements this afternoon.
Professor Cleaver: The biggest
problem is analysing the data that they get and understanding
what it means.
Q335 Jonathan Shaw: So that is about
competency, not just about staff shortages.
Professor Cleaver: No, it is linked
to staff shortages because—
Q336 Jonathan Shaw: Well, not every
area. I agree in London there are particular problems, but it
is not every area in the country that has staff shortages.
Professor Cleaver: It is fairly
universal. It is average 30% running—
Q337 Jonathan Shaw: Well—
Professor Cleaver: Well, yes,
I will not argue. Some of them—I have not met one yet—may
be fully staffed.
Q338 Jonathan Shaw: What I am keen
to understand is whether it is just about shortages, or is it
about a general competency that has an impact upon training?
Professor Cleaver: It is a combination.
I think there is a difficulty from the social work training that
is done in universities; that needs to be addressed, in terms
of understanding child development and how you do analyse information
and how you use research data in analysing your information and
making plans. There is an issue there, and what one would have
hoped then, if you had had social workers who were coming out
with these difficulties, is that they could be overcome if you
had very good supervision in terms of allowing the time for reflective
practice, to think through it with your line manager. That is
where the difficulty comes in terms of staffing issues, because
you are often carrying too large a case load and so is your manager,
so you do not have that time.
Q339 Paul Holmes: Professor Cleaver
has already done some research on the setting up of the databases.
Is there a need for further research to evaluate whether it has
made any difference?
Professor Cleaver: Yes.
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