Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-314)
CHRISTINE GILBERT
CBE, MICHAEL HART
AND MIRIAM
ROSEN
10 DECEMBER 2008
Q300 Mr Stuart: Thank you for that clarification.
If 210 children were killed during those 15 or 16 months, that
means that more than three children in this country are killed
by abuse every week. That is an horrific statistic. Can you explain
the discrepancy between that and the Government's assertion that
the figures are more like one a week? Whether it is three a week
or one a week, those children are not statistics; they are human
beings who have been killed.
Michael Hart: Those are the figures
that we established. The calculations show that there were around
12 a month over 17 months. Those are certainly the figures that
we have established since we have had responsibility for them.
Q301 Mr Stuart: Thank you.
Are social workers hindered in their jobs
by the excessive bureaucracy and paperwork involved, and could
a reduction in that bureaucracy and paperwork help to ensure a
more effective system that is less interested in ticking boxes—you
referred to that, Chief Inspector—and better able to identify
and support children such as Baby P?
Christine Gilbert: We have not
investigated that issue as such, but we have identified it for
possible survey work in the year to come. As I said, people are
dismissing the paperwork without looking at the detail of what
it tells you. It is like going to the doctor and the doctor not
having your notes and giving you the wrong treatment. The paperwork
is really important, and the issue for me is that if it is managed
properly, and looked at and discussed as it should be, you would
pick up the bits of information that someone might have missed
during a busy day and so on. There are two issues. We have not
focused just on social workers, so I do not have the evidence
to answer your question, but I would not dismiss the importance
of paperwork.
Q302 Mr Stuart: I think that in Haringey
there are one and half social workers for every child on the child
protection register, yet despite the focus on paperwork no one
seems to have been properly responsible for Baby P. Has the heavy
bureaucratic load come at the expense of accountability?
Christine Gilbert: Some of what
is being asked is simple stuff, but it is not being done well,
and it needs to be done well. Managerial supervision in social
care is intended to focus very much on practice, to pick up and
talk about individual cases, to explain why you have not seen
the child alone, and so on, since the previous visit, and to consider
what support could be provided.
Q303 Mr Stuart: Is it your finding
that those on the front line believe that the paperwork required
is proportionate and reasonable?
Christine Gilbert: We have not
asked that question, and I have seen no evidence to enable me
to answer it honestly.
Q304 Mr Stuart: Given the nature
of what you are dealing with, is that not important? I think you
said that you would try to take more cognisance of information
from those on the front line. Will that be an urgent priority
for you?
Christine Gilbert: It is an urgent
priority. The survey is a longer-term issue, but it will be part
of the safeguarding no-notice inspection visits. It is likely
that we will do the questionnaire before we go in. We will have
to do it in such a way that they do not know that we will be coming
next month. The questionnaire will accompany the assessment of
whether we need to inspect a certain authority now, next month
or whether it is safe to leave it until next year.
Q305 Mr Stuart: I am trying to square
what you are telling us as Chief Inspector. You are effectively
saying that paperwork is important, and obviously everybody would
accept that; broadly speaking, you are suggesting that the paperwork
is proportionate and reasonable. That is not what social workers
tell me. You have not surveyed them yet, but are you stating to
us today as the Chief Inspector responsible for this area that
you are broadly confident about the amount of paperwork that front-line
social workers have to put up with?
Christine Gilbert: I feel confident
about the safeguarding requirements put in place after the Laming
inquiry. I have seen those working well and not so well. I do
not know whether you are referring to additional paperwork over
and above that. We do not have the evidence for that additional
work. I am confident that social workers up and down the country
are not being asked to do too much because of the requirements
placed on them as a result of the Laming inquiry. One thing that
we will ask about in the questionnaire will relate to that and
to the work load issue in the Haringey case that has been described.
People were allocated families, so it would not have been picked
up that four children were part of their work load. That would
be picked up in a questionnaire.
Q306 Mr Stuart: You said that you
planned to do more on the issue of whistleblowers, with a whistleblowers
hotline. In a sense, that answers my first question of whether
you think enough is being done to allow whistleblowers to warn
us of these tragic cases. In the Baby P case, the whistleblower's
warnings were repeatedly ignored and she ended up being bullied
and ostracised at work instead. Is there something inherent in
the culture of children's services that needs to be looked at?
Christine Gilbert: I hope not.
I said earlier that we are scrutinising the proposals we made
in September to ensure that they are rigorous. We are ensuring
that any piece of evidence that would have been key in that tragic
case will in future be picked up. Such things will be built into
any system that we establish. The consultation closed last week
so I have not read through it. We will go through the responses
from wherever they come in great detail. I do not think that we
have had that many. We had far more on schools. We have had fewer
than 50 responses. We will look at those and build any that we
think sensible into our proposals.
Q307 Mr Stuart: Of course, the context
for the Baby P case is the Climbié inquiry, which took
place after that case traumatised the whole country. That case
could not have had greater national attention and political focus,
and yet in the very authority in which it took place you have
found that the findings were not implemented. How can we give
confidence to our constituents that the lessons learned from this
new terrible case will be implemented?
Christine Gilbert: I have spoken
to a number of chief executives and directors of children's services
over the last few weeks. There can hardly be a place in the country
that is not looking at its procedures and asking itself those
questions. We can give further guidance to councils on how they
can scrutinise such work more effectively.
Q308 Mr Stuart: If I may, I will
move to a more general issue. It is unlikely that these councils
have been indifferent to the welfare of children. What are the
systemic reasons for their failures? Is it a lack of funds? Is
it because social services do not rate high enough on the political
priority list? Are you in any position to make any comment on
that? Social services departments and social care workers are
basically being hung out to dry as the great villains of the piece.
Perhaps it has happened once or twice too often for us to want
to blame the individuals concerned, and we should be looking further
up the political system to find responsibility.
Christine Gilbert: The safeguarding
review that we published in July stated that there had been some
improvements locally and that most partners were round the table
on the local safeguarding children boards, although not all of
them were. A number of agencies were still not attending, and
we recommended that they should. Those boards are meeting and
talking, but in too many instances the serious case reviews show
that they are working in parallel rather than focusing sufficiently
on the needs of the child or young person.
Q309 Mr Stuart: To come back to their
practice, do they have the resources and support to do the job?
Is there something systemic that means that they are destined
to keep failing, and that we can berate them for their failure
when in fact it is not their fault? The quality of social care
and perhaps of social workers is a real issue to consider.
Christine Gilbert: More resources
are always helpful, but that point has not emerged in our work
as a major issue. The major issues are such things as the use
of different language to describe things, the use of different
systems and so on. Agencies focus on getting things right in their
own organisation rather than on the child herself or himself.
It is very much about the different organisations. There are really
good examples up and down the country of very good practice involving
multi-disciplinary, multi-agency work that is absolutely focused
on the child and support for the child. We are doing some work,
although maybe we could do more, to share best practice in those
areas and give examples of what really good practice looks like.
Q310 Mr Stuart: But yet again, you
have failed to answer my question, which is really about the bigger
picture. There are pockets of better practice, but are they properly
supported? You are the Chief Inspector; do we have an adequate
system within which we can expect most social care cases—or
99% of them, given the seriousness of the matter—to deliver
proper care to some of the most vulnerable people in this country?
Christine Gilbert: I said last
week that Haringey was exceptional, and I do believe that. Even
in other places where there have been serious case reviews that
we considered inadequate, the safeguarding arrangements are often
as good as they could be made but there has been a problem in
a particular case or a human error. That does not mean that the
whole set of arrangements for safeguarding vulnerable children
is poor. I hope that you do not feel that I am not answering your
question, but money has not emerged as an issue. It is the practice
of applying some policies that seems the key issue, and I do not
feel that most authorities in the country are in the same state
as Haringey.
Q311 Mr Stuart: But you said earlier
that 50% of staff being agency workers was quite normal across
London—so normal, in fact, that it was not even worthy of
comment, regardless of its contribution to the poor service levels.
As the Chairman mentioned, if those service levels were in a school,
we would assume that it had serious problems. Yet because that
is so common, it was not worth commenting on in your report to
give us an idea of what was going on in social care. Surely if
that is happening commonly across London, there must be something
going wrong with what is being done to attract, motivate and retain
really good social workers.
Christine Gilbert: I did not mean
to say that we do not mention the stability of social workers.
That is very important, and we mention it in both the APA and
the JARs. London authorities have certainly done a number of things
to try to attract social workers, but in some ways it is a thankless
profession. What has happened in this tragic case will not encourage
more social workers into the profession. We need to give some
attention to recruiting, supporting and training social workers,
and to make that a high priority.
Q312 Mr Carswell: Chief Inspector,
I should like your perspective on a slightly broader area. Yesterday,
I spoke to a social worker with 20 years of experience, who told
me that there is a slight danger that we have created social workers
and children's services who are almost encouraged to look on the
bright side when they should not, and encouraged to see progress
and positive things where there are none. Similarly, we have created
a so-called multi-agency approach in which everyone is responsible,
but no one is actually in charge. Do we need a separation between
those who make the assessment of the vulnerable child at risk
and those who can take a hard-nosed, tough decision about whether
something needs to be done? If that had happened, surely someone
within Haringey would have had the wherewithal to say, "Enough:
this child is going into care. If we need to take it to court
we will, but this child is going to be removed from this situation."
Do we need to ask whether we are doing something fundamentally
wrong by placing an onus on social workers to see something positive
where there is nothing?
Christine Gilbert: Our July safeguarding
report, and the serious case reviews, point to the optimism of
social workers about what parents are saying, or promising, as
a real issue, so that certainly is not encouraged. We have highlighted
that as a significant problem, because the focus is very much
on the parent rather than being sufficiently on the child. That
links to my earlier point about focusing on the child and listening
to them, where possible, if they are old enough to engage in debate.
The optimism of some social workers is an issue that needs to
be discussed and countered in debates about practice at local
and national level. On your other point, our reports also pointed
to difficulties with accountability, which is not always clear
and needs to be clearer in some organisations. In the safeguarding
work that we looked at, and in work on the serious case reviews,
it is not always clear, in the police, exactly who is accountable
for what in particular cases and with safeguarding issues more
generally. I know that they are looking at that.
Q313 Chairman: Chief Inspector, a
member of the public who had been horrified by recent events and
who was listening to us questioning you this morning might have
heard some very plausible explanations from you for where we are.
You have acquitted yourself very well this morning. However, you
have just said that Haringey is an exception, and many of us might
believe that, but many of us know social workers who cannot sleep
at night because they worry about their cases. They work hard
and are not well paid, and they do a fantastic job that many other
people in this room and on this Committee would not want to do,
so they should be given the support that they need in the job.
To a person outside this Committee, looking in, you have revealed
a higher percentage of child deaths than I have been given by
the NSPCC or any other charity, let alone the official figures.
You have presented figures that are quite astonishing and unacceptable.
If we are to try to bring down the number of child deaths, something
more radical has to be done, but in your responses to the Committee
you seem to be floating over the surface of that. You have given
the most horrific figures that I have ever seen in the public
domain, but you are also saying, "More or less, we are doing
the job alright." Many social workers might say, "If
only Ofsted had been there, trumpeting from the highest of heights
that something is deeply wrong in our society if we have this
number of child deaths a year and a child protection system that
does not save those children." I do not want to say that
you are complacent, but is not there an air of complacency around
this, from either the Government or yourselves?
Christine Gilbert: I am really
concerned if I have come across as complacent, because I hope
that we are not complacent and are examining every part of our
practice. We have done that in the past year and again because
of recent events. I think that social workers are absolutely key,
and we need to think harder about the support, training and status
of social workers. With regard to the number of deaths we reported,
of the 50 children we looked at in detail in the serious case
review, for instance, not all were seen by social workers, particularly
the babies, and only two out of 21 were on any form of child protection,
so this is everybody's responsibility. All those babies were known
to health services, for instance, because they would have been
born and been in a hospital and perhaps been seen by a health
visitor, so it is everyone's responsibility and we have made those
recommendations about increasing awareness.
Q314 Chairman: But does that not
refer back to Douglas's point and the criticism of Laming—I
do not know whether you share those criticisms—for making
it more complex, rather than focusing on real accountability across
Departments? There is a lack of accountability, which Douglas
Carswell asked you about in his question, so do you recognise
the criticisms of Laming and are they justified?
Christine Gilbert: I feel that
the criticisms are not justified, actually. Applying and doing
some of the very simple, straightforward things that he has suggested
would allow us to pick up and make the connections across. At
the same time, I want to stress the work that we have done. Yes,
specialist services are sometimes involved, particularly as children
get older, but of the babies that died, only two were known to
social services. We make the point in the recommendations about
the responsibility of what we describe as universal services,
such as health and education, for recognising the signs.
Chairman: Chief Inspector, we started
this as a scrutiny of your annual review, but I did not want to
stop anyone asking questions about this very important aspect.
You will know that the Committee is about to start a major inquiry
into the inspection process, so I will now call a halt to the
questioning. We have not asked many of the questions that we would
normally have asked you, but earlier in the new year we hope to
have you back to finish today's job and start our inquiry into
inspection. Thank you very much for your attendance.
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