19 February 2004
City
of Edinburgh Council Meeting 19 Feb 2004
UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch
Submission on Child Protection Audit
for audit details
see www.edinburgh.gov.uk
UNISON
wanted to make this brief submission to put the figures you will consider this
morning into context. There has already been a level of press speculation and
to be fair an attempt to understand what the figures mean.
The
first thing we want to say is that - while everyone would want and expect that
100% of children on the child protection register have an evidenced child protection
plan - we are encouraged at the 85% figure .
That is an achievement
with all the vacancies rising by the week, with only about half the social workers
needed with the necessary child protection and with the rise in workload.
If
the BBC documentary last night was right in saying a social worker had 37 children
on his caseload, you can see the level of the problem. Even if it was not right,
figures near this are not unusual. They were commonplace when I came into social
work but then there were no child protection procedures to speak of, and none
of the huge expectations and standards that staff are rightly expected to deliver
on today.
To put the figures into context, you have to look
at the exercise itself. Managers were rightly looking for 'evidence' of a child
protection plan and of a 'comprehensive risk assessment' in files.
It
will be the case that some children did not have a spelled out child protection
plan but that does not necessarily mean than nothing will have been done. Some
will in fact be being visited weekly.
A 'comprehensive risk
assessment' is a pretty vague term and there are bound to have been difficulties
and anomalies in assessing this on files. Currently this Council, and few, if
any, others have no specific risk assessment model or framework. Staff use a range
of models and this will not always have been recorded specifically.
But
it is important to remember that any model can only assess risk. It cannot assess
certainties because there are none. Staff work with risk and staff need supported
in that as the Edinburgh Inquiry stressed and the Council itself accepted at the
time. It is also important to remember that an assessment that a child is 90%
likely to be safe and only 10% likely to be harmed does not mean that the 10%
risk will not happen. That is the nature of working with risk.
The
'chronological history' scores, we believe, very high at 81%. This is a relatively
new concept from the 2002 Scottish Executive's "It's everyone's job to make sure
I'm alright' and is mentioned in the 2003 Carla Bone inquiry in North East Scotland.
There is always a history on file but not necessarily laid out in the way these
outline. There had been no specific previous guidance on this and the assessment
forms used do not always lend themselves to that process. So 81% is pretty good.
This
is the first survey UNISON is aware of of this kind, of this detail and of this
depth. That means there is really nothing to compare it with. In talking to colleagues
around the country, the anecdotal view is that any authority would be quietly
pleased with this kind of result.
The only comparator we could
find was the "It's everyone's job…" document mentioned in the report before you
today which used a smaller sample and based itself on different methodology -
however it did use case conference plans as one of its indicators. That came up
with a figure of only 46% of children being safe across Scotland. That puts today's
results in context.
Yes we'd want 100%. But even in the 85%,
the reality is that there will be cases with a clear risk assessment and clear
child protection plan but no allocated worker to carry that plan out. It will
be carried out by already overburdened senior social workers and practice team
managers or through duty systems at nowhere
near the level
we would want to achieve.
It is not all about resources and
there are practice issues. Social Workers welcome their practice being audited
but the audit exercise has thrown up serious resource issues and serious system
issues. Individual workers must not be left carrying the can for those.
Many
of these are internal issues but some are external. Social Work carried the can
for just about everything in the O'Brien aftermath - often very unfairly. For
example, ask any member of staff and they will tell you that there are numerous
examples where we cannot get information from GPs, that they are still not attending
case conferences and social workers are still forced into the position O'Brien
unfairly put them in of being expected to collate medical information with none
of the power or knowledge to do that. In saying that, our members would wish to
recognise the important and helpful role of health professionals and not least
the Zone Paediatricians. It is not an individual issue, it is a systems issue.
The
O'Brien report is often quoted as demonstrating resources were not an issue. It
only makes two comments about resources and one was that it was not in its remit
to look at resources. That kind of puts things into context. That perhaps also
partly explains why the staff inquiry is over-running. UNISON warned at the beginning
that any such inquiry would have to look at a range of evidence and information
that O'Brien chose not to seek out or evaluate - or where O'Brien mis-analysed.
UNISON has provided a detailed critique of this which I would refer you to.
But
resources are the issue and they are the main issue with vacancies approaching
crisis level - a level in some places now which makes the job impossible to do
to the standards expected or aspired to by staff.
The standards,
expectations and the quality of service staff aspire to did not suddenly appear
after 16 October last year. The cases audited did not suddenly appear after 16
October last year.
Your employees have been working under these
pressures with these expectations for years. Yes, we want improvements. Our members
have a role in this but more and more it is becoming clear that you as a Council
have the key role in addressing resources and addressing morale so we can keep
our staff and encourage others to come to fill the vacancies. That means councillors
being thoughtful about what they say and do. I am afraid that as yet our members
do not feel either valued or supported by their Council.
These
results did not come without a cost. The cost of workloads, pressures and all
to often very long hours by managers and main grade workers alike. The message
your employees should get this morning is one of congratulation for delivering
these results in these circumstances and under these pressures.
ENDS
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