I worked in the social care system as a residential social worker, and later as a recruitment consultant in the early 2000s. During this period I found a majority of inept and corrupt social care settings ** – and I screamed loudly about this – and attempted to get the media’s attention – alas this fell onto mostly deaf ears. I must have worked in 12-15 children’s homes across the South East and found that yes, with the growth of privatisation came the growth of bad practice and neglect of children as young as 11. ** Not necessarily always ‘deliberate’ I point out – and certainly not every home had bad practices. Indeed some were extremely well managed and staffed with high standards of safeguarding but it is not these I am focusing this blog post on today.
The main issues of serious concern I had over these years in relation to young people being vulnerable to further sexual abuse include:
1) Children being placed in homes too far away from family and friends – therefore removing their support networks
2) Children being placed in homes which were unsuitable for a variety of reasons: unqualified and inexperienced staff, for example, for their needs to be met. I recall a severely abused, deaf child aged 12 being placed in a home with no-one with signing skills, rendering the child deeply frustrated, confused and isolated (more on that in a later post)
3) No ‘care’ taken when placing vulnerable children who had been sexually abused – with young people who were institutionalised due to their own abusive behaviour. For example one 11 year old girl who had been systematically raped by her own father was placed with a 15 year old male who had systematically raped his younger sister. Go figure
4) Inept systems for keeping children in and local to the home and preventing them from absconding – the Missing Person’s reporting books were always very busy, on a daily basis
5) Very little if any therapeutic support for children
6) No staff training on the risks of sexual exploitation or sexual health in general
7) Staff being very heavily subsidised by agency personnel
8) No intelligence shared with crucial staff about local risks – including known sex offenders
I’ll no doubt be writing more about these issues – in the meantime feel free to comment / email:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/03/children-in-care-protection
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