Child protection investigation - how not to do it.....

The first thing to say is that none of the following should be taken as strictly factual.

The realization that they were dealing with someone who had spent hours reading the procedure, printed it off, taken copious notes and had some notion of how things should be done was not one greeted with enthusiasm.

It may well be that the facts as originally relayed to us are even as I write being rewritten to protect the guilty and incompetent oh sorry I mean the innocent and capable.

I am still waiting for a proper time line, so cannot really say when the inspectorate opened their mail and first read the form. Either way it was Monday morning when the inspectors for reasons yet determined seem to have referred not to the correct child protection team, rather they chose the intake and assessment team of daycastle.

Despite this being all wrong the intake and assessment team seem to have taken it in and started an investigation.

There were problems finding managers, both in I&A and the district. The district social worker is very good; young, keen and from Europe so has not been trained in CPP. There is a tradition in Daycatle of not doing anything till a manager Ok's it, so for now nothing definitive seems to have been done.

Fostering seem to have become involved quite early on. Deciding to share with us on Tuesday lunchtime that there was an investigation arising from the review but declining to tell us anything. Maximum stress minimum information.

One of the things I did was to point out that the investigation was the local authority here's to lead and not theirs.

Sometime about then someone decided to tell the local CP team who decided they needed to investigate. Now refer to the timescales in my previous post then please note they picked up the case on Tuesday in the afternoon.

Having been told that something was being investigated we tried to work out for ourselves what something was. Since the word review had been mentioned we could rule out several possibilities. It could have been something from the recent statutory review but that was unlikely as management had been there through all of them and the reviewing officer had spoken to neither child alone. That of course is one of the roles of a reviewing officer but hey, this is Daycastle, not best practice...

Anyway, it did not take an Einstein to work out that something odd must have been written on the consultation form.

The man in question was suprised that anyone thought he had complained After a bit he remembered he had written something a bit jokey, but no one could possibly believe that could they? The answer of course was yes.

Wednesday was a day of all sorts happening. Seemed the process had acquired a bit of momentum from somewhere and a meeting was scheduled for the following day. One of the children's sw had dropped everything and come to make sure his child as OK. As of course a good social worker would. It meant when asked if he thought we ran a torture camp he could answer from a level of knowledge. They call that best practice....

Fostering, full of information came on the phone in the afternoon, they were coming down on Thursday for a meeting and would call in in the afternoon. Meeting? Yes, a meeting, yes, did we need to know about it - no.

The meeting of course, if they were following procedure would be a strategy meeting and unless completely stupid we would work that out - but of course we must be stupid....

Thursday morning the social workers came out and interviewed young man, decided not to interview us (saved me a couple of pounds on a solicitor)then went on to a strategy meeting which of course ended it all.

No actually it didn't, the fostering worker came to see us in the afternoon.

An allegation is a pretty stressful time and this one had been difficult.

They say the brain sometimes wipes the worst experiences and I think mine has wiped a fair bit of what followed.

Our worker was very pleased that everything had been finished so quickly. Everyone had done really well, her in particular and we were to be really pleased and grateful she was here to talk at us and tell us.

The service had been fantastic and done everything it should.

She carefully avoided telling us the exact nature of what we were accused - so from her position, officially, we still don't know.

Glaring failures to follow the all wales cpp and stick within it's
timescales were just minor points.

Published procedures are just for guidance; there to guide the professionals in what they do, if at all possible, best practice is for a world which is ideal.

The whole affair had arisen through our own doing and there were lessons
for us to learn.

Things we had done were glaring breaches of procedure, bad practice and
quite unforgivable.

Because procedure was something set in stone by social workers, to be followed to the letter and only the very best practice would do.

This was pick and mix social work, chose which bits to do properly. Usually the bits that others have to do.

Having a warm joking relationship with a foster child, was a problem.

My decision to discuss what was on this cursed form with the young man should really have been discussed with her.

Hmmmm did she discuss their decision not to follow the CPP with me first I almost asked...

Again, we were really lucky to have such a competent and diligent support worker, we only had to ask her and she would tell us...

I am not sure where it really started to go downhill but that way it went.

It was genuinely dreadful.

Our link worker did not take too well to having cards put on the table
and being told it like it is.

we did not enjoy being talked at.

Our worker had done a fantastic job and it was not her job either, getting the whole thing done and dusted so quickly.

It was simply an irrelevance that from referral to the local cp team to resolution had been bang inside the deadlines set in procedure.

Things like this often dragged on for months she said, not around me they didn't I ventured.

I think this was where I realized the true discourse.

This was about social workers as holders of power and arbitrators of what as important.

There was a sub context where their prejudgment of a situation allowed for a triage. If a situation as deemed grave it became urgent, if not it could occupy a back burner for months.

As foster carers we are supposed to be subjects of their work, partners but only in so far a they decide we can be.

The notion that we could look at how they work and decide whether it was good enough, exercise judgment in our own right, was odious.

The fact that I could and would have made everyone act to a lawful procedure without her was an unspeakable affront.

Thank goodness I work with decent social workers too...

R