Neglect most common cause for Northants children being taken into care
New safeguarding report shows concerned calls made about children to social services have increased
By Sarah Ward
Neglect is the most common reason Northamptonshire children are being taken into care, as a new safeguarding report shows that child protection enquiries are up by almost a third.
The children’s trust received more than 46,000 calls by people concerned about the safety of a child in the year to April 2023, a six per cent rise on the previous twelve months.
And social workers carried out just under 3,500 child protection enquiries, a rise of 30 per cent on the year before.
The figures have been published in the Northants annual safeguarding report from the partnership of agencies such as health, police and social care, which was discussed at the cabinet meeting of the West unitary authority on Tuesday night.
The report points to the cost of living crisis, mental health of parents and guardians and the after effects of covid as reasons why more children are coming to the attention of social workers:
It says:
“Many families and children who have been managing just below the threshold for social care involvement have seen a reduction in support network and services available during the Covid 19 pandemic. Additional levels of need as a direct result of Covid-19, such as poverty, anxiety, non-school attendance, poor child and adult mental health, loss and bereavement have contributed to an increase in the number of families requiring support due to complexity of needs.
“The pressure on these families has been further accentuated by the cost-of-living increase and as such they are likely to experience higher levels of need and risk and families presenting complex, multi-layered needs which are more acute. Whilst post-pandemic and cost of living increase are not specific to Northamptonshire, locally we have an underdeveloped Early Help offer which presents additional complexity in terms of availability of the support.”
The neglect of thousands of Northants children by their parents and carers has become such a concern that the safeguarding partnership has marked it as a priority for the current year and has set up a ‘neglect sub group’ to come up with ideas and track any trends.
The report says:
“Neglect continues to be the main abuse category in Child Protection Plans and the highest category for why children come into care.
“A Neglect Sub Group has been created to monitor the extent of neglect in the county and co-ordinate a multi-agency response. The group was formed in the last quarter of the reporting period and has established a comprehensive three-year delivery plan, with identified measures of impact, in response to the issue of neglect and has established a well-attended multiagency group and robust working group structure.”
The children’s trust, which manages children’s services, is independent of the county’s two local authorities and was created in 2021 after the former county council was deemed incapable of running the service.
The trust, which is led by chief executive Colin Foster, was rated as ‘requiring improvement’ in 2022 by Ofsted (an improvement on the damning 2019 inadequate inspection) and a focused inspection near the end of last year said improvements had been made in the department which receives calls about child safety concerns but the responses to children protection concerns that came in out of hours needed to improve.
At Tuesday’s meeting Liberal Democrat Sally Beardsworth said while the report showed the huge amount of work the safeguarding teams had to do, she had concerns about why so many children were coming to the attention of the authorities.
“The worry I’ve got primarily is the preventative side of things. We seem to always be picking up the problems rather than stopping them before.”
She continued:
“We hear that 60 percent of our children come into care because of neglect.
“Neglect does not need to stand hand and hand with poverty - it is a question of nurturing and looking after a child.
“Why is this still happening in this day and age? We should be having things in place to prevent children coming into care. Education. When they become pregnant to find out if they are capable and to learn how to be a good parent.
“I just worry sometimes that we are not doing enough to prevent people falling into this trap and then we have children coming into care who are damaged and then have difficulty in their lives from then on.
“Although they do a lot of work and it is very expensive, I just wish there was more in here [the report] about prevention.
“I feel there are a lot of multi agency panels - there a lot of people who talk about it - but what is being done to stop these children coming into care?
She highlighted the issue of two year old -child who had been in hospital since they were born due to a lack of getting the correct care position for them.
“It can’t be right to have a child in hospital for two years. It is not a normal existence for a child to be in hospital for that length of time.”
Labour deputy leader Bob Purser echoed Cllr Beardsworth’s concerns and said some creative thinking was needed in terms of the county’s early help offer. Early help is additional support services beyond the universal offer open to all (such as GP services) which are provided by organisations across the county to help children and families who are experiencing problems. The service is supposed to link up different agencies to provide the best possible support for young people.
Early help was a priority of the 2022-23 covered in the annual report and it outlined what has been done.
It said: “The aim is that children and families receive more appropriate help at an earlier stage, which makes a difference to their lives. The Early Help Strategy is supported by a refreshed action plan with stronger ownership and driven by the Early Help Partnership Board. Early Help provision has been strengthened through additional staffing:
• Increased and strengthened Partnership Co-ordinator team within Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) which supports the partnership Early Help response.
• All schools have a named link partnership coordinator from Northamptonshire Children’s Trust who communicates regularly and offers practical support with Early Help Assessment processes.
• Two Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) Education Leads posts have been created, working directly with schools across West and North Northamptonshire, offering support and guidance
• Early Help partnership coordinators, Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) senior management, and partner representatives have completed multi-agency working sessions to enhance knowledge around threshold application, ensuring the right help at the right time for children and families.
However as stated in a recent review carried out by an independent assessor into the suicide of Raunds teenager Callum Woodcroft, there is confusion about exactly what the early help offer is in Northamptonshire and professionals, parents and teachers are unsure of how to use the framework. In Callum’s tragic case the schools he attended were left to handle the early help assessment alone, and practitioners from other agencies did not attend meetings. (A number of agencies said this was due to insufficient levels of resource available).
The first recommendation from the review into Callum’s death was that the safeguarding partnership:
“ . . must ensure with the support of Northamptonshire Children’s Trust, that agencies and professionals know and understand how they can utilise the early help framework and how they are expected to contribute to individual cases. This includes how they can obtain appropriate support from the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust partnership services to assist with building appropriate support from the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust partnership services to assist with building appropriate services around children and their families.
“This is the clear finding from this review, that agencies and professionals don’t always know what’s available. There is also a need for individuals and agencies to ensure that they work collaboratively and make best use of available resources to be able to effectively engage with Early Help Assessments. This is an impasse that needs to be resolved.”
Recently children trust boss Colin Foster told the BBC he acknowledged early help needed to be strengthened. However when NN Journal asked the trust questions about early help yesterday we were directed to the West unitary as the media officer said ‘we are only a small part of it.’
We have asked further questions of the trust and will report back the answers.
Clearly there is the issue of the shortfalls in funding of each of the Northamptonshire councils. Can the councils actually do anything when they are not filling vacancies and their reserves are dwindling year on year.
Which is why centres such as Pen Green in Corby and Sure Start are so vital.