On the first day of taking up my appointment at Oxfordshire in 1964 I found the office in a state of great excitement and on my desk was an invitation from the Mayor of Oxford City for a Civic reception to mark the achievement of the Children's Officer in becoming President of the Association of Children's Officer. The reason why I had chosen Oxford County rather than Oxford City is that the Children's Officer was known to be a service leader and to find that she had been chosen by her colleagues to lead the Association was beyond expectation. Mrs Kahan became a Deputy Chief Inspector of Social Services at the Department of Health and Social Services. The Children's Officer at Oxford City not only also became President of her Association but Baroness Faithfull and a member of a Government in the House of Lords.
My purpose was to do a good job and become an established appointment after the usual probationary period. I had to work hard and long to achieve this because in addition to the usual workload of a qualified child care officer I was given an additional responsibility then unique to Oxfordshire County Council. Between 1948 and 1963, the year before my appointment the responsibility of Child Care officers was to deal with applications, usually emergency applications for children to be received or taken into care and then to visit the children and supervise their placements in foster homes or residential establishments. In the instance of children placed in care through a court on Fit Person Orders, officers supervised when the children returned to their homes, homes under these orders until they were discharged.
Oxfordshire already employed specialist an officer to vet parents seeking to adopt children and investigate applications for children to be placed for adoption, but we were involved in the supervision of adoption placements by other agencies and as Guardian Ad Litems to investigate applications to advise courts that an adoption was in the best interests of individual children.
Under the 1963 Act Child Care authorities and agencies were required to undertake work to prevent children appearing before the courts, coming into care and remaining in care. All the evidence then as now was that children in care performed worse than those in the community in terms of educational attainment, obtaining and keeping in employment and then marrying and acting as good parents. Our prisons, psychiatric institutions and sidewalks have always contained a disproportionate number of those who have been in care.
The unique feature of the Oxfordshire Department was the approach to juveniles who were caught breaking the law. Until then those who committed offences under the age of sixteen were first assessed by probation officers and only if they and the court decided, Children's Departments became involved if A Fit Person Order was to be made. The majority of children who committed offences were either placed on Probation or committed to Approved Schools after which time they were released on licence under the continuing supervision of Probation. These were academies of crime rather than Care organisations and the first step to a life in and out of prison. There has been evidence that staff including senior staff acted towards the young people in which in other circumstances would have led to criminal proceedings.
Mrs Kahan negotiated with the Probation Service, the Police and Magistrates that Child Care Officers should investigate and report to courts whether young people should be committed to the care of the local authority instead of to an approved school. If committed to care then the department had the funds to place the young person in a range of specialist residential situations in all parts of England and officers were expected to make regular visits. The Council also provided a separate boys and a girl’s remand centre where young people were placed if courts required investigations to be undertaken including psychiatric assessment. I was appointed as the liaison court officer at two Courts. One was in the more rural part of the county where police advised ancient practices took place at night in the hills, and where the son of Duke of Marlborough chaired the adult court magistrate’s panel and his wife the Juvenile Court.
The other was at the County town of Witney. Three years before In December 1961, after my first term at Ruskin was ending, a young police constable had read my detailed statement to the magistrates Court explaining why I was supporting the march and civil disobedience protest arranged by the Committee of 100 at the then Brize Norton Airbase although I was not intending to break the law myself but acted as a supporting observer. I had done this on other protests since my role at the Holy Loch demonstration. The police asked for a meeting with the chief marshal and other marshals and then advised we were being taken into court under an ancient statute to be asked to enter into a recognisance to keep the peace or go to prison over Christmas and New Year.
I was upset as were some sections of the media at questionable police tactics because the actions removed the responsible organisation of the March and protest, and had placed people who had not intended to break the law before the courts. I was in a dilemma, torn between commitment to the principle of what I was doing, the likely loss of my course grant and college place, but mainly because I could not face going back to prison. My first decision was to refuse the recognisance and I was taken down to cells to await going to prison but while I waited I changed my mind and was taken back to the magistrates where I accept the conditions of the recognisance. This was a defining moment in my life marking the beginning of the transition from poacher to game keeper and which for was then marked with the appointment as Court officer where I became professional friends with the police and probation officers who attended the courts on a regular basis, although I never again met the young constable who when the court clerk protested at the length of my political statement had firmly explained to the magistrates that I had made the statement and the law required the he read it out. It was a talking point then and subsequently.
Because of the technical arrest I had not reached the Brize Norton Airbase although I came to pass it by at least once a week on my way to supporting the several single parent women who lived in the area with children fathered by one or more American services men Some had married and returned while others never achieved the objective of marry a Yank and going to live in the United States. (Miss Saigon and all that and I just wonder what arrangements are made for R and R for the troops based in Iraq and Afghanistan.) I believe some 400 young women for the greater Witney Area had successfully married USAF men so that those I and my colleagues supported were a minority, but a significant group in the local community.
I did get to visit the Brize base during my work in the County however. I was required to advise my presence to the Gate Guards and was then taken by car to the office of the then British Commanding officer where he arranged for me to interview one of his men, as required by a court in relation to an Adoption Hearing. I resisted the temptation to take my CND flag with me.
During my second year, in addition to my normal workload, I was asked to undertake the supervision of a number of young men from the workload of an officer who was absent from the department undertaking training and where the young men were resident in the area of Henley on Thames with the consequence that I was motoring one hundred miles to make visits on each of several days a week when I attend to my own workload during the day, had tea and then visiting the Henley workload in the evenings. I would sometimes arrange visits to young people placed in establishments at a distances at weekends and during the first two years clocked up 38000 miles although the total did include the trip with a colleague through Belgium and Germany, into Austria and then through Italy to Sorrento, and back to Switzerland and home through France.
I had a case load of over 70 although obviously not everyone was visited as frequently as I wished and being single I was in the position to devote most of my time but I still had a social life although this was usually restricted to weekends.
It will also be evident that that I had a more colourful background than most new entrants with many weaknesses among some strengths, Dr Clare Winnicott was in my judgement, and that of many others of more standing from all over the world, the most important thinker and guide for professional social work there has been and she also had great impact, in part through her husband, on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. She was the leading light on the selection of people and their training for professional social work and I suspect the majority of those engaged in the training, recruitment and deployment of professional social workers in local authorities, in training establishments, and in government departments and agencies know little of her work to day although I appreciate that psychologists have developed analytical and predictive tests which should cover the same ground.
In one of her monographs Dr Winnicott explained that it was wise to select those undertaking professional social work that had stable and conventional backgrounds and she and her colleagues at that time were skilled in ensuring they had an accurate account of the life and experience of applicants in order to make that judgements. She was not opposed to the training and recruitment of people who had damaging childhoods, and referred to the exceptional quality of work some were able to achieve and she also highlighted the potential dangers and the need for appropriate supervision and management.
Having turned myself inside out emotionally and psychologically I became quickly aware of how I responded to certain situations and pressures, but awareness is not always the same as being able to remain as detached and focussed to the extent to which having the responsibilities of a social worker requires
My first major test occurred when a child in care under my supervision died. The child was in a foster home and the death was accidental and outside the home and one of my tasks was to advise a parent what had happened and I attended the funeral. There was no need for any departmental or government inquiry and we were therefore fortunate to be able to grieve together. There were however a number of formal requirements. The Children's Officer was immediately advised and she immediately advised the Committee Chairperson, the Local authority Chief Legal officer and the Chairman of the County Council, the Home Office Social Services Inspectorate who in turn advises the Home Secretary. I cannot remember if I attended the Inquest alone or with a legal colleague and the results of the Inquest together with a case history of the child, the foster parents and the circumstances of the death were prepared by me in association with my supervisor and passed to the Children's Officer, to the Inspectorate who would have then briefed a Minister. Had there been any query regarding my and the department's supervision of the foster home I have no doubt that the Inspectorate would have required to see the full file and undertaken further direct enquiries.
At the time I was supported by my supervisor, the Children's officer and colleagues. It was a feature of life in local authority children's department at that time that all staff was supervised by senior officers who would read the caseload fines beforehand and discuss the progress made on individual cases. I was questioned why I did this or that and asked if I had done this and that. In turn the seniors were supervised by the Deputy Children's officer and Children's Officer. During this first period of work the Department was Inspected by Home Office. An Inspector read my files and then questioned about the work and some of the decisions I had taken. In one instance I had gone to great lengths to find the parent of children in care that had disappeared. I had been successful and contact had been re-established with a view to the parent regaining their care. The Inspector thought I was being "brave." However on this occasion it worked and the children were discharged and grew up with their parent.
It is important that social workers are able to work in framework where they can have confidence in their judgement and feel able to take calculated risks, however I would not recommend risk taking as a standard way of operating and it can only be effective in a situation where all staff and their close supervisors are trained specialists, and open in what they do and carefully record what they do and why. The exception must be any situation where there is a threat to life. There can be no risks taken and social workers and their manager should always err on the side of caution. I would rather be criticised for the action taken which proved unnecessary than have to live with the death of someone knowing it could have been prevented.
This approach was also applied to those at the top. If a child in care committed an offence, and this was rare, the Children's officer would personally attend the court and apologise for the failure of the department and then plead on behalf of the future for the young person.
It is also about having clear standards and requirements and applying them thoroughly and vigorously. Because of my training and the quality of the supervision I received, I just did not comply with the boarding out regulations in terms of making visits but I was thorough in their application requiring to see the sleeping arrangements of the child and other members of the household on each visit, to examine their clothing and play and to see the child on their own even if this was just briefly. Moreover if as one occasion I reported that I had not done one task, and gave what I considered to be a good reason, I was sent back, and as a result of the insistence and being explained the actual position, a much closer and more effective relationship with the foster parents was established.
While I asked about progress at school, medical and dental care, I also made contact with the schools and with the general practitioners. In this respect I still remember the genuine hurt of a GP when I rang him to say that one of his single parent patients was too embarrassed to ask him about contraception although as he said he had not only delivered the individual into the world but her two children. For some reason it had never occurred to him to ask her if she wanted contraception.
This sounds that I was more successful than I was in practice. On one occasion I admitted to my supervisor and he mentioned this to the Children's Officer that I could not make up mind whether to recommend a young man for commitment to care or agree that he should be sent to an approved school. From my meeting with him and his parents and from the other information obtained I thought he was a bad lad who had no intention of being anything other than a bad lad. The Children's officer was surprised that I was thinking of recommending an Approved school Order and predicting that he was destined for prison regardless of what I or anyone could say or do, and arranged for her husband, a child psychiatrist to make a home visit with me to see the adolescent but who did keep the appointment and did not return while we waited an hour. On the way back I apologised for the wasted journey and his response surprised. He said it showed that he knew he could not manipulate me, added that the only way I could stop the boy and his family getting into more trouble was to ask the local authority to build an extension and move in. He also argued that placing the young man in an approved school would only hasten his progress into criminality. The same argument also applied to keep some teenage girls locked up between the ages of 14 and 16 because at during that time they did not produce babies they had no hope of providing appropriate care. This did not mean they would produce children with poor prospects at some point but at least there was a great chance of survival the later in life it happened.
If child care social workers were able to apply these kind of standards under supervision in the 1960's children cared for by approved normal and respectable foster parents it should self evident that in any situation where at child is considered to be at risk, let alone where there is evidence of harm, even more vigorous standards should be applied.
I am not surprised that this does not appear to be the situation because the fault lies with governments, with the social service inspectorate, with the way local authorities operate, with the creation of generic departments and generic social services chiefs. I came to these conclusions slowly over a period of decades but in fairness to myself I did warn anyone who cared to listen in the period 1969-1974; I did so again when compiling the majority report in the 1980 Child Care Inquiry, In the reports to the then Secretary of State and Northumbria Chief Constable in1992, and in the Guardian published article of that year.. I am not arguing that I was always right or that what I had to say always merited attention although again in fairness when I wrote to Michael Heseltine in the mid 1980s, on the future of local government in the changing business world having attended the senior management course at Henley, he wrote saying he thought the paper merited circulation in Whitehall and he arranged for his secretary to do this. Similarly when I wrote three papers to the House of Commons Social Services Committee about 1989 I was invited to discuss them with the Committee in open session as they warned of the dangers and problems likely to arise in attempting to implement the Community Care Reforms and the new Children's Act all at once.
The most important lesson from practical experiences as child care officer was that some individuals and their families are psychopathic and unlikely to change and therefore for the protection of the rest of society they need to be either locked up or their movements strictly controlled and monitored.
I obviously do not have access to any of the records of what happened in Harringey and have not met either those directly responsible for the horrific death of the child or from the information presently available those who appear to have been severely negligent in their professional duties and responsibilities in relation to this child, but I hope my experience from over fifty years ago indicates that there was knowledge, standards and skill which prevented this kind of horror from happening on the kind of scale made public during the past three decades.
I appreciate that to this point my experience was personal, but then because of my situation and background I was helped to have a national role and gained considerable knowledge of the general state of child care services in the UK prior to creation of the disastrous social service departments, disastrous because of what happened in relation to child care of what happened to child care.
While the death of one child Denis O'Neill can be argued to have led to the Curtis Committee which led to the formation of Children's Departments, it was the death of Maria Colwell at Brighton in 1965 which led to introduction of the present day inter agency Child Protection system, a case which attracted similar media interest to Baby P albeit in an era without 24/7 coverage.
In 1965 I was concerned that the media response appeared to show little understanding of the work of child care officers and I drafted an article for the monthly magazine of the Association of Child Care officers which I submitted to the Children's officer who returned it with helpful comments and a note of support saying she hoped it would be published. It was and there was some favourable response but it was to have been a one off outburst. My priority was keeping up with my workload which had escalated and when I started there was one other officer who subsequently became an Inspector, and my supervisor became a Director of Social Services. When I left in 1967 the team had increased to four and the supervisor was required to mange two teams. During my second year I did attend two one week residential Home Office sponsored course on the supervision of qualifying social work students.
The Children's officer in her capacity as President and former President of the Association of Children's Officers liked to keep abreast of what was happening in Parliament in relation to child care and family matters and would get copies of the week's Parliamentary proceedings in Hansard. I was invited to do the research for her and typed notes on the various matters which I thought were of interest from the official report of proceedings. These were then circulated to members of the Executive committee and were made available to any Children's department in the form of a subscription to cover costs which excluded my time. I was not paid for this work which I found interesting and which helped my career.
The work was then undertaken under the umbrella of the Association of Child Care Officer's. Originally I dictated the report, and then collated the pages after it had been typed put them in envelopes to be taken to the post office. The subscriptions were taken up by the social services inspectorate national child care organisations, training establishments as well as individual departments, and some authorities and agencies took more than one subscription. I undertook the work between 1965 and 1969 editing some 100 editions. During the later period an agency was used to translate my recorded notes of debates and questions.
This work led to being invited to become a Parliamentary Officer for the Association Child Officers as the previous holder of the position was to become the President of the Association. This meant that in addition to reading what was said in parliament I was expected to make contacts and pass on information about the policies and interests of the Association in addition to the work undertaken in this respect by the President, Vice Presidents and Past president, the full time Secretary and the chairs of committees. I commenced to write a monthly Blog on Parliament and Social Work in the days before Blogs and a number of other articles were published. I am sure this work together with my record of work over three years in Oxfordshire contributed to my appointment as a senior Child care officer at the London Borough of Ealing which was one of the authorities which required all its staff to be qualified and paid above average rates accordingly. After only six months I was invited to apply for the post of Area Children's Officer and I attended a Home Office residential Course on middle Management as well as social work with communities of different racial and cultural backgrounds. The Central Area of the London Borough of Ealing had the Southall on one side with its strong Asian Community and on the other; there was Acton with its strong Caribbean representation. I had worked in the Acton area for the first six months and was appointed Court Officer which involved weekly attendance. Central Ealing was more of a mixed Community which included refugees from central European Communist countries. There was also a constant flow of young women from Ireland, primarily Catholic who came to London for their pregnancies and to have their children adopted. My work was varied and challenging and very different from that in Oxfordshire. Travelling to work and across London was a daily nightmare especially as residential care establishments and fostering placements were all over London. I lived in Teddington in the Borough of Richmond and it could take over and hour to reach he office. Close to my home where not one but I believe three small family group homes run by Ealing.
I therefore gained considerable insight into what it was like to work for a London Borough and there was one aspect which merits highlighting. Ealing was created out of the former Middlesex Council which I had joined as a sixteen year old in its Motor Vehicle Licences Department and one of the reasons why I moved to closer to home Borough of Croydon Finance department was the proposal that Motor Licence Services were to be regionalised and moved to Ealing in West London. The new Children's Officer and his senior management staff had been shocked by the inherited state of the case files. The department had systematically worked on file abstracting of the key information into front sheets after checking and double checking its accuracy, and then creating chronological case summaries which were then added onto. It was the responsibility of each worker when taking on a case to read the file thoroughly, including original material, and to ensure that the records were kept accurate and up to-date and then to make a short overview if they left, or as in my case obtained promotion. These files could reflect the quality of the work undertaken and it was essential that they were read but they were only part of the process ensuring the decisions were well founded. I once found what appeared to be a well written and up date file but when I visited the case in question I could not match what was on the file with the situation on the relocation of visits reported to have been made, I concluded that some if not the majority of recorded visited had not been made, The officer concerned had left the authority and service.
In Ealing at that time as in Oxfordshire the department held periodic meetings to Councillors or with Magistrate to advice of the work being undertaken. In Oxfordshire meetings took place with magistrates to report on children committed to the care of the local authority. In Ealing work on a selection of cases was reported to Councillors who were members of the Children's Committee. This was quite an ordeal because in both instances we were grilled about the work and often questions were asked which we could not immediately answer. As a Senior Child Care officer I continued to operate as a case worker and therefore it was my individual work under scrutiny. As an Area Children's Officer it was the work of team members under scrutiny. I supervised the work of the Senior Child Care officer who in turn supervised half the members of the child care team. I supervised the other half of the team but I was also accountable for the work of everyone whether I supervised or new their individual cases in any detail. Such meetings were and should be vital enabling local Councillors and Magistrates to gain first hand knowledge of the work undertaken by social work departments and the nature of the problems they encounter. However it also provides the opportunity for Councillors and Magistrates to monitor the work and form their own judgments of staff, including the managers.
The London location meant that I could take a more active role in the activities of the Association of Child Care Officers in what was becoming the most important time in the history of child care and social work in the UK. It was proposed to create one pattern pf local authority managed departments covering all aspects of social work, Child care, Mental Health Work, services for the elderly, those with learning difficulties and those physically disabled. However there were also proposals to reorganise local government structures and boundaries outside of London and to also significantly reorganise the National Health Services bringing hospital and community medical and nursing services into one body in each area, and abolish the post of Medical Officer of Health transferring the majority of functions between the new Health departments and social services although a Public and environmental Health service was to remain under local government.
Because of this Medical Officers of Health commenced to persuade their local authorities that they should take over Mental Health Departments, where these were separate, as well as Children's Department services. At one point there were eight forms of reorganisation taking place and this led Jim Callaghan to advise that Seebohm Implementation action committee that if the situation was not stopped it would be impossible for the government to introduce legislation for one new pattern of service. It was into this cauldron that I became the unopposed President Elect of the Association of Child Care Officers.
My purpose was to do a good job and become an established appointment after the usual probationary period. I had to work hard and long to achieve this because in addition to the usual workload of a qualified child care officer I was given an additional responsibility then unique to Oxfordshire County Council. Between 1948 and 1963, the year before my appointment the responsibility of Child Care officers was to deal with applications, usually emergency applications for children to be received or taken into care and then to visit the children and supervise their placements in foster homes or residential establishments. In the instance of children placed in care through a court on Fit Person Orders, officers supervised when the children returned to their homes, homes under these orders until they were discharged.
Oxfordshire already employed specialist an officer to vet parents seeking to adopt children and investigate applications for children to be placed for adoption, but we were involved in the supervision of adoption placements by other agencies and as Guardian Ad Litems to investigate applications to advise courts that an adoption was in the best interests of individual children.
Under the 1963 Act Child Care authorities and agencies were required to undertake work to prevent children appearing before the courts, coming into care and remaining in care. All the evidence then as now was that children in care performed worse than those in the community in terms of educational attainment, obtaining and keeping in employment and then marrying and acting as good parents. Our prisons, psychiatric institutions and sidewalks have always contained a disproportionate number of those who have been in care.
The unique feature of the Oxfordshire Department was the approach to juveniles who were caught breaking the law. Until then those who committed offences under the age of sixteen were first assessed by probation officers and only if they and the court decided, Children's Departments became involved if A Fit Person Order was to be made. The majority of children who committed offences were either placed on Probation or committed to Approved Schools after which time they were released on licence under the continuing supervision of Probation. These were academies of crime rather than Care organisations and the first step to a life in and out of prison. There has been evidence that staff including senior staff acted towards the young people in which in other circumstances would have led to criminal proceedings.
Mrs Kahan negotiated with the Probation Service, the Police and Magistrates that Child Care Officers should investigate and report to courts whether young people should be committed to the care of the local authority instead of to an approved school. If committed to care then the department had the funds to place the young person in a range of specialist residential situations in all parts of England and officers were expected to make regular visits. The Council also provided a separate boys and a girl’s remand centre where young people were placed if courts required investigations to be undertaken including psychiatric assessment. I was appointed as the liaison court officer at two Courts. One was in the more rural part of the county where police advised ancient practices took place at night in the hills, and where the son of Duke of Marlborough chaired the adult court magistrate’s panel and his wife the Juvenile Court.
The other was at the County town of Witney. Three years before In December 1961, after my first term at Ruskin was ending, a young police constable had read my detailed statement to the magistrates Court explaining why I was supporting the march and civil disobedience protest arranged by the Committee of 100 at the then Brize Norton Airbase although I was not intending to break the law myself but acted as a supporting observer. I had done this on other protests since my role at the Holy Loch demonstration. The police asked for a meeting with the chief marshal and other marshals and then advised we were being taken into court under an ancient statute to be asked to enter into a recognisance to keep the peace or go to prison over Christmas and New Year.
I was upset as were some sections of the media at questionable police tactics because the actions removed the responsible organisation of the March and protest, and had placed people who had not intended to break the law before the courts. I was in a dilemma, torn between commitment to the principle of what I was doing, the likely loss of my course grant and college place, but mainly because I could not face going back to prison. My first decision was to refuse the recognisance and I was taken down to cells to await going to prison but while I waited I changed my mind and was taken back to the magistrates where I accept the conditions of the recognisance. This was a defining moment in my life marking the beginning of the transition from poacher to game keeper and which for was then marked with the appointment as Court officer where I became professional friends with the police and probation officers who attended the courts on a regular basis, although I never again met the young constable who when the court clerk protested at the length of my political statement had firmly explained to the magistrates that I had made the statement and the law required the he read it out. It was a talking point then and subsequently.
Because of the technical arrest I had not reached the Brize Norton Airbase although I came to pass it by at least once a week on my way to supporting the several single parent women who lived in the area with children fathered by one or more American services men Some had married and returned while others never achieved the objective of marry a Yank and going to live in the United States. (Miss Saigon and all that and I just wonder what arrangements are made for R and R for the troops based in Iraq and Afghanistan.) I believe some 400 young women for the greater Witney Area had successfully married USAF men so that those I and my colleagues supported were a minority, but a significant group in the local community.
I did get to visit the Brize base during my work in the County however. I was required to advise my presence to the Gate Guards and was then taken by car to the office of the then British Commanding officer where he arranged for me to interview one of his men, as required by a court in relation to an Adoption Hearing. I resisted the temptation to take my CND flag with me.
During my second year, in addition to my normal workload, I was asked to undertake the supervision of a number of young men from the workload of an officer who was absent from the department undertaking training and where the young men were resident in the area of Henley on Thames with the consequence that I was motoring one hundred miles to make visits on each of several days a week when I attend to my own workload during the day, had tea and then visiting the Henley workload in the evenings. I would sometimes arrange visits to young people placed in establishments at a distances at weekends and during the first two years clocked up 38000 miles although the total did include the trip with a colleague through Belgium and Germany, into Austria and then through Italy to Sorrento, and back to Switzerland and home through France.
I had a case load of over 70 although obviously not everyone was visited as frequently as I wished and being single I was in the position to devote most of my time but I still had a social life although this was usually restricted to weekends.
It will also be evident that that I had a more colourful background than most new entrants with many weaknesses among some strengths, Dr Clare Winnicott was in my judgement, and that of many others of more standing from all over the world, the most important thinker and guide for professional social work there has been and she also had great impact, in part through her husband, on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. She was the leading light on the selection of people and their training for professional social work and I suspect the majority of those engaged in the training, recruitment and deployment of professional social workers in local authorities, in training establishments, and in government departments and agencies know little of her work to day although I appreciate that psychologists have developed analytical and predictive tests which should cover the same ground.
In one of her monographs Dr Winnicott explained that it was wise to select those undertaking professional social work that had stable and conventional backgrounds and she and her colleagues at that time were skilled in ensuring they had an accurate account of the life and experience of applicants in order to make that judgements. She was not opposed to the training and recruitment of people who had damaging childhoods, and referred to the exceptional quality of work some were able to achieve and she also highlighted the potential dangers and the need for appropriate supervision and management.
Having turned myself inside out emotionally and psychologically I became quickly aware of how I responded to certain situations and pressures, but awareness is not always the same as being able to remain as detached and focussed to the extent to which having the responsibilities of a social worker requires
My first major test occurred when a child in care under my supervision died. The child was in a foster home and the death was accidental and outside the home and one of my tasks was to advise a parent what had happened and I attended the funeral. There was no need for any departmental or government inquiry and we were therefore fortunate to be able to grieve together. There were however a number of formal requirements. The Children's Officer was immediately advised and she immediately advised the Committee Chairperson, the Local authority Chief Legal officer and the Chairman of the County Council, the Home Office Social Services Inspectorate who in turn advises the Home Secretary. I cannot remember if I attended the Inquest alone or with a legal colleague and the results of the Inquest together with a case history of the child, the foster parents and the circumstances of the death were prepared by me in association with my supervisor and passed to the Children's Officer, to the Inspectorate who would have then briefed a Minister. Had there been any query regarding my and the department's supervision of the foster home I have no doubt that the Inspectorate would have required to see the full file and undertaken further direct enquiries.
At the time I was supported by my supervisor, the Children's officer and colleagues. It was a feature of life in local authority children's department at that time that all staff was supervised by senior officers who would read the caseload fines beforehand and discuss the progress made on individual cases. I was questioned why I did this or that and asked if I had done this and that. In turn the seniors were supervised by the Deputy Children's officer and Children's Officer. During this first period of work the Department was Inspected by Home Office. An Inspector read my files and then questioned about the work and some of the decisions I had taken. In one instance I had gone to great lengths to find the parent of children in care that had disappeared. I had been successful and contact had been re-established with a view to the parent regaining their care. The Inspector thought I was being "brave." However on this occasion it worked and the children were discharged and grew up with their parent.
It is important that social workers are able to work in framework where they can have confidence in their judgement and feel able to take calculated risks, however I would not recommend risk taking as a standard way of operating and it can only be effective in a situation where all staff and their close supervisors are trained specialists, and open in what they do and carefully record what they do and why. The exception must be any situation where there is a threat to life. There can be no risks taken and social workers and their manager should always err on the side of caution. I would rather be criticised for the action taken which proved unnecessary than have to live with the death of someone knowing it could have been prevented.
This approach was also applied to those at the top. If a child in care committed an offence, and this was rare, the Children's officer would personally attend the court and apologise for the failure of the department and then plead on behalf of the future for the young person.
It is also about having clear standards and requirements and applying them thoroughly and vigorously. Because of my training and the quality of the supervision I received, I just did not comply with the boarding out regulations in terms of making visits but I was thorough in their application requiring to see the sleeping arrangements of the child and other members of the household on each visit, to examine their clothing and play and to see the child on their own even if this was just briefly. Moreover if as one occasion I reported that I had not done one task, and gave what I considered to be a good reason, I was sent back, and as a result of the insistence and being explained the actual position, a much closer and more effective relationship with the foster parents was established.
While I asked about progress at school, medical and dental care, I also made contact with the schools and with the general practitioners. In this respect I still remember the genuine hurt of a GP when I rang him to say that one of his single parent patients was too embarrassed to ask him about contraception although as he said he had not only delivered the individual into the world but her two children. For some reason it had never occurred to him to ask her if she wanted contraception.
This sounds that I was more successful than I was in practice. On one occasion I admitted to my supervisor and he mentioned this to the Children's Officer that I could not make up mind whether to recommend a young man for commitment to care or agree that he should be sent to an approved school. From my meeting with him and his parents and from the other information obtained I thought he was a bad lad who had no intention of being anything other than a bad lad. The Children's officer was surprised that I was thinking of recommending an Approved school Order and predicting that he was destined for prison regardless of what I or anyone could say or do, and arranged for her husband, a child psychiatrist to make a home visit with me to see the adolescent but who did keep the appointment and did not return while we waited an hour. On the way back I apologised for the wasted journey and his response surprised. He said it showed that he knew he could not manipulate me, added that the only way I could stop the boy and his family getting into more trouble was to ask the local authority to build an extension and move in. He also argued that placing the young man in an approved school would only hasten his progress into criminality. The same argument also applied to keep some teenage girls locked up between the ages of 14 and 16 because at during that time they did not produce babies they had no hope of providing appropriate care. This did not mean they would produce children with poor prospects at some point but at least there was a great chance of survival the later in life it happened.
If child care social workers were able to apply these kind of standards under supervision in the 1960's children cared for by approved normal and respectable foster parents it should self evident that in any situation where at child is considered to be at risk, let alone where there is evidence of harm, even more vigorous standards should be applied.
I am not surprised that this does not appear to be the situation because the fault lies with governments, with the social service inspectorate, with the way local authorities operate, with the creation of generic departments and generic social services chiefs. I came to these conclusions slowly over a period of decades but in fairness to myself I did warn anyone who cared to listen in the period 1969-1974; I did so again when compiling the majority report in the 1980 Child Care Inquiry, In the reports to the then Secretary of State and Northumbria Chief Constable in1992, and in the Guardian published article of that year.. I am not arguing that I was always right or that what I had to say always merited attention although again in fairness when I wrote to Michael Heseltine in the mid 1980s, on the future of local government in the changing business world having attended the senior management course at Henley, he wrote saying he thought the paper merited circulation in Whitehall and he arranged for his secretary to do this. Similarly when I wrote three papers to the House of Commons Social Services Committee about 1989 I was invited to discuss them with the Committee in open session as they warned of the dangers and problems likely to arise in attempting to implement the Community Care Reforms and the new Children's Act all at once.
The most important lesson from practical experiences as child care officer was that some individuals and their families are psychopathic and unlikely to change and therefore for the protection of the rest of society they need to be either locked up or their movements strictly controlled and monitored.
I obviously do not have access to any of the records of what happened in Harringey and have not met either those directly responsible for the horrific death of the child or from the information presently available those who appear to have been severely negligent in their professional duties and responsibilities in relation to this child, but I hope my experience from over fifty years ago indicates that there was knowledge, standards and skill which prevented this kind of horror from happening on the kind of scale made public during the past three decades.
I appreciate that to this point my experience was personal, but then because of my situation and background I was helped to have a national role and gained considerable knowledge of the general state of child care services in the UK prior to creation of the disastrous social service departments, disastrous because of what happened in relation to child care of what happened to child care.
While the death of one child Denis O'Neill can be argued to have led to the Curtis Committee which led to the formation of Children's Departments, it was the death of Maria Colwell at Brighton in 1965 which led to introduction of the present day inter agency Child Protection system, a case which attracted similar media interest to Baby P albeit in an era without 24/7 coverage.
In 1965 I was concerned that the media response appeared to show little understanding of the work of child care officers and I drafted an article for the monthly magazine of the Association of Child Care officers which I submitted to the Children's officer who returned it with helpful comments and a note of support saying she hoped it would be published. It was and there was some favourable response but it was to have been a one off outburst. My priority was keeping up with my workload which had escalated and when I started there was one other officer who subsequently became an Inspector, and my supervisor became a Director of Social Services. When I left in 1967 the team had increased to four and the supervisor was required to mange two teams. During my second year I did attend two one week residential Home Office sponsored course on the supervision of qualifying social work students.
The Children's officer in her capacity as President and former President of the Association of Children's Officers liked to keep abreast of what was happening in Parliament in relation to child care and family matters and would get copies of the week's Parliamentary proceedings in Hansard. I was invited to do the research for her and typed notes on the various matters which I thought were of interest from the official report of proceedings. These were then circulated to members of the Executive committee and were made available to any Children's department in the form of a subscription to cover costs which excluded my time. I was not paid for this work which I found interesting and which helped my career.
The work was then undertaken under the umbrella of the Association of Child Care Officer's. Originally I dictated the report, and then collated the pages after it had been typed put them in envelopes to be taken to the post office. The subscriptions were taken up by the social services inspectorate national child care organisations, training establishments as well as individual departments, and some authorities and agencies took more than one subscription. I undertook the work between 1965 and 1969 editing some 100 editions. During the later period an agency was used to translate my recorded notes of debates and questions.
This work led to being invited to become a Parliamentary Officer for the Association Child Officers as the previous holder of the position was to become the President of the Association. This meant that in addition to reading what was said in parliament I was expected to make contacts and pass on information about the policies and interests of the Association in addition to the work undertaken in this respect by the President, Vice Presidents and Past president, the full time Secretary and the chairs of committees. I commenced to write a monthly Blog on Parliament and Social Work in the days before Blogs and a number of other articles were published. I am sure this work together with my record of work over three years in Oxfordshire contributed to my appointment as a senior Child care officer at the London Borough of Ealing which was one of the authorities which required all its staff to be qualified and paid above average rates accordingly. After only six months I was invited to apply for the post of Area Children's Officer and I attended a Home Office residential Course on middle Management as well as social work with communities of different racial and cultural backgrounds. The Central Area of the London Borough of Ealing had the Southall on one side with its strong Asian Community and on the other; there was Acton with its strong Caribbean representation. I had worked in the Acton area for the first six months and was appointed Court Officer which involved weekly attendance. Central Ealing was more of a mixed Community which included refugees from central European Communist countries. There was also a constant flow of young women from Ireland, primarily Catholic who came to London for their pregnancies and to have their children adopted. My work was varied and challenging and very different from that in Oxfordshire. Travelling to work and across London was a daily nightmare especially as residential care establishments and fostering placements were all over London. I lived in Teddington in the Borough of Richmond and it could take over and hour to reach he office. Close to my home where not one but I believe three small family group homes run by Ealing.
I therefore gained considerable insight into what it was like to work for a London Borough and there was one aspect which merits highlighting. Ealing was created out of the former Middlesex Council which I had joined as a sixteen year old in its Motor Vehicle Licences Department and one of the reasons why I moved to closer to home Borough of Croydon Finance department was the proposal that Motor Licence Services were to be regionalised and moved to Ealing in West London. The new Children's Officer and his senior management staff had been shocked by the inherited state of the case files. The department had systematically worked on file abstracting of the key information into front sheets after checking and double checking its accuracy, and then creating chronological case summaries which were then added onto. It was the responsibility of each worker when taking on a case to read the file thoroughly, including original material, and to ensure that the records were kept accurate and up to-date and then to make a short overview if they left, or as in my case obtained promotion. These files could reflect the quality of the work undertaken and it was essential that they were read but they were only part of the process ensuring the decisions were well founded. I once found what appeared to be a well written and up date file but when I visited the case in question I could not match what was on the file with the situation on the relocation of visits reported to have been made, I concluded that some if not the majority of recorded visited had not been made, The officer concerned had left the authority and service.
In Ealing at that time as in Oxfordshire the department held periodic meetings to Councillors or with Magistrate to advice of the work being undertaken. In Oxfordshire meetings took place with magistrates to report on children committed to the care of the local authority. In Ealing work on a selection of cases was reported to Councillors who were members of the Children's Committee. This was quite an ordeal because in both instances we were grilled about the work and often questions were asked which we could not immediately answer. As a Senior Child Care officer I continued to operate as a case worker and therefore it was my individual work under scrutiny. As an Area Children's Officer it was the work of team members under scrutiny. I supervised the work of the Senior Child Care officer who in turn supervised half the members of the child care team. I supervised the other half of the team but I was also accountable for the work of everyone whether I supervised or new their individual cases in any detail. Such meetings were and should be vital enabling local Councillors and Magistrates to gain first hand knowledge of the work undertaken by social work departments and the nature of the problems they encounter. However it also provides the opportunity for Councillors and Magistrates to monitor the work and form their own judgments of staff, including the managers.
The London location meant that I could take a more active role in the activities of the Association of Child Care Officers in what was becoming the most important time in the history of child care and social work in the UK. It was proposed to create one pattern pf local authority managed departments covering all aspects of social work, Child care, Mental Health Work, services for the elderly, those with learning difficulties and those physically disabled. However there were also proposals to reorganise local government structures and boundaries outside of London and to also significantly reorganise the National Health Services bringing hospital and community medical and nursing services into one body in each area, and abolish the post of Medical Officer of Health transferring the majority of functions between the new Health departments and social services although a Public and environmental Health service was to remain under local government.
Because of this Medical Officers of Health commenced to persuade their local authorities that they should take over Mental Health Departments, where these were separate, as well as Children's Department services. At one point there were eight forms of reorganisation taking place and this led Jim Callaghan to advise that Seebohm Implementation action committee that if the situation was not stopped it would be impossible for the government to introduce legislation for one new pattern of service. It was into this cauldron that I became the unopposed President Elect of the Association of Child Care Officers.
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