Editor - David Lane
Trust is vital in bringing up children, Children need to be able to trust the adults who care for them. They need to know that the adults will give their needs primacy, and be confident that they are valued and loved. This is true, whether the carers are blood parents, adoptive parents, foster carers or residential childcare workers.
It is often assumed that there is a special bond between natural parents and their children - "blood is thicker than water", as the saying goes, but any children who can no longer be cared for by their blood parents still have the need for unconditional concern, and indeed it could be argued that their needs are greater, because they are having to rely on substitute carers.
Certainly, most children and young people entering residential care have acute needs. Often they will have suffered major problems at home, frequently including physical and/or sexual abuse. This may well have been compounded by unsatisfactory experiences in other forms of care, such as foster placements which have broken down or episodes of care with relatives.
By the time they enter residential care, they need a quality of service to meet their needs which is both highly skilled and committed. The practice of the workers needs to be professional, underpinned by knowledge and the teaching of competences, but it also needs to reflect a natural real concern and a liking for children.
A Double Betrayal
The abuse suffered by children and young people, as described in the Waterhouse Report, is therefore a double betrayal. Removed to a place of sanctuary because of problems at home, they were further abused by those entrusted with their care and upbringing. It is hard to imagine any greater breach of the professional values underlying teaching and residential childcare work, and the reaction of the Sun in wanting to lock the abusers up and throw away the key is a natural and understandable response.
Action …
We must protect children looked after by local authorities and other childcare agencies better, and the Waterhouse Report comes up with a batch of sound recommendations, such as a social worker for every child in care, a Children's Commissioner for Wales and Complaints Officers in every authority. Many people working in this field have been arguing for such developments for a long while. Some of them should already have been standard practice, and others have been introduced by the Government recently. If all these recommendations are implemented, they will be welcomed and there will be a general feeling of relief that action has at last been taken.
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 Advertisement Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England Dr. Louise A. Jackson Pub. Routledge |
… and its Side-Effects Every good development, however, brings with it the risk of side-effects, and it is important to be aware of such possibilities, so that they do not detract from the benefits. In this country we often make policy to counteract the effects of the last failure, rather than starting by setting up the systems needed to have the positive effects we desire. Clearly we need checks on the quality of work in residential special education, children's homes and foster care, but in checking quality and preventing abuse, we need to make sure that the action we take does not destroy the fundamental nature of the work, like the gardener who kept pulling up the plant to see how its roots were developing. |
As checks on the quality of care, among others, we already have line managers (who should be reassuring themselves that their staff are working to agency policies), field social workers (who should offer an external check that their children's needs as outlined in their care plans are being met), registration and inspection officers (checking that local authority standards are being met), councillors and others undertaking statutory monthly visits, independent representatives and independent persons (in relation to secure accommodation and other situations where children have the statutory protection of an external person visiting to consider things from their point alone), other people who visit (such as doctors or ministers) and, of course, the families of the children and young people themselves.
All these external checkers are now to be augmented by some more, if Waterhouse's recommendations are implemented.
Who can be trusted?
The implication in the visits of all these checkers is that the residential childcare workers need to be monitored and cannot be trusted to work unchecked. But if the children are to tell the checkers of any abuse they may be suffering, they need to be able to trust them, even though they may visit only occasionally. Implicitly, the checker says to the child, "Although you do not know me, you can trust me more than the people who are working directly with you. They are not to be trusted, but I am." Why should a child trust an unknown visitor just because he or she has an official label?
Sadly, the history of abuse catalogued in Waterhouse indicates that large numbers of residential workers and foster carers were not to be trusted. Neither were many of the external people - the councillors, line managers, inspectors and social workers - either because they were insufficiently trusted by the children to be told of the abuse, or because they took no action, or, worst of all, because they tried to suppress complaints or even joined in the abuse themselves.
Simply adding more official positions will not change things. The people in those roles could be just as unaware or corrupt.
What is needed is much more complex and far-reaching. We need to go back to basics, in various ways.
The Importance of Values
If the needs of disturbed children and young people are to be met, the residential workers and foster carers do need to be trusted by those in their care. The workers need to earn that trust through their competence and their commitment. They need every support and encouragement from those to whom they are accountable to become competent and remain committed throughout their careers.
In the workforce at present, there are such people, despite the historical shortage of training and indifferent management. They need to be helped to practise better, because if there is good practice, children's needs will be met and they will not be abused in care and the need for action arising from checking will diminish.
In short, in taking the measures needed to prevent abuse, we must make every effort not only to counter the negative but to emphasis the positives as well and to encourage good practice. This can only be done if those involved, whether as practitioners or managers or one of those monitoring quality, have the right fundamental values. Otherwise, all the systems in the world will not put things right.
Children and young people have a right to be able to trust those who care for them. The wider community should be able to trust those to whom it delegates the responsibility of looking after and educating those in need. To do the job, they need all sorts of training, support and resources, but most of all they need the right values. Given the right values, we must make sure that nothing we do undermines the building of trusting relationships.
March 2000