The recent history of child protection in Scotland and the impact of intra-familiar child abuse inquiries such as orkney on today's child protection work E-Book
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- Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
Master's Thesis from the year 2000 in the subject Social Work, Glasgow Caledonian University, language: English, abstract: In November 1999 the Sunday Mail ran a story Orkney in new kid-sex scandal. Within the article, the social workers at Orkney were accused of doing nothing because the mother thought that the Orkney inquiry in 1992 damaged them so much they were happier pretending this was not happening. Furthermore, an ‘unnamed insider’ stated “it’s true that sex abuse allegations are handled with kid gloves within the department. It’s only natural after what happened here before.” The purpose of this study is to explore the recent history of child protection in Scotland and the impact of intra-familiar child abuse inquiries on today’s child protection work. The main question hereby is: Are children more at risk? Crystallisation was used as a general research methodology to obtain a wide range of information and to increase the validity of results. The data was derived from social work sources – interviews with two senior social work managers of two local authorities in the West of Scotland as well as a child protection trainer and questionnaires presented to child protection trainers and 32 students of two West of Scotland cohorts currently undertaking a post-qualifying child protection programme. The study was carried out between February and April 2000 and examined the perceptions and attitudes of child protection workers and how recent inquiries into child abuse have influenced today’s protection work and policy. It was found that there has been both a positive and a negative impact on child protection work. All agreed that the partnership approach with parents and children and the inter-agency approach are important for good practice within child protection work. However, most of the respondents felt also a negative impact of the inquiries not necessarily on practice but on the social work profession itself. Furthermore, most agreed that children are not under greater risk owing to the reluctance of social workers to believe children’s...
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Page 1
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55The Child Protection Trainers
The Attitude Scales
The Open-ended Questions57
57The Senior Social Work Managers and Child Protection TrainerThe social work role within child protection practice57
The impact of child abuse inquiries such as the Orkney inquiry on today’s child protection practice59
Negative effects on the social work profession and their practice62
Public information and education about child abuse and the social work role65
Self-image and dilemmas of the social work profession66
4. Conclusions68
References
77Appendix 1 The Scottish Child Protection System80Appendix 2 Evidence of consent for dissertation topic81Appendix 3 The Questionnaires93Appendix 4 The Interview Schedule
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4
List of TablesPage
1. Socio-demographic data of respondents 47
2. Profession of respondents 47
3. Child protection work of total caseload of respondents 48
4. Responses to statements relating to the impact of Orkney on Child protection procedures and training 50
5. Responses to statements relating to the impact of Orkney on Child protection work 51
6. Responses to statements relating to how child protection workers Experience public opinions towards child protection workers 51
7. Responses to statements relating to child abuse in general 52
8. Responses to statements relating to defining child abuse 53
9. What support or resources do you need/want 54
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Acknowledgements
This dissertation would not have been possible without the assistance, both direct and indirect, of many people. I am grateful for the co-operation and help giving to me by all the professional people who were generous in giving their time to be questioned and interviewed by me: senior social work managers of the two local authorities and child protection trainers as well as child protection students of the Scottish University. My tutor Ian Brodie from the Glasgow Caledonian University has provided me with a great deal of learning, support and inspiration during my study and the research process. In addition, the lecturers of the Glasgow Caledonian University in the Division of Social Work have been a great source of learning and encouragement. I would like to thank the Leipzig University of Applied Science and the Glasgow Caledonian University for providing generous support in terms of time and resources to undertake this course of study. I would also like to thank Professor Dr. Thomas Fabian for friendship and support, inclusive of reading and commenting on the research and the draft chapters. Finally, my family and my friends in Germany and Scotland have provided me with love, support and understanding throughout this whole period.
Glasgow, June 2000 Sven Guenther
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Abstract
In November 1999 theSunday Mailran a storyOrkney in new kid-sex scandal.Within the article, the social workers at Orkney were accused of doing nothing because the mother thought that the Orkney inquiry in 1992 damaged them so much they were happier pretending this was not happening. Furthermore, an ‘unnamed insider’ stated “it’s true that sex abuse allegations are handled with kid gloves within the department. It’s only natural after what happened here before.”
The purpose of this study is to explore the recent history of child protection in Scotland and the impact of intra-familiar child abuse inquiries on today’s child protection work. The main question hereby is: Are children more at risk?
Crystallisation was used as a general research methodology to obtain a wide range of information and to increase the validity of results. The data was derived from social work sources - interviews with two senior social work managers of two local authorities in the West of Scotland as well as a child protection trainer and questionnaires presented to child protection trainers and 32 students of two West of Scotland cohorts currently undertaking a post-qualifying child protection programme.
The study was carried out between February and April 2000 and examined the perceptions and attitudes of child protection workers and how recent inquiries into child abuse have influenced today’s protection work and policy.
It was found that there has been both a positive and a negative impact on child protection work. All agreed that the partnership approach with parents and children and the interagency approach are important for good practice within child protection work. However, most of the respondents felt also a negative impact of the inquiries not necessarily on practice but on the social work profession itself. Furthermore, most agreed that children are not under greater risk owing to the reluctance of social workers to believe children’s
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allegations. At the same time, there was a good deal of realism, mixed with frustration, about the limits of intervention created be evidential requirements.
The findings from the professionals reveal that social work needs to be more pro-active in educating and informing the wider public about the phenomenon of child abuse and to shift negative perceptions towards social workers, about the roles, responsibilities as well as limitations of social work in the protection process. Finally, to enhance the professional status of social work, it is necessary and vital that social work becomes an all graduate profession with a professional and regulatory social work body.
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Introduction
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the recent history of child protection in Scotland and the impact of intra-familiar child abuse inquiries on today's child protection work.
Thomas and Pierson (1995) defined child protection as an action taken by social workers and others to safeguard children from harm inflicted deliberately or through neglect. It is the general term for the measures, steps and procedures taken when a child is reported to have been abused.
During the late 1980s, the term 'child protection' gained currency to describe actions by official agencies to prevent, respond to or alleviate child abuse. Even more specifically, child protection has come to denote the investigation processes in relation to suspected child abuse (Appendix 1). Suspected child abuse should be reported to local authorities, who have a duty to cause inquiries to be made and, if necessary, inform the children's reporter. The reporter will then investigate whether there are sufficient grounds to refer the matter to a Children's Hearing for consideration and determination.
In Scotland, in late 1999 and early 2000, child protection came again under the spotlight of the media interest and the community. There was the death of Michelle Kearney (16) in October 1999, who died on a heroin overdose just one day before her Children's Hearing should have taken place (Daily Record, March 13, 2000), theMonkey Girl Case(Sunday Mail, January 23, 2000) - the neglect of a five-year-old girl in Glasgow and the alleged sexual abuse of a six-year-old girl in Orkney. In all three cases social work was blamed and accused of doing nothing.
On the 7th November 1999 theSunday Mailran a storyOrkney in new kid-sex scandalpolice probe paedophile ringby C. Lavery. The mother (Janice, 34) of the six-year-old Karen fled from Orkney to the mainland from a paedophile ring run by her ex-husband
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(Ian) after the police in Kirkwall did apparently nothing after she reported her claims. Within the article the social workers at Orkney were accused of doing nothing because the mother "felt social workers there were unwilling or unable to help." She "believes Orkney's social workers abandoned her because the last thing they wanted to hear was evidence of another child-sex ring on the island." She stated "I got the impression that the social workers didn't want to even hear the word sex abuse much less investigate. I think the ritual abuse inquiry damaged them so much they were happier pretending this wasn't happening.” And at the end of the article an ‘unnamed insider’ at the council stated "It's true that sex abuse allegations are handled with kid gloves within the department. It's only natural after what happened here before."
This story is especially interesting in relation to the Orkney Inquiry in 1992, which strongly influenced the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and the role of the media at this time. In February 1991 nine children from four families were removed from their homes on the island and flown to the mainland. Their disclosures had led social workers to believe they were at risk from organised ritual abuse involving a number of adults on the island including the local Church of Scotland minister. Later on the sheriff dismissed the application of the social work department for place of safety orders for the nine children and announced that in his view ‘the children were safer at home.’ The children were returned to their parents on 4th April and a public inquiry was set up. The inquiry, the Clyde Report (1992), found that the actions of all the agencies involved were shown to be seriously flawed and was highly critical of them.
Orkney came to symbolise a power struggle between the state represented by social workers, the police and the RSSPCC who were said to have engaged in a witch hunt, and the parents who were universally presented in the media as innocent victims. The social workers were variously compared to Gestapo, Saddam Hussein and Satan busters (The Scotsman, 5 March 1991), while parents were represented as trapped and powerless. The children themselves had no voice. The parents, those accused of abuse, were accepted unquestioningly by the press as advocates on the children's behalf.
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The long term consequences of Orkney have cast a shadow over child protection practice and, more especially, have harmed the relationship between child protection workers and parents. Social workers are no longer trusted. Orkney has come to symbolise the interfering state and the powerlessness of parents (Abrams, 1998) and the media created "a climate of opinion that clouded our consciousness" (Campbell in The Scotsman, 3 June 1997).
While social work practice with child abuse is a well-documented topic, this dissertation actually changes the focus. Instead of concerning itself with the ways in which the task of preventing and detecting child abuse, emotional, physical and sexual, can be more effectively undertaken, this research presents a critical analysis of the task itself as it is currently conceived in the light of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.
There have been a number of public inquiries, often after a tragic death, in which social workers have been severely criticised, and as a result the social work profession itself has been stigmatised (Reder et al., 1993a, b). This dissertation will argue that it is the simultaneous statutory duty of social workers to prevent and detect child abuse and also to rehabilitate children with abusing parents or caretakers that at times will produce situations in which social workers are focused to a greater extent on any one of these duties at the expense of the others. Merrick (1996) argues that this leaves them vulnerable to the periodic charge that they are either intervening to too great or too little an extent.
The study will analyse and discuss the historical context and the impact of inquiries, like Orkney, into this particular field of social work as well as its consequences for today's child protection practice.
One focus of this dissertation lies in the two areas of family life - the public area (e.g. the social status, relationships with others) and the private area. The question of the latter is "What is going on behind the closed doors of families?" (e.g. domestic violence, abuse and the problem of power). This is a very important issue for research into families and abuse, because child protection work is mainly interested in and focuses on the private
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area, with what is going on within relationships. After cases like Cleveland and Orkneysocial work moved back from the private area, which is infected through/by policy as well as by the law and since then, influenced by the question of protection or prevention, child protection work has tried to move back into this private zone.
Research and inquiries have shown that the triangular relationship between children, parents and state is particularly problematic in the area of child abuse (DoH, 1991a; Clyde, 1992; Reder et al., 1993). For centuries, it has been acknowledged that the state has a quasi-parental duty to safeguard children's welfare, but at the same time, strong norms of parental responsibility and family privacy mean that the state should not interfere in family life unless there are significant grounds for doing so. Nevertheless, children have a right to be protected from such harm and it is social work’s statutory responsibility to do so. However, Chapter 1 will show that by turns, there have been major criticisms of both insufficient and excessive action to protect children.
The main concern of this study is with the role played by social workers in child protection work. This focus stems both from my own background and interests, and from the fact that social workers, while by no means the only profession operating in this field, have key responsibilities throughout the spectrum of child protection work, from initial investigations to long-term involvement with children and families.
