Channel 4 Dispatches under cover in Birmingham's Children's Services

24 May 2016

In a unique and important investigation, Channel 4 Dispatches has gone undercover inside one of Britain’s largest and worst performing children’s services departments, where social workers are battling to keep vulnerable children safe.

Earlier this year,  Dispatches asked an experienced social worker to go undercover in Birmingham’s Children’s Services which has been consistently criticised for failing children  and in 2013 was described by Ofsted's Chief Inspector as a 'national disgrace'

Birmingham Council has insisted that sorting out its Children’s Services is a top priority and claim substantial improvements have been made in the last 18 months. 

Dispatches’ undercover social worker discovered a troubling picture of chaos, low staff morale and confused decision making on how to handle serious cases where children could be at risk. She found overstretched colleagues struggling to cope and battling against constant changes in their attempts to keep children safe.

Key findings reveal:

• Some social workers failing to cope with high caseloads, others not receiving appropriate supervision and many announcing their intention to quit;
• Concerns that serious cases where children could be at risk of sexual or physical abuse are not being handled properly ;
• One junior social worker resigning after being rushed to complete a Special Guardianship Order and being forced to “beg” for help from managers;
• The department descending into chaos as a reorganisation takes place; and.
• A “ridiculous” situation arising where social workers have to phone police in the same room to discuss the most serious cases because they haven’t got the required security clearance.

Undercover at Birmingham City Council’s Children’s Services:

Dispatches Undercover Social Worker, Vicky, discovers that morale levels are extremely low.  Social workers are advised to not have more than 20 cases at any one time, Vicky soon hears from colleagues who have far more on their books.

 Vicky, “So what’s your case load at the moment?”

Social Worker, “It’s 29, and there are 4 that are yet to be allocated that are not on my caseload yet.”

 The high work load means that they are months behind on cases, Vicky records her concerns on video diary:

 Some of the cases have now been open for 5 months – and the question for me as the new allocated key worker is how will I be able to go into that family about an incident that happened 5 months ago and say this is important to us and we’re worried about your child being at risk in the light of the fact that there’s been no re-referrals during that time.

Incorrect Case Categorisation:

The most serious child protection cases dealt with by Birmingham Children’s Services are often referred to as Section 47s, these require urgent action to protect children at risk of significant harm.

The second most serious cases are called Children in Need. These include cases where there are concerns about a child’s welfare and where up to 45 days are allowed for social services to make an assessment.

One of the first cases Vicky is given involves a child alleged to have been sexually assaulted by a family member living outside the home. Vicky believes this is so serious it should be a Section 47. Vicky shares her concern with a colleague

Vicky, “They are ridiculous. Their reasoning is absurd.”

Social Worker, “Anything to get out of doing section 47s – it’s unbelievable. The fact is she had contact with him, so he could do it again…

Vicky, “and he sexually abused her…”

Social Worker, “just because she doesn’t live in the same house, he is not a risk?”

                       Vicky later records her video diary:

The decision-making just doesn’t make sense – you know we’re talking about a 3-year-old girl being sexually abused. It doesn’t make any sense “

Independent child safeguarding expert, Edi Carmi said, “On the face of what you’ve said with an allegation that a toddler has been sexually abused, one would expect it to go into a section 47 enquiry, regardless of whether the family member lived in the home or didn’t live in the home… it should not make a difference.”

A second case Vicky has to deal with involves a domestic incident where police were called and, at the time, they believed a father had deliberately tried to harm his partner and children. Once again Vicky believed this should have been treated as a section 47 inquiry.

Edi Carmi said: “The children have been subject to the risk of significant harm, and very fortunately they didn’t die, but that must have been incredibly frightening. There should have been a Section 47 inquiry in order to think about the risk to the children in the future.”

In a staff meeting attended by Vicky, the then head of the department admits that even he doesn’t understand how certain decisions are made. “I’ve seen loads now I just do not understand why this is considered a section 47 or I just can’t for the life of me understand why this is a child in need rather than a section 47. I just can’t work out the rationale… I suspect there is no rationale”

He gives his own example of a case that he doesn’t believe has been properly categorised: “A person saying to his 7/8 month pregnant partner saying “I’m going to kick the baby out of you” is kind of for me a section 47. “

In a statement to Dispatches Birmingham City Council said the information sharing and decision-making within MASH is working well but “we are always open to reconsidering our decisions where additional information is provided to us.”

Special Guardianship Orders:

Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) are an increasingly popular means of caring for vulnerable children at risk, a halfway-house between long-term fostering and adoption. They are court orders used by a council to place a child at risk with a guardian such as a family member or friend after the child has been removed from its birth parents.

In recent years, there has been a large increase in the use of SGOs by councils sparking concerns that they may sometimes be used inappropriately and as a way of cost-cutting as they are cheaper than fostering.

Three weeks ago, the woman who Birmingham’s Children’s Services chose to be a guardian for 18-month old Keegan Downer was found guilty of the barbaric murder of the baby she was supposed to protect after inflicting weeks of violent physical abuse on Keegan.

In the last 3 months of her life Keegan was not visited at all by social services which according to the Detective Inspector in charge of investigating Keegan’s murder, could have saved her life.

DI Harry Harrison, West Midlands Police told Dispatches, “It’s reasonable to say that given the horrific nature of the injuries some of those would have been obvious to any ordinary person.”

Birmingham’s policy now says that children placed with guardians should be visited at least once a month for up to 6 months, a policy that was not in place when Keegan Downer was handed over last year.

Evidence that emerged in Dispatches’ undercover investigation will raise further questions over how Birmingham handles SGOs . One junior social worker confides in Vicky about how he has recently completed a SGO.

 Vicky, “Your SGO thing you did in three weeks?”

Social Worker, “I wrote it in about 3 to 4 weeks”

Vicky, “Do you know how long an independent social worker would get to do that report?          

Social Worker, “2 months”

Vicky, “Yeah could be three months”

Social Worker, “I was blown away by the whole thing, because when it come to it and me having to come to court, Birmingham didn’t care with me you know writing it. They didn’t even seem to bat their eyelids… But when I was doing the SGO and I was going to court – that week – I was like begging managers to come in there and support me.”

John Brown of the NSPCC, said:  “It’s absolutely critical where social workers are undertaking assessments that are going to result in decisions that are important or significant in terms of the safety and welfare of children that supervision is there. Social workers undertake incredibly challenging, incredibly difficult work and the ramifications of getting that wrong and making the wrong decisions are obviously significant and we’ve seen that tragically in too many cases”

In a statement to Dispatches, Birmingham City Council said: “Following the death of Keegan Downer last September and the introduction of new guidelines “We substantially changed our Special Guardianship Order policy and practise”. Its policy is now to “continue to keep the case open and offer post-SGO support for six months.” It said “SGOs are agreed by the courts and are not driven by considerations around cost”

Reorganisation chaos:

The Department has seen a huge amount of change in the past few years, and our undercover social worker, Vicky, witnesses the impact of a further shake up.

At a team meeting the Head of the Department announces that he is moving on, he is going to run the unit which initially allocates cases, the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH).

One Social Worker who has been in Birmingham for two years isn’t happy with the news,

“One of my worries is that – again – this is the third head of service that we’re about to have that’s going to be coming in with these new ideas, coming to change the world – and again it’s learning a whole new process.”

In December the government wrote to Birmingham ordering the council to make a number of changes, most pressingly to resolve its staffing problems.  The deadline, last month, was to secure a “high quality, stable social care workforce”. However, during Vicky’s time undercover a number of her colleagues tell her they’re quitting and the reorganisation appears to make matters worse.

One social worker is in despair: “ I'm not coping with my cases I'm not coping with them…You've got section 47s coming in and there's not much she can do about it, is there? What can you do except leave?

Vicky records her feelings on the video diary,

“There was a feeling certainly leading up in the last few weeks of chaos – of things being ill thought-out, rushed through and a real lack of leadership of what would happen and how it was going to impact on people both within the teams but also families.”

As part of the restructure Vicky and her colleagues will have to work some shifts alongside a central unit known as the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub or MASH for short. . This multi-agency hub plays a key role in handling serious cases where children are at risk of harm and consists of a team of social workers and police amongst others.  It’s designed to ensure that agencies communicate effectively with each other and no warning signs are missed.

But after the reorganisation, Vicky witnesses a major problem emerging. Even though some social workers are working in the same room as the police they’re not allowed to sit in certain parts of the room as they don’t have the required security clearance to view certain computer databases. It leads to the “ridiculous” situation of social workers having to phone police in the same room to conduct strategy meetings about serious cases.

John Brown of the NSPCC, “That was absolutely contrary to the original thinking and the idea and the rational for a multi-agency safeguarding hub. The whole point about it is that they system and the process should enable professionals to be able to speak together in an efficient way, in an immediate way. Where you have to have a worker who’s not been properly vetted picking up the phone and speaking to a police officer rather than having a face-to-face conversation with them in the same room is frankly ridiculous”

 Birmingham City Council response:

“We recognise the historic and well-publicised failings of Birmingham’s Children’s Services and we are committed to improving the quality of social work practice. We still have a long way to go, but we consider that services are significantly better organized and more focused.

Part of our improvement plan involved establishing more assessment teams and those teams are much more settled and stable now. Social worker morale has increased in the last year leading to a decrease in staff turnover.”

 Undercover: Inside Britain’s Children’s Services will be broadcast on Thursday 26th May, 10pm