Category Archives: children’s rights

child protection, child protection investigation, children's rights, children's voices, Haut de la Garenne, Islington Council, Islington Survivors Network, Organized Abuse, Sandy Marks, social work, Survivors, Uncategorized

Parallel Universes; social workers and abused children

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On the 28th September at an Islington Council Executive meeting, I received an apology from Islington Council Leader, Richard Watts.  I was deeply moved by this because, after 27 years of campaigning, it was important for me to hear his acknowledgement of the crimes committed against children whilst in the care of Islington Council from the 70s to the 90s.  This was the very first time that I had spoken at a council meeting. It was the first time I had not felt vilified by council officials.  A former Islington social worker told the council that I had been truly scapegoated by managers at the time who had never been called to account.

I began to reflect about why I had spent so many years of my life alongside police, journalists, researchers and survivors, investigating the historic abuse of Islington children and yet there had been so little involvement or even concern from the vast majority of my former social work colleagues.  I also thought much about when I was employed in Islington, first in 1973 and later in 1986, because I was one of the social workers who placed children into the homes where they were abused. I  had imagined and assumed that the systems were safe. I still do not understand fully how or why I slowly began to take an unchartered leap into the child’s world of horrors, to see through the pretence, recognise some of the carers as abusers and the managers who were complicit but also have the confidence to think I could do something about it.

Continue reading →

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brain scans, child protection, children's consent, children's rights, Kids Company, Neuroscience, Uncategorized

Child victims of neuroscience?

In 2002, Prince Charles first gave Camila Batmanghelidjh, CEO of the former charity Kids Company, the idea of considering the impact of child abuse on children’s brain development. He presented her with 25 clinical papers on the topic.  From that moment I was suspicious because the idea was so wide as to include the impact of all kinds of trauma making any research very confused in aim. Also, the method of research was to scan the brains of ‘troubled teenagers’ which seemed to be more about a social control agenda. I had already detected mixed messages  about the aims of this children’s charity  (Evening Standard: 11.09.2009). Continue reading →

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children's rights, Frontline, Organized Abuse, social work education, social work privatisation, Uncategorized

Doublespeak and Frontline

On 31st January 2013, I attended a promotion meeting for Frontline – a charity providing social work education. By then I had been a senior social work lecturer for over 10 years, was qualified in teaching Undergraduate and Postgraduate students, had written widely on the subject, been external examiner for two University social work programmes and had designed, delivered and evaluated modules in every aspect of children’s social work. In other words, I thought I knew a more than little about the job of teaching social work students to become committed, effective practitioners. As I arrived at the event, held at the prestigious building of the Boston Consulting Group in London’s Manchester Square, I thought I was at the wrong venue, a feeling exacerbated by the predominance of young white men in suits contrasting significantly with the typical motley audience of academics like myself. I remember deciding that my task for the morning was to persuade Boston Consulting Group to rethink their investment in this educational project … I could but try and stem the ravaging tide of privatisation of social work education! Continue reading →

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child protection, children's rights, Uncategorized

Lessons Unlearnt -children imprisoned

Following on from my last blog, this week I obtained an original copy of the Home Office ‘Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Conduct of Standon Farm Approved School and the circumstances connected with the murder of a master at the school on 15th February 1947’. It cost me £22.00 – the original price was just 9D [pence].  It is 69 years since 4 boys were convicted of the murder of a Master at this institution and 5 others pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder. The Headmaster  was dismissed and the school closed.

The Inquiry concluded that the causes of the murder included;

  • The isolation of the school
  • The prolonged bad weather coupled with the lack of a suitable gymnasium or adequate recreational facilities
  • The prohibition of smoking and the cumulative effect of the long standing regime of limited freedom
  • The collective punishments and threats of collective fines
  • The inadequate system of distributing pocket money
  • The inadequacy of religious guidance
  • The lack of understanding on the part of the Headmaster of his boys as individuals and their belief in his unfairness particularly in respect of the uncertainty as to licensing (permission to leave the institution and be on license in the community)
  • The gross carelessness of the headmaster with regard to the safe custody of fire-arms and ammunition
  • The presence in the school of a boy with a very strong personality and a burning sense of grievance.

The Inquiry led to the establishment of the first secure units for children. Stronger arrangements to imprison children were defined as the solution to the prevention of such crime in the future, instead of analysing the causes of the young people’s behaviour and emphasising the importance of child-centred, therapeutic care systems.

The report makes interesting reading in the context of an inspection report detailing attacks on staff by young people in the Rainsbrook secure training centre, during the first quarter of 2016 when 5 staff  needed hospital treatment.  61 boys and 13 girls, who had a custodial sentence or were on remand, were at this time in jail at Rainsbrook which was run by the private company G4S. Continue reading →

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