Safeguarding boards to report SCR decisions to new expert panel

Heads of local safeguarding children boards (LSCB) must inform a new panel of experts within two weeks if they decide not to conduct a full serious case review (SCR) following a serious incident.

Operating guidelines for the new independent panel of experts on serious case reviews, which launches today, state that LSCB chairs must also provide an explanation to the panel of why a SCR has not been ordered. The experts will then look into the details of the case and can ask for a meeting with the LSCB chair to discuss the case. It will also scrutinise any decisions not to publish SCRs. The launch of the four-person panel – made up of family law barrister Elizabeth Clarke, air accident investigator Nicholas Dann, journalist Jenni Russell and NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless – comes just three months after it was announced in revised Working Together guidance, published in April. The idea of an expert panel came out of Lord Carlile’s call for a rethink of the independence of LSCBs following his inquiry into the Edlington case in November. There have also been concerns that some councils are not ordering SCRs unless they are absolutely necessary. In February 2011, an investigation by CYP Now found that the number of official probes into child abuse, neglect and deaths has dropped sharply since the controversial policy of publishing SCRs in full was introduced. A document outlining how the panel will operate also reveals that over the coming year the Department for Education is planning to review the process used by LSCB’s to notify Ofsted of serious incidents. Mor Dioum, director of the Victoria Climbié Foundation, said that while a panel is “a positive step forward”, his organisation wants government to go further and mandate the process of serious case reviews. “Without a legislative framework in place for SCRs, we are left wondering how this panel will sufficiently influence and affect change within the sector to bring about the necessary learning to enhance the child protection system,” he added. Local authorities are duty-bound to order an SCR for every case where abuse or neglect is known or suspected and a child dies, or a child is seriously harmed. However, current guidance also outlines circumstances in which SCRs should be considered but are not mandatory

Source: CYPNow

Government to pump £200m more into Troubled Families programme

The government is to spend £200m to expand the Troubled Families programme to a further 400,000 families.

The funding for 2015/16 is designed to enable local services to offer intensive help to 400,000 families who are currently below the threshold for support through the existing Troubled Families scheme.

Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “The Troubled Families programme is a radical example of how, by spending a bit more in certain areas, we can save much more in others and by doing so create a stronger economy and a fairer society.

“Extending this intensive help to 400,000 more families will enable us to tackle problems such as truancy, antisocial behaviour and crime.”

The money will be offered to local services on a payment-by-results basis with central government covering 40 per cent of the cost of working with each family.

Councils and other local agencies will foot the remaining 60 per cent of the bill.

The Department for Communities and Local Government will administer the funding and local agencies will need to produce a “detailed plan” setting out how they will work together and reform services to reduce spending to get the money.

The Treasury said that the programme saves public services money by helping families into work, improving school attendance, and reducing antisocial behaviour and criminality.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said the announcement was “a vote of confidence” in the work councils had done through the existing Troubled Families programme but raised concerns about the funding arrangements.

“Further cuts to local government funding will make it increasingly hard to provide the key services that troubled families will need to access to tackle the challenges they face,” said Merrick Cockell, chairman of the LGA.

“We will be seeking clarification that this £200m is actually additional money and not money redirected from existing local authority budgets. We await the Spending Round announcement on Wednesday for more detail on this.”

The current Troubled Families programme has worked with more than 35,000 families to date and ends in 2015.

Source: CYPNow

UN challenges treatment of asylum-seeking children

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has criticised the way children are treated within the UK asylum process.

A report by the UNHCR accused the system of not adequately considering the “family context” of cases to ensure that children are effectively protected.

The report, which was requested by the Home Office, examined a sample of 2,768 asylum claims made by families in 2011, 14 per cent of the total number of claims that year.

Roland Schilling, the UNHCR’s UK representative, called on the Home Office to make the process more family-focused so that “all members of the family are properly identified, documented and assessed and that appropriate status and rights are bestowed upon individual family members”.

Responding to the report, immigration minister Mark Harper said: “The UK has a proud history of granting asylum to those who need it and I am pleased that this report notes our progress in dealing with asylum applications for women and children.”

“I am committed to building a better asylum system and we have already started making improvements which have seen cases resolved more quickly, the number of appeals fall and the cost of asylum support reduced by £220m.

“I will consider how the recommendations in the report can help us make further improvements.”

Campaign group the Refugee Children’s Consortium said it is “concerned” by the treatment of children within the asylum process.

Kamena Dorling, the consortium’s co-chair, said: “This important report reveals that families’ asylum claims are not being considered properly in the first place, raising questions about their subsequent treatment as they progress through the asylum system.”

Source: CYPNow

Child porn crackdown needs more money, say charities

Children’s charities have welcomed a £1m package of measures aimed at stamping out online child porn but are warning that more money is needed to fight child abuse.

The measures were agreed yesterday at a meeting between culture secretary Maria Miller and some of the UK’s biggest internet and mobile phone firms.

It was agreed that the Internet Watch Foundation, the industry body that lets people report criminal content online anonymously, and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) will work together to seek out, block and remove images of child abuse from the web.

The work is backed with £1m from Virgin Media, BSkyB, BT and Talk Talk.

All the companies at the meeting, including Google and Facebook, also signed up to a “zero tolerance” pledge on images of child sexual abuse.

A NSPCC spokeswoman backed the move, but added: “It’s part of a bigger effort that’s needed, including more police resources and a public education campaign to warn people about the risk they run if they are caught with these images, such as losing their families, homes and jobs.”

The child protection charity also wants to see more investment to strengthen efforts to identify victims in the pictures “so they can get help”.

Ellen Broome, policy director at the Children’s Society, added: “We shouldn’t only focus on stopping access to these images; each one represents the abuse of a child in the real world.

“It is essential that more is done to identify and prosecute the perpetrators of this awful abuse.”

It is estimated that there are one million unique images of child abuse online, but the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which is funded by the internet industry and the EU, only receives 40,000 reports each year.

The extra funding and new link with Ceop will mean that the IWF can take proactive action over images rather than having to wait for them to be reported.

“The IWF and Ceop already do important and valuable work. This agreement will mean these organisations will no longer be limited to reacting to reports received,” said Miller.

“They will now have the remit and the resources to take the fight to the criminals perpetrating these vile acts.”

Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF, said: “This is a great commitment from the UK internet industry. We are ready to step up the fight against online child sexual abuse content.

“By expanding our resources and by allowing the IWF to proactively target child sexual abuse content, we can make real headway towards our shared vision of an internet free of child sexual abuse content.”

Internet companies have also agreed to introduce warnings that will come up when people try to access web pages that have been blocked by the IWF.

Internet service providers have also promised to make parental controls easier to use and companies that offer wi-fi in public places have pledged to offer family-friendly access in places where children are likely to be.

Source: CYPnow