Monday 21 March 2011

Why schools should not investigate allegations of abuse

Instead, whenever an allegation or report of abuse arises, a school should always, automatically and immediately forward the report to the Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection (LADO). It is the LADO who decides whether the report is obviously trivial, or requires some kind of investigation.

The child protection policy of any school should state this clearly. No ifs, buts or wriggle room. Just a straightforward policy that everything gets forwarded, with no attempt at any kind of preliminary investigation by the school.

The reason for this is clearly stated in the St. Augustine's complaint against the ISI.
25. This is of particular relevance because on publication of the Proposed Report the School will come under an obligation to send copies to parents and guardians, many of whom also have children at St. Benedict's. The favourable assessment of St. Benedict's is liable to be compared with the unfavourable assessment of the School.
As this makes clear, independent schools are in competition with each other, and a paedophile scandal is terribly bad for business. If a school does its own investigations (which school staff are not trained for) there is a great temptation to conclude either that nothing really happened, or that the matter can be handled internally without the need to notify outside authorities and risk adverse publicity.

This temptation is compounded if the member of staff under investigation is long-serving or is an old friend of the head teacher. The assumption is that the person under investigation would never do such a thing, and so the investigation is prejudiced from the outset by the preconceptions of the investigator.

So there is a clear conflict of interest if the school tries to investigate cases itself. It is to prevent this conflict of interest that the law requires that the LADO be automatically informed. The LADO is independent both of the school and of the staff member, and moreover is properly trained.

The current Ealing Safeguarding Children Board guidance states on this point
15.2.1 The employer must inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) immediately an allegation is made.
Nice and simple. Clear, succinct and to the point. The current St. Augustine's policy, the one they have spent nearly a year updating following the ISI inspection, says this in clause 8.
When deciding whether to make a referral, following an allegation or suspicion of abuse, the Designated teacher will not make her own decision over what appear to be borderline cases, but rather the doubts and concerns should be discussed with the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO). This may be done tentatively and without giving names in the first instance. What appears trivial at first may later be revealed to be much more serious and an allegation of child abuse or neglect may lead to a criminal investigation. Thus the School should not do anything that may jeopardise a police investigation, such as asking a child leading questions or attempting to investigate the allegation of abuse.
So many words! So much wriggle room! That paragraph should simply say this.
The Designated teacher must immediately inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) of a suspicion or allegation.of abuse.
So, nearly a year after St. Augustine's was inspected and told that its child protection policy was illegal on this specific point, the school still hasn't got this right. It's not even as if it is terribly hard to do the right thing here. Why go to such lengths to get such a simple matter wrong?

9 comments:

  1. Thank you, Mr West. You really do know your stuff and I reckon you will win a landslide majority if this article went out to a straw poll. Strong argued views with only a hint of personal vindictive bile. Much much better.

    It is such a shame that your reputation goes before you and no-one has commented on such a well argued piece.

    I am still waiting for a named supporter of your views AND methods. I am sure we will not have to wait long.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stefan Puchowski21 March 2011 at 17:53

    Well, I don't see how it really helps you, Anonymous, but I for one support Jonathan West's views and his commitment on this blog to be critical of the way that children are protected in some local School's.

    There is no doubt that terrible things have been allowed to happen. And the best way I can describe it is that mistakes have been made. The mistakes need to be made visible and we need to insist on a clear commitment to protecting young people from abuse.

    I can't believe anyone would be allowed to work with children without the school insisting on CRB checks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am still awaiting an answer from 04.47 to my posting in the previous strand. It should be a very quick answer to provide.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The other reason that schools must not investigate allegations is that DO's and Head's will be prone to destroying or compromising evidence that could be very important to either party.

    Mrs Mason clearly did not follow this guidance when she decided to investigate the complaint against her friend Chillman in 2004.

    She is not a trained teacher, and neither is she safeguarding literate as the ISI report confirms.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stefan, anyone who writes like you helps us all.

    A clear commitment to protecting young people backed up with action is all that we all want. It is the bare minimum that any school must provide.

    There is no simple answer mainly because the law itself is in such a complicated state. I was involved in the Ian Huntley trial 8 years ago and "heads rolled" after that trial for all the times Huntley was allowed to slip through the net. I am not sure if a CRB check would catch Huntley even now but the co-ordination of the agencies, the police, the schools and anyone else who works/volunteers with children is much better than it was.

    List 99 is still our best means of keeping tabs on dodgy people, it does not depend on an arrest or conviction, but it is reliant on schools referring the gross misconduct to the authorities. And it can be anything from helping to cheat in exams to alcohol/drug abuse but it is a very powerful tool. Once you are on List 99 it is extremely difficult to get off it and basically you will never work as a teacher again, or at least for many years.

    "Abuse" is a very wide term indeed and it covers practically every conceivable type of inappropriate behaviour. It is too simplistic to say that every single instance must be referred, the school must retain some discretion for it to function properly.

    Anonymous 04.47

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jonathan, it is entirely your choice whether to publish my contributions or not, that is the power you have over your own blog. I promise you that this is not a battle between me and you and I am more than happy to join forces with you. You do not have to publish my heated response this morning but I do ask that my recent response is published. If you are truly committed to ensuring that schools do not make the same mistakes over and over again, then we must take the debate further. And it is your blog that has the power to do so.

    Anonymous 04.47

    ReplyDelete
  7. Come on anonymous 04:47. You said you would drop the anonymity if some non-anonymous person posted supporting my aims and methods. Two now have - Stefan Puchowski here, and Michael Grant on the previous thread.

    And, no, the school should not have discretion in the matter of defining abuse and what should be referred to the LADO. The LADO has discretion in deciding what is too trivial to be worth following up. The reason the LADO has this responsibility and discretion is because the LADO does not have the conflict of interest.

    As for List 99, the school must have no discretion as to whether to refer people to the ISA when they leave for reasons connected with their fitness to supervise children, but the ISA has discretion as to whether the referral should result in the person concerned being placed on List 99. The same reasons apply.

    ReplyDelete
  8. 04.47 says (italics):

    I am not sure if a CRB check would catch Huntley even now but the co-ordination of the agencies, the police, the schools and anyone else who works/volunteers with children is much better than it was.

    Had the 'soft box' information existed at the time of Huntley it would have stopped him being employed. This aspect (CRB) of safeguarding is good. Safeguarding law however has not improved and this is the reason the ‘soft box’ on CRB's is of such importance. Here is an interesting article in the Times for you to consider.

    List 99 is still our best means of keeping tabs on dodgy people, it does not depend on an arrest or conviction, but it is reliant on schools referring the gross misconduct to the authorities.

    It is dependent on schools making referrals to the ISA, and Police returning referrals (until last year Notifications) following the conviction of alleged perpetrators. Of course this is something that neither St Benedict’s nor St Augustine’s complied with and therefore they broke the law, in the case of St Benedict’s it resulted in a member of staff being able to continue a career in teaching despite being a known danger to children.

    Once you are on List 99 it is extremely difficult to get off it and basically you will never work as a teacher again, or at least for many years.

    Well you are mostly correct. An appeals process is available which follows a procedure. For sexual and physical abuse it results in a psychological assessment from a specialist NGO which is experienced in the subject. In the past a referral on sexual abuse grounds meant a maximum of 10 years out of teaching and then, quite extraordinarily the whistle went and perpetrators were allowed back. No logic, no reason. But this stopped following a decision by children’s minister Ruth Kelly to allow someone on List99 to return to education early. He abused again within months. You can Wiki this story.

    "Abuse" is a very wide term indeed and it covers practically every conceivable type of inappropriate behaviour. It is too simplistic to say that every single instance must be referred, the school must retain some discretion for it to function properly.

    Absolutely wrong. The school must undertake no investigation of any incident. A quote from the ISI April report for St Benedict’s - Regulatory Requirements (iii) referrals are made not only where a case is considered by the school to be serious and criminal;

    Please do look at the video links I posted on a previous strand from Teacher TV. It is absolutely not for the school to decide on these matters, it is for the Local Authority led initially by the LADO. In the Teacher tv video link you see the Governors confirming this in the ‘training’ case.

    If the incident can be handled by the school, and no harm has come to the child, it is for the LADO to refer it back to the school in writing.

    This provides an assurance to all that the incident has been independently investigated and evaluated by experienced people and the school has an audit trail of the entire incident to demonstrate it has been handled correctly.
    There is no reason for this not to happen, and if you think otherwise then you are wrong.

    Now 04.47, you proposed a deal which has been accepted by this side of the exchange.

    Are you going to welch?

    I suspect you are.

    Adieu.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hallo again 04.07.

    You refer to the Ian Huntley case (the Soham murders).

    As you'll see if you look in the previous thread where I explain my connection with the parish, the school, and child protection issues, as well as identifying myself and stating why I support Jonathan West's campaign, I worked on the Police Training programmes which arose out of the Soham report recommendations.

    Your comment about whether a CRB check would or would not have caught Huntley needs some comment.

    Huntley had a criminal record for burglary, which would have prevented him from being employed as a school janitor in Soham. Due to poor practices in keeping, sharing and retrieving information (which Huntley became aware of when he applied to see his own record), this did not come to light at the time he was employed.

    Huntley did not have a criminal record for sexual abuse. The inquiry found that repeated allegations of sexual abuse of minors (the earliest of which he actually admitted, with the recorded words "that's not a crime, is it?") and of rapes of young adult women, were variously not taken further, not recorded properly, often not shared even within a single police force.

    Officers in both the police forces which had repeated contact with Huntley over these allegations often had no knowledge that he had previously been questioned - even at the same station - on remarkably similar allegations.

    One of the most ghastly features of the Soham report is that one can trace Huntley's career as an abuser through his repeated contacts with the police. He was learning how to get away with it. They were not learning about him, until it was too late.

    The relevance of this is that the value of CRB checks and of child protection in general depends on efficient record keeping and sharing, clear guidelines about responsibilities, avoidance of conflicts of interest, transparency and accountability. The rules need to be good, and they need to be implemented.

    The child protection policies at St Augustine's and at St Benedict's lack these essential elements, and have been shown not to have been implemented.

    Jonathan West has ably made the point about clarity by placing passages of fudge and blather in the two school's written policies with simple and unambiguous equivalents from the state system.

    The policies endorse a conflict of interest, in allowing the school a degree of discretion about reporting and investigating allegations - which is also wrong in law.

    The inspection reports and the history revealed there show that even the inadequate policies as they stand have been applied inadequately.

    Both schools have demonstrated a lack of transparency is dealing with the issue of abuse, both regarding previous allegations, and in responding to the concerns of parents.

    Until these things are addressed, children remain at risk. If there are currently no abusers at either school, and if no abusers are ever employed by either school ever again, it will be pure luck.

    Personally, I feel that is not good enough.

    ReplyDelete