Since October last year, a scheme has been running called Children’s Social Work Matters.  This is a two-year project launched by 15 authorities within Yorkshire and the Humber which, between them, look after more than 74,000 children.  The purpose of the project was to help promote the social work profession, something which, following high profile cases, is not always shown in a positive light.

Director of Safeguarding Children and Families at Rotherham Council, Howard Woolfenden, said “The negative connotations of children’s social work are obvously from higher profile cases where safeguarding inefficiencies have been exposed, so you’re looking at Victoria Climbie and Baby P as the two big high profile cases that have come about”.

The Children’s Social Work Matters campaign has proved a success already with a recent advertisement for a frontline social worker job in duty assessment for Kirklees receiving 57 applications.  It is understood that a London council is now expressing interest in carrying out the same campaign.

Nick Clegg has announced plans to trial free childcare to almost 1,000 two year olds across England from this September.  From September 2013, it is intended that 150,000 of the most disadvantaged two year-olds will be receiving up to 15 hours of preschool education a week, with the figure rising to 260,000 by September 2014.

The first areas to benefit from the scheme are Blackpool, Cornwall, Greenwich, Kent,Lambeth, Lancashire, Newcastle, Northamptonshire, Peterborough and Rotherham.

Mr Clegg said: “We’re revolutionising the early start our children get in life.

“Every child should have a fair crack at the whip from the start and be able to go on to fulfil their potential.”

The announcement is intended to have an effect on child protection matters in that parents will be able to work more flexible hours whilst receiving suitable child care, in particular for the most disadvantaged children.

Mr Clegg added: “There are real concerns for families, as nurseries begin charging top-up fees, children’s centres funding is slashed, and family tax credits are being cut.”

In a recent case, a young man aged 20 was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in prison for the murder of his 17 year old girlfriend.  Despite the fact that he had repeatedly abused her, she would not have been considered to have been a victim of domestic abuse.  This is because the definition of domestic abuse is that both the victim and abuser are adults ie both 18 years or over.  Unfortunately, the definition is restrictive in that the services designed to support women in violent relationships and the agencies designed to support women in violent relationships could not have been able to help the 17 year old.

However, some local authorities have alredy tried to address the restriction by reducing the age at which people can access the domestic abuse service.  Unfortunately, there is no national consensus on this matter although the government does recognise the inconsistencies and has launched a consultation on the definition of domestic abuse.  The results are expected in the very near future.

Following recent high profile child protection matters such as Baby Peter and the Rochdale case, an investigation is being made into the issue of vulnerable children and young adults ‘missing from care’.  This is a matter which has not been high on the political agenda until recently and in light of the above cases but two influential parliamentary groups, chaired by Ann Coffrey MP and supported by many peers and MPs from across the political parties, have already started working together to investigate the issue.

They have been supported by charities Missing People, the Who Cares Trust and the Children’s Society and have been speaking to children who have run away from care.  Also consulted have been ministers, the Child Exploitation and Online protection Agenda, Ofsted, the voluntary sector, police forces and local authorities.  All have spoken of the need for change.

What seems to be resulting from the investigation so far is that many of the vulnerable children who do go missing from care are being failed by those people and systems which are supposed to be protecting them.  Also highlighted is the poor quality of some children’s home and other care placements.

Tim Loughton MP, the children’s minister, has acknowledged this and spoken about the need to improve the quality of children’s homes.

Ill Manors is a film due to be released on 6th June.  Written by musical artist, Plan B, it tells the story of youth gangs in North London.

Camila Batmanghelidjh is the founder of London charity,  Kids Company, and has reviewed the film.  She says that she has come across all the characters during the last 16 years of working within the youth culture of London.  She said “The film is an incredibly accurate portrait of that kind of environment. The little boys terrorised into joining the criminal network are just so real. It demonstrated what I keep telling people: don’t say a child chooses to join a gang; there is no choice. The cycle  is so accurate.

“I want to get a copy of this film and deliver it to the prime minister and say: “This is another bit of your country that you don’t talk about, you don’t see, but nevertheless, large numbers of children and young people are trapped in this life.” For the past 16 years I’ve been trying to describe what these kids’ lives are like. It’s very difficult for people to visualise the way they live.

“I’d argue that the exposure to violence and sexual assault of children in street gangs at the moment is, in scale, a bigger child protection issue in this country than the violation of children in family homes. I remain hopeful that at some point someone will stand up and take the lead on this.”

Cafcass has produced a report which cites the reason for recent increase in care applications as the ‘Baby Peter effect’.  Since the case of Baby Peter came to public knowledge through the press, three years ago, thousands more children have been taken into care for justifiable reason.

The Cafcass study confirms that the increase in care applications made by local authorities in the months after the conviction of Baby P’s mother, her boyfriend and her lodger in October 2008 has barely subsided and has, effectively established a much lower threshold for intervention into the lives of vulnerable children deemed to be at risk of neglect and abuse.  In 85% of cases studied, guardians believed that a care application was “the only viable action and that there was no other alternative”.

Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass, said that the shift demoinstrates that children are being safeguarded more effectively and appropriately by local authorities anbd called the change in social work practices “an important growth in realism about the depth of justifiable concerns about the risk being experienced by some children”.

The two social workers who were sacked by Haringey Council following the Baby P case have lost their appeal for unfair dismissal.  Howwever, Maria Ward and Gillie Christou have vowed that they will take the matter to the appeal court.

A hearing on Friday morning found, as had a previous employment tribunal, that Haringey Council had acted reasonably in dismissing them due to serious failings in their care of Peter Connelly who died at 17-months old.

Haringey’s Children’s Services Director at the time of the case, Sharon Shoesmith, successfully took an unfair dismissal case to the court of appeal in May last year.  Judges found that the council had, in her case, acted in a way which was “procedurally unfair” when she was first removed from post and then subsequently dismissed.

Professor Eileen Munro delivered a review in 2011 on changes required to child protection services.  Following that report, she has recently delivered a progress report calling for the Government to speed up policing and health reforms.

Professor Munro’s report says that reforms taking place in parallel to those in child protection such as in health and policing were still evolving and that the government should continue to facilitate and encourage understanding between the services.  She felt it was so important for Local Safeguarding Child Boards, Health and Wellbeing Boards and other professional bodies not to allow safeguarding to get lost but at the same time she was very positive about how councils have been recruiting principal social workers to make sure that front-line workers are properly represented to both managers and those managing budgets.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton responded that the government is committed to doing everything possible to get the right mechanisms in place and making sure that local authorities are strong enough to step up to the challenge.

A new service to be run on the Vodafone network called Bemilo will allow parents to remotely control their children’s access to mobile phone services, texting and even making telephone calls from their mobile.  Parents will be able to buy a safety pack which contains a SIM card and then have to install it into a mobile phone and use it on a pay-as-you-go basis for a minimum of £2.95 a month.

The service will then allow parents to remotely control access the phone – including the ability to control the time of day when calls can be made/taken and allow or disallow certain contacts.   For instance, a parent could switch off the phone during school hours by doing so remotely from a website on their computer.

It is understood that the service will help to protect children from mobile phone bullying.  Statistics have shown that many children are still either receiving or sending texts or calls late into the night when they should be asleep and this is having a knock-on effect on their behaviour.

As a safety aspect of the service, even if nearly all the functions on the child’s phone are disabled, parents can always manage the handset in such a way that they are able to reach their children, and the child is able to contact them.

Northamptonshire County Council has announced changes to the way in which child protection cases are going to be dealt with within Northamptonshire.  A Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) is to be set up and will be a central communications section to tackle the issue of child protection.  MASH will be made up of police, other emergency services, probation, social services and the NHS working in the same office and sharing information, thereby allowing cases to be dealt with much quicker than at the moment.

The Council has already started a pilot study with the police, in which six social care staff are working as a joint child protection team within Northamptonshire Police headquarters for the next three months.