ENOUGH IS ENOUGH a Report on Child Protection and Mental Health Services for Children and Young People
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ENOUGH IS ENOUGH A report on child protection and mental health services for children and young people A policy report for the Centre for Social Justice by Adele Eastman June 2014 contents Contents About the Centre for Social Justice 3 Preface 5 Special thanks 7 Executive summary 9 Kids Company Cases 25 Profile 25 Case Study One: Claire (16-years-old) 30 Case Study Two: Daniel (17-years-old) 32 Case Study Three: Michael (24-years-old) 34 Case Study Four: David (23-years-old) 37 Case Study Five: Callie (24-years-old) 41 Legal foreword 44 Local authority duties to children and young people 44 Statutory mental health provision 53 The United Nations Convention On The Rights Of The Child 60 Main introduction 63 A brief policy context 64 The scope of the report 67 CSJ review and analysis of 20 Kids Company cases 67 The scale of the problem – what we do and do not know 69 Our key findings 75 1 Frontline child protection 83 1.1 Introduction 83 1.2 Challenges to frontline practice 88 1.3 Other challenges to frontline practice 142 1.4 Reforms 162 1.5 Conclusion 165 2 Statutory mental health provision 171 2.1 Introduction 171 2.2 CSJ review of Kids Company cases 176 2.3 Early intervention 179 2.4 Primary care 187 Child Protection And Statutory Mental Health | Contents 1 2.5 Secondary care 193 2.6 Commissioning 233 2.7 Conclusion 237 3 The voluntary sector 243 3.1 Introduction 243 3.2 Child protection 244 3.3 Mental health 269 3.4 Conclusion 280 4 Legal and regulatory framework 287 4.1 Introduction 287 4.2 Child protection 288 4.3 Mental health 334 4.4 Conclusion 348 Main conclusion 355 Recommendations 367 Appendix 1: Flowcharts from 2010 WTSC 374 Appendix 2: Flowcharts from 2013 WTSC 379 Appendix 3: Kids Company definitions of risk levels 383 Appendix 4: Michael’s summary (24-years-old) 385 Appendix 5: David’s summary (23-years-old) 391 Appendix 6: The Voluntary Sector: A Poor Position For Exercising Influence 396 Appendix 7: Better Outcomes, New Delivery (BOND) 403 Appendix 8: Schools 405 Appendix 9: Glossary 409 2 The Centre for Social Justice about About the Centre for Social Justice The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) is an independent think-tank, established to put social justice at the heart of British politics. Moved by shocking levels of disadvantage across the nation, it studies the root causes of Britain’s acute social problems in partnership with its Alliance of over 350 grassroots charities and people affected by poverty. This enables the CSJ to find and promote evidence-based, experience-led solutions to change lives and transform communities. The CSJ believes that the surest way to reverse social breakdown – and the poverty it creates – is to build resilience within individuals, families and the innovative organisations able to help them. Child Protection And Statutory Mental Health | About the Centre for Social Justice 3 Enough is Enough © The Centre for Social Justice, 2014 Published by the Centre for Social Justice, 4th Floor, Victoria Charity Centre, 11 Belgrave Road, SW1V 1RB www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk @CSJthinktank ISBN: 978-0-9927085-7-3 Designed by Soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk 4 The Centre for Social Justice preface Preface In 2012 the CEO of Kids Company, Camila Batmanghelidjh, raised a number of serious concerns regarding child protection and statutory mental health provision for vulnerable children and young people with the CSJ. These concerns prompted us to embark on what has become one of the most detailed single reports that the CSJ has ever undertaken. Two years of research, over 70 interviews, many weeks of legal advice, and, most importantly, the experiences and views of some extremely vulnerable children and young people have gone into its making. At the centre of this work has been a detailed analysis of the cases of 20 vulnerable children and young people who have been supported by Kids Company. These provide a window on to the horrific challenges they have endured and the multiple barriers to statutory services that they have often faced. Their stories and the testimony of the experts we have consulted reveal a growing group of children and young people whose family lives have broken down or are in deep crisis, who are in desperate need of help and love but who are struggling to receive the necessary care and support of statutory services. As Camila explained to us, many are our country’s ‘lone children.’ We have heard of such children and young people cycling in and out of statutory services without receiving the sustained help they need; but for the extraordinary work of voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) like Kids Company, would be entirely without support. It is exceptionally important that, as a society, we find a way of helping these vulnerable children and young people; unless we do, the outlook is extremely bleak. As the CSJ has seen so often, just as the family breakdown, addiction and abuse experienced by vulnerable parents affects their children, so such vulnerable children are the parents of tomorrow. In some cases, they are the parents of today. The current Government has made huge efforts to improve child protection and social work. The Munro Review of child protection, the Narey Review of social work training, and the overhaul of adoption procedure, to name but a few, have made valuable contributions to the improvement of services and will, over time, help to rebuild lives. But as the Government would acknowledge, there is still much further to go. Child Protection And Statutory Mental Health | Preface 5 Our work has shown that some grave concerns remain. The quality of local authority services is obviously highly variable, but a number of themes have presented themselves both through the case studies and consultation with experts in the field that are clearly being felt in many parts of the country. In particular we have highlighted concerns about the effectiveness of some social work services, about their limited engagement with voluntary sector organisations, about the inaccessibility of some mental health services, and about the way in which the current legal framework is being subverted by some statutory services. Whilst services are operating in particularly tightened financial circumstances, the solution to the problems outlined here is not merely more money. Simply pouring additional resource into a dysfunctional system would not automatically produce the best results for our vulnerable children and young people. Instead it is time to consider a radical overhaul of how, when and by whom child protection and statutory mental health services are provided. None of this research would have been possible without either the huge and generous co-operation of Kids Company, the children and young people they work with, the experts and many witnesses who contributed to our Review, or the extraordinary exertions of the CSJ’s Senior Policy Specialist, Adele Eastman, who has, singlehandedly, pulled all this evidence together and written the report. Detailed though this report is, it is not, and could not have been, comprehensive. That would have required greater resources than any think tank has to offer. Yet such an understanding of the problem is urgently required – as are comprehensive solutions to it. These solutions are neither obvious nor easy. This is why we are calling on all political parties to commit to the establishment of a Royal Commission to advise on the wholesale redesign of social care and statutory mental health services for vulnerable children and young people, which should report by the end of 2017, and, most importantly, ask how best to recreate parental support for these children and young people in the public space. The campaigners of the late nineteenth century exposed the adversity faced by children orphaned and left destitute by slum life and cholera epidemics. Their efforts and campaigns led, over time, to renewed public responsibility for the vulnerable young in Britain’s burgeoning cities. The efforts and campaigns of their heirs can surely achieve the same today. Centre for Social Justice, June 2014 6 The Centre for Social Justice thanks Special thanks The CSJ would like to thank the many individuals and organisations who gave evidence to this Review and shaped its recommendations. The author would also like to extend her deep gratitude to the following, without whose support this report would not have been possible: The remarkable children and young people who so courageously, and with enormous trust, shared their experiences, in the hope of helping others. Camila Batmanghelidjh, who provided a critical window through which we were able to gain a more informed understanding of the devastating ‘childhoods’ survived by many vulnerable children and young people. Darren Howe, a barrister from 1 Garden Court chambers, whose contribution to this report, as one of its experts, has been boundless. The other experts who have also dedicated vast amounts of time, expertise and knowledge to our report, including Mitchell Woolf (solicitor at Scott-Moncrieff & Associates Ltd), Paul Patterson (Public Health Manager, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (BSMHFT)), Dr Karen Broadhurst (Senior Lecturer in Socio-Legal Studies, University of Manchester), a Senior Manager in a Children’s Services Department, and a Service Development Manager at BSMHFT. David Smellie and Henry Sainty, Partners at Farrer & Co LLP Solicitors, who so generously advised on various aspects of the report. Numerous individuals who shared their expertise and insight, including Dame Moira Gibb, Dame Clare Tickell, Isabelle Trowler, Tim Loughton MP, Andrew Webb, Jan Tallis, Angela Gascoigne, Dr Peter Fuggle, Dr KAH Mirza, the senior Forensic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services clinician, the experienced independent social work consultant and expert witness, Councillor Georgie Cooney, Chris Callender, Professor Corinne May-Chahal, Dr Zoe Cameron, Headteachers of special schools, and others who wish to remain anonymous.