This is part of our safeguarding insights section. Our aim is to provide you with a broader understanding of a specific topic through a researched and referenced article that contributes towards your professional development and ensures that you can support your staff accordingly.
| 20 minute read | DSLs and Safeguarding Teams |
Introduction
The sentencing in Coventry Crown Court of Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes on the 3rd December 2021 served was the culmination of a significant court case which set out the tragic and horrendous treatment of a six year old boy by his father and father’s partner. In his sentencing remarks Mr. Justice Wall identified the case as “one of the most distressing and disturbing case [sic] with which I have had to deal.”
The response to the case has been rapid and significant, with the government announcing a “major review into the circumstances leading up to murder of Arthur” in order “to determine what improvements are needed by the agencies that came into contact with him in the months before he died.” This local review will be supplemented by a national review to look at lessons that can be learnt. What happened to Arthur and the wider issues that it raises was also subject to a debate in the House of Commons during which the MP for Harlow and Chair of the Education Committee, Robert Halfon, stated:
As I understand it, Arthur was not in school—he had been kept at home by his father—when this tragedy happened. My right hon. friend the Secretary of State will know that, putting aside the 200,000 children sent home because of covid, who are known about by the school system, there are another 100,000 ghost children, as I call them, who are lost in the system. They not returned to school for the most part, and are potentially subject to safeguarding hazards—county lines gangs, online harms and, of course, awful domestic abuse. (Hansard, 2021)
Amanda Spielman picks up on this in her opening remarks for the Ofsted 2020/21 Annual Report, succinctly stating that due to the pandemic “Many vulnerable children disappeared from teachers’ line of sight.” (p.7) The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, adds a note of caution reminding us that the issue of children who are persistently absent from education was already present prior to the pandemic, with the pandemic serving to increase the size of this cohort. . De Souza goes on to highlight that in many cases the rationale for the persistent absence is not clearly understood, stressing that “the issue of increased pupil absence during the pandemic should not be simplistically conflated with the tragic and extreme case of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes.”
Arthur
To understand what is being discussed here, and why De Souza feels what happened to Arthur cannot be conflated with the issues that the wider cohort may face, we need to briefly consider what happened to Arthur.
Born in January 2014, Arthur’s parents separated when he was one and Arthur remained in his mother’s care until she was arrested for (and subsequently convicted of) fatally stabbing her then partner with a kitchen knife. When on trial the court reportedly heard that the couple had met on an alcohol awareness course, with ongoing alcohol misuse and mental health issues and their relationship being categorised by violence towards each other, with Arthur ending up “cowering under the covers” on one occasion.
When his mother was arrested Arthur’s care was taken on by his father, and it was around this time that Arthur started formal education (February 2019). It is suggested that not long after Arthur’s father, Thomas, met Emma Tustin through a dating site. Court records note that Arthur was initially told that his mother had joined the army before later being told that she had been sent to prison. Between February 2019 and the first lockdown in April 2020 Arthur’s presentation in school changed from a settled, happy child to one who was reserved, anxious and ‘not quite as smiley’ (this appearing to correlate with when he was told that his mother was in prison). Concerns reportedly escalated in January 2020 due to Arthur’s behaviour and there was increased contact between the school and the family. On the 23rd March 2020 the first lockdown was implemented and Arthur joined the majority of the school age population in being educated remotely.
During the first lockdown, Arthur’s grandmother raises concerns with the local Children’s Services, but when followed up by the school on return from the Easter holidays the DSL is told that Children’s Services have no concerns and there would be no further action. The school aimed to make weekly contact with Arthur, some contact more successful than others.
The school re-opened to all pupils on the 8th June 2020 but Arthur never returned and he died in hospital 9 days later.
Case by case approach
Even prior to starting school, Arthur had experienced several adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) including domestic violence, drug and alcohol misuse and family mental health issues. Traditionally these were known as the toxic trio, the phrase coming about following a 2012 analysis of 139 Serious Case Reviews by Brandon et al. which showed that in over 75% of incidents where children were seriously harmed or died, one or more of the trio was present. (More recently however there has been moves to reduce the focus on these three areas, with a 2021 article in Community Care suggesting for a number of reasons that academic research had shown “an alarmingly weak evidence base” for the emphasis on the toxic trio.) Regardless of the badge that is applied and the focus that is given, as identified by Collingwood et al. (2018) early life experiences are crucial with positive experiences contributing to a deposit in the “wellbeing bank” and stressful experiences representing withdrawals from the bank. He had also experienced parental separation as well as parental imprisonment.
Whilst his early childhood experiences are not directly attributed to the death of Arthur, they would have therefore impacted on his understanding of the world, his interactions with others and his ability to respond to stressful situations. With hindsight and the associated knowledge of his short life, this could then be arguably seen as contributing to his changing behaviours over the course of the year that he was in school regularly.
Going into the first national lockdown therefore, Arthur was already at a disadvantage without even considering the impact of his father’s relationship with Emma Tustin. This disadvantage was not necessarily quantifiable – for example unless the police had been called to the home address no professionals may have been aware of the domestic abuse in his mother’s relationships or the drug and alcohol misuse by Arthur’s mother – and even if it were quantifiable, the resultant impact on the child is different for each child.
On top of this is then the impact of the relationship between his father and Emma which we now know singled out Arthur for further isolation and discrimination in the home as well as the impact of being in lockdown. As with many settings, decisions had to made in a very short timeframe about how to support swathes of children that were no longer coming in on a daily basis. For some children the decision was an easy one, for example if they were on open to Children’s Social Care, for some children it could be reliably determined that there only needed to be the cursory check every so often. In the middle of these two end groups were those children who were potentially vulnerable, but not enough so to warrant formal intervention.
This, along with lack of government guidance led to disparities in service for this middle cohort. Clayton, Clayton and Potter (undated) in written evidence to a parliamentary committee identify that:
- There was little consistency between schools concerning how much contact was made between the schools and the lockdown families. Some schools had regular contact with the pupils including daily video conferencing. Other schools were in contact as little as once a week via email. (p.5)
- For families who had additional support needs, there was a general lack of support during the initial weeks of lockdown. Families perceived that they were expected to be able to manage. (p.7)
In Arthur’s case, contact was attempted with the family on a weekly basis, but on the occasions where there was contact, father generally reported a good state of affairs with the occasional issue, but nothing that on the information available would have triggered alarm bells. It is this then that encapsulates the problems that settings have faced around the country with the key question being what level of contact is the right level? In Arthur’s case would increased contact with the family have identified anything different? Coupled with this is also the question of what contact with the family looks like – does it involve seeing the child and speaking to the child? If the child was with you then time could be made to have a one-to-one talk with the child and hear their voice, hear what their day-to-day life is like, understand what it is like to be in their shoes. But how does that happen over a virtual platform – for example if you can speak to the child, are they really alone in the room or are the answers that they are providing being orchestrated? For Arthur, would this have been considered necessary? As reported by the Daily Mail, Arthur’s grandmother had referred to Children’s Services which had led to a social worker visiting. When the school followed this up, they were reportedly told that “they'd seen Arthur and that the injuries were from boisterous play.”
Lived experience
A theme of many serious case reviews is about understanding the lived experience of the child – a quick search of the summaries of case reviews published in 2021 and added to the National Case Review Repository shows that six mention the need to have greater understanding of the child’s lived experience. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Safeguarding Children Partnership Board highlight that lived experience is more than just hearing the voice of the child:
The ‘lived experience of the child is; ‘What a child sees, hears, thinks and experiences on a daily basis that impacts on their personal development and welfare whether that be physically or emotionally. As practitioners we need to; actively hear what the child has to say or communicate, observe what they do in different contexts, hear what family members, significant adults/carers and professionals have said about the child, and to think about history and context. Ultimately we need to put ourselves in that child’s shoes and think ‘what is life like for this child right now?’
We all interpret the world around us on a continuous basis – it is part of our in-built protection mechanisms. At its most basic level it determines how we respond to any given situation, commonly referred to as fight (responding aggressively), flight (running away from the threat), freeze (unable to do anything to move away or react to the threat) or fawn (immediately attempt to try to please the aggressor to avoid the conflict). In doing this we draw on many areas – our experiences to date of similar situations, our perception of how successful we have been in previous situations using each of the responses, as well drawing on the emotional reserves that we have available, the wellbeing bank referred to earlier. For some children however the responses are potentially skewed due to deficits in one or a number of areas, and it is therefore understanding this that leads us to understand what life is like for any child at the moment.
This approach is reinforced by the results from a survey of over half a million children and young people aged 4-17 published in September 2021 by the Children’s Commissioner. The survey found that “children were united – they want the same things. Simply, children value a society where all can succeed.” (p.9). Whilst the survey found that 80% of 9-17-year-olds and 95% of 6-8-year-olds were happy with their family life, “where children were unhappy with their family life, they were 9 times more likely to be unhappy with their life overall, and 70% of them were unhappy with their mental health.” (p.13) Therefore, when things are not going well there is a significant impact on their life as a whole with this then impacting on every aspect of daily living.
So how do we determine lived experience? Crucial to this is listening to the child, but it is also about asking the right questions. The Scottish Government, through their Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) program, encapsulate the areas that we can think about when looking at what we should be asking in the following model:
This model builds on the Framework for Assessment (National Archives link) which, although no longer actively promoted by central government has formed the basis of assessment work undertaken by Children’s Social Care in England and Wales for a number of years. Many of us will be familiar with the model through many threshold documents across the country using the same domains and subheadings when helping you quantify where your concerns sit and what the response should be.
A significant criticism of the Framework for Assessment and subsequent iterations (e.g. the Common Assessment Framework) was the way in which it broke everything down descriptive block, with critics arguing that this led to a loss of narrative (e.g. White, Hall and Peckover, 2008), or to put it another way, the loss of overall picture of what the lived experience of the child is. The Scottish model however replaces arguably jargonistic terms such as developmental needs, parenting capacity, family and environmental factors, with more child focussed terminology. Contextual safeguarding is key to this – what else do we know about the child or young person, and what can we use, who can we talk to, to triangulate the information (in the same way that Ofsted inspectors for example will triangulate evidence to form a single view)?
The GIRFEC program has also developed a Wellbeing Wheel, allowing us to think about the different areas that a child needs to grow and develop, or as the program phrases it to get the “best start in life: ready to succeed”.
Children missing education
As we highlighted earlier, Dame de Souza is right to argue that the experiences of Arthur should not be conflated with increased pupil absence as a result of the pandemic. What we know of Arthur does however highlight the need to understand what is happening not only for children and young people who have not returned to your setting after lockdown, or start to have periods of extended absences due to the ongoing waves due to mutations of the virus, but also for children and young people who are persistently absent from education.
For such children and young people, potential threats and challenges can come from within the home as well as from external factors. We know that in the lockdowns loneliness increased, domestic abuse increased, alcohol and drug misuse increased and numbers of people experiencing mental ill health increased. We also know that poverty and homelessness have increased as a result of the pandemic.
Outside of the home, exploiters adapted and changed their approach to utilise the increased use of the internet by whole populations. Such ability to adapt should not come as a surprise. If we look at the issue of exploitation, in 2011, Barnardos issued a report around the sexual exploitation of children. Titled “Puppet on a string” this report looked at the issue of sexual exploitation and the way in which it is was organised and executed, quoting one of their managers who stated:
Child sexual exploitation appears to be far more organised, more carefully planned and executed now. We regularly find girls who are from totally different areas of the city, different schools, who know each other well. After some investigation it usually transpires that they share the same ‘boyfriends’. This is a frightening development as it appears that these ‘boyfriends’ or perpetrators are no longer satisfied with abusing one young person at a time – they are working with groups of girls or boys on a much wider scale.
The process [of grooming] has become so sophisticated, such a complex network, there is no doubt in my mind that the people who perpetrate this are extremely calculating, practised criminals. Grooming is the initial stage, taking grooming out through a network of friends or peers is a whole new level. One perpetrator can recruit a group of vulnerable children who can then be abused or even internally trafficked. It sounds far-fetched, but we know it is happening. (p.9)
In the intervening ten years since its publication our knowledge of child sexual exploitation has expanded significantly, and we have come to understand that some of the issues being highlighted as far-fetched are more routine than we cared to realise. We have also become more aware of the wider issue of child criminal exploitation which includes issues such as county lines, money mules and modern slavery.
One of the key areas of vulnerability is engagement with school and interaction with peers. For children and young people who feel excluded from the system, their narrative is then likely to become one of rejection, with the impact of lockdowns and isolation further amplifying the issues they are facing, in turn meaning that they are more vulnerable to others who are reportedly offering companionship and support.
A significant proportion of children and young people who are disengaged with the education system often have additional needs, for example mental health issues or learning needs that impact on their ability to access the curriculum in the “normal” way – something that will alter their narrative further. A quote from the Children’s Commissioner’s survey highlights this point:
I have been out of school for a very long time, and I don’t see friends…it can be really lonely. I don’t think people always understand autism and it’s hard to fit in. I need an education so I can get a good job, but I am stuck…” – Girl, 16, not in education.
The challenge is therefore to understand the narrative, the lived experience of the child’s life – in this case what is it like not to fit in, what does she see “fitting in” as looking like, what does she feel the impact of her autism is, what would it take to “unstick” her?
So what do we do?
As part of the continuing national response to coronavirus we are likely to see ongoing absences, both authorised and unauthorised, and children and / or parents who are reluctant for their child to return. We must also ensure that those who we already know to be persistent non-attenders do not drop off our radar or become subsumed in the wider issues of managing the settings response.
As set out in this insight, there are two key cohorts to identify:
- Those who are persistent non-attenders.
- Those who are likely to experience increased vulnerability if they are absent due to coronavirus related events.
The first cohort may well be the easier grouping to identify as this can be sourced from information such as attendance data. The second group, which would include children like Arthur, are inherently more difficult to categorise. In my experience working in initial contact teams, a multi-agency safeguarding hub and more latterly out of hours services, there is the tacit acknowledgement that prior to the summer holidays referrals increase and usually this is where children and young people have been “held” and monitored by their settings over the course of the academic year, but the dearth of professional involvement over the summer means that these children will not be seen or supported. Arguably it is these children and young people that we need to initially focus on – the ones who do not necessarily stand out as needing multi-agency support but during the course of the week often need additional support or a check-in with. This cohort could also include children and young people who do not stand out for any reason (e.g. they are not high fliers or struggling and not involved with any external agencies, not attracting specific attention).
With both cohorts we need to think about what we know already – settings will often have a wealth of information, what the Police may class as “soft intelligence”, the information that her not necessarily been formally recorded anywhere as it does not need to be, but staff will know of. This all provides the starting point for thinking about the lived experience of the child, providing the beginnings of an insight into what life is like for them. Using this information we can then start to think about the sorts of questions we can ask to elicit information that will help to form the bigger picture and then, from there, develop a clearer understanding of those who need more intervention and those we are less worried about. It is often the process that we follow on a daily basis, but the cohorts of children and young people are different.
It is the process of quantifying information that is inherently difficult, and over the years there have been a number of terms for this including hypothesising, professional curiosity and respectful uncertainty to name a few. As we train all staff, the process is a conscious one looking at what you are seeing and what you are hearing and having time to reflect. It is also about remembering that this is not a one time only process, but one that needs revisiting on a regular basis to look at what is new and challenge previous assumptions.
Finally, we need to find a way of recording our thought processes and any rationale for action taken or not taken so that should there be a need to revisit a specific decision in the future the notes provide the insight into what was happening at the time.
