In the article regarding the Joint Targeted
Area Inspection, completed by OfSTED, the CQC, HMI Constabulary and HMI
Probation, and published May 2016. The
findings into Oxford Social Services was almost damning (but not quite).
However, it did state some stark failings by
Oxford Social Workers, that more and more I see through news reports and on
speaking with other families.
Oxford Social Services fail to record
meetings! They have no actions and no
minutes and the fail to record on file where inaccuracies have been used as fact.
“Recording of
discussions and actions agreed at some multi-agency strategy meetings to
determine the best way to investigate concerns and to protect children are not
consistently robust or sufficiently comprehensive. Resulting action plans do
not routinely identify named individuals to complete specific actions, or expected
timescales. Some strategy meetings were not timely and key information from
partner agencies was not consistently used to inform decision-making processes.
In some cases, meetings were only held once it was recognised that concerns
about a child’s safety were a partnership issue. This meant that cases,
including cases of sexual exploitation, continued to be supported by a single
agency when the threshold had been reached for multi-agency intervention. As a
result, some young people did not receive the full range of services that they
needed.”
What
is also apparent is that inaccuracies are recorded as fact and no attempt to
correct this information is made, WHY?
Commenting on a separate case from Essex Andrew
Pack, a local authority solicitor in the south-east of England and a blogger on legal matters writes, “not only had the
foster carer shouted at the mother and racially abused her, but she lied about
it in her notes and made up an allegation that it had been the mother who
behaved badly towards her.”
The Health and Care Professions Council has just
suspended a social worker in Derby for lying to colleagues about a woman
she falsely alleged had threatened to burn down her house with her children
inside. The children were removed after an emergency hearing, with the mother
given no opportunity to hear or challenge the evidence.
In
another case last year, an Essex county council social worker was struck off for creating a false statutory
assessment for a child’s grandmother to provide care, which was later presented
in court.
Distortions,
dishonesty and mistrust are leading to an increasing number of parents opting
to film or record – either overtly or covertly – their meetings with foster
carers or child protection social workers. Annie Johnson, who has extensive
experience of care proceedings after suffering a mental breakdown, explains how
things can go wrong. “You’ve perhaps asked for help, you’re struggling with a
child’s behaviour or with an abusive partner, and then [social workers] come
out and start asking you how often you wash your towels, they look in your fridge,
and at any point during these interactions you can say something and it’s taken
the wrong way, and you only find out later when it’s written in a report.”
So we continue our fight to prove our case and
get our children back, but also to get justice for born 1 August 1999 who died
whilst under the case of Oxford Social Services.
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