Are Child Protection Conferences lawful proceedings? Charles Pragnell argues
that there are serious concerns regarding their legal basis and the procedures
and processes involved and whether they are conducted in a just and fair manner
in accordance with the principles of natural justice.
The statistics published by the Department of Education and Skills indicate that
in the year ending March 2004 there were 37,400 children and their families who
were subjected to Child Protection Case Conferences. These were cases in which a
social work assessment of 68,500 children had arrived at a supposition that the
allegation of abuse was ‘substantiated’. The fact that the cases of 31,100
children were unsubstantiated indicates a very high level of over-reporting of
child abuse and false allegations of abuse. It must also be considered that
`Substantiation’ by a social worker is a very low level of standard of
evidential proof.
General definitions of `substantiations’ and `Not substantiated’ are:
• `Substantiation’ – where there was reasonable cause to believe that the child
has been, was being, or was likely to be abused, neglected, or otherwise harmed.
Substantiation does not necessarily require sufficient evidence for a successful
prosecution and does not imply that treatment or case management was provided:
• `Not substantiated’ - where an investigation concluded that there was no
reasonable cause to suspect prior, current, or future abuse, neglect, or harm to
the child.
Note there is no mention in these definitions of obtaining factual evidence to
support the contention or otherwise of abuse or neglect or whether the
`evidence’ should meet standards of evidentiary proof of `a balance of
probabilities’ or being `clear and convincing’. There is also no requirement to
investigate the credibility of the person making the allegation of child abuse
or the veracity of the accusation or whether the accusations have been made for
mistaken, mischievous, malicious, or monetary reasons.
Following such `substantiations’ the next stage in the child protection process
is to hold a Child Protection Conference. Testamentary reports and statements by
parents and some professionals attending such Conferences, indicate that they
may in fact be little more than Kangaroo Courts.
Usually the principal professionals involved have held a secretive previous
meeting known as a `Strategy Meeting’ where the evidence they propose to submit
to the CP Conference is discussed and no doubt collusion and confirmatory bias
must be suspected. Parents are not invited to attend these Strategy Meetings and
are rarely informed about them or are able to obtain information regarding their
content or who attended.
Confirmatory bias can often occur and be merely based on delusional or extremist
religious beliefs or personal value judgements by individual professionals, such
as occurred in the Orkneys, Rochdale, Nottingham, the Isles of Lewis, where
allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse of children gained general acceptance
without factual proof and in Cleveland where a unproven medical theory of sexual
abuse of children was similarly given general acceptance with out challenge or
query. This confirmatory bias can often be seen in cases of False and Induced
Illness in Children [FII] which has no basis in scientifically-conducted medical
research but is widely accepted as a form of child abuse by many professionals,
despite their claims to `evidence-based practices’. Often the suggestion of FII
begins with a mere whisper by an inexperienced professional or para-professional
and then expands and grows exponentially and without being contested or
challenged as to its veracity or authenticity. This can be without malice or
intent by the professionals involved but they are unwittingly able to reinforce
each others incorrect suspicions, which then result in all the professionals
involved sincerely believing they have uncovered child abuse. This process of
confirmatory bias often involves initial hysteria, counter-transference,
transference, folie a deux, and groupthink. Where it involves a number of
families in a specific geographic area it leads to mass delusion and societal
hysteria particularly if the media are persuaded into accepting the versions of
events of the professionals involved.
Parents report that they often only receive the agenda and reports about an hour
before the commencement of the Conference, if at all. They are not permitted
legal representation or any form of advocacy on their behalf, even though they
are in an unfamiliar environment, they may lack skills of self-advocacy and
articulation or how to present their evidence. They report overt and covert
hostility by those present towards them, with little attempt to make them feel
they have a place in the Conference.
Often they are told that the `meeting’ is merely to hold a strictly confidential
discussion to explore the issues and that they will have an open-minded forum in
which to present their views. One parent was told the meeting was only and
`administrative’ meeting to discuss funding to support and assist the family but
found that they were ambushed and were faced with a barrage of pre-prepared
accusations of child abuse and the meeting ended with a judgement of abuse
against the parents and that the parents name would be `listed’ resulting in the
loss of a teaching career and permanent termination of contact by the parent
with the children and permanent denial of any information concerning the
education, health, and welfare of the children.
When the Conferences begin and individual representatives of the child
protection agencies present their reports – very often no attempt is made to
separate fact from opinion, innuendo or rumour and everything stated by agency
representatives is accepted as fact. There are no rules for the submission of
evidence, or careful examination as to its veracity, i.e. no rules and protocols
for the submission of evidence, no standards of evidential proof and
suspicion/opinion being paramount, evidence discussed and decided on by
pre-meetings of professionals (so-called Strategy meetings), parents denied
legal advice/representation, parents often denied sight of the evidence
presented against them, rules of conduct for CPC meetings completely ignored,
the evidence and views of opposing professionals disregarded, hearsay evidence
presented by some professionals who have no knowledge of the family, and final
decisions to place a child's name on the At Risk Register (and thereby labelling
the parent as an abuser with all of the social implications and stigmatisation)
taken by one legally untrained person. (Although euphemistically they are
claimed to be `the decision of the meeting').
One parent describes an Initial CPC Meeting and Review CPC Meetings as follows:
“The `Independent’ Chairman of the CPC was relatively scruffy, grumpy, quite
bullying off-record (there was a great deal more unminuted gloves off oral
boxing after the formal minuted meeting than in the formal part.) at which he
was prone to fly into an aggressive rage against me. In contrast the chairman of
the Review CPC’s was extremely controlling of content and always turned up
suave, clean shaven, immaculately dressed and completely unflappable and with an
initial unpublicised agenda of his own which he was clearly determined to force
through the meeting. He behaved exactly like a Welsh hellfire-and-brimstone
preacher and was totally domineering and completely unimpressed by any logical
argument whatsoever, and seemed obsessed with Satanic Ritual Abuse and sought to
distort innocent events into indications of abuse, including satanic ritual
abuse.
The CPC’s became totally dysfunctional. Some were boycotted by other
professionals and many of them broke up in disarray because of serious disputes
between this Chairman and the other professionals who were present. Some of the
professionals left the meetings in disgust and anger, as the Chairman was
constantly trying to over-rule the opinions and evidence of the professionals or
circumvent legal rulings. Eventually he had to de-list the children because he
could no longer get a quorum. All the attendees at the Review CPC’s refused to
disclose their names, merely stating their affiliations such as “Education”, or
“Health”. They could have been Ku Klux Klan in regalia or members of the Spanish
Inquisition for all I knew. Often the same professionals were replaced by others
from their agencies at subsequent meetings and they had little if any knowledge
of what had gone before and had no personal knowledge of the child or the
family.”
Many of the professionals and para-professionals attending CPC meetings seem
often not to understand what they are undertaking or its legal status or the
intense and widespread consequences for the child and family of a false positive
finding and that their decisions, can have immediate and devastating effects.
A parent reports that;
“They seemed more terrified about the remote possibility that the child might
die or come to serious harm if they did not place the child’s name on the At
Risk register with severe recriminations if they decided not to do so, rather
than consider the more likely probability that there had been no abuse nor risk
of it. The professionals attending were often not experts in their respective
fields and had little knowledge of risk assessment processes e.g. nursery nurse,
teacher, police constable, health visitor. They were prone to being
overwhelmingly influenced by the opinions of more expert professionals such as
paediatricians and senior social work managers. This abject fear and terror by
the professionals that they could not take any risk of being wrong and
subsequently being pilloried if they failed to place the child’s name on the
Register, pervaded every meeting”
In effect parents are convicted by these CPC’s and see themselves as such, yet
have not had the protections of a fair and just trial.
It is in these CPC meetings where the greatest harm and the most travesties of
natural justice are committed against children and parents which are then often
subsequently transferred into the civil and criminal court settings.
If a child is placed on the `At Risk’ Register by a Child Protection Conference
then one of the principal and most important outcomes is that a `Keyworker’ is
appointed (usually a social worker) and a Core Group. Their duties and
responsibilities are to provide support and assistance to the child and to the
family, marshalling and mobilising resources to provide support for the child
ands family, and in doing so to monitor the health and welfare of the child, but
parents report that this extremely rarely happens. Many parents report that even
where their child has been on the `At Risk’ Register for two years, they have
never seen or heard from neither a Keyworker nor any members of the Core Group.
Child Protection Case Conferences are administrative, and arguably quasi-legal,
proceedings and as such are subject to the principles of European law and to the
principles of `Natural Justice’ in British law.
Where in such CPC proceedings is there natural justice, when the evidence which
is submitted by the professionals and para-professionals involved, is not tested
and cannot be contested? As long as they continue to exist they are a serious
blight on the British system of justice and fair play.
And the final injustice for parents, whose lives are devastated by this chaotic
system, is that they are denied any redress in criminal or civil law against
those who falsely accuse them or whose decisions are seriously flawed.
ByCharles
Pragnell
August 8, 2006
Diploma in Social Work and Letter of Recognition in Child Care
Expert Witness – Child Protection
and Social Care Consultant
and Child/Family Advocate.
