007: Human Rights and Decision Making

It's time we learnt from the lessons of previous failures.

Hello there,

Welcome to the first post of Practice Reflections for 2025. I hope whatever you decided to do this festive season, that you are rested and looking forward to another year of supporting people to live lives free from harm.

There has been a little flurry of new subscribers over the festive season. If you are one of those recently signed up, welcome. Thank you, I really do appreciate it. Each fortnight, I share an article of interest which I have come across. I offer my reflections as a Safeguarding professional on how the article will influence my practice. When I share research, this will be from Open Access sources meaning that it won’t cost anything to download and read.

Now, I feel I need to highlight that I am not an academic nor am I a researcher. I am just a Social Worker who is offering my personal/professional reflections on the papers I read.

I want to demystify CPD for safeguarding practitioners. I want to show that it is possible to take an active interest in research and explore how it might impact my practice. That is why I am developing the Safeguarding CPD Community.

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Research Spotlight - Human Rights and Decision Making

I subscribe to several newsletters, but by far the most useful and valuable is the Social Work Links and Learning Newsletter from Victoria Hart. This newsletter is the one that I always return to and check out because there are so many links relevant to the Social Work profession. And it was the last post which alerted me to a really important blog post which I wanted to highlight in this newsletter.

This week I was to explore my reflections about Ella’s Human Rights Claim and the very important lessons for the Social Work sector. I came across George Julian’s blog post over the festive period and spent time with hot cups of tea reading about Ella and quickly decided that I needed share it here in this newsletter.

Ella is an 18 year old adult who was at the centre of an Article 8 Human Rights claim against a Local Authority in England. Article 8 of the Human Rights Act relates to every single person’s right to respect for Family and Private lives and correspondence.

Article 8 protects your right to respect for your private life, your family life, your home and your correspondence (letters, telephone calls and emails, for example). - equalityhumanrights.com

The work we complete within Safeguarding almost always involves an element of interacting with someone’s Article 8 rights. I recently attended a Clinical Leadership course which focused on how the work we do requires practitioners to have a clear understanding about how everything we do needs to be based in line with what Legislation stipulates.

George Julian has written an excellent post outlining the facts which are known and includes a critique of actions taken by the Local Authority Children’s Social Care team in relation to Safeguarding concerns, which were raised when Ella was just 11 years old.

Ella has WAGR Syndrome, an extremely rare disorder, is DeafBlind and has Learning Disabilities. She needed intensive support and the Local Authority was ordered by the SEND Tribunal (the fact the Local Authority had to be Ordered to do this, is probably worthy of its own reflective post) to provide a bespoke package of support during waking hours with fully trained practitioners who could meet Ella’s needs.

I was keen to read around the actions of the Local Authority when Ella was taken to hospital with life-threatening pneumonia at the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020. Her parents had taken her to hospital following advice from a 999 clinician. This was the first admission due to respiratory difficulties in over a decade.

Two days into the admission, a Local Authority Social Worker and the Paediatrician held a Strategy Discussion following concerns raised by staff about concerning behaviour from Ella’s mother, Elly. Following the discussion, an Initial Child Protection Conference was convened and it would seem that the main concern was that Ella’s parents had not sought medical attention for Ella soon enough, even though there was evidence that they had sought advice from the GP several times the day she was admitted and had also sought advice from 999 and followed all the advice which was given.

There is Statutory Guidance for Child Safeguarding processes called Working Together to Safeguard Children. This was updated in 2023, however, at the time there was an earlier version which outlines the focus of Child Protection conferences.

The 2018 document advised that the purpose of an Initial Child Protection Conference is to:

To bring together and analyse, in an inter-agency setting, all relevant

information and plan how best to safeguard and promote the welfare of the

child. It is the responsibility of the conference to make recommendations on

how organisations and agencies work together to safeguard the child in

future. - Working Together to Safeguard Children, 2018.

This is important to remember because the outcome of the meeting was a decision that Ella was not at risk of significant harm, but that support should be put in place in the form of a Child in Need plan.

This should have been the end of the ordeal for Ella’s family.

However, the following day, a member of Ella’s support team contacted Children’s Services with concerns about Ella’s mother. This particular member of staff had been subject of disciplinary processes in relation to a safeguarding matter and they had handed their notice in just one week after Ella was admitted to hospital.

What followed was a series of completely shocking events.

The Social Worker took the concerns from the ex-member of staff and a further Child Protection Conference was convened which concluded that Care Proceedings should be considered by the Local Authority. There was no investigation to test the claim made by this ex-member of staff.

The Local Authority refused to continue paying for the support (which they had been previously Ordered to provide) on the basis that their insurance wouldn’t cover them given the concerns raised (still with no real assessment of risk completed). Ella was discharged home, and an emergency health care plan was put in place. While Ella was waiting to be discharged from hospital, her mother was notified that she and Ella’s siblings had to leave the family home. On the same day, the Local Authority initiated immediate Care Proceedings.

Although the letter sent to Ella’s parents stated that they (the Local Authority) had been clear about the concerns in the Initial Child Protection Conference and had tried to work with them to reduce the risks, the Local Authority were unable to identify any work which had been completed.

Even when Ella’s mother and the Human Resource Manager for the Care Package that Ella received highlighted concerns about the staff member who had raised the concerns, the Social Worker never followed up with the agreed actions.

The family had to participate in Care Proceedings for a further 5 months until the Local Authority held an internal discussion, which concluded that the threshold for Care Proceedings was no longer met.

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Reflections

I should first highlight that George Julian’s original post provides a much more detailed overview of the events which happened, including the impact this had on Ella. She has also covered a longer time span of events and explores the impact of parental blame. I would wholly recommend reading the original post in detail. However, the above points are the parts which I want to offer reflections on as I was able to consider my own practice as a Social Worker who was once employed in children’s safeguarding roles.

I am always keen to understand the context of decisions which were made when reviewing records in my current role. However, from the details shared in this article, it seems that, for whatever reason, professional curiosity and an understanding of requirements within legislation and policy were not considered. We don’t know what the Social Worker was trying to manage at the time the decisions were made but this is not an excuse to not fully explore and test the evidence when making decisions.

I cannot help but feel angry for Ella and her family at this lack of proper diligence and process, which led to the family experiencing infringements of their Human Rights. This series of events reminds me of the importance of stopping and thinking before making decisions. And that can be hard in a high-pressure environment like a children’s safeguarding team. Safeguarding is emotive, and regardless of what role you play within this type of work, there are always significant consequences to the decisions we make daily.

I am conscious that the evidential threshold within safeguarding work is lower than the criminal threshold. As practitioners, we don’t have to provide evidence beyond all reasonable doubt but instead need to consider whether, on the balance of probabilities, something has happened (or is at risk of happening). Once we have established this, there is always a golden thread of proportionality which should run through our responses.

There are, of course, times when we do have to interfere with an individual’s Article 8 rights. For example, when we are protecting another person’s Article 2 or 3 rights (the right to life or freedom from torture or inhumane treatment), it is appropriate to step into potential infringement of someone’s right to respect for family life. However, what we do must be proportionate to the assessed risks. It is not ok to just accept information as fact. We have to test the evidence, triangulate and corroborate with others.

I am also interested to know what the Social Worker’s supervision experience was. How often were they receiving reflective supervision, which explored the dynamics of Ella and her family’s situation? Were there opportunities to consider alternate solutions? Did the Social Worker feel psychologically safe to explore all the possible options? I regularly provide Safeguarding Supervision to clinical staff, and something that people feedback is that they value the safe space in a non-judgmental environment to allow personal reflection of different situations and scenarios.

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What Next

This subject has brought up lots of questions for me professionally. It is the first edition of the year, and it feels like a good time to reflect on processes which we engage in daily. Asking ourselves questions about the legitimacy of the evidence which is provided.

I want this newsletter to provide value to people and offer insights that help you as a practitioner to consider your own practice. One thing we often see in Practice Reviews for both Safeguarding Children and Adults is that practitioners need a space to reflect and consider how their practice is going to change. This can be done in any number of ways, and over the festive period I have been thinking about how we as a community can start to consider the wider impact on practice.

So, as this newsletter will now be published every fortnight with a focus on each edition alternating between Children and Adult Safeguarding matters, I will also be arranging a Peer Reflection session to accompany each newsletter edition.

I will be holding a Peer Reflection session on 22nd January at 6:30pm. If you would like to attend, check out the link below. I am limiting this to 25 spaces initially. However, if more people want to attend, I will host a second date. I think that a small group is more beneficial to enable participation.

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That’s the end of this first post of 2025. I hope you have enjoyed it or found value in the reflections.

Can I please ask that if you did find value in what I have written, can you please share this amongst your colleagues and within your networks? You can either forward it by email, or click the link below to share to Social Media.

If you want to connect or discuss this newsletter with me directly, you are more than welcome to reply to this email and I will reply back. Or, ir you want a natter over a cuppa, book a 30min discussion by following clicking here.

Remember, no matter how hard things get, you are amazing and do wonderful things each and every single day. The fact you have got this far into this newsletter is proof you are dedicated and committed to making the world a better place for people.

The next Practice Reflections newsletter will be delivered to your inbox on 16th January.

Thank you.

Until next time,

Take Care.

Anthony

New for 2025 - Work with me 1:1 for your Safeguarding Supervision Needs. If you would like to have either a one-off Safeguarding Supervision session, or book a regular slot, check out my availability below