Two in five practitioners believe families are being subjected to “intrusive child protection enquiries” due to a risk-averse culture, a poll has found.
The concerns follow the Department for Education’s latest children’s social care statistics, which showed that the number of child protection enquiries reached a record high last year, but significant harm was found in less than a third of cases.
The findings reflect longstanding concerns, highlighted by Josh MacAlister’s 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, about councils over-investigating families and insufficiently supporting them.
Around 40% of 1,086 practitioners responding to a recent Community Care poll called the DfE data “concerning”, on the grounds that it showed “too many families are drawn into intrusive enquiries due to a risk-averse culture”.
Their views echo charity Family Rights Group’s response to the findings, which warned many families were being “dragged unnecessarily into an intrusive system”.
However, a comparably sized group (38%) said the data did not provide enough context to draw firm conclusions about social work practice on the ground.
A further 20% took the opposite view to the first group, seeing the record number of enquiries as a positive sign, on the basis that every concern about a child’s safety warranted a “thorough investigation”.
An 'oppressively interventionist' system
In the comments under the related article, some practitioners expressed concern about the current child protection system being overly intrusive.
David called the system “oppressively interventionist”, while Lola, a child protection social worker for over a decade, said families were frequently subjected to “unnecessary” child protection processes, driven by “professional anxiety and risk-aversion”.
“The current child protection framework feels outdated and reactive,” she added.
“Too often, we intervene too quickly in families’ lives while being unable to offer meaningful services or support due to significant financial cuts to local authorities and community resources.”
‘Statistics is not analysis’
Another practitioner agreed that the system was "punitive and intervenes too easily in family life", but stressed that this was not borne out by the DfE's data.
“The threshold of evidence [needed] is necessarily lesser for investigating whether a child is suffering significant harm than it is for asserting that they are, and the inevitable consequence of this is enquiries will outnumber plans,” they added.
“How do we know that a decrease in the number [of cases] that progress to a conference is not instead a reflection of local authorities attempting to manage down the number of child protection plans they have, given how resource-heavy they are? Statistics is not analysis.”
Another practitioner agreed that the section 47 figures “do not tell the full picture”.
Section 47 enquiries can be done ‘with sensitivity’
However, not all practitioners agreed that the high number of enquiries indicated an overly intrusive system.
Children’s social worker Liz F argued that relationship-based practice could ensure that section 47 investigations do not feel invasive.
“On average I have at least one section 47 a week. [It] can be done [with] sensitivity and there is not an argument [that] this is invasive and unnecessary when workers have good skills and can work well with families.”
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