CHILD ABUSE - "HIDDEN CHILD VICTIMS OF OUR "CARE SYSTEM"

Arguably the most remarkable speech in the Commons last week, though almost wholly unreported, was by Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale. It was made in the course of an otherwise wholly unremarkable debate on a vast new set of Government guidelines for professionals in our “child protection” system, which urges, inter alia, that they must be quicker to intervene in the lives of families who have come to their attention.

Mr Danczuk recounted how he had looked into the story behind a case which made the headlines last month, when nine men from his constituency, or nearby, were convicted of the prolonged physical and sexual abuse of a number of teenage girls. All the victims of these outrages had been known to social services, and several of the girls involved in the investigation were in council care.

Mr Danczuk described how he had been visited by two health workers involved in the case, who said that the social workers had not intervened because they “believed that the girls had been making life choices, which is why they were seen as prostitutes”. One 13-year-old girl had actually asked to be taken into “secure care to escape from the abuse”, but social services refused, saying that “she was too disruptive and that it would cost too much”.

One of the most horrifying things that I have found, in my own investigations of our “child protection” system, is how frequently children taken into care appear to become victims of abuse, neglect and emotional harm far worse than any they might have suffered from the parents from whom, with the blessing of the courts, they have been removed.

There is abundant published evidence, not least in the US, where the “child protection” system is often as flawed as our own, to show that the “outcomes” for children placed in care homes or foster care – although of course there are shining exceptions – can often be horrendous. Of course, many children taken into care may already have been damaged by their dysfunctional families. But statistics show, for instance, that 50 per cent of the prostitutes in Britain came through the care system; and more than half the adults in our prisons likewise. To cite a couple of further indicators: 80 per cent of Big Issue sellers grew up in care; and only 9 per cent of children in care go to university, compared with 47 per cent of young people as a whole.

When Mr Danczuk exposed, in his speech, just a tiny corner of what is going on in our care system, it was noticeable that none of the other MPs who spoke in the debate – including two ministers, Tim Loughton and Sarah Teather – picked up on the horrifying picture he had painted, nor made any serious criticism of how tragically our system is failing. Their only concern, it seemed, was to speed up the way our social workers are using their powers, without ever questioning how those powers are being abused.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9335420/Crime-on-the-high-seas-committed-for-decades-by-the-EUs-Common-Fisheries-Policy.html