The Arthur Labinjo-Hughes case has brought into stark focus the strain that services in this country are under. There has been a steady dismantling of children's services through underfunding, staff cuts and removal of resources in my time in teaching. These have been political decisions and anybody trying to argue otherwise are blind to the facts.
I worked in a school that managed a Sure Start Children's Centre. In 2015, the local authority had to pretty much remove all children's centres due to funding. I can remember thinking at the time, this may save money now, but ultimately it is a false economy as the number of referrals to social care will increase and more children will be put at risk. The government at the time (the coalition) quite rightly said that they did not make the decision to remove children's centre - this was a local decision. However, this was very disingenuous of them. They massively cut local authority spending, resulting the local councils barely having enough cash to cover statutory services, let alone additional extras. This has dwindled further so that even statutory services are not being provided adequately.
Over the weekend, the DfE released a press release, which can be read here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-action-following-murder-of-arthur-labinjo-hughes
This press release abdicates all responsibility from central government and puts it all onto local government. Yes, by all means look into what the the local services could have done better - Arthur was known to them, wasn't deemed serious enough and lockdown meant he was not going to his safe sanctuary - school. However, we need to consider why the local services couldn't support him.
Firstly, there is very limited funding for early help support and many health services have been reduced. I can remember the days when children's centres outreach workers would do home visits. It is these home visits that allowed professionals to put eyes on the children, speak to them and meant parents (if you can call these monsters that!) knew people were coming in. It made it harder for this type of abuse to happen. Those professional eyes on and curiosity are so important for children. We have to make this happen.
Secondly, social services are stretched to the limit. They cannot adequately support the children and families under their care because of case loads. There are not enough social workers. There are too many children. This is a recipe for disaster. The social workers in this case potentially could have done more - they could have actually spoken to Arthur and gone into the house, but when you are over stretched mistakes happen. As a head, the number of times I have to battle against the system to be taken seriously is ridiculous. One case of severe neglect took social care over 3 years to deal with. We did Child in Need. We did Child Protection. Nothing was changing, but still the parent was given chance after chance. This cycle needs to stop.
Finally, levels of poverty are increasing disproportionately. I am not sure if poverty is a factor in this case, but poverty does mean more money is pushed into supporting families on the breadline. If they were given enough to live more comfortably, fewer children would be of concern for neglect, resulting in more time to be available for the more complex cases.
This case has really affected me. I cannot stop thinking about it. Something needs to change. We do not need empty words and "lessons must be learned". We need action. We need funding. We need people to actually listen and care.