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Assurance from Children's Secretary on intimidation of child protection staff following Laming Report
 
Speaking during a Commons debate (12 March 2009) on Lord Laming's Progress Report, Children's Secretary Ed Balls has given child protection campaigner and Wansdyke MP Dan Norris an undertaking that the issue of dangerous and devious individuals who not only harm children, but also seek to intimidate and deceive professional child protection staff to hide their crimes will be specifically addressed.

Mr Norris has long argued that while child protection systems always need to be improved, unless staff can overcome the violence, threats and deception they face when directly confronting child abusers,  those system improvements cannot make a significant difference in protecting children.

The following is an extract from the debate which followed the Children's Secretary's statement to the House on Lord Laming's Progress Report
 
Dan Norris (Wansdyke) (Lab): Those who harm children by using intimidation and violence against them often act in the same way towards the professionals who deal with them. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the taskforce focuses carefully on intimidation by dysfunctional, dangerous, violent, aggressive and generally unpleasant and devious families? While I welcome the changes in the system that my right hon. Friend has announced and consider them necessary and appropriate, unless social workers out there in the field, or at the coal face, can apply them, that work will have been in vain. 

Ed Balls: My hon. Friend is right. He, too, has great professional expertise in this area. It is vital for us to provide proper training and support for front-line social workers who, as I have said, do what is often a dangerous job that may involve both deception and intimidation. The social work taskforce must examine that issue explicitly. Today the Health Secretary and I will write to every social worker in the country, telling them what we have announced today but also encouraging them to participate in the work of the taskforce. We hope that social workers throughout the country will take up our invitation.

Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): I entirely endorse the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) regarding the disgraceful closure of the social work courses at Reading university. It gives me no pleasure that the Secretary of State named in his statement two local authorities in my area—Reading and Wokingham—but does he acknowledge that significant progress has already been made in Reading in improving the safeguarding of children, with Ofsted saying: “Lead councillors and the new chief executive are providing strong leadership by driving through urgent measures to ensure rapid improvement”?

Ed Balls: As I said, Reading is one of the authorities where we have sent in our diagnostic team—and I must say that in all the areas where we have done that, there has been real co-operation from the local authority leadership involved. Although the report has not yet come back to Ministers, I know that there is real and substantial engagement from the local authority, and a determination to make sure that any things that need to be changed are changed with speed and determination.

Ms Dari Taylor (Stockton, South) (Lab): I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, but I ask him to acknowledge once again that social workers are often overworked and face extraordinarily complex situations, and that, added to this mix, they frequently face parents who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) said, can be seriously devious and can hide the abuse they are perpetrating. This is a very complex area, and training, personal mentoring and support for social workers is an absolute requirement.

Ed Balls: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I have said, social workers are often unsung heroes doing a very difficult job, but to make sure that they can do their job with confidence and determination requires us to look at both resourcing and management, and the front-line support they get from management. We need to address this; we cannot simply leave individual social workers to do the job on the front line. They need more support and training, and we are determined to make sure they get it.

To read the debate in full from Hansard use this link