LBWF, the Whitefield School abuse victims, and their special needs care plans: a discreditable failure, and one that reflects wider truths about local child safeguarding

As previously noted, the January 2017 Ofsted report on Whitefield was the first to reveal the abuse that children had suffered in the school’s ‘calming rooms’ (see links), and it is no surprise to find that much subsequent discussion has focused on the same topic.

However, the Ofsted report also made other observations about Whitefield, and one that deserves more attention than it has so far received is the following:

‘Leaders [at the school] were unable to show how parents and other professionals were made aware that pupils had been placed in… [the ‘calming rooms’]. Individual behaviour plans, EHC plans and pupils’ files do not include enough information about the use of these rooms. This has prevented parents and other professionals, including social workers, supporting children looked after by the local authority, from discussing the appropriateness of the actions taken by the school’.

What’s notable here is the comment about EHC (Education, Health, and Care) plans, and to explain why means briefly turning to the relevant legislation.

The idea of plans for those with special educational needs was introduced by the Education Act of 1981. 

The plans were called Statements of Special Educational Need (SSEN) and focused as the name suggests on schooling.

Later on, though, the overriding Children and Families Act 2014 was more ambitious, keeping some of its predecessor’s basic requirements as to how plans should be created and administered, but considerably widening their basic remit.

Thus, plans were still to be mandatory, and the responsibility of local authorities; alongside the professionals, parents were still to be involved in formulating the specifics; and there were still to be annual reviews.

But the narrow focus on education was superseded, with SSENs being replaced by the EHC plans already referenced.  In short, the objective now was to understand each child’s needs, and then specify the totality of the support that they required.

Read today, Ofsted’s finding that the plans at Whitefield were incomplete is in itself striking, especially given the possible legal ramifications.

At the time though, much more important was the fact that, as Ofsted recognised, these regrettable omissions put the families of Whitefield pupils, and even, apparently, LBWF social workers, at a considerable disadvantage in understanding the abuse that had occurred, a disadvantage that lingered long after the ‘calming rooms’ were shut in 2017.

However, there is more.

For one thing, it is clear that in 2017 LBWF had problems with EHC plans not just at Whitefield, but also more generally.

Indeed, a joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection of that year cited a variety of criticisms:

‘Although most new plans are completed within the required timescale of 20 weeks, the final version shared with parents often lacks sufficient detail to be useful. Some plans are finalised before contributions from health professionals have been included or checked. In some cases, parents and their children have not been actively involved in agreeing the content of the plan. There is too much jargon or confusing terminology that has been cut and pasted from professional reports. Very few plans include desired outcomes that are specific or measurable. Parents and professionals are therefore unable to judge how well children and young people have been supported’. 

But, of even greater concern, the evidence also shows that, prior to 2017, LBWF had been warned about these same failings on several different occasions.

In January 2013, for instance, an Ofsted ‘Inspection of local authority arrangements for the protection of children’ report found that some SSENs were satisfactory, but others were not, lacking evidence about how ‘children’s wishes and feelings’ had been taken into account ‘in assessing their needs or developing a plan’.

More generally there was also an unhealthy tendency to waffle, vividly described in the following paragraph:

‘Child protection plans ensure that children are appropriately protected. However, the majority of written plans were not sufficiently specific, or measurable. Often plans contain too long and exhaustive lists of actions or requirements that some parents found confusing or simply unachievable, rather than being focused on the key actions required’.

In fact, Ofsted added, LBWF managers themselves recognised that corrective measures were needed, and had introduced ‘mandatory training for relevant staff’. 

Nevertheless, when Ofsted returned to the borough in late 2014 it found that there was still plenty to do, with one of its required ‘areas for improvement’ being ‘Ensure that children’s plans…are outcome-focused and that case records are of high quality, including more detailed planning records for child protection enquiries’. 

Why didn’t LBWF heed these warnings and in the following years take remedial action?

Unarguably, the Children and Families Act 2014 required that all local authorities change their working practices, which no doubt could be an unwelcome wrench.

But while some local authorities adapted fairly easily, others struggled, and LBWF was one of the laggards, with the joint Ofsted and CQC report of 2017 observing:

‘It is taking too long for statements of special educational needs to be converted to ECH plans. Far fewer children and young people with statements in Waltham Forest have been issued with a plan, compared to other areas’.

This suggests that the nub of the problem lay in the Town Hall.

One fact that stands out is that during this period, LBWF seems to have been constantly short of the very professionals who had most to contribute when constructing and reviewing plans, that is social workers.

And this was no secret, with Ofsted reporting in 2013 that ‘a high number of social work posts are vacant’, and in 2022 that LBWF faced ‘significant challenges in recruiting and retaining [social work] staff’.

Moreover, there were obvious knock-on effects, with those in post trying to manage caseloads which Ofsted described as ‘too high for them to do effective…work with families’; consequent illness and burnout; and in the end spiralling staff turnover rates.

No doubt the nature of the jobs market in London, with many public and private providers fishing in the same pool, didn’t help.

But the blunt truth is that LBWF finances were relatively healthy in this period, and plenty of money was being frittered away on vanity projects, such as pricey art installations, or ‘grants’ to dubious business organisations, so if senior officers and political leaders had really wanted to employ more social workers, they could have done so.

In other words, the lack of social workers was not an act of God, rather a consequence of particular choices.

Up to the present, exactly who it was that fashioned and implemented these choices has remained unclear.

The Local Children Safeguarding Practice Review centred on Whitefield is currently proceeding.

Will it be brave enough to name names?