Whitefield latest: in August 2024 LBWF and partners initiated a statutory review of the school’s historic child abuse scandal, but incredibly it’s yet to report

In August 2024, LBWF and its various safeguarding partners initiated a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) to examine the historic child abuse at Whitefield School, and this was then publicly announced by the Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams, on 27 November 2024, one day after the BBC’s Noel Titheradge had published the third of his devastating exposés (‘CCTV…obtained by the BBC shows autistic children being shoved into padded rooms, thrown to the floor, restrained by the neck – or left alone, sitting in vomit’).      

According to the mandatory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, LCSPR reports must be published ’no longer than six months from the date of the decision to initiate a review’.

Hence, the review about Whitefield was due in February 2025, yet here we are, a year later and there’s still nothing.

Rather typically, LBWF has remained silent about the delay in public, though behind the scenes it apparently blames ‘extensive requests for information’ and the need to ‘ensure meaningful engagement with [victims’] families’.

It adds that the Secretary of State and Ofsted have agreed to LBWF’s wish for an extension. 

But outside the Town Hall, the vacuum has been filled with dismay and suspicion.  

It’s periodically been alleged in the past that the abuse at Whitefield has been covered up in order to protect the guilty, and from this perspective what’s happened with the LCSPR is entirely predictable, just the latest chapter in an old story.

Elsewhere, the fear is that decision-making has fallen prey to local politics. In short, the feeling is that Labour is trying to kick the can down the road because the local elections are looming in May, the Greens and Reform are posing a threat, and it doesn’t want voters to be reminded that it is the party which presided over something so shocking.

Whatever the truth, those who have suffered because of Whitefield, and the many who bear the scars today, have a right to feel let down.

The current mantra is that victims should always be put first.

Here, they appear to have been put, not first, but last.

PS For previous posts on Whitefield please click the tag at the top, or use the search engine on the left of the home page