Subsequent government research showed that overloaded child protection services found it impossible to provide family support and, of course, deaths occurred because services focussed on the needs of parents and ignored children70. The document identified the characteristics of “at risk” children as including:
low income and parental unemployment
homelessness
poor parenting
poor schooling
postnatal depression among mothers
low birth weight
substance abuse
individual characteristics, such as levels of intelligence
community factors, such as living in a disadvantaged community71
The more risk factors a child experienced, the more likely that there would be “negative outcomes” with damaging parenting practices playing the key role. Identifying risk factors and providing early intervention were identified as the major strategies for overcoming social exclusion. Health, social care, education and criminal justice would be integrated to ensure that traditional, organisational and professional barriers were overcome.
The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report and the government’s response were framed in terms of child safety whilst previous policies and practice focussed on supporting parents. The government confirmed that it introduced Every Child Matters: Change for Children after Victoria Climbié’s death to ensure that it never happened again. Thus the case of Baby Peter raised more embarrassing questions and undermined the proposed reforms at the very time when they were supposed to be introduced. The government made it clear that for improvements in child protection, there had to be a well-trained, respected and highly professionalised social work service that understood and could cater for the needs of children. While improving systems and interagency communications was important, improving the service was dependent on supporting and investing in a knowledgeable professional social work workforce. And that involved universities which have been slow to change.
In 2011, there were media reports that social workers had become overzealous and in the two years after the furore about Baby P, the number of children being removed from parents into state care had soared by almost 50% to an all-time record level of nearly 10,000 a year72.
Australian policies and practice have followed the British model, paying lip-service to the importance of family support and early intervention (with insufficient resources) while only investigating “serious cases” of abuse. Unless the balance is right, children will continue to suffer.
For further reading see Goddard, C & Saunders, B (2001) Child Abuse and the Media. AIFS Child Abuse Prevention Issues 14 and Saunders, B & Goddard, C (2002) The role of mass media in facilitating community education and child abuse prevention strategies. AIFS Child Abuse Prevention Studies No 16, both published by the National Child Protection Clearinghouse
The development of child protection systems in Australia
A social historical review of Australian legislation shows the gradual development of a complex system that has consistently been influenced by British initiatives. State intervention arose from the dire necessity of providing food and shelter for homeless and abandoned children73. The state government of South Australia took the lead in social reform in 1845 with the Criminal Law Act which made carnal knowledge (sexual intercourse) of a girl under ten an indictable offence punishable by imprisonment. In 1876, the age limit was raised to 12-years; punishment for offenders involved whipping and a maximum seven-year prison sentence.
In 1935, laws were introduced to protect Under 18s from sexual acts by their guardians and teachers; the abduction of children under 14-years and child abandonment became crimes punishable by imprisonment. However laws were only designed to protect girls, there being a mistaken assumption that either boys were not vulnerable or alternatively, that an early introduction to sex was harmless.
Bearing in mind that unaccompanied children as young as five were deported from England, states built asylums and housed them with adult criminals, paupers and the mentally ill. Children received no education or training. Over-crowding became problematical in the 1850s when a large number of fathers abandoned their families to work in the Victorian gold-fields. The conditions in which children were herded were so unhygienic that the public demanded legislation to control living conditions in state institutions. It was concern that these neglected children were to become the next generation of parents that led to the realisation that the State had a duty of care. Child advocate Caroline Clark wrote to The SA Register in 1866 suggesting that disadvantaged children should be “boarded out” with rural families, pointing out that this had been used successfully in Edinburgh since 1858.
The idea found favour with politicians because it had economic benefits. However, a year later, legislation supported the establishment of three separate types of institution: reformatories for juvenile criminals, industrial schools for neglected children and orphanages for the abandoned and destitute. This change came from recognition that children who broke the law needed rehabilitation as well as punishment. Hitherto boys were placed in adult jails. Conditions remained harsh however; punishments for boys included whipping and, for both boys and girls, a diet of dry bread and water for up to seven days74.
In 1872, complaints relating to overcrowding and unhygienic conditions led to the acceptance of foster-care, referred to as “boarding-out”. Untrained volunteers were made responsible for supervision and after 2-3 years, carers received notice that they must either adopt or lose their foster children. Those who chose adoption lost their allowances. This clearly demonstrated that the politicians were more concerned about saving money than providing stability in children’s lives.
The development of child protection charities
Western society has a very long history of child abuse. The first protection efforts began only in the late nineteenth century at a time of social deprivation and great hardship. The Reverend George Staite summed up the inhumanity of the era in a letter to the Liverpool Mercury (UK) in 1881: “… whilst we have a (Royal) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (the RSPCA), can we not do something to prevent cruelty to children?”75
It was the plight of an American child, Mary Ellen McCormack that showed the need for an agency to strive for children’s safety. Beaten daily, Mary had no protection under American law until her case was taken up by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Its founder, Henry Bergh, successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court on Mary’s behalf, arguing that a “human animal” should have the same protection as other animals.
British banker, Thomas Agnew visited the Society in 1881. He was so impressed by what he saw that he opened a similar charity in England known as the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. News of this reached the Reverend Benjamin Waugh who was concerned about children’s suffering in London’s impoverished East End. In 1884, he established The London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The influential Lord Shaftsbury was appointed president. Waugh’s priority was to draw public and government attention to the plight of abused children in Britain, given the lack of legislation to protect them. Waugh worked to raise awareness, lobbied the government and published reports of abuse and neglect cases to shock the public.
By 1889