Mandatory reporting risks overwhelming children's services, warns ADCS

Speaking at the National Children and Adult Services conference in Manchester, ADCS president Alan Wood said research by the organisation, due to be published next month, found that there had been an 11 per cent increase in initial referrals to children's social care departments between 2012/13 and 2013/14.

“That’s why ADCS does not support the mandatory reporting of abuse,” Wood said.
“It would overwhelm the system,” he added.

Earlier this week the government announced that a 12-week public consultation on the matter will be launched in order to gauge the arguments for and against.

Speaking to CYP Now after his speech, Wood said that the ADCS has not seen any evidence backing the introduction of mandatory reporting.

"Our position is that if it is going to apply to everyone in the children's services world and members of the public then inevitably there must be a very strong likelihood that referral systems will get inundated.

"If we think that the cost of that is worth it we need to resource-up to do it."

"You would also create a climate where every single referral, and this might be the right thing to do, would have to have a full investigation, and that brings in questions of levels of judgment, skills of judgment, and governance around judgment.

"There's a danger you will substitute sensible decision making by experienced professionals with upward delegation to let someone else take the final decision.

"You can't but be sensitive to and aware of the motivation behind the people who want to do it because they think it would help."

"But I'm yet to see convincing evidence about how this would work. That's perhaps because we don't know what the design will be.

"If you withhold information from the police, that's an offence and you can be prosecuted, so there are [already] methods for dealing with it."

Wood also used his speech to delegates to warn against frontline professionals being targeted for blame in the fallout from recent child sexual exploitation scandals.

"Child protection is complex work," he said.

"It has a complex ecology which is highly interdependent.  A response, like that seen in the wake of the Jay Report that seeks to simply ‘out’ a small number of guilty people and publicly and ritually condemns them does nothing to aid understanding, nor does it help us get to grips with the challenging and deep-seated organisational and cultural issues we need to address."

Wood said a BBC documentary that aired earlier this week about the fallout from the case of Baby P, highlighting the angry response from media and the public towards social workers in particular, had "many important reference and reflection points".

Speaking to CYP Now, Wood said it is likely that other areas will emerge as having experienced similar issues, but backed action being taken to address the issue.

Work being carried out includes an inspection of children's services in Rotherham by the government’s troubled families adviser Louise Casey and a series of thematic reviews on CSE being carried out by Ofsted.

Wood is also calling for a major awareness campaign to be launched by government. "We have asked for a major public relations campaign and marketing campaign on the scale that was undertaken with our attitude towards racism, homophobia and Aids. We need a national campaign, bringing the scale and nature of this abuse to children, and what can be done about it, to people's attention."