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The plenary sessions were rousing affairs. Owen Jones talked of the ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ stalking the land, and that now was the time for ‘hope’ and Mark Serwotka, from the PCS, argued that ‘it’s time we stopped fighting with one hand tied behind  our back and socked it to these viscous bastards’. It was heartening that this radical talk was matched by Frances O’Grady, the new TUC general secretary, who described the Government as declaring ‘class war’ and pledging to fight as hard for ‘our people’ as the Condems do for theirs. The test, of course, will be on whether we can hold trade union leaders to their bold words.

The Assembly also impressed with its range of workshops, such as ‘tactics for the anti-austerity movement’, ‘climate change’, ‘re-unionising the UK’, ‘welfare not warfare’ and ‘defending the welfare state’. SWAN got a plug at the latter with a contribution from the floor emphasising the impact of austerity not just in terms of benefit cuts, important as these are, but also acted out in increases in the numbers of children coming into care and of people being sectioned and explaining that SWAN brings together practitioners, students, service users and academics: a model, perhaps, of the way that this campaign sees itself as progressing. The call for People’s Assemblies in towns and cities across the country may well invigorate the anti-cuts committees and other groups already in existence and encourage new initiatives. There is also the commitment from the Assembly to support the already planned strikes of teachers and the PCS and to call for a national demonstration in support of the NHS, at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on September 29th 2013.

I came to the Assembly both glad it was happening and sad that it had taken so long to organise on this scale and so far into the cuts. While at the Assembly I missed the international dimension, there were few references to the world wide resistance to austerity, and curious about how the Assembly will respond to strongly expressed calls from Ken Loach and others for a political alternative to Labour. But overall I left excited at the prospects the Assembly holds to continue and strengthen the fight against austerity.

Jeremy Weinstein

The lobby was composed of UNISON, UNITE and GMB members received support from from Smethwick Against The Cuts and West Midlands Social Work Action Network.

Sandwell has gradually closed all its inhouse residential homes and will become completely reliant on commissioning residential care from the private and community sector.

It is understood the decision will be called in and will be considered by the Council’s Scrutiny Committee.

The Trade Unions have complained that Management ‘have failed to properly engage staff and young people in meaningful consultation and have failed to explore all options.’

The Committee paper gives the grounds for the closure that building design made Spon Lane as no longer fit for purpose.

The Unions have made a counter proposal that the Council explore using two 3 bedded Sandwell Homes to continue an in-house residential service.

There are growing concerns about this government’s plans for social work with adults. There is a sense that in its search for cuts and economies, it will see many of the tasks which qualified social workers do with service users as tasks that can be left to unqualified staff if addressed at all. While there may be political awareness of the need to avoid another scandal and crisis in relation to child protection, the same priority does not seem to be attached to work with adults and safeguarding them from violence and abuse.

Notice the comments made about generic training and the reference to funding. Please keep this review on your radar. It is important for service users and practitioners. Please take any chance you have to submit evidence highlighting the valuable role of social workers in relation to adult service users and the valued role that many service users see them as playing.

Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb has asked Professor David Croisdale-Appleby OBE, independent Chair of Skills for Care, to undertake a review of social work education.

Norman Lamb said:

I want to be reassured that social work education produces high quality practitioners and that the government’s £100m investment is producing the high quality social workers that our society deserves and needs.

The government invests money in social work education via the bursary and practice placement funding.

The review will include looking at the case for a generic qualifying course and the scope for increased specialisation within the degree.

Also making the news this week was Government funding for a pilot of the new Frontline programme for 100 trainees announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove. Based on the ‘Teach First’ programme in the teaching profession, Frontline will operate by fast-tracking high quality graduates in social work practice after just 5 weeks intensive training. SWAN rejects the principles of Frontline which are implicitly elitist and denigrate the complexity of social work education, practice and the social work role.

SWAN’s Dr Terry Murphy, Teesside University, commented that an erroneous idea lay behind the programme that social work needs ‘an elite of Oxbridge type graduates in it doing an MA’, he further mentioned that ‘a) there are lots of MA programs already [and] b) more importantly Social Work services are being hit by massive government cuts leading to a reduction of service to vulnerable people in all sorts of situations, which is the real problem.’

Similarly Tom Henri of Goldsmiths, University of London, commented in a recent article that Frontline’s focus on child protection and short term risk ‘undermines all those struggling parents and families who do want the best for their children but need help and support.’

Other concerned practitioners and students on the SWAN Facebook page commented:

‘It’s shocking. I was a graduate who then became a social worker (I completed the DipSW) and I know that I would not have been ready for practice after 5 weeks. When you consider that most stat placements will now only take a student SW for 3rd year placements because of the complexity of the work – it demonstrates how ridiculous and dangerous this is.’

‘I am a second year social work student and have contacted Mr MacAlister outlining my grave concerns about Frontline. This idea is not only very dangerous, but undermines the intense three year training which social work students undertake and risks attracting graduates form unrelated disciplines for completely the wrong reasons. I am studying at a Russell group university and the standard of training I am receiving an exceptional level which I strongly believe can not be achieved in such a short amount of time as frontline are suggesting. For me social work is vocational and should not be an option if ‘all else fails’. I feel ready to undertake complex work in a statutory setting after two very intense years.’

‘I’m very concerned as well that this scheme gives the impression that social work is all about child protection and nothing else.’

SWAN encourages members and supporters to write directly to those involved in these developments and to do the same in the general media and social media. The future of social work and social justice could be at stake.

Contact details:
Liz Davies, Reader in Child Protection, London Metropolitan University
Email:  l.davies@londonmet.ac.uk
Or via website
www.lizdavies.net

On October 24th 2012, Tom Watson M.P. asked a Prime Minister’s Question. He asked the Prime Minster, to ensure that police investigate claims of a powerful paedophile ring linked to a previous prime minister’s senior adviser and parliament. The question referred to an evidence file collected by the police to convict paedophile Peter Righton in 1992. I was involved in the investigation of Peter Righton linked to the abuse of Islington children and  worked closely with a social work team in Hereford and Worcester which expertly investigated other aspects of this network.  Watson later wrote that a specialist unit at Scotland Yard had the material, seized in a raid on Righton’s home, which supplemented a wider investigation into organised paedophile rings in children’s homes and included letters from known and convicted paedophiles. The person who had informed Tom Watson has remained  anonymous for his own protection.  

Peter Righton was a social work academic and practitioner. He was also a member (number 51) of the UK Paedophile Information Exchange and co-author of a book which promoted the right of adults to have sex with children. After conviction for possession of abusive images of children, he lived in a house on a baronial estate in Suffolk which was a regularly used and valued holiday centre for disadvantaged children of Islington (Payne and Fairweather 1993). Despite requests by police and social services that Righton leave this house, it seemed that he continued to live there until he died in 2007.  

Investigations into Righton highlighted extensive worrying connections within the world of social work and academia including networks that went right to the top. An Inside Story documentary comprehensively traced his association with known child sex abusers (BBC 1993) and can now be viewed (alongside many other interesting dvds)  on the website spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/. or via this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hli-iPilDII#.
Some convictions were achieved but it was ever clear that the investigation could have gone much further. The social work team, which had conducted the investigation jointly with police, was closed down. This case is well documented by a senior police officer who led the investigation (Hames 2000).

Following Watson’s question, much new and historic information came forward and, in the aftermath of the work of Operation Yewtree, concerning allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile, two further police teams, Operation Fairbank and Operation Fernbridge, were established at Scotland Yard.  Specifically, a hostel, Elm Guest House, in South London, was exposed as a place where high profile people were alleged to have abused children from children’s homes across the UK during the 80s. This has been mainly exposed on www.exaronews.com by David Henke and colleagues.   Watson committed himself to following up the issues; ‘What I am going to do personally is to speak out on this extreme case of organised abuse in the highest places. At the core of all child abuse is the abuse of power. The fundamental power of the adult over the child. Wherever this occurs it is an abomination. But these extreme cases are abuse of power by some of the most powerful people. Abuse of trust by some of the most trusted. It is a sickening story, but one which – like the truth about Jimmy Savile – is now going to be told’.

The mainstream media have almost completely and consistently blanked all these issues. Some people have been raising these matters for twenty years and there have undoubtedly been many cover-ups. This is the first time – through the social media – that the national picture is being systematically collated. Police investigations have generally been limited to localities and though some police and social workers have long asked for a national child protection investigation team this has never been set up.  Even the Savile inquiries are being held separately and we are told there is no evidence of a network… but the evidence needs to be examined, collated and analysed across all the areas of the country and range of institutions.
The following people are among others on Twitter raising these issues;  
Murunbuch   
Liz Ramsay (NAPACNI)  

There are two blogs which are collating and presenting information.

spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com

This is murunbuch’s blog and it is highly professional – mainly a collation of press cuttings and dvds going back to the 80s which is informing survivors, journalists, politicians,  and the general public. As a result more information is coming forward and informs the police where appropriate. This site is attracting a lot of interest. I realised from this blog that Lambeth child abuse scandal was happening at exactly the same time as I was involved exposing Islington child abuse scandal. Yet the connections were not made. For instance, only through this website have I learnt of one residential worker who worked in both authorities children’s homes. There never was a police investigation to make such links. When I went around the country in the 90s and met the social workers in Hereford and Worcester, for instance, this was largely on my own initiative or in response to particular police officers requests who were trying their best to investigate across area boundaries.

theneedleblog.wordpress.com/
This blog includes Operation Greenlight which is being complied by a historian to list all children’s homes and collate information across the UK. The comments added into these blogs of course also provide interesting information.
Exaronews website costs a small fee to access. Generally their breaking news articles are picked up by the few tabloids brave enough to run with some of the stories. These are probably newspapers none of you read but this is where the news is getting out. The Guardian, some of you may know, have been subject to criticism for their two articles recently which were on the subject of  child sex abuse (‘paedophilia’) ( see: http://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/category/graham-ovenden/).  

BBC (1993) The Secret Life of a Paedophile. Inside Story documentary. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hli-iPilDII#

Hames M (2000) The Dirty Squad. The inside story of the obscene publications branch. London. Little Brown

Payne S and Fairweather E (1993) Country house hideaway of disgraced care chief. Central figure in Evening Standard news investigation. London. Evening Standard. 6th May.

Watson T (2012a) Prime Minister’s Question. Available from:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2012/october/prime-ministers-questions-24-october-2012/

Watson T (2012 b) A little more background on today’s PMQs. http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2012/

Watson T (2012c) Ten days that shook my world. Available from: http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2012/11/10-days-that-shook-my-world