Accountability
It is difficult not to conclude that the failings of all the agencies involved were inexcusable.
The Director of Social Service (as the Chair of the Safeguarding Children Board) has apologised for failing these children. As has Swansea's Head of Service for Child & Family Social Services & the Police Chief Superintendent. We have been assured that lessons have been learnt. These are sincere expressions of regret, but they inevitably sound glib and inadequate. But what of the myriad other agencies involved? Very little (if anything) publicly has been heard from any of them. Chief Superintendent Mark Mathias on behalf of the Police has been a notable exception. It seems that the view of these agencies is lie low and let the Authority take the flak – but in at least two of these cases the principal causes lay outside the Authority.
And Swansea Council has been public about these reports – they could and should have gone further – but they have gone much much further than anyone else. And that's because local government has a way of dealing with these situations – and publicly. The others do not. Last year, we saw how the NHS Trust flatly refused to attend the Scrutiny Board and how other agencies reacted to questioning in regards to their involvement in Children's Services. This is not good enough. There has to be some way for these agencies to be made publicly accountable.
It is of course very easy to criticise. I saw that the new head of the family courts, Lord Justice Wall, has said that social workers have a "legal duty to unite families rather than separate them". But in Carly's case it was doing precisely that, that led to her death. But who would be a Social Worker – as the judge said, "damned if they do and damned if they don't". I am deeply disturbed merely by reading these reports, what about the social workers who deal with this day after day? My ward colleague, the Lord Mayor, Cllr Allan Lloyd, has led a life of political activism not just here in Swansea but across the world. I was given thought by comments he made at the recent opening of the Anne Frank exhibition, when he asked whether, in difficult and threatening circumstances, he would still have been prepared to stand up and take action. Like the rest of us, he hoped he would. But in this context, if we were the social workers, what would we have done? Would we have been able to save these children?
As councillors we have a responsibility as corporate parents, and whilst we cannot deal with each case, we do have a responsibility to ensure that our services are fit for purpose. The difficulty is determining exactly how we do that.
But everyone has responsibility here. Responsibility not just to stand by, but to act, where we see things are wrong. I refer again to Allan Lloyd's words. This is not being a busybody – it is our civic and human duty. Let me be clear, we know of these children, because they are children. Had they lived longer and become adults, over 18, there would have been no Serious Case Reviews, they would have been just another drug related death, just another statistic. And how many of those young adults are victims failed by our 'system'?
The other evening, Council was shown A Swansea Love Story. Whilst in one reading it is an uplifting story of survival against the odds, its back-story is harrowing, painting a picture of moral and family breakdown that most of us would see with horror and incomprehension. Of course, it is not typical – but it is real. And that is the big question, how have we created a society in which we have forgotten or allowed to be forgotten, whole swathes of people, families, not only without hope but (seemingly) without the possibility of redemption or recovery? The creation of generational cycles of dislocation and dissociation, people who have fallen so low that heroin and strong cider are not recreational drugs, but the only coping mechanism they have.
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