Agencies to face legal action over Rochdale abuse case, says claimant lawyer

September 27, 2012

A leading claimant lawyer has warned that a report into the failure to stop the sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale gives “a pretty firm basis” for legal action against social services.

The comments by Richard Scorer of Pannone came after the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board today published a report highlighting “many missed opportunities” to safeguard children and young people affected by sexual exploitation.

The Board commissioned the report to examine how agencies in Rochdale worked together from 2007 to 2012 on safeguarding.

Nine men were convicted of sex offences in May this year in relation to the case.

The Board’s report was based on feedback from 23 professional staff. It also contained a case study covering the experience from 2007 to 2010 of one of the girls to have been abused, Suzie. This found that:

The nature of the harm and of the ‘relationship’ between Suzie and the offenders was understood by members of the Crisis Intervention Team and the Early Break Service, but their referrals were generally not acted on by children’s social care;
Social work practitioners and managers “wholly over-estimated” the extent to which Suzie could legally or psychologically consent to the sexual violence being perpetrated against her. “This was frustrating for referring practitioners. However, there was no escalation of agency concerns that the needs of this group of young people were not being adequately addressed and dealt with by the local authority”;
The absence of knowledge in respect of the appropriate response to child sexual exploitation was a significant feature of practice. “However, it was not the whole story: participants in the review acknowledged that, had existing legal processes and safeguarding processes been used effectively in all other aspects, the harm that Suzie was suffering could have been mitigated and her risk of suffering harm in the future could have been reduced”;
While some organisations were consistently supportive in their response to Suzie, overall, child welfare organisations “missed opportunities” to provide a comprehensive, co-ordinated and timely response to her as a child in need;
The criminal justice system missed opportunities to bring the perpetrators to justice and so to protect Suzie and other young people from their criminal behaviours;
Agencies and organisations in Rochdale made “faltering” early progress in developing a satisfactory framework for managing allegations of child sexual exploitation. The need for a specialist resource was identified in 2008, but its development was “inadequately co-ordinated and supported”;
Specific training to frontline practitioners in the borough was “patchy” and lessons were absorbed “inconsistently”;
Efforts were made to identify the extent of the problem locally, but responses to individual children, although evident in some instances, were not sufficiently comprehensive;
In children’s social care, the focus was on younger children at risk of abuse from family and household members, rather than on vulnerable adolescents;
Activity to disrupt alleged offenders was developing on the ground, but this was not always followed through at a more senior level. “The early investigation of crimes and the prosecution of alleged offenders were flawed”;
Although between 2009 and 2012, some improvements had been consolidated, overall, the review group acknowledged that there many missed opportunities over the five years to safeguard children and young people from exploitation;
The review group also recognised that there was still much to be done to ensure that children and young people were better protected in future.

Lynne Jones, Chair of Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board, said the findings had been used to identify many of the required changes that had now been made.

She said: “We have responded to this review and improvements have been implemented. I believe organisations are working better together, sharing information to ensure children are protected and that perpetrators of these crimes are prosecuted.”

Steps taken so far including briefings being give to more than 10,000 staff in agencies in the borough, and awareness raising workshops being held with children in local secondary schools.

Jones added: “Raising awareness so that young people are better equipped to understand what is happening to them or to their friends has been delivered to 10,000 young people.

“Staff training has ensured that professionals are now more aware and able to respond appropriately and the licensing authority is more actively using its powers to stop criminal activity. We are also seeing stronger joint working on police operations to bring people to justice.”

The Board is also undertaking a serious case review into child sexual exploitation. This is expected to be published in 2013.

But Pannone’s Scorer, who acts for one of the victims, told the BBC: “There’s clear evidence that social services failed to act, failed to intervene, when they had this mass of information, about this grooming and exploitation of young girls.

“They failed to act on that information, even though they had a responsibility to do that. And that’s the basis of any legal action we’ll be putting forward.”

He added: “Obviously we need to….build up the detail of exactly what happened. But I think this report probably does give us a pretty firm basis for legal action against social services.”

Summary of the review’s recommendations

The Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board (RBSCB) should develop an effective local strategy, ensuring that there is a coordinated multi-agency response to child sexual exploitation, based on the knowledge which already exists about the extent and nature of child exploitation locally.
Awareness-raising briefings should be held as a matter of urgency at high schools across the borough.
‘Train the trainer’ sessions should be provided for professionals working with children and young people at risk of sexual exploitation as a basis for effective training of the wider workforce.
The RBSCB strategy should identify and ensure that appropriate levels of training/awareness-raising/information for (a) those professionals for whom training in respect of child sexual exploitation should be mandatory; (b) those professionals where ‘awareness-raising’ activities are required; (c) those community groups where ‘awareness-raising’ activities are indicated; and (d) parents and carers.
Partner agencies, particularly the local authority and the police, should review how they work with local communities and consider how communications and opportunities for representation can be further developed. This should include using third sector partners to gain access and build trust.
The RBSCB should ensure that there are clear policies and procedures in place for managing referrals in relation to children at risk of, or suffering harm through child sexual exploitation.
The RBSCB should provide good practice guidance for practitioners and managers to build their knowledge and support their work with children and young people at risk of child sexual exploitation.
Greater Manchester Police should ensure that all staff are aware of the appropriate and legally compliant evidence gaining requirements and that, when arrests have been made, that there are appropriate bail conditions in place to protect the victim/s.
Criminal justice organisations locally should work together to ensure that support is provided for sexually exploited young people throughout the whole process of reporting the crime, making a statement, the pre-trial preparation, going to court and after the trial.
The RBSCB should ensure that the use of disruption tactics permeates the work with young people; work in particular locations; work with local businesses; and targeting offenders.
Greater Manchester Police and a representative of the multi-agency Sunrise Team should attend licensing panels to assist the Chief Officer in determining applications where drivers have been interviewed about the sexual exploitation of children.
The RBSCB should establish a specific performance management framework to evaluate progress made by agencies in preventing child sexual exploitation; in diverting those at risk; in responding to the needs of those young people who are being sexually exploited; and in reducing the overall incidence of this type of abuse.
The RBSCB should establish multi-agency information-sharing meetings.
The RBSCB should ensure that these meetings collate and analyse information about offender and victim profiles and identify changing hotspot locations, so that disruptive action can be planned and taken.
The RBSCB should ensure that agreed actions to develop and support the Sunrise Team are implemented. Agreed actions include: (a) oversight and governance of the team should be coordinated by the Board to ensure an effective multi-agency approach; (b) commissioning arrangements should be formally agreed and integrated into a service level agreement with clear outcome and other performance measures; (c) consistent, high quality staff supervision and professional support is essential to enable practitioners to deal with complex and difficult safeguarding issues. This supervision and support should be provided within the team structure; (d) the role and responsibilities of the Sunrise Team should be communicated to all agencies/professionals who work or come into contact with children and young people; (e) the referral pathway into the Sunrise Team must be clearly communicated to all agencies and potential referral sources: the referral pathway should be simple and accessible; the Sunrise Team’s approach should include physical, psychological, social and emotional assessments, plus immediate and ongoing assessments of risk, witness protection measures, support for the family and a key worker system.

Source: Review of Multi-Agency Responses to the Sexual Exploitation of Children