A High Court judge has allowed three children to remain in the care of their parents after they rejected the radical and extremist views which they had previously shared on social media.

The judge praised the efforts of an independent radicalisation expert and unnamed local authority in the case, which he said had delivered “a positive outcome” for the family.

The children, referred to as C, D and E, had initially been taken into care after the parents were stopped at Folkestone, with the children in the car, and the local authority and police believed their ultimate intention was to travel to Syria. They were returned into the care of their parents in November last year, however the parents had to be fitted with electronic tags and agree to a contract with the local authority.

Specialist work

In the nine months following a fact-finding hearing held in January this year, the parents underwent a specialist piece of work and assessment regarding their attitudes and opinions to Islam.

“There is now good evidence that the parents reject their previous ideological beliefs, which they now acknowledge to have been extreme and unorthodox; there is no evidence that they have in any sense indoctrinated C and D; they have a much more resilient attitude to extreme ideology and previously,” Justice Cobb said.

In the fact-finding hearing, Cobb said he did not believe there was the evidence to definitely prove the family was travelling to Syria when they were stopped. However, he felt it was clear the family hadn’t been honest with him and it may have been their intention, if not immediately, to eventually end up in Syria.

Videos

Videos had also been posted to YouTube showing the father with someone “known for his extreme views” and made scripted videos where he said “the Prophet was sent to make ‘Islam dominant over every other way of life’”.

The father had also tweeted after a social services visit: “social workers who don’t have children come to your house (dressed as whores) telling you how to bring up your children”, which he later accepted was wrong.

Justice Cobb had initially said: “Over the first half of 2015, the evidence reveals increasing participation by the parents in activity among those who clearly espoused and promulgated extreme and/or radical views about Islam. There was a crescendo in the parents’ interest in sharing views on social media of an extremist nature; they posted messages which I am satisfied indicated their own support for terrorist activities, individual known terrorists and terrorist organisations; they clearly adopted, openly supported and repeated the views of others who proclaimed similarly radical views.”

‘Wrong’

Cobb concluded: “While relieved to record, as I have, that the parents’ extreme and radical fervour has not (yet) infected the children, there is a likelihood that, unless checked, it will do so; if it does so, it will cause these children really serious or ‘significant’ harm.”

After this hearing, the parents accepted the findings of the court and wanted to work with the local authority to address the concerns.

The father said, shortly after the fact-finding hearing, “I cannot fully explain why I allowed myself to get drawn into radical extreme thinking” and both parents accepted what they had done was “wrong”.

Justice Cobb said he accepted there was a risk the parents had complied “superficially” and said what professionals wanted to hear but the parents had also undoubtedly responded more positively to the interventions of social workers.

“I am sufficiently satisfied from the reports of Mr Ali, who is experienced in working with those who hold and promulgate extremist views, that the attitudes of these parents have genuinely changed,” Cobb concluded.

He discharged existing interim care orders affecting the three children, and made none to replace them. The children will remain on a child in need plan.

A report has criticised an “irrational” response by social services and a school after an eight-year-old child was thought to be at risk of radicalisation due to the wording on his t-shirt.

According to the report by Rights Watch UK on the impact of the Prevent duty, the boy was referred to a social services department in east London by his teachers after he wore a t-shirt which said ‘I want to be like Abu Bakr al-Siddique’ – a major Islamic figure, considered to be one of the first converts to Islam.

The boy’s mother then received a phone call from social services where she recalled ‘deradicalisation’ being mentioned.

Misreading

The child was interviewed without his parents being present about whether the t-shirt referred to Islamic State, a line of questioning, the report said, “presumably on the basis of a misreading of the name on the t-shirt as referring to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of [Islamic State]”.

Under the Prevent duty, which was brought in last year, agencies working with children must identify those at risk of radicalisation and refer them to the Channel programme, where cases are assessed and decisions made about intervention.

Channel panels must include police, and can include social workers and representatives from other services like schools and housing. Researchers interviewed professionals, academics, parents and children from across the UK.

‘Irrational’

Rights Watch UK, a think-tank which scrutinises security policies, said the response in this case by the school and social services was “irrational”.

“The only inference available is that school and social services staff drew the inappropriate conclusion that an Arabic name was suspicious in and of itself,” the report said.

Professionals were also concerned by the boy describing his father’s ‘secret job’, which turned out to be selling nail polish online.

“Presumably school and social services decision-makers elected to question the child on the flawed assumptions that his t-shirt referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and that his father’s ‘secret job’ was a cause for suspicion. Neither was correct. But what is more important is that neither was even a reasonable position for the school or social services personnel to hold,” the report said.

It also criticised the decision to interview the boy alone, saying it was difficult to see how this served his interests better than having the support of a parent.

There was confusion among agencies about whether the school was correctly acting in line with the Prevent strategy.

“Subsequently the head of social services has told the mother that the Prevent strategy does not govern the child’s situation,” the report found.

‘Untenable’ Prevent strategy

Stephanie Petrie, a qualified social worker and Liverpool University legal academic quoted in the report, said none of the “substantial” knowledge about preventing child abuse was included in Channel guidance.

“It is misleading to imply that what is primarily a surveillance operation is intended to protect young people from harm,” Petrie said.

The report said the Prevent duty was “leaving a generation of young Britons fearful of exercising their rights to freedom of expression and belief and risks being counter-productive”.

“Brought into operation without adequate consideration of its impact on children’s rights, the Prevent strategy and the statutory duty on schools is predicated on a series of flawed assumptions. The most concerning of these is that holding non-violent extremist views is a reliable precursor of future participation in terrorism,” the report said.

“The Prevent strategy as currently structured and implemented is untenable,” it concluded.

The 2015 Prevent update now places a statutory duty on local authority staff and partner agencies to work to the Prevent agenda. This has reimagined the role of statutory social work and could serve to alter the relationships social workers have with service users.

Statutory guidance issued under section 29 of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 states that authorities should place the appropriate amount of weight needed to prevent people being drawn into terrorism (HM Government, 2015). The guidance is unequivocal in promoting a risk-based approach to information sharing, while monitoring and enforcement principles underpin the duty.

The question has to be asked – how can this new duty be balanced with the fundamental social work principles of promoting a family and community centred rights and justice based approach, rather than focusing on the individual?

The following tips offer a critical social work perspective, designed to help you fulfil your statutory duty without losing sight of the social work role.

1. Simply instilling in children a strong sense of belief and/or religious practice is not a safeguarding concern. Radicalisation is a vague and non-specific word.  It means different things to different people, and this has led to confusion in accurately assessing risk.  Where there is evidence that a child is being influenced or groomed with fundamentalist thoughts, associated with a hatred for the country or another religion, then that is a potential concern.
2. Start assessments early, meaningfully engage with the family and keep the response proportionate. In cases where it is suspected that a child or young person has been radicalised, and they are living in a household where other family members are known to hold extremist ideologies, it can be difficult to determine the proportionate social work response. It is not enough to live in a family where parents are associated with prescribed groups. The quality of information gathered is key here. You need to know what it is like for the young person living in this family, to keep a real watching brief on whether compliance is genuine or disguised and how you are making progress.  It is about solid assessment, meaningful understanding of the family and thorough risk analysis to inform a plan going forward that links back to evidence.
3. Work closely with police, and other partner agencies, to develop a shared understanding of how and when information will be shared and thresholds. This is crucial from the outset. Robust systems of information governance need to be developed, and understandings around what information is shared, and why, need to be explicit. It can be difficult when police colleagues have high levels of sensitive information which cannot be shared, but might change the outcome of a decision. Work needs to be done to look at how this information can be managed between partners. Learning needs to be done together, developing a truly multi-agency strategy. The Prevent board, strategic overview and channel panel all need to dove-tail, and fit together with an operational approach. Social workers also should also work closely with partners to promote understanding amongst pivotal associated roles eg assisting independent reviewing officers and child protection chairs to understand thresholds, and how they are applied in cases of suspected radicalisation, or working with schools in identifying risk. This needs to be alongside wider community work to raise awareness of what radicalisation looks like and what people should do when they suspect it is occurring, and to build community resilience.
4. Do not focus exclusively on at-risk children. In radicalisation cases risk is a dynamic idea that shifts and changes. The family group conference model can be adopted, and in some cases prevent an escalation to child protection. This model gives the family the right and option to come up with plans to help themselves in a quiet and confidential space. If you can locate possibility, dreams and desires in family life, then it is the work of social workers to help in bringing about that change. Social workers need to question what they are drawing on when they talk about risk and children and families in this area. Thinking about risk needs to be orientated out, so that it is not just about at-risk children, but at-risk families and communities.
5. The social work role is a safeguarding role. There is a real need to keep an eye on whether social workers are treading into the territory of ‘soft policing’. It is crucial to remember that social workers have a distinct role, and are not there to deliver the police agenda. Despite the immense political, public and media pressure to influence the lives of some families, social workers need to be mindful to take a ‘business as usual’ approach, as they would to any safeguarding concern, and remain proportionate in any response taken. Social workers need to question the notion of radical views being a problem. The problem we should be concerned about is extremist behaviour.

A mother who tried to take her three children to an Islamic State-controlled area of Syria placed them at “extreme risk of very, very significant harm, if not death”, a judge has ruled.

Justice Keehan said he was “entirely satisfied” by Leicester City Council’s claims that the children – aged 11, eight and five – faced probable radicalisation and being drawn into a war zone when their mother took them to Birmingham Airport in July 2015 to embark on the first leg of the journey to Syria.

He granted final care orders for all the children to live with the mother’s parents, where they had been living since August 2015. The mother did not actively oppose the care orders but would not consent to them.

Airport arrest

The mother, whose phone showed she had contacted an Islamic State fighter hundreds of times, was arrested after the family checked in for a flight to Munich.

She planned to travel from Germany to Istanbul where she had booked three nights’ accommodation with the children’s father – who is understood to have been living in Chechnya with a terrorist group since 2013. From there she intended to cross into Syria.

After the mother’s arrest, the children were immediately removed under a police protection order and placed in foster care. A week later they moved in with the grandparents. The judge accepted evidence that this was a loving environment where the children had excellent care.

In his judgment (delivered in January but just published), Justice Keehan said the significant harm threshold was met and agreed that the care orders were in the children’s best interests. He found “ample” evidence to support Leicester Council’s claim that the mother intended for the family to live in Islamic State permanently.

Her luggage contained an itinerary with the actual travel plans, telephone numbers of suspected Islamic State fighters, and photos of children with firearms and wearing balaclavas with Islamic State emblems on a phone.

‘Effectively abandoned’

A search of the family home by police and a social worker after the attempted flight indicated it had “in effect been abandoned” – many items relating to the children had been destroyed or disposed of.

The judge also backed the council’s claim that her “intention to cross into Syria was driven by religious ideology and placed the children at risk of suffering significant harm and probable radicalisation, including the real possibility of the children being drawn into the war, and being placed at risk of death”.

Emotional harm

Justice Keehan also accepted evidence that the parents’ relationship was “characterised by domestic abuse” and so the mother’s plan for the family to live with the father meant the children would be at risk of ongoing exposure to domestic abuse and emotional harm.

While the three children wanted to “go home to their mother”, Justice Keehan said the risk of harm meant their wishes and feelings were not in their own best interests.

The mother did not seek a specific contact order so the judge left it to the local authority to decide appropriate arrangements for contact “from time to time”.

By Tony Stanley and Lisa Gunstone

‘Radicalisation risk’ is an emerging practice issue confronting social workers, families, communities and local authorities. Alongside child sexual exploitation and children reported ‘missing’ from home and care, these new areas of social work are mostly issues external to parental care and the family home, so we need fresh ideas to inform our social work offer.

We think, however, that ‘radicalisation risk’ is a misleading term – and a simplistic use of language. It writes in particular narratives about vulnerability, risk, and blame while erasing others. Simplistic language will encourage unsophisticated options for practice.

If we define this in traditional ‘child abuse’ terms, we have a ready-made victim and ready-made perpetrator, or (and more likely) a set of scary unknowns, that we quickly set out to eliminate to resolve. But what happens to our social work relationships when we are in a hurry? Working with uncertainty is a practice reality, while not always a comfortable place; are we too keen to get to ‘safe certainty’?

‘Violent extremism’

The term ‘violent extremism’ is closer to what we think we need to intervene in. Social workers are not trained to determine radicalising actions or behaviours. The cases where adults have shown abhorrent violent video imagery to children are by far the minority of cases. Mostly we are dealing with young people who seek or desire links to the self-defined caliphate in Syria, or families who desire a life under the same.

Some will argue for the protection of these children, in terms of removal, from such poor adult decision making. Others argue that we have sufficient state controls in place and a national Prevent policy to offer help to these families. For some Muslim families this will feel like an overly zealous state apparatus.

So, how can social workers offer a humane and more helpful approach to this complicated area of practice? How can we avoid the laziness of language and simplistic responses like child rescue?

Families as a resource

For many families, the offer of Prevent has been taken up and found helpful. Others have declined this offer, and a referral to children’s social care follows. We need a practice offer in the middle. The family system needs to be held in mind as a resource. In the name of help we too often remove a child from what we define as an unsafe household.

We find it uncomfortable to work with risk, as risk. Risk aversion dominates – and we are driven/ encouraged to avoid it. Too often families are not helped when this practice dominates.

One way to do things differently is to widen the family circle. Not everyone in the family will hold the same views and ideological beliefs.

Ideology is not uniform. It is lazy when we apply broad brushstrokes to family systems and deny them voice and activity to participate and help.

Where are the aunts, grandparents, friends and neighbours?

We need a social work system where social and family networks are invited in, and social methods of help drive our work – and the family group conference (FGC) is a good example. Families hold rights to be involved in the decision making about their children and vulnerable adult members. The FGC offers a restorative intervention approach for working with risk.

This is a family-focused restorative model where the resources within and around the family are drawn on to harness safety and strengths to help children and families. The FGC provides a facilitated space for families to locate solutions and options to help keep their young people and children to be safer. We need to trust families and invite them to be partners in the work.

Preventing family breakdown

The evidence (for example, Ivec, 2013) shows that FGCs work to widen the circle of involvement and then bring challenge to behaviours inside family systems. Further, it is more cost effective and socially just to commit resources to prevent family breakdown rather than to respond to problems later.

Commentators such as Kate Morris and Marie Connolly argue it is effective in early help, with success in complex cases noted because families get to see the urgency. Most families, when consulted about their experiences of the approach, tell researchers they wish it had been offered earlier. The FGC provides a rights-based intervention method without the need for definitive or conclusive assessments of risk.

Birmingham Council is offering the FGC as an approach to intervening in cases where the risk of radicalisation or extremism is identified and the Prevent offer declined. This is a way to bring family networks together to hear the concerns and plan for next steps. The FGC has a built-in private time for families, free from the state’s eyes and ears. We need to give families the power and the opportunity to help themselves.

Major rethink about ‘helping’

The debate about the efficacy of our existing child welfare system is alive and well. Some will argue for the current system – preferring a professionally driven system where trust is optional. However, others argue it is time for a major rethink about what we are doing in the name of statutory social work ‘helping’.

The FGC offers a humane and socially just solution to this emerging and complicated area of social work. Nevertheless, it relies on social workers and managers believing that families are worth doing business with.

Dr Tony Stanley is chief social worker at Birmingham Council, and Lisa Gunstone is its family group conference manager

The chief of the family courts has rejected a local authority’s claims that parents planned to take children to live in an area of Syria controlled by Islamic State, after lawyers for the family argued the case had been “incoherent”.

In a judgment following a fact finding hearing, Sir James Munby said the unnamed council had been unable to establish that the parents had a “pre-existing ideological mindset” to evidence its claim that the family had been radicalised and intended to go to Syria.

In its final submission the local authority had, he said, “made clear that its case on radicalisation is largely dependent upon whether or not the court accepts its initial case that the family was in fact in the process of crossing, or about to cross the Turkish/Syrian border into Syria”.

“It does not rely upon motive to establish intention; on the contrary, it relies upon intention to establish motive,” Munby said.

Holiday gone wrong

The family – including four children – were among a group detained by Turkish authorities in a military-controlled zone near the country’s border with Syria. Their lawyers claimed, though, that it was “more plausible that this was a family holiday which went wrong rather than.. some inexplicable attempt to travel to a war zone by an exceptionally capable and loving mother”.

Munby said the family’s explanation “at best push[es] credulity to its extremity and in truth, in my judgment, involves significant lying”.

But he said the local authority “wholly failed” to make a case that a grandmother, father and mother were “adherent to, a supporter of, or subject to any ideological belief system that could possibly explain a desire to re-locate to Syria”.

Solicitors for the mother of two of the children said she was a “caring and attentive parent” and it was “inherently improbable that she would imperil her sons unless there was some powerful ideological driver operating upon her”.

Munby added: “But, they say, none has been established and the local authority’s case as to her and her husband’s reasons for migrating to Syria is, they assert, ‘incoherent’.”

Lack of evidence

Munby said the local authority lacked evidence that “loving and devoted parents” would be motivated to expose their children to the realities of life in Syria.

He said the family’s reason for lying could have been a combination of fear of what inferences might be drawn if they had admitted to travelling where they did, and the feeling that having come up with a story it was better to stick to it.

The hearing concerned a family for which two judgments had already been made. An interim care order for the four children who the local authority believed were being taken to live in Syria had already been discharged in favour of the children being made wards of court and electronic tags being placed on one of the mothers involved.

The local authority claimed that a brother of one of the adults, who travelled with the family, had made comments expressing support for Al-Qaeda and a desire to become a terrorist, while being treated as an in-patient for mental illness with psychotic symptoms; that the family were being harassed by other members of the extended family; that their homes appeared abandoned; and that the explanation of the trip as a holiday was not credible and proved the family wanted to travel to Syria to live permanently.

Munby said he didn’t know the truth behind why the family were close to the Syrian border, and that the local authority case could be correct, “but it has not persuaded me, even on a balance of probabilities, that it is”.

After the judgment, the local authority conceded that the proceedings against the family should be dismissed.

Many social workers lack confidence in identifying extremism and have not received any training on the Prevent duty, the core component of the government’s counter-radicalisation agenda for the public sector, according to a Community Care survey.

The snapshot Community Care poll of 507 social workers across children’s, adult and mental health services and others practising in the sector, found that 54% were either ‘slightly’ or ‘extremely’ unconfident in their knowledge of the correct intervention in a case of radicalisation. Just under 30% were ‘slightly’ or ‘extremely’ confident.

More than 40% were unconfident about being able to assess an individual’s vulnerability to being drawn into terrorism, while 36% were confident.

Strikingly, three-quarters of social workers surveyed were not clear about their local area’s threshold for intervention in a radicalisation case, and nearly 70% were not at all, or not very, aware of the process of referring people at risk of radicalisation to their local Channel panel – which is where all suspected radicalisation cases should be referred to.

Training not provided

More than two-thirds (69%) said they had not been offered training on the Prevent duty and how it affects social work practice. This contradicts Prevent duty guidance, which says: “All specified authorities subject to the duty will need to ensure they provide appropriate training for staff involved.”

The guidance also says: “Frontline staff who engage with the public should understand what radicalisation means and why people may be vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism as a consequence of it…Staff need to know what measures are available to prevent people from becoming drawn into terrorism and how to challenge the extremist ideology that can be associated with it.”

The Prevent duty requires workers in a range of public bodies and registered settings to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”.

A quarter of the social workers surveyed said the number of cases in their team where radicalisation was a concern had increased in the past year.

The Prevent duty came into force in July this year, so social workers have not had long to grapple with what it means in practice, and Nushra Mansuri, a professional officer at the British Association of Social Workers, explained: “My hunch would be, with all the other pressures on social workers, this would not necessarily be high up on council and NHS partnership agendas, hence the [lack] of training and awareness and consequently, [there is] uncertainty amongst social workers.”

Simon Blackburn, chair of the Local Government Association’s safer and stronger communities board, said councils had organised training but the process could take months.

“Those areas without long established programmes will have to provide training over several months to ensure all their staff have the opportunity of attending a session – so not all staff can be offered training immediately,” Blackburn said.

He added: “There is also a cost to councils in delivering this training, and the money available from the Home Office to reimburse councils for the costs of training staff and other activities will not necessarily cover this.”

Local focus required

Joan Beck, joint chair of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) workforce development network, said the findings “call into question the focus of that training and the appreciation of radicalisation being possible with the people we work with”.

She added: “Many safeguarding boards are asking for more information with regard to Prevent. Adass will bring the findings of this survey to the attention of directors and safeguarding chairs so that they can reassure themselves of the emphasis of their own local work and communication of the take-up and emphasis of this agenda in their own localities.”

There is also the risk the duty is confusing for social workers, and can contradict their professional values, Mansuri said: “I think that it does create a level of real tension for social workers as they grapple with the complexities of the Prevent agenda. Are we saying that children deemed to be at risk of radicalisation should be subject to a child protection plan? Working Together [child safeguarding guidance] does not suggest this but it appears to me that since this new duty was introduced earlier this year, it has not been fully thought through in terms of what it means in relation to safeguarding and child protection.”

She added: “Social work is after all an ethical and human rights profession and not all will see this agenda as compatible with the social work task.”

Political agenda

David Jones, chair of the Association of Independent LSCB (Local Safeguarding Children Board) Chairs, agreed: “I think [radicalisation] feels very different because of the high political dimension and I don’t think that should be minimised or argued away. Social work has a strong value base of not judging people because of their politics, [and] not intervening for political reasons.”

He added: “Somehow this area of work appears to challenge that, it appears to be saying [that] on the basis of people’s opinions you need to intervene. I can understand that that feels very uncomfortable for social workers… It doesn’t sit easily with other areas of their work, I think it is an area they have to engage with but it requires attention and people have to be won over with good arguments.”

Jones also said it was difficult for social workers to learn about and understand this area of practice at a time when so many other areas of their work has been changing: “Everyone says, ‘What’s more important?’ New child sexual exploitation, female genital mutilation, Prevent, different ways of working with adoption and fostering and all of this is in the context of growing workforce pressures.”

Social work contribution important

Social workers do, however, have an important contribution to make to this area, said Jenny Coles, chair of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services families, communities and young people committee.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to preventing radicalisation; it can take many shapes and forms and each locality faces its own challenges. So spotting those at risk is far from straightforward and finding a way to reach out to them can be difficult,” she said.

Coles added: “We recognise that our learning of this issue continues to rapidly unfold and going forward local authorities must continue to work with their safeguarding partners and the local community, to develop the range of materials available to practitioners and the wider public so that we are able to safeguard the most vulnerable.”

Social workers are not expected to put in place interventions of their own, assured the LGA’s Blackburn, and a referral to a Channel Panel should mean a range of partners will consider what needs to be done.

“Following the announcement in the Spending Review that there will be more funding available for counter-terrorism activity, the government must ensure that councils’ work to prevent people being drawn into terrorism is properly funded,” he said.

Community Care Inform has launched a new knowledge and practice hub focused on social work involvement in cases where radicalisation and extremism are factors.

The hub is available to licence holders on the Inform Children website. It features a guide to the policy context for intervention in radicalisation cases under the Prevent agenda, written by academics from University of Kent, Kent police, and reviewed by the Home Office. This also includes information on legislation, resources and multi-agency working.

A critical social work perspective on the government’s counter-radicalisation agenda is provided in a separate article by Tony Stanley, a lead on radicalisation for principal social workers.

The hub also includes links to Inform’s analysis of case law from court judgments and rulings related to radicalisation, and links to Community Care’s news and opinions on the subject.

Community Care will add to the hub as more material on social work and radicalisation is published. This will include in-depth studies of specific local authority interventions in cases where radicalisation is a factor.