14 year old girl in hospital following the fourth overdose in two months. Hospital refuses to have the child any longer on the ward and is discharging that day against the wishes and advice of the worker and manager.
Child refuses to stay with mother, father or any other relative. Mother lives 50 miles away and does not respond to phone calls, child hasn’t lived with mother since age of 6 anyway and only seen her twice since then. Father is known to drink regularly and child has taken overdose of father’s medicine which was not locked away as he had agreed. Father not at home nor responds to calls on his mobile, father knows child is in hospital as worker had informed him verbally by phone but he has not visited her in hospital for three hours, father does not work.

On further discussion with child with medical staff present, hospital are still discharging that day despite child clearly saying she will jump off multi-story on release.

Worker again visits father’s home, child’s younger brother is at home but is unable to contact father, father still not answering phone or visiting hospital, now after 5 hours.

Child at significant risk and placed into care under Section 20, father gets in touch the next day to complain about child accommodated against wishes.

Care proceedings later initiated

Unfortunately there are occasions where a child needs to be accommodated immediately without agreement of parents

i guess what us parents that have had dealings with local authority care are wondering no we are demanding , how do you justify breaking the law or working round it which is still breaking the law , how many peoples children have been removed because social workers decided they should flout the law , and for those parents that do lose a child/ren because some social worker decided to be solicitor judge and jury and break the law , this has to be coming from management and top level staff for this to be happening , so again i ask the author to explain themselves ? .

The article is not talking about s20 per se, but the abuse of s20.

Of course s20 is a “common standard technique” but abuse of s20 remains a human rights abuse. You would agree with that, I hope?

This makes as much sense as you do on Twitter, please explain?

Another major factor is decisions taken by management and desire of the legal dept. to build a case.

Then there are quota set by Central Government and various theories being promoted by partisan lobbies – like more adoption, MSBP, etc.

I have met robust and “go out on a limb” IRO’s but I have also met ones who openly say in meetings “our plan is” thus losing the perception of independence and perceived independence is crucial.

All involved in Children’s Social Care have to work in a legal framework whether it is the family support worker, the social worker, their supervisors, their managers, senior managers, Directors and the IRO. It is staggering and indeed shocking to think either there was a deliberate process of manipulation of the law or, on the flip side, ignorance of it by all concerned.

I occasionally lecture on BA and MA as a guest on sessions for Permanency Planning and I constantly stress the legal framework and advise you stray from it at your peril. whilst qualifying training can only ever provide a base knowledge of the legal framework, whether in Adults or Children’s Services, it is practice, supervision, working with colleagues from the legal department, further training and development that increase understand and expertise of the law.

I have reached the age where my practice will soon come to an end but I still have hopes social work will continue to improve its image and presentation as a robust, fair, open, transparent and knowledgable profession which understands the legal frameworks within which practice has to be based.