Council 'flaws' allowed paedophile to offend
Severe flaws in child safeguarding allowed a convicted paedophile to continue abusing two young victims, according to a report released today.
The independent report, commissioned by the Devon Children Safeguarding Board covers the services repeated oversight during a five-year period of abuse and the circumstances leading up to the abuser coming into contact with his victims.
The abuser, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a known child sex offender prior to coming into contact with the family.
He was jailed last year for a series of offences against his victims, including rape and sexual assault.
The review of the circumstances surrounding the abuse found that Devon County Council: “did not effectively fulfil its duty to make enquiries into whether the children in this family were likely to suffer significant harm.”
At least six assessments of the victims circumstances were taken during the abuse period and “Opportunities were missed to at a number of points to take a fresh look at the case.”
The report also criticises poor practices by the council’s social services department finding that while repeated assessments of the victims’ circumstances were followed they appeared to have a limited picture due in part to poor sharing of information and management.
Some of the issues raised by the review had previously been reported by Ofsted, who rated the service ‘inadequate’ last year.
The council is currently undergoing a large scale re-structuring of their social services in order to bring in the improvements outlined by Ofsted.
While other agencies involved in the safeguarding of the victims such as the schools, police and others involved the social work services had acted appropriately, the report found that: “There was an over reliance on, and insufficient challenge of, Children’s Social Work by the other agencies until the involvement of and, external challenge from the NSPCC led to more comprehensive background checks being undertaken”
It continues: “The social work assessment for the children did not adequately take into account known information regarding potential risk posed.
“The multi-agency working was weak, and because the social work team lacked information about potential risk, this appeared to influence the approach taken by other agencies. “
The review calls for the development of a better system to surrounding abuse risks to children.
The review also recommends that the Council ensure its social workers have a better understanding of offender risk to children and use this understanding to guide child protection policies.
The response by the children’s charity NSPCC, to raise and communicate concerns is praised in the review.
