Parents' social service hell after one anonymous letter : Judge attacks Baby P council for 'knee-jerk' abuse investigation

Social Services (UK)

Parents' social service hell after one anonymous letter : Judge attacks Baby P council for 'knee-jerk' abuse investigation

Judge said Haringey Council's social workers should not have investigated
They approached child’s GP and her school without parents' permission
Child’s mother said her family had gone through 'a nightmare'

By TOM KELLY FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 17:40, 14 March 2013 | UPDATED: 00:33, 15 March 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Intrusive: Judge Anthony Thornton condemned Haringey council for its heavy-handed approach to the abuse case

A mother told of her nightmare yesterday after being secretly investigated for child abuse by social workers who received a single, anonymous letter.

The woman was left ‘terrified’ that her six-year-old daughter would be removed in the probe by Haringey Council – the authority at the centre of the Baby P scandal.

After winning a ‘landmark’ case yesterday, she also spoke of her anger that the local authority had sought to avoid being named in the affair to prevent further public embarrassment.

Officials had obtained three mobile numbers and a landline phone number for the family after contacting the girl’s school without her parents’ knowledge.

The mother – who works as a social worker – said she was ‘horrified’ when a student social worker later contacted the couple to belatedly reveal they were investigating allegations of mistreatment.

Yesterday a High Court judge condemned Haringey for its ‘knee-jerk reaction’ to the unsigned letter, which was riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

This included approaching the child’s GP and her school to ask for any signs of ‘emotional and physical abuse’ of the child before they had spoken to her parents.

Pay out: The parents of a young girl have won High Court damages over an 'unlawful' decision by social services to investigate whether their child was being ill-treated or was at risk of suffering significant harm

Judge Anthony Thornton said the child was never at risk of harm from her middle class parents, who had never been in trouble with police or had previous contact with social services.

He quashed the ‘unlawful’ decision to start the investigation and ordered the council to pay £2,000 compensation to the couple and legal costs expected to run to tens of thousands of pounds.

After the hearing, the girl’s mother urged the Government to step in to sort out Haringey’s beleaguered child protection department.

She expressed fears that while the council squandered taxpayers’ cash investigating spurious complaints it risked overlooking genuine cases.

She said: ‘This has been a dreadful ordeal that has taken a huge emotional and financial strain on my family. Although I knew it was groundless, I was terrified they would take my child away.

‘We were accused of smacking our child. As it happens, we don’t smack, but if the council starts investigating all parents who occasionally smack their child to discipline them, they would end up looking at 90 per cent of families in the borough.’

The woman and her partner are both experienced social workers and so knew the council’s reaction was excessive.

Decision: A judge ruled there was no basis on which the London Borough of Haringey's social workers should have started the inquiry. Haringey council building is pictured

Tragic: Haringey council has faced devastating criticism in the past over the Baby P, pictured, and Victoria Climbie cases

Gone: The former director of children's services at London's Haringey council Sharon Shoesmith is pictured

They brought a legal challenge to the council’s decision to investigate them under Section 47 of the 1989 Children Act, which the judge described as an ‘intrusive’ assessment of a child and her parents to determine if she was being harmed.

The mother said: ‘Because we know the system we had the courage to stand up to the council and take it this far, but I pity the many other parents who aren’t able to do this and have to suffer in silence.

This is the first time that a section 47 investigation has been successfully challenged and overturned.’

The council launched the investigation after its ‘social services child abuse department’ received the unsigned letter dated March 2011 from someone claiming to be a neighbour of the family saying he was worried about the child.

The judge ruled that approaching the GP and school without seeking the parent’s permission was ‘erroneous’.

He said: ‘These were serious departures from permissible practice and these actions were unlawful.’ The child was not at risk of significant harm and it... was highly likely the anonymous referral was malicious.’

A Haringey Council spokesman said: ‘Our handling of this case fell below the standards that we would expect, and we apologise to the family concerned.’