Shocking allegations made by foster carer against social services department

Martin Shipton

A foster carer with decades of experience has made a series of shocking allegations against a council’s social services department, claiming that concerns about a child’s disturbing behaviour were not properly addressed and that disclosures of abuse were not investigated.

The carer, who has previously had complaints against Bridgend County Borough Council (BCBC) upheld by an independent investigator, has set out her narrative in a statement to Nation.Cymru.

‘Toddlers’

In her statement, the foster carer, who has recently retired and cannot be named for legal reasons, wrote “In January 2016, BCBC placed two toddlers with me, telling me that they had no conditions whatsoever in the full knowledge that some months earlier, [name redacted] a senior social worker from the authority had visited the children’s home at the invitation of the family. The family welcomed social services into their home because of their concerns about the behaviour of one of the children. At this time the children were aged 21 months and almost three years old.

“This BCBC specialist senior social worker compiled a report after several visits to the home concluding that the home environment and care provided to both children was excellent.

“The only worries [name redacted] expressed, was that the younger child appeared to have cognitive development delay, speech delays and there were other conditions that needed to be assessed further. He also confirmed that the older child would require further assessments to establish her needs.

“ [Name redacted] did not stop there. He sourced a specialist private nursery school for the younger child and with the agreement of the birth family, enrolled the younger child into it. BCBC paid 50% of the nursery fee. Yet, a few short months later, the same authority told me there was absolutely nothing wrong with the children and described them to me as ‘normal toddlers’. That was a deception on the part of the social services manager, who was desperate to place the children immediately, because the only alternative was to put them both into residential care, costing thousands of pounds per child per week.

“Within one hour the children were brought to my home. Within two weeks we told BCBC that there was something very wrong with the children and in particular, the younger child who was extremely violent. Bridgend social services claimed the child was violent because he had witnessed domestic abuse, yet [name redacted]’s report documented a good home environment and went as far as to rule out domestic violence. This was and still is in black and white.

“I was later to also discover other documents confirming that there was no domestic abuse in the home. I began to realise there was a huge question mark over the ability of Bridgend social services being able to tell the truth. They lied about the children not having any conditions and also that they had been brought up in a home where domestic violence was the norm with one social worker telling me that the children’s mother was used to growing up and being on the end of ‘a slap’ from her father.

“However, in 2023 the grandparents went through a vetting procedure for their suitability to work with vulnerable children with an outcome that both obtained an enhanced certificate from the DBS authority. Anyone that understands that process will realise that to meet the criteria to be provided with an enhanced certificate would have required the police to check their national computer systems to establish if children would be safe in their care. The process would have included background checks going back to early teens to ensure they were not violent and that no records indicated risks to children such as domestic violence.”

‘Seeking help’

The statement continues: “Having cited domestic violence as the reason for the younger child’s behaviour, if Bridgend social services lied about this to me, what else were they lying about? More to the point, the grandparents, holders of an enhanced DBS certificate could, if they wished, apply to become foster carers. How can children have been removed from these grandparents, who, far from being negligent and failing to meet the children’s needs, had acted properly by seeking help for the children and ensuring they sought to have assessments undertaken so whatever was wrong with either child could be diagnosed and treated?

“Early diagnosis is key to recovery. The children were denied this help by the intervention of BCBC who simply cancelled appointments, placed them with us and refused the medical interventions they needed for eight years.

“From very early on, we asked about having the children assessed. We were told that the children were going to be put up for adoption and if the adoptees had concerns it would be up to them to have their own assessments done. This meant the children could be possibly adopted by people that had no idea there were any problems. They would be deceived too. They would be misled. In the pre-adoption paperwork it reports that there is no domestic violence within the birth family, but let’s not forget, BCBC categorically insisted that the younger child was copying the domestic violence he had allegedly witnessed and that it was this, and not any condition that is attributed to his behaviour.

“If it was true that domestic violence played a part in the younger child’s behaviour, then BCBC were legally required to make this known to any prospective adoptee, yet in all the paperwork that I read where it specifically asks if the birth family were involved in domestic violence, the authority has confirmed there was none.

“I lost count of the very many times we asked for assessments to be carried out for autism, ADHD, OCB, ODD and more, in particular for the younger child but also the older child needed help too. The younger child’s special school referred him for an autism assessment at a hospital but when the hospital wrote to me, saying they could not even put this child on the waiting list because his school failed to complete all the necessary information on the referral form, I was shocked.

“His school had all the information needed yet they decided not to provide it. Taking this matter to his social worker did no good. I ask why? It seemed that all the professionals including the school worked together to avoid assessments being carried out and only paid lip service in reports to make it look like they were actually doing something.

“When a therapist was engaged to help with the children’s behaviours, she was asked by Child and Adolescent Mental Health to submit a report around the younger child. The therapist responded with: ‘I don’t think I can offer any additional evidence to warrant an assessment of neurodiversity. I’m holding back from writing a report as requested because I’m not comfortable about the ‘is it ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder] or AD [Autism Disorder] focus. I’m struggling professionally with the differentiation and overlap of symptoms around autism and attachment difficulties and hold in mind how well evidenced his complex background, complex needs and complex presentations are’.

She also wrote: ‘I wonder if it might be unrealistic and a waste of resources to try to tease out a clear diagnosis of one thing or the other.’ The therapist had a golden opportunity to submit a report to help the children but she declined to do so.

“When asked by the SPACE Wellbeing neurodiversity team what needed to be addressed, [a school] specifically asked for a neurodevelopmental assessment to investigate ASD.

“[The school] requested this assessment on May 1 2022, listing his many behavioural presentations. They also included that the medical history of this child evidenced ‘no medication – no diagnosis’ and that it had been reported that ‘autism had been identified within the biological family’. His school completed the paperwork saying that they had expectations that the child would receive additional interventions to support his emotional wellbeing and mental health and that further advice for those working with and supporting him was to be given. Even a special needs school requesting this resulted in no action. I asked why. I was never given an answer.

“[Name redacted], during a conversation, said that the child had many referrals and the professionals were all working together on his behalf but how could they be when each referral led to nothing? I even wrote to SPACE directly to ask questions and took the child to the GP, who also made a referral to them. I made SPACE aware that I had offered to pay privately for the child to be seen but BCBC did not allow this saying that the professionals preferred that instead of offering the child anything more, they thought that additional support be offered to me to manage his violent behaviour and attacks. But this approach did not deal with the root cause of the child’s behaviour and placed me and others in danger of sustaining injury.

“SPACE responded to my correspondence, telling me that they were awaiting a report from the educational psychologist and therapist which they never received. There was simply no urgency surrounding any help for the child even though he was talking about suicide and was self-harming. A copy of a report with actions agreed was given to me, that had been compiled by the educational psychologist. This report named the school as the body to make referrals to the ND panel and the psychologist also made another referral for speech and language therapy and receptive language skills. It came to nothing and when I questioned this, still no-one took action and the child was just not assessed. The authority and school failed to meet the child’s most urgent needs.

“It should also be noted that when this child was removed from his birth family a schedule of hospital appointments had been set up for him for much needed speech and language therapy. The schedule of hospital appointments had resulted from the grandmother taking the child to the GP with her concerns something was not right. Social services told me not to take this child to the hospital for appointments as they were not necessary. I was told by [name redacted] that the birth family were just trying to label the children with as many conditions as they could in order to apply for additional benefits. I do not believe there is any evidence that the family was doing this. I do believe as did [name redacted], that the child badly needed speech and language therapy as a starting point.

“In November 2023 the child made disclosures of peer abuse in school. I reported this immediately and steps were taken by BCBC to investigate and involve the police. However, no specialist trained police officer spoke to the child or to the child in his classroom that was involved. I was concerned about this because I did not know if it was one other pupil in his class or more than one, and I had no idea if an adult at the school was also involved. I was told that there would be no further action. The other named child was not spoken to by the police nor his family. This meant he was not safeguarded and could have been at risk himself. I was assured that there would be a ratio of five adults in the classroom of six pupils and that the CCTV would now be switched on. When I asked why the CCTV had been switched off and more to the point, who switched it off, no-one would tell me.

“Two weeks later the child made yet another disclosure and named a second pupil. I reported this again immediately to BCBC. For around a week social services were very quiet and it was necessary for me to chase after them to find out what was happening as I was worried that I was still sending this child to school, yet, even with the new ratio of adults to pupils, the child had been subjected to further sexualised abuse. I wanted to know what was happening.

“To my horror I was told by [name redacted], manager of the child’s social worker that the school that was already in special measures, partly for issues surrounding safeguarding matters, had been allowed to investigate itself with no police involvement at all and with an outcome of no further action. Because the police were not involved meant the child was, for the second time, not spoken to by a specialist police officer, nor were we interviewed or any of the birth family when we should have been.

“Then, hot on the heels of this, the child arrived home from school and had been the subject of a very frightening attack in the classroom where two boys set upon him; one choking him from behind whilst a second was punching him in his face around the mouth area. The child told me how he had called to [name redacted], one of his 2:1s for help. With her back to him she responded by telling him he would have to wait as she was busy doing crafts with another pupil. I asked the child where his second 2:1 was and he said she was on a break. This child had 2:1 provision because of his complex needs which meant that two people were assigned to be by his side for the whole of the school day. If he had two people by his side he would not have been put into a position where he could be attacked. The school failed him. The school had a ratio of three more adults in the classroom (five in total) yet not one went to the child’s aid. Later that day, the child’s tooth fell out as a direct result of the attack.

“When I complained about this attack and questioned how it could happen I was told by senior officer at social services [name redacted] that in her experience no matter how many adults there are in a room a fight can break out, but I challenged this because a fight did break out and the child called for help and not one member of staff intervened.

“When I made a fuss, [name redacted] told me that because she had accepted that the child had been attacked, that they did not need to investigate. What this signalled to me was, that it was not a case of not needing to investigate, it was more a case of not wanting to investigate as they knew the child had been seriously and significantly injured and there were failures in a duty of care owed to him. To officially investigate would have warranted a full report that would be placed on file. They did not want this.

“A week later the child was physically and psychologically assaulted by a member of staff. Because the school was in Blaenau Gwent, I reported this assault directly to them. I had never,in all the years I had fostered, had to do this and was unsure of the process but believed that it was important to report this to the authority in which the school was based. They did, after all, employ the member of staff from the school.

“It took two days before I had a response, by which time I had also attempted to contact the child’s social worker three times and left a message on his mobile to call me. The following day I emailed the social worker and still got no response. The next day I emailed again and got an out of office reply. This suggested to me that the social worker logged onto his account and would have seen that I was trying to contact him but instead of getting in touch with me, he ignored me and then put his out of office response into action. I then emailed his manager, [name redacted] and she too ignored me.

“At this point I wrote an open letter and addressed it to all the relevant most senior officers at BCBC and Blaenau Gwent council along with Estyn who had placed the school in special measures and a copy also went directly to the Chief Constable of Gwent Police. At last I got a response but it was from Estyn. Then nearly two weeks after the incident, BCBC officials telephoned me. They were more concerned that I had not followed their procedures for reporting than any concern for the child. They were mad with me for dropping them in it with the police but I felt duty bound to report that the child had disclosed abuse in school and I believe all of this was being swept under the carpet instead of being properly investigated just like the peer abuse was hushed up. How can an investigation be undertaken when the person at the centre of it – the child – is excluded from the investigation?

“I believe that because I wrote to the Chief Constable to alert her to the fact that no-one from her force had interviewed me or the child, was the reason why BCBC then tried to cover themselves. This was when, in the latter part of 2024, the child’s social worker informed me that he had contacted Barnardos to request that they independently assess the child to discover why he displayed sexualised behaviour. I understand from the outcome that BCBC did not provide a lot of requested documentation to Barnardos to assist with the assessment they were undertaking. I did take part in this assessment at the request of Barnardos and subsequently was provided with a copy of their damming report.

“It should be noted that I audio recorded the child in the presence of his mother when he disclosed the assault by a member of school staff. I did this in light of the investigation style the authority had displayed with other discloses but, importantly I did it because it gave the child’s account, not mine and it evidenced what I had asked him which was in line with guidance.

“There could be no argument that I behaved improperly. I gave the recording to BCBC who refused to hand it to the police and said I had no right to record the child without his permission, but his mother gave me permission on his behalf and she was present holding his hand.”

Safety

A council spokesman said: “While we cannot comment upon individual cases, the council takes safeguarding allegations seriously and works alongside all appropriate partners in order to ensure the safety and well-being of children.

“We value and respect all of our local foster carers and the important work that they do, and are fully committed towards providing them with the training and ongoing support necessary for ensuring that children and young people can receive the best care possible.”