Social workers are so immune to abuse that they turn into robots who cannot protect our children

Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of the Kids Company charity in Peckham, says that exposure to the horrors of child abuse makes social workers immune to suffering and places children at risk

It is naive to imagine that we can know what takes place behind every front door at every moment.



Time will tell in the case of the three women apparently kept as slaves in an ordinary London house for a staggering 30 years, but the indications are that no one, including the authorities, could have known.



Yet there are plenty more examples where evidence of abuse is clear. And when we consider that more than 400 children have died in horrifying circumstances since 2000, it is obvious something in our approach to vulnerable people is very wrong.



Last year in Coventry, Daniel Pelka was found scavenging in bins for food. His mother eventually killed him.



Hamzah Khan from Bradford was dead for two years before the smell of his decomposing body brought the police to the door in 2011.



Before them, there was baby Peter Connelly in Haringey, North London. There were 22 visits from social workers and 14 appointments with a GP.



Despite 60 injuries including a broken spine, a hospital doctor sent him home. In 2007 he died.



And no one will forget Victoria Climbie in Ealing, West London, tied up in a bin bag in a bathtub, dead in her own excrement.

Each time such a child dies we are promised case reviews and told ‘lessons are to be learnt’.



Then there is a catalogue of recommendations: better communication, enhanced administration, ‘multi-agency working’. And we’re left none the wiser.



As the founder of Kids Company, which provides a refuge for vulnerable children and young adults, many of whom have suffered terrible abuse, I know the dangerous circumstances in which they have to live – and I’m very aware of the positive and negative responses they get from the authorities.



I have come to believe that after years of exposure to traumatic events, professionals can become desensitised – so disturbed that they shut down their feelings to protect themselves.



To protect children you need a sense of alarm to propel you into action. Without that sense of alarm, whole social work and child mental health departments can end up unwittingly justifying inaction, placing hundreds, probably thousands, of children at further risk.



Child services are given just £113million each year, while £42.2billion is spent on defence, leading to despair among social workers who have a wish to do good but are unable to deliver (file picture)

Some will go as far as beginning to grade levels of abuse. I know of child protection departments where sexual abuse of children involving penetration will be acted on, but those involving exposure to inappropriate behaviour or sexual touching will not. When we start grading child abuse we become institutionally savage.



One in ten children suffers significant mental health difficulties and, according to the NSPCC, one in ten children is being sexually abused.



In research carried out by University College London, one in five of our young people attending the Kids Company’s educational facility were found to have been shot at and/or stabbed.



' A fter years of exposure to traumatic events, professionals can become desensitised – so disturbed that they shut down their feelings to protect themselves.'

Half had witnessed shootings and stabbings in the past year. Yet the most recent national child protection review failed to comment on sexual and physical abuse of children in gangs.



There are reasons for this widespread failure, of course – including the low priority we give to child protection.



Our social work and child mental health departments are so grossly underfunded they can no longer act appropriately.



Child protection is not a priority for Governments. Abused children won’t hold them accountable so they’re relegated to the bottom of the pile.



We spend £42.2 billion on defence, £40 billion is set aside for high-speed rail, but the budget for child protection in England and Wales in 2010 was £113 million.



This is against the backdrop of 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK, some 1.5 million children affected by neglect and approximately 1.5 million children suffering maltreatment.



There is a sense of despair in these child protection workers because of the gap between their wish to do good and their poor delivery. A collusive, perverse silence pervades, driven from the top.



At some point these professionals have to protect themselves from that anxiety. Some do it by leaving. Others become physically and mentally ill.



Those who stay on are either remarkable in their resilience or, worryingly, they shut down their abilities to feel and become almost robotic.



Trauma can lead to reduced functioning of the pro-social parts of the brain; a sort of ‘acquired psychopathy’ borne of over-exposure to abuse.



Camila founded Kids Company charity in 1996 which now reaches out to 36,000 children across London and intensively supports 18,000 more

This mechanism in maltreated children can manifest itself in workers who work with them if the worker is not supported.



No national child protection review has gone anywhere near discussing the desensitisation, the perversion of feeling, in workers which can ensue.



I remember a two-year-old who was brought to Kids Company by his siblings. He barely reacted, and he looked haunted.



We spent years trying to get social services to take him into care. The case was constantly transferred between authorities who didn’t want to take responsibility.



There were three changes of social worker, and eventually in 2009 the child was presented at hospital. He was now four, had 36 separate injuries, was malnourished, and was taken into care.



So the cycle repeats itself. Every so often our conscience is pricked by catastrophic harm. Workers will be blamed and reports will be produced.



'There is a sense of despair in these child protection workers ... A collusive, perverse silence pervades, driven from the top.'



The millions of children who are desperate, terrified and deeply alone cannot rely on one of the world’s richest societies to ensure their protection.

Chronic exposure to harm begins to alter these children’s brains until the child adapts to the savagery they’re exposed to. Incubated in terror, they emerge as disturbed adults who either harm themselves or others.



It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better. The first step needs to be one of truth-telling.



Early next year the Centre for Social Justice will report on the profound failures in children’s services and the concerns workers have shared with them.



Kids Company is arguing for a 15-year national improvement plan and a taskforce to redesign child mental health and social care services.



The reason Kids Company consistently returns children to education and employment at rates of above 90 per cent is that we look after the emotional life of our workers. And we act robustly to protect our kids.



The minute a worker is too paralysed to protect a child, the murder of their emotional life begins. Maltreated children are yearning for human warmth and dignity. The cruelest thing is to greet them with the coldness of denial.



Sometimes it results in the death of children but always it leads to their betrayal.



Enough lessons. Let’s act.

