Arthur Labinjo-Hughes: The Vicious Cycle of Failing Children in the UK

Dennis O'Neill 1945

Maria Colwell 1973

Jasmine Beckford, Tyra Henry, Heidi Koseda, and Shirley Woodcock 1984

Victoria Climbié, Kennedy McFarlane 2000

Peter Connelly (Baby P) 2008

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes 2021

There are some things you just don't want to be right about, and this is one of them. Every 10-20 years in the UK, since 1945, a high profile and horrific case of child abuse is reported on in the national news. Each time, these children are killed by the people they were supposed to be able to trust, who were supposed to care for them and keep them safe. You may remember some of these names, even if you can't remember why or the exact details surrounding their case, but the similarities are stark. Every time, reports of 'public outrage' and 'shocking discoveries' lead to the same kind of abuse being overlooked, the same kind of vulnerable children being failed, and the same reasons given in the same type of inquiry; warning signs were missed, social services were overwhelmed, staff were overworked and made significant mistakes, agencies didn't work together to see the patterns of abuse, and crucially, support services were so under-resourced that it was easy to see how even the most clear cases of abuse and neglect were buried under a pile of other desperate cases. They also all show the signs of prejudice and discrimination against those who are disadvantaged and vulnerable, even when they are just children. 

They were all poor families living in areas where the already sparse children's services All of these children suffered horrific abuse and neglect prior to their murder, all were killed by their primary caregivers, and all of them were living in situations where domestic abuse was the norm, but they were particularly targeted. All of them had instances where concerns were raised about their wellbeing but were not acted upon by the local social services. Risk factors which were known to indicate escalating danger to these children were seen, such as emotional and psychological abuse which is dehumanising towards the child, and more severe physical punishments, including violence and starvation. It is harrowing to learn about the cruelty these children suffered, but what is more harrowing is that these cases are not as unusual as we might think. Many more children suffer the same levels of abuse and neglect, but survive. Some children who are killed simply do not get the same level of media coverage and slip into obscurity. 

So why does this keep happening? And why do only a few cases receive the national attention they all deserve? Despite the complexity of the individual cases and they bureaucracy of the systems meant to help them, the answer to the first question is relatively simple; it is considered too expensive to invest in the level of resources which are required to provide social care support to people to prevent these things from happening. Children and families who come into contact with social services are usually the ones who are already struggling with disadvantage, in particular those who live in poverty. That doesn't mean abuse doesn't happen in middle or upper class families - it does - but those families are protected from scrutiny because of their higher status. The circumstances which make abuse worse are also more prevalent in poorer families, where they don't have enough material, emotional or social resources, and patterns of behaviour are replicated over generations. Understanding gender based violence is absolutely crucial, as it is still the case that the majority of murders are committed by men, including the killing of children. An intersectional approach is vital, acknowledging that those most at risk are the ones facing multiple disadvantages in their gender, socio-economic status, geography, age, disability, ethnicity and immigration status. 

The frustrating thing about this is that we absolutely can see which children are in danger, and even which potential parents would be in need of extra support. The problem is, no government is willing to invest the amount of money and crucially, time that is required to change both the circumstances and the behaviours. In order to do everything possible to prevent child abuse, we as a society would need to ensure everyone earned a proper living wage, or had benefits which matched it, had decent living conditions, and were able to access long-term psychological therapy which deals with the patterns of generational trauma and enable them to change their behaviour. This would need to be put into place for a whole family, including any adult caregivers, siblings and the children themselves, and start as soon as a pregnancy is discovered. Prevention means taking positive steps change things for the better as early as possible, instead of waiting until things hit a crisis point to start to deal with them. In order to do this effectively, billions would have to be invested across all spheres of social care, with millions more people recruited and trained over decades. And even if that were done, the effects wouldn't be truly seen until at least the next generation. All the evidence points to exactly the same interventions over and over again, requires more than only just enough resources to be poured into every single department and service - schools, GPs, hospitals, social workers, police, therapists, the justice system, the DWP, housing and a huge impact on the private sector being forced to pay a real living wage. Despite the preliminary studies proving that all this investment, when properly sustained, actually saves money in the long run, no government is willing to commit to the initial expenditure when they know they have a decade in power at best, and they plan for every four years. We know how to stop this, we just don't know how to convince the people who have the power to do it to sacrifice their short term popularity for the long term gains of literally everyone in society.

Unfortunately, things only get more cynical when considering the media. Politics is also the reason only a few of these cases ever receive enough national attention to force a government to make changes. The case itself needs to be relatively simple and have overwhelming evidence of both ongoing abuse and failings by social services to be able to explain it in a short article, and convictions need to have already been secured. The kinds of traceable, multiple failings inevitably happen at the peak of a long term decimation of social services where people are simply unable to do their jobs with the resources they have. The perpetrators need to be people who have very little power, to reduce the chance of the media company being sued. If a case this compelling is discovered, it also has to be worth it for the media, either one particular outlet or all of them, to effectively go up against the current government. It may be that a particularly right or left leaning outlet sees an opportunity to discredit a government they don't support. That government also needs to be perceived as relatively vulnerable at the time of the case, so that the risk of criticising them is worth it. There also needs to be something which separates one particular story from countless others, usually an unusual perpetrator. Dennis was killed by his foster father,  Maria by her step-father, Jasmine after she had been returned from foster care. Victoria by her great-aunt and her boyfriend, with concerns that racial bias meant her injuries were considered less severe by those who should have intervened. Peter because he was a baby, the severity of missed injuries, that his mother pled guilty and he was the same local authority as Victoria. And now Arthur, killed by his step-mother and aided by his father. The most callous reason for how few cases reach national attention, however, and the most disheartening, is that if too many of these stories are reported consecutively, people become overwhelmed and they lose their impact. Many people are lucky enough not to have to deal with the reality of the scale of child abuse that is always happening, every day. Therefore, when one case is highlighted it's shocking and motivating, but too many and it becomes overwhelming and we are unable to cope, and we become nihilistic.         

However, that's not to say changes never happen. There have been multiple landmark cases and changes in laws and social policy which have made improvements to services after each of these cases have occurred. The Children Act 1948 sets the legal requirement for the government and local authorities to have social services for children in the first place, when previously there may have been some help from charities or religious institutions but this was patchy and unregulated. Reforms have been made in 1973, 1975, 1984, and in 1989 the welfare of the child took precedence in law. 1990 saw the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child, and in 2003, the Every Child Matters policy made significant changes to child protection and supporting families. There have been further reforms, but with mixed results, and there has been no real-term increase in resources for children's and families services, and most of them have suffered from extreme cuts to their funding and staff. So inevitably, here we are again. Things are better than they used to be before 1948, but positive changes take a long time to take hold and become the norm, and it is so much easier to lose ground than it is to take it. Hopefully, the murder of Arthur will force a positive change to come sooner rather than later. Hopefully we will keep inching towards a society where children are safe in their own homes.