7.30pm. Thursday 9^th October 2014, at The Victoria, 48 John Bright Street, Birmingham B1 1BN.

Speakers for this important debate include John Hemming MP, Chair of Justice for Families.

“The system keeps limping along – its feet bearing the self-inflicted gunshot wounds of trigger-happy policymakers." Professor Sue White, University of Birmingham

The Children and Families Act 2014 is the latest in a barrage of laws centred on the UK’s child protection system. Since the 1989 Children's Act, which established the primacy of child welfare and the importance of preserving home and family links where possible, an astonishing 21 further Acts of Parliament have focused on the protection of children.

So why have we seen such terrible fatalities over the same period?

Professionals point to problems such as performance targets, obsession with data, difficulties in recruiting and training social workers, and a lack of recognition of child protection issues in other professions leading to a failure of agencies to collaborate effectively.

But at the end of the day, the very system set up to monitor cases such as Victoria Climbie, Baby P, and Daniel Pelka, has failed to protect those children.

Recent campaigns highlighting the process of adopting out (forced adoption) children in care have indicated a possible class, disability, and race bias within the child protection system. And yet the Rotherham scandal suggests that it was the unquestioning culture of political correctness across the system that left large numbers of children open to sexual exploitation.

So is the child protection system interfering or incompetent? Is it under-funded, under-valued, over-stretched and over-criticised?  Or is it overbearing and morally compromised to the point that it loses sight of its own principles?

Putting the headlines to one side, what does the system look like when it works well? And are we all to blame for demanding quick fixes, when longer-term solutions that address the full complexity of the issues would be more effective?

 Speakers

John Hemming MP: Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley and Chair of Justice for Families

Professor Kate Morris: Professor of Social Work and Director of the Centre for Social Work, University of Nottingham

Recommended Readings

Forced Adoptions and Mums on the Run - BBC R4 programme

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pjf3z

Professor Kate Morris and others on rethinking the child protection system

http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2013/oct/22/think-again-how-protect-children

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2014/03/19/potential-injustices-likely-arise-children-families-act/

http://www.frankfuredi.com/article/nspcc_not_in_the_best_interests_of_the_child