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GAZETTE
SEPTEMBER 1980
with his wife. To give vent to his anger he had taken a live
turf ember out of the fire and had burned the child with it.
Because the child screamed he got angry with it and
shook it so violently that he caused further serious
physical injury. This man and his wife had another older
child. That child had had to be committed to an
institution with permanent brain damage. The explanation
for it was that the child had been lying on a couch but had
rolled off and fallen on its head on the floor. Nothing
could be proved to the contrary but a very big question
mark remains against that explanation in the light of what
happened the second child.
Protection of the child and rules of evidence
One of the most frustrating things about trying to take
action to protect a child at risk is the difficulty at times of
trying to substantiate a case within the normal
requirements of the rules of evidence. To take a child
away from his home and parents is a serious thing. Apart
from establishing a case under the Children Acts (with
which I deal in more detail later on), one has to bear in
mind that natural justice and constitutional rights, which
are so readily invoked these days, have to be respected.
In one way or another social workers may become
quite convinced that a child may be at risk within a
particular home. It may not even be a case of all the
children in the home being at risk because sometimes one
out of the number of children in the family can be
rejected. A child may be noticed to be withdrawn and
neglected-looking at school. He may even display bruises
which are highly suspect but which could be due to
accidental cause. Neighbours may talk but that is only
heresay evidence. If one wants them to come forward as
witnesses they are unwilling to do so.
Information may be obtained through public health
nurses who normally are welcomed into the houses in
their district. They may see conditions which give rise to
concern about the welfare of a child in a particular house.
In the Easterrt Health Board area there is a reluctance on
the part of the nurses and their superiors to have the
nurses appear as witnesses. The reason is that if they are
seen to appear as witnesses against the parents and in
support of applications to take children away from those
parents they will be identified as part of the
'Establishment' and there will be a high risk that doors
will be closed against them in the future. Consequently, 1
will only call a public health nurse as a witness when it is
unavoidable.
Difficulty can arise even where there is medical
evidence of physical injury to a child and the parents
themselves have actually brought the child to hospital for
medical attention. They will seldom admit to deliberately
injuring the child. Instead, a plausible explanation may be
given claiming the injuries were caused in some accidental
way. The social workers and the doctor concerned in the
case may be satisfied in their own minds (having regard to
the surrounding circumstances of the case) that the
injuries were deliberately inflicted. Nevertheless, when he
comes to give objective evidence, the doctor may have to
acknowledge that a genuine accidental cause cannot be
completely ruled out, however much he may personally
believe it was not the true cause. The court then has to
weigh up all the evidence and decide whether or not to
accept the parents' explanation of accidental cause.
Anticipation of risk
There is also the problem that one cannot ask the court
to anticipate something even though there may be a
definite risk that it is going to happen. I had a case in
which I was consulted one September about a child who
had been assaulted by his parents. The assaults had
occurred in the early part of the year and positive
evidence of injury had been found by a doctor in the
preceding February. An arrangement was then made that
the child would be voluntarily placed in the care of
grandparents with whom he remained until the time I was
consulted.
I was consulted because the parents were then insisting
on getting the child back. In view of the past history the
social workers were satisfied the earlier assault had arisen
out of certain inadequacies in the parents. As these
inadequacies were still present the social workers were
apprehensive that the child would be assaulted again if
returned to the parents. The question was, what could be
done to prevent it? I had to advise that I did not think we
could move in September to get a Fit Person Order on the
basis of what had happened over six months previously.
Had action been taken the previous February, a Fit
Person Order would certainly have been granted. Instead,
the parents had voluntarily agreed to place the child in the
care of the grandparents. It was possible of course that
the parents may have come to realise the error of their
ways so there was no positive proof that they would
repeat the previous ill-treatment of the child. There was
really no option, therefore, but to let the child go home to
the parents on the basis that the home would be kept
under the closest possible supervision. We would have to
await a further act of ill-treatment (if it were to happen) to
provide fresh evidence on which a Fit Person Order could
be sought. The child was allowed home and was assaulted
once again. Needless to say, we moved in very fast then
and got an Order committing the child into the care of the
Eastern Health Board.
Supervision by social workers
The case just mentioned underlines a major difficulty in
these children-at-risk cases, namely that supervision must
of necessity be limited. One obviously cannot have a
social worker in a problem home all the time. The degree
of supervision must be carefully worked out. If there is
too much a mother's own initiative and morale could be
undermined. Or it could create resentment in the mother
which could be turned against the child. Even with the
best supervision an act of violence can occur
spontaneously and injury be inflicted in a matter of
minutes.
Social work with parents
I mentioned in my opening comments that in the child-
at-risk type of case we are not dealing with the child
in isolation but are dealing with problem people in the
family unit. I also mentioned that the invocation of the
criminal law is not always appropriate and social workers
do not normally wish to see it invoked. It would only add
to the stress in an already very difficult situation and
could well build up an anti-Establishment feeling in the
parents.
It is vitally important that the social workers should be
free to try to maintain the best possible relationship with
the parents with a view to helping the child at risk as well
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