An Open Letter to Children’s Secretary Ed Balls
Dear Mr Balls,
The Independent Safeguarding Authority must be abolished.
I as much as any other reasonable person accept the need to protect children and other vulnerable groups in society, but the ISA isn’t the way to go about it. In your letter to Barry Sheerman MP, Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, you say:
Our aim throughout has been to develop an approach which is proportionate, balanced and effective, with the scheme operating in a way which is neither burdensome nor bureaucratic, or off-putting to potential volunteers in children’s settings – while still meeting the concerns of parents.
I’m terribly sorry but if those were your aims you have a very funny way of attaining them. The ISA in practice is already neither proportionate, nor balanced, nor effective. It is indeed bureaucratic, is already off-putting to potential volunteers and couldn’t possibly meet the concerns of parents. After all, how could it? For risk credibly to be determined, it needs to be assessed on evidence which is fair and, as you say, balanced. The ISA doesn’t do that:
The risk assessment model starts by identifying a series of possible ‘hazards’, which may come about as a result of a person taking a job/volunteering position, and listing them in a table. It gives the examples of ‘inappropriate physical contact with a 12- to 16-year-old pupil during a lesson’, ‘building a relationship which is exploited out of school resulting in underage sex’, and ‘taking photos of 12- to 16-year-old pupils (eg, during swimming lessons)’. Once they have identified the hazards, the case worker will give each a figure from one to five for the impact it would have on a child (in the examples above, it gives these hazards the figures of four, five and two). Then, they will give it a figure between one and five for the likelihood that the event will occur.
Once they have these two figures for each hazard, they will transfer the figures to ‘a matrix’, which seems to involve basically plotting them on a graph. So for each individual they are considering barring, they will end up with a graph with a series of dots on it: ‘The risk matrix gives a picture of the risk assigned to each hazard as a result of the likelihood and impact assessments.’ Then – somehow, it doesn’t exactly specify how – the ISA is supposed to be able to tell from this graph whether the person is a risk or not, and whether they should be barred.
Clearly a system like this, with caseworkers who don’t even know the people they are vetting through any personal involvement, who are free to take heresay, supposition, prejudices and evidence which wouldn’t be admissible in a court into account, is damaging to the rule of law. It also suggests to children that they can only have safe relationships with adults if those adults are vetted by the government first, and discourages the vast majority of adults (almost all of whom are safe to work with children) from contact which in times gone by would have been considered normal. The ISA is poisoning the social fabric.
To set up a vetting scheme which doesn’t allow employers any individual leeway to risk assess their employees and potential employees is to miss the point of where abuse against children and other vulnerable groups actually takes place. Numerous child care experts in recent weeks have acknowledged that almost all abuse against children is perpetrated by someone close to the family. Esther Rantzen herself said:
“Most abused children suffer at home, at the hands of people very close to them; the risk provided by strangers is minimal.”
The founder of Childline says that the ISA is damaging to the national psyche and thus contributes to putting children at risk. It’s an understandable outcome when you have an all-pervasive scheme such as this, run as a bureaucracy with the outgoing presumption that everyone is a paedophile/abuser unless they can prove otherwise (at their own cost). This isn’t a question of ‘striking the right balance’ or ‘drawing the line’ somewhere else in vetting and barring people from work, it is about a bureaucracy which is immensely damaging, which will make it harder to detect genuine abusers, and make it much harder to teach our young people to risk assess for themselves. A review isn’t needed here – the ISA must go and go now.
I would welcome your thoughts on the points I have raised, but there is no room for compromise about whether the ISA should continue. If you want to protect children and vulnerable adults you should:
- let existing professionals in HR, the police and social services do the jobs they know how to do. It’s insulting to them to suggest that a barely accountable bureaucrat only (for the most part) observing the world of work is able to protect the vulnerable more effectively than them;
- reform the management of local police services (particularly the Metropolitan Police) and courts, whose record keeping is incompetent at best, outright dangerous at worst;
- get the inter-agency communication which is supposed to protect children and vulnerable adults to actually happen uniformally. Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez would never have been murdered in New Cross if that had taken place as it should have.
Finally you and your cabinet colleagues need to accept that risk cannot be eliminated in society, in protecting us from terrorism, from identity theft, or from the abusers in our midst. Even the (then) senior detective who set up the surveillance operation which led to Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr’s arrest acknowledges Huntley didn’t kill through his job working at a school. The ISA’s remit ignores that fundamental point; it’s ludicrous then to suggest that a £170 million bureaucracy, which even you admit has barely any need, could ever succeed at stopping people like him, certainly without enormous collateral damage. I’m shocked at your apparent willingness to write off the people already being damaged by the ISA; to suggest the ISA is like a seatbelt is an insult to those being strangled by it.
Yours sincerely,
Cosmodaddy
Independent Safeguarding Authority Head Patronises His Opponents
Sir Roger Singleton, the government-appointed head of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) has decided that rather than giving a reason why the ISA should exist, he’d rather just patronise the scheme’s opponents:
Sir Roger, whose agency will run the vetting scheme, said: “We need to calm down and consider carefully and rationally what this scheme is and is not about.
“It is not about interfering with the sensible arrangements which parents make with each other to take their children to schools and clubs.
“It is not about subjecting a quarter of the population to intensive scrutiny of their personal lives and it is not about creating mistrust between adults and children or discouraging volunteering.”
He added: “It is about ensuring that those people who have already been dismissed by their employers for inappropriate behaviour with children do not simply up sticks and move elsewhere in the country to continue their abuse.
“And it is about bringing an end to the need for repeated CRB checks which so many people have found irritating. ISA registration is a one-off process for a single fee.”
Except he’s wrong on all counts, and for the record Sir Roger I am calm, I have considered your scheme carefully and rationally and know exactly what it’s about. It’s about presuming that everyone in the country is a paedophile unless they can prove (at their cost) otherwise. It’s about discouraging children from risk-assessing on their own, and teaching them to believe that a giant, unmanageable bureaucracy can protect them from harm. It’s about undermining the rule of law, using heresay, supposition, guesswork and a graph matrix to quantify ‘unsuitability’ by people who are themselves unaccountable for their decisions. The ISA makes all the wrong presumptions about relationships in society, breaks down trust and quite simply isn’t necessary. Oh and it doesn’t supplant the CRB…
There are people who would have you believe that the ISA or even CRB would have prevented Ian Huntley’s Soham murders, but it’s already been determined that even the most basic (and pre-CRB) checks would have stopped him in his tracks; they were never done. As Esther Rantzen rightly said, the vast majority of abuse is committed by people whom the victim already knows – the ISA is yet another scheme aimed at giving the illusion that the government is doing something, when the people already tasked with protection aren’t (for a variety of reasons). All risk can never be eliminated and certainly won’t be by a bureaucracy.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority must be abolished (calmly and rationally).
The Independent Safeguarding Authority ‘Puts Children at Risk’
Childline founder Esther Rantzen has attacked the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), saying it was damaging to the national psyche, which puts children at risk. This isn’t an argument from an activist, a blogger or an opposition politician – this is from a woman whose credentials in child protection are beyond reproach.
“Most abused children suffer at home, at the hands of people very close to them; the risk provided by strangers is minimal.”
And she’s right – blanketing the entire population with the suspicion that they might be paedophiles is damaging the national psyche, and is already putting children at risk. Wes Cuell, director of services for children and young people for the NSPCC, added:
“The warning signs are now out there that this scheme will stop people doing things that are perfectly safe and normal, things that they shouldn’t be prevented from doing.
“When you get this degree of public outcry there is generally a good reason for it. I think we are getting a bit too close to crossing the line about what is acceptable in the court of public opinion. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Mr Cuell said that while it was important to strengthen rules to protect children from potential sex offenders, over zealous interpretation of such rules could threaten the civil liberties of thousands.
When leading child protection charities themselves start calling for an end to this madness of trying to use a bureaucracy to obliterate all risk for children and ‘vulnerable adults’, it suggests something really needs to be done. Interestingly Iain Dale has discovered that the likely next Home Secretary Chris Grayling is already reviewing the possibility of abolishing the ISA. How sickening a legacy it would be for Alan Johnson, Jack Straw and Gordon Brown – all progressive politicians once – to leave behind next summer. We shouldn’t have to wait for the Tories – the ISA must be abolished now – there is no time to waste.
Three Voices Against the ISA
Three prominent writers (at least two of them Tories) have lined up against the Independent Safeguarding Authority:
“Independent” Safeguarding Authority indeed! Independent of whom? Paedophile networks? One would hope so. Rather like the Independent Electoral Commission in Afghanistan (its boss appointed by President Karzai), “independent” seems to have become the adjective of choice for politicians anxious to slap a patina of objectivity on to their latest acronym.
I’ve racked my brains for sinister vested interests from which the ISA might be independent: certainly not the Home Office, which appoints its chairman. What’s the betting that when the authority stumbles, as all authorities do, and ministers seek shelter from the media storm by appointing an inquiry, it will be called the Independent Inquiry into the Independent Safeguarding Authority?
The ISA scheme and its enabling legislation were a response to the Soham murders. Those murders would almost certainly never have happened were it not for the incompetence of the police, social services and education authorities. The result is that in consequence of the failure of three state authorities, a fourth state authority has been set up.
If we can pull back from the manipulation of fear and the exaggeration of risk, the madness of the scheme is evident. Not only Scoutleaders, choirmasters and football coaches will need to be certified, but so will parents who give a lift to other people’s children to school, and authors who enter schools to chat about their books (including me). If you give a lift to school to a neighbour’s children a few times without beiing certified, you will get a criminal record and a £5,000 fine.
Relatives, of course, are exempt – which as they are statistically by a huge degree the most likely people to harm the kids, only further points up the nonsense.
I hesitated to write that, lest the government has the wheeze of bringing in a certificate you need to be an uncle.
The scheme represents a monstrous new bureaucracy and yet a further radical extension of government databases on ordinary people. It will not stop child abuse at all. To take as one example the recent high profile case of Vanessa George, Plymouth nursery teacher accused of child sex abuse. Ms George could have easily obtained a certificate as she had no prior convictions.
What kind of sick society is it that puts its entire adult population under a cloud of suspicion? Does the word Trust not mean anything at all? An entire generation of kids will be brought up without that particular word in its vocabulary. We have lost all sense of perspective.
The fact of the matter is that nine out of ten instances of child abuse occur within the family or the family’s circle of friends. What would our government like to do about that? Introduce family visiting orders, whereby only “approved” members of one’s family is allowed to visit? Because that’s the logical next step.
Predatory paedophiles will always find ways to get to their prey. That”s not to say society shouldn’t do everything it can to make it more difficult for them. But this scheme not only won’t achieve its aim, it will actually make life worse for kids.
Ian Dale makes a valid appeal to Chris Grayling – the likely next Home Secretary, and I’ll repeat it here. The ISA is unfair, wrong-minded and counter-productive. You want some easy votes to get you into office, and then prove the leftie naysayers wrong when you win in May/June? Promise to stop the ISA. You’re into law and order? Promise to manage the police better, social services, the CRB; get local public services to talk to one another the way they should. Labour’s had 12 years to do this, but gave up early on and started forming bureaucracies to look as though they were doing something – that should be anathema to a Tory administration. Repeal the Safeguarding Groups Act 2006 and start getting society to accept once more that we can’t get rid of all risk, and that we should be teaching our children to risk assess for themselves rather than hope for the best from a bureaucracy that measures risk from a meaningless matrix, and won’t have the reach to stop real paedophiles accessing children.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority must be abolished.
Child Protection Minister Justifies ISA With Propaganda
Baroness Morgan, Britain’s Child Protection Minister, when interviewed on Channel 4 News, fails to put forward a single argument about why the Independent Safeguarding Authority is necessary:
When pushed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy that the ISA isn’t needed because most abuse does not happen with total strangers, she agrees with him, before returning on-Home-Office-message with the crack that ‘you need to know’ that people in positions of trust ‘have been properly vetted’. If most abuse takes place in private, invariably by people who would not be on a ‘barring’ list old or new anyway, then I fail to understand where the need for vetting comes at all. Morgan then resorts to the familiar Home Office tactic of presenting the ISA as a solution to a serious problem (even though there isn’t one), and hammers home her rationale for the ISA (even though there isn’t one), in the hope that her relentless propaganda will gain public support for it. But the rationale for this £170 million scheme simply isn’t evidence-based: she insists that it’s a step on from the simple ‘snapshot’ of a CRB check, but conveniently again fails to admit that it really does provide no additional, meaningful information. The extra intelligence the ISA uses to bar people from working with children and/or ‘vulnerable adults’ is heresay – evidence which would not be admissible in a court of law, and is used in the most meaningless and arbitrary way in order to come up with barring decisions.
With its presumption that everyone is a paedophile unless they prove otherwise (at their cost), the ISA undermines the rule of law, will have the most pernicious effects on adult and adult-child relationships and won’t provide any meaningful protection for children or ‘vulnerable adults’. Sir Michael Bichard, the man whose report into the Soham murders led to the formation of the ISA, has expressed surprise and dismay at the scale of the ISA’s remit, but essentially writes that and the rest of its collateral damage off as ‘irrelevant’ as long as children were protected; in other words the ends justify the means – that damaging the lives of adults is worth it if it succeeds in safeguarding children or ‘vulnerable adults’ (which can’t be proven). And Morgan implicitly says exactly the same thing when in response to Guru-Murthy’s statement that most abuse happens in the home she says, ‘we must take all steps that we can’ (in protecting children). In other words, even though there’s no need for it and it will have disastrous repercussions, we’re going to do it anyway. Well when the ISA fails in its remit, and ends up causing significant social damage, I hope those words come back to bite them both.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority must be abolished.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority – Whatever the Cost?
The Children’s Society believes that the potential benefits of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) outweigh its costs:
It is not a knee-jerk reaction provoked by media hype and moral panic. Nor do I agree that it would produce more social evil than it is seeking to prevent. This is about preventing unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults.
After the horrendous Soham case, we should all see this practical and down-to-earth scheme as a positive development, as it is designed to improve significantly the flow of valuable information. We have learned over many years now that there are adults, albeit a small proportion, who deliberately seek ways of gaining access to children in order to abuse them.
This is not a wild surmise. The figures back it up. For example, in January 2009, the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) took over responsibility for receiving referrals from employers who had been alerted to concerns about the behaviour of people working with children and vulnerable adults. There have been 500-600 referrals every month. Surely, in the light of those figures, any parent would want to know that the person who is taking their child to a football match, the Girl Guides or Cubs had been checked out?
Bob Reitemeier’s argument doesn’t make sense. It most certainly is a knee-jerk reaction provoked by moral panic. It’s already been determined that if the relevant (and pre-CRB) checks had been done, that Ian Huntley would never have come into contact with Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. To set up a super-bureaucracy to prevent ‘unsuitable people’ from working with children and vulnerable adults is then just an exercise in futility. As I’ve argued before it will have limited, if any, success, it will make genuine abuse much more difficult to detect, and because the ISA is allowed to make barring decisions based on heresay, it will undermine the rule of law. Reitemeier suggests the ISA is already a success because there have been 500-600 referrals a month. So what? When those referrals could all be malicious, bogus or not even covered by the ISA’s remit, how can he claim there really are hundreds of paedophiles out there, trying to access children? It’s an appalling, irresponsible position to take. Are those 500-600 people then automatically barred from working with children and vulnerable adults? Should it be alright to bar someone from the workplace based on evidence which wouldn’t be admissible in court, or is it really worth sacrificing hundreds or even thousands of people’s careers to the altar of child ‘protection’?
His final line: ‘what would I want for my child’ raises the stakes. I personally would want my child to be taught how to risk assess for themselves, to acknowledge that all risk in public and private can never be prevented (and certainly not by a bureaucracy) and for workplaces I allowed my child (or elderly parent or autistic elder brother) near to have their own child protection policies, and make fair, measured decisions based on individuals and situations they know. An employer with a employee doing work they have been ‘barred’ from faces a fine of £5000, even if the ISA’s decision is wrong or unfair. I wouldn’t want my child to live under the illusion of protection, and certainly not at the cost of a single innocent adult’s life.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority should be abolished.
Sarah’s Law is Better Than Megan’s Law. So What?
Mary Dejevsky argues Britain’s version of America’s Megan’s Law is an improvement:
But this pilot Sarah’s Law was, in fact, very different from Megan’s Law, and potentially more effective for that reason. As a rule, it preserves the anonymity of registered offenders, leaving in place the incentive to remain above ground. Their disappearance is what prompts disclosure of identity. Information will be provided about convicted sex offenders in the neighbourhood, but only to those with a reason to ask. There are no police websites, where you can scan, voyeuristically, for paedophiles on your own, or someone else’s, patch.
The most innovative, and pertinent, aspect of Sarah’s Law, however, allows parents and other carers to ask the police whether someone with access to their children has a child sex conviction. This recognises that abductions, such as that of Jaycee Dugard in California or Sarah Payne here, account for a tiny minority of child sex offences.
The vast majority are committed by members of the child’s immediate circle, with fully 80 per cent taking place in the home of the offender or the victim. Mothers who might have concerns about a new partner are among those encouraged to use the service, and in the four areas of the pilot, more than 80 applications for information were received in the first six months alone.
It is true that Stacey Lawrence’s killer, although accused of assault by his former wife, would not have shown up in police records – even if Stacey’s mother had suspected anything (which she did not). Nor can it be known how often paedophiles seek out lone mothers, with a view to gaining access to their children. But what cannot be disputed is that there will be more cases like Stacey Lawrence’s than will have drama of Jaycee Dugard’s, and that Sarah’s Law is better framed to protect children than Megan’s – even if in Stacey’s case, tragically, it failed.
It’s a somewhat odd argument, which she concludes by arguing against. Firstly she’s right – there will always be a level of risk in society – for adults as well as children, but these laws are being pursued anyway; they are symptom of a prevailing belief in government that databases and registers can somehow protect us from all ills. It’s a dangerous delusion. Sometimes Sarah Paynes will happen, even if they’re as thoroughly supervised as parents could naturally be expected to manage, and Stacey Lawrences indeed can’t be 100% prevented – what about dangerous people who don’t appear on the sex offenders’ register? She fails however to acknowledge the other fundamental flaws in the ‘Sarah’s Law’ pilots – applying the same rationalised principles we do to our economy to the administration of our private relationships is just bananas – it’s not only counter-productive (adults and children becoming increasingly alienated from each other, children not taught to risk assess on their own), but it really won’t result in vulnerable adults being safeguarded any better than ‘Megan’s Law’ – is anyone really naïve enough to think the police with parents ‘and other carers’ can be trusted any more than a baying mob?
It’s a step forward to acknowledge that the vast majority of paedophile attacks happen within the close family, I’ll admit (though it fundamentally undermines the entire rationale for having an Independent Safeguarding Authority), but this project (as the ISA) undermines the basis of justice and the rule of law. It’s a dangerous road we head down if we accept the validity of permanent punishment, and doubly so when we remember that the categorisation of what’s now labelled as a ‘child sex offence’ has grown exponentially under New Labour – presuming that everyone on the sex offenders’ register presents an equal risk to children will just put hundreds of people who do not pose any threat into the line of fire. It misses the point – firstly why not look for people with sexual offences prevention orders (SOPO) rather than the less informative ‘child sex convictions’, but why stop there? If the aim is ‘protection’ why not do a full criminal records bureau (CRB)? Why not get ‘someone with access to their children’ vetted by the ISA? Where would it end? The milkman? New boyfriend? Child’s new best friend? Their parents? Their extended family? Where does the line get drawn? History has shown when such intrusion can be taken to an extreme it will be, and for how significant a benefit?
Is it right to try to protect children as much as possible? Of course, but to say Sarah’s Law is better than Megan’s because of a presumption that individuals who ‘need to know’ are less likely to threaten the safety of people on the sex offenders’ register than the general public, in a free-for-all information grab is staggeringly naïve. Sarah’s Law is just as much a hand-wringing sop to the child protection lobby as Megan’s Law, it will continue to increase alienation between adults and children, distort how private relationships are formed in this country, and lead us away from what was once a more enlightened understanding of risk assessment. We may live in a largely post-modern society but I have no desire for it to be run under The Jeremy Kyle Show’s principles. These pilots undermine the social fabric itself.
The ISA Fails Before It Starts
The Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) was set up following the murders in 2002 of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. It is supposed to offer an additional level of protection for children, and work in conjunction with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). From October 2009 for entire swathes of work involving contact with what the legislation refers to as ‘vulnerable people’ (not just children) it will run its Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), which will require job applicants or existing job holders to be registered (at their own cost) with the ISA. The ISA in contrast has absolute power to force people onto its vetted and barred lists, as well as the ability to prosecute employers and employees for non-registered employment in areas the ISA considers under its remit. Terrifyingly, unlike the CRB though they’re allowed to use hearsay – they can play judge, jury and executioner towards people’s entire livelihoods on the basis of material which wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, with no meaningful comeback. Authors attending school assemblies will be presumed to be paedophiles if they refuse to register. Children’s parents will be presumed paedophiles if they refuse to register for summer exchange visits; the entire basis of the ISA is a universal presumption of paedophilia and an operating manual which subverts the rule of law.
One of the initial aims of Cosmodaddy.com is to bring about the abolition of the ISA.
This is not because any of the authors disagree with child protection – quite the opposite. We simply do not believe that the ISA by its very nature has a hope in hell of actually protecting children. Instead the bureaucracy will use an arcane ‘matrix’ to determine risk (whatever happened to assessing individual cases on their merits?), which will breach the human rights of vulnerable adults, will disincentivise social services and the police from old fashioned evidence collection and analysis, and instead make the detection of people who pose a real risk for children and other vulnerable groups that much harder. The ISA however accepts none of these points. Even when recently suffering an information security breach its response was to say:
“There has been one security incident in respect of information handling in the current year when an email containing confidential data was issued to the incorrect email address.
“A full investigation was carried out into this incident which concluded that there were no systematic failures in procedure and that the incident was due to human error. The incident did not result in any risk to safeguarding.”
A separate section on the “management and control of information risk” states: “While all staff are made continuously aware of information assurance issues, the lack of ISA policies to direct staff could have an impact on the confidentiality, integrity or availability of information. Policies are close to being finalised.”
Safeguarding is not a one-way process and in saying ‘risk to safeguarding’ it clearly doesn’t see those it considers caught in its remit (vetted or barred) as worthy of protection at all. I’m reminded of the government saying it sees the ISA as a ‘club’ to which ‘decent adults’ should want to be part of. Quite frankly considering the damage which it is already causing to the social fabric and the rule of law, should decency not really be determined by different criteria? We at Cosmodaddy.com will be campaigning in the months to come to convince ever more of you that an unaccountable bureaucracy which makes insidious presumptions, and which is guaranteed to make numerous errors (as the CRB has) is not the solution to child protection. There are existing services and procedures which are already responsible for child protection - local public services must communicate between one another as they are required to but rarely effectively do, protection agencies need better funding and managing, and there needs to be a national conversation started that running society from databases, and ignoring local communities entirely, doesn’t protect anyone. Subscribe to this site, join us and tell us your stories if you’ve already been affected by the ISA.
