- Sputnik International
World
Get the latest news from around the world, live coverage, off-beat stories, features and analysis.

Social Agencies in UK Bear Responsibility for Child Abuse - Watchdog

© Sputnik / Alexey Filippov / Go to the mediabank"On behalf of the UK Government and the people of Scotland it is a great pleasure to welcome UK and Russian Arctic Convoy veterans to Edinburgh and host a reception in their honour," Scotland Office Minister David Mundell said in a statement.
On behalf of the UK Government and the people of Scotland it is a great pleasure to welcome UK and Russian Arctic Convoy veterans to Edinburgh and host a reception in their honour, Scotland Office Minister David Mundell said in a statement. - Sputnik International
Subscribe
The chair of the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board says that additional legislation to bring to account authorities who turn a blind eye to child abuse in the United Kingdom is unlikely to have any effect unless local services improve.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — Additional legislation to bring to account authorities who turn a blind eye to child abuse in the United Kingdom is unlikely to have any effect unless local services improve, the chair of the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB) told Sputnik on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, in the wake of the Rotherham and Oxfordshire scandals around child abuse that was disregarded by local authorities and social workers, UK Prime Minister David Cameron proposed to introduce up to five years of imprisonment for "willful neglect" of evidence of abuse.

"Bringing the additional legislation will not make any difference. Because you still have to rely on the local organizations to follow their procedures when things go wrong. If at the moment anyone commits a crime, then they will be prosecuted. There is enough legislation to do that in any way," Maggie Blyth, Independent Chair of OSCB, told Sputnik.

The prime minister"s proposal coincided with the release of a serious case review into child sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire by OSCB.

The review, which was presented by Maggie Blyth, focused on 59 offences of child sexual exploitation by a group of criminal men in the period 2005 — 2010. It claims that systematic sexual exploitation across Oxfordshire could have been prevented had local agencies exercised more awareness and intervened.

"The report outlines really serious failings across all local organizations working with children in 2005 to 2010 — systemic failings across all professionals, police officers, social workers, health workers and teachers," Blyth said.

Therefore, it is the chief officers of local child protection organizations who bear the responsibility for the effectiveness of the whole child protection system, Blyth explained.

Nevertheless, there has been substantial improvement in the work of social agencies in Oxfordshire in recent years, according to the OSCB chair.

Blyth explained that the improvement has been due to a multi-million pound investment in frontline services, which came from the police, local authorities and health organizations. Ultimately, it has led to an increase in the number of children being identified at risk and the number of men being brought to justice in the courts.

According to the review of the Oxfordshire cases, almost 400 children could have been victims of sexual abuse over the past 16 years. An independent inquiry into the Rotherham case found that some 1400 children were sexually exploited during the period from 1997 to 2013 by gangs of British-Pakistani men. The local authorities not only failed to prevent the abuse, but even knew it was taking place in some cases.

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала