Better engagement with and support for parents before and after child removal can break cycles of harm and reduce repeat risk. Recommendations from a national child safeguarding review call for urgent action to better protect vulnerable unborn babies and infants.
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has published its recommendations from the national review of the death of baby Victoria Marten. It calls for clearer national guidance to ensure vulnerable unborn babies and infants are consistently considered within child protection frameworks.
Key findings
Although the circumstances surrounding baby Victoria’s death were extreme, the review notes that the professional and system-wide safeguarding difficulties highlighted are widespread with agencies often aware of multiple risks within families, such as domestic abuse or parental disengagement, but not always assessing and managing these risks together. A stronger focus on trauma-responsive engagement with parents, recognising the impact of previous child removal, alongside earlier and more effective multi-agency working and purposeful information sharing, may have made a difference. It warns that without stronger coordination, opportunities to protect vulnerable unborn babies and infants can be missed.
- Earlier and stronger pre‑birth safeguarding, including national guidance that explicitly includes vulnerable unborn babies and infants, and clearer protocols for responding to concealed or late‑disclosed pregnancies.
- Trauma‑informed practice, to help reach families who do not engage with services, recognising that avoidance of services often reflects grief and mistrust rather than deliberate refusal.
- Better engagement with and support for parents before and after child removal, to help break cycles of harm and reduce repeat risk.
- A preventative ‘Think Family’ approach, bringing together adult and children’s services to provide a holistic view and identify issues that affect the whole family unit.
- Stronger links between children’s social care and offender management services, especially when serious sex offenders are parents or carers.
- Clearer arrangements when families move, including formal information transfer, shared chronologies and defined safeguarding responsibility.
What impact will this have on practice
Baby Victoria’s four older siblings had been placed in care, and the review notes the skill and dedication of professionals involved in keeping them safe. But, by the time Victoria was conceived, the rapid recurrence of pregnancies, births and removals ‘had become a repeating pattern with devastating consequences’, underlining the cumulative impact of trauma and repeat child removals on parents.
The review cites a growing body of evidence that ‘long-term, relational support’ which recognises the impact of trauma on parents can disrupt the cycles of harm to children identified in research on recurrent care proceedings . Where available, these dedicated services demonstrate that multi-agency, holistic support to parents can reduce future risk and improve outcomes for both parents and children.
The review explores in more detail what a trauma-informed, relationship-based approach to parental engagement means and why it is vital in the context of child removal (pages 39-54). This is explored further in Reconceptualising parental non-engagement in child protection: Frontline Briefing, which makes the case for understanding parental ‘non-engagement’ as a trauma response and sets out how trauma-informed approaches can support more effective relationships with parents.
However, the requirement for proactive and sustained, multi-agency support to parents who experience recurrent care proceedings cannot be resourced solely or primarily through already stretched local authority children’s social care budgets.
Context of recurrent care proceedings
Research over the past decade has shown that recurrent care proceedings are a significant issue across England and Wales. Landmark studies by researchers found that around one in five mothers who appear in care proceedings are likely to return to court with a new baby within ten years, and that one in eight fathers are also at risk of returning within five years.
More recent research shows that about half of mothers have another baby after a first set of care proceedings and half of these go on to appear in a new set of proceedings within eight years.
The Born into Care research revealed a concerning rise in newborns entering care proceedings, with cases in England and Wales increasing. Also, troubling were statistics showing that in 2019/20, 86.3% of newborn cases in England and 74.8% in Wales involved short-notice hearings.
A significant proportion of these parents were also in care as children. Broadhurst et al. (2017) found that 40% of mothers experiencing recurrent care proceedings had looked after status as children. This gives the state an additional moral and ethical responsibility towards these parents, as corporate parent and grandparent.
These patterns reflect a growing need for holistic, multi-agency, ‘personalised’ support for parents who experience separation from their children to help them make lasting changes and build more positive futures for themselves and their families, whether or not they are able to care for their children themselves.
A number of local authorities, NHS Trusts and voluntary sector organisations have developed specialist local services, alongside the national work in this space by Pause. These services recognise that without sustained, compassionate support, parents can remain trapped in cycles of trauma, loss and repeat removals. A 2021 report provides a national overview of specialist services for parents.
The Giving HOPE boxes – developed from the Born into Care research and co-produced with mothers with lived experience of separation close to birth – are also being introduced by local areas across the country to help practitioners provide compassionate, trauma-informed care when mothers and babies are separated close to birth.
The review calls for a 'matrix of offer' that provides trauma-informed, long-term support to parents. At Research in Practice we are pleased to be working with Birth Companions and the co-design community they have convened to shape a National Integrated Care Framework that will help drive this coordination forward.
Working in partnership with
Research in Practice has been working in collaboration with those innovating practice with parents across the country, many organisations have been working to improve support for parents experiencing repeat removals. These include the Centre for Child and Family Justice, University of Lancaster, University of Essex, Family Rights Group, Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO), Birth Companions, Pause, and MBRRACE-UK and Research in Practice.
We welcome the recommendations from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s report into the death of Baby Victoria. In particular, calling for a stronger focus on trauma-informed practice when working with parents with children’s social care involvement in their lives, more effective implementation of pre-birth protocols and for the development of parent support plans when parents are no longer able to care for their children.
A decade of high-quality research makes evident that recurrent care proceedings are a significant issue across England and Wales. We recognise the urgent need for coordinated, specialised, sustained, and compassionate trauma-informed support for parents before, during, and after care proceedings. We consider these recommendations to be vital steps forward and we would like to see them strengthened further.
It is excellent to see the report call on Government to strengthen national guidance. However, we think that this should go further and for long-term, relational support to be available in every local authority for parents in these situations. However, the requirement for sustained, multi-agency support to parents who experience recurrent care proceedings cannot be resourced solely or primarily through already stretched local authority children’s social care budgets. This will require long term, dedicated funding arrangements that enable meaningful support. There are moral, ethical and cost benefit imperatives to this, with clear evidence of significant cost savings to children’s social care and wider public services (Boddy et al., 2020).
We have been working collaboratively to advocate for and improve support for parents experiencing repeat removals. The Community of Practice we support involves 75 organisations across all regions of England and is the repository of deep practice expertise that should be utilised in planning for the implementation of these recommendations. Their work demonstrates that timely, relationship-based, trauma-informed support can help parents stabilise, recover and make the changes needed to enable them to keep or be reunified with their child.
Where this is not possible, sustained relationship-based trauma-informed support, which responds to long-standing unmet health and welfare needs and recognises the trauma of previous child separations, remains essential in helping parents to make lasting positive changes and build more positive futures for themselves. This is particularly important for the significant proportion of parents who were themselves in care as children – understood to represent around 40% of mothers experiencing recurrent care proceedings (Broadhurst et al., 2017) – where the state carries a moral and ethical responsibility as corporate parent and grandparent. Providing this support can strengthen parents’ chances of maintaining relationships with children they are separated from, keep open the possibility of reunification in the future, and reduce the risk of further care proceedings, including by preventing the recurrence of removals for subsequent children and supporting better outcomes for those children
We are committed to supporting parents with compassionate and trauma-informed responses that make lasting changes and build more stable, hopeful futures for themselves and their families, whether or not they are able to care for their children themselves.
Signatories
-
Susannah Bowyer, Deputy Director for Children and Families, Research in Practice
- Claire Mason, Research Fellow at Lancaster University
-
Kate Tilley, Director of Partnerships and Engagement, Pause
-
Pam Ledward, Director for Social Care Practice, Family Rights Group
- Lisa Harker, Director, Nuffield Family Justice Observatory
-
Kirsty Kitchen, Director of the Birth Companions, Birth Companions
-
Kaat De Backer, Midwife Research Fellow, King’s College London
- Dr Danny Taggart, Programme Director in psychology at University of Essex
References
- Boddy, J., Bower, S., Godar, R., Hale, C., Kearney, J., Preston, O., Wheeler, B., & Wilkinson, J. (2020). Evaluation of Pause. Department for Education.
- Broadhurst, K., Mason, C., Bedston, S., Alrouh, B., Morriss, L., McQuarrie, T., Palmer, M., Shaw, M., Harwin, J., & Kershaw, S. (2017). Vulnerable birth mothers and recurrent care proceedings. University of Lancaster.
Supporting practice with parents experiencing repeat removals
Research in Practice has extensive resources to support professionals in this area.
A suite of resources aim to help local services develop and improve their pre-birth work.
The materials – including videos and audio clips featuring parents, practitioners and academics – are grounded in evidence from the Born into Care research, practice guidelines and other research and guidance in this space. This includes this Birth Charter for women with involvement from children’s social care from Birth Companions.
The resources offer practical tools and guidance for service managers, strategic leads, commissioners, and frontline practitioners.
Developed through a Change Project, our resource pack bring together materials from project sessions, alongside reflections, exercises, films, and an evaluation guide to help those establishing or strengthening services for parents affected by recurrent care proceedings.
We are currently working on developing further resources on working with recurrent care-experienced birth mothers.
Strengthening support for parents: Reflections on the baby Victoria Marten review
Research over the past decade has shown that recurrent care proceedings are a significant issue across England and Wales. This blog reflects on the baby Victoria Marten review, joining the dots across work to support mothers in pregnancy and where parents face recurrent care proceedings.
Reconceptualising parental non-engagement in child protection: Frontline Briefing (2020)
This briefing builds on findings from Broadhurst et al’s (2017) research on vulnerable birth mothers in recurrent care proceedings. It makes the case for reconceptualising parental ‘non-engagement’ with services - proposing that an understanding of how some parents’ experiences of adversity and trauma in their own childhood can help to understand why they may find service engagement difficult.