Once an allegation is made, it is important to be prepared for contact with the local authority. This is usually with the local area designated officer (LADO) – though it is a title no longer stipulated in guidance, there will always be someone within social services to fulfil this role. On initial contact, the LADO will want as much information as you can give – without you carrying out your own investigation (see previous article in this series).
If the LADO has concerns, a strategy meeting will be required. You can prepare a file for this. You should not share this information with anyone and the member of staff involved should not be told. The seriousness of the allegation will influence which agencies social services invite to attend. Often these are police officers, local area advisers as well as the LADO and other personnel from social services. Your role here is to share as much information as you can so that a strategy of next steps can be put in place, describing who will undertake what parts of the investigation.
It is important during this time that you remind yourself that the police and social services are not experts in the regulation of childcare and you must be the person who keeps them informed. I had a case where it was vital to know who had undertaken personal care for a child. Police officers were un­aware that nurseries keep nappy-changing records and records of who is working with a particular set of children at any one time. This evidence ended up being of major importance to the case.
At the end of this meeting you will be sent minutes. These may take a while to arrive, so don’t forget to take notes of the actions you need to take. Also try to get the telephone numbers of people dealing with different elements of the investigation so you can be kept informed.
Your investigation
After social services and others such as the police have completed their investigation, you will need to start yours.
Planning is vital to capture the information you want, and the better the investigation is, the easier it will be for you to make conclusions.
Some terminology used by these agencies may not be familiar in their outcomes – make sure that you are really aware of what has happened. The police apply criminal law thresholds – so evidence must be really good to take an allegation to prosecution. Often the police will state they are not taking things further; this is because they cannot obtain enough evidence. It does not mean that nothing happened or there is not more investigating to do. Social services operate using civil law and their evidence needs to demonstrate the balance of probability. However, social services work with children and their families – not with employers and employment law or childcare staff. This means that this investigation falls to you to do. Make sure the investigation follows both employment law as well as safeguarding procedures.
The final part of this series will describe the role of Ofsted.
CASE STUDY
In one case, an allegation had been made against a member of staff. Neither the manager nor the owners had dealt with this situation before. The allegations were of pushing children over on purpose, shouting at babies, and other issues of rough handling. At the end of the investigation the police did not have enough evidence and social services asked the provider to investigate. I
Several incidents of abuse were found. However, there were no dates, no CCTV and much of this was based on staff statements. The alleged perpetrator was then called in for an investigation hearing. During this interview she admitted all the incidents and offered no reason other than being depressed. She was dismissed later at a disciplinary hearing and other staff were disciplined for not reporting incidents quickly enough. A referral was also made to the DBS. Ofsted, social services and the police were kept informed.
While large organisations will have an HR department, small settings and pre-schools often don’t. This case highlights how hard it is for people who don’t have training or support to carry out these processes and how they often don’t feel confident to do so.