From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children

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Families of disabled children know all too well how easily a request for help can turn into scrutiny, suspicion or even a child protection investigation. It’s a pattern we’ve covered many times on SNJ, including Professor Andy Bilson’s previous piece on the misuse of Fabricated or Induced Illness. His latest article for SNJ continues that vital work, setting out why the Government’s latest child protection proposals risk widening the net even further, and why this matters profoundly for disabled children and their families.

The current consultation, Improving Help and Child Protection, promises earlier support, better multi‑agency working and stronger family voice. But as Andy discusses below, the reality may be very different. Disabled children are already investigated far more often than their peers, and reforms that expand information‑sharing and lower thresholds for intervention could intensify that trend. Families asking for help with disability‑related needs may find themselves pulled into intrusive assessments that do little to improve safety and a great deal to increase stress. In the guest article below, Andy provides his evidence and ideas that would support more proportionate safeguarding responses for disabled children and young people. If you wish to respond to the consultation, you only have a few more days to do so.

The consultation closes on 4 September, so you don’t have long. If you would like to respond to the consultation you can do so here.

Guest Post By Dr Andy Bilson, Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Lancashire

A current Government consultation, Improving Help and Child Protection, will lead to major changes to the way children and families receive help and how child protection operates. Proposals include changes to statutory guidance for professionals Working Together to Safeguard Children, bringing more Family Help within Section 17 of the Children Act, and creating new Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams.

According to the proposals, families should get help earlier, agencies should work well together, and children and parents should have a stronger voice. But the major proposals are likely to take us further towards a system in which requests for help lead to more information-sharing, scrutiny and investigation – without evidence that this makes children safer. That is particularly concerning for families with disabled children, who are already more likely to encounter child protection processes.

I recently presented the evidence and alternatives at a PFAN Webinar. You can see my presentation here (if not yet up, check back soon). In this guest article for Special Needs Jungle, I am drawing on this evidence base and I am recommending five easily achievable changes that the government can make that would reduce parent blame, prevent over-investigation and protect disabled children’s rights.

Disabled children are already investigated far more often

My previous research found a striking growth in child protection intervention involving disabled children and children where mental health concerns were identified. Between 2015 and 2023, section 47 investigations involving disability or mental health concerns increased by 145.2%. Disabled children were more than three times as likely to be investigated as other children.

That raises a basic question: is social care responding to disability with support, or increasingly interpreting disability and unmet need through a child protection lens?

Families seeking help with autism, learning disability, complex health needs, school attendance or diagnostic uncertainty can find their request for support becomes an assessment of their parenting. Parents describe intrusive checks of bedrooms and fridges, children being seen alone, and disability-related difficulties being interpreted as possible neglect. Poverty, insecure housing, inadequate services and parental exhaustion are reasons for practical support, not evidence of parental risk.

More information-sharing does not necessarily make children safer

My latest research challenges another assumption behind the reforms: that sharing more information and identifying risk earlier necessarily improves child protection. I examined Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH) across 130 local authorities. MASHs were intended to improve safeguarding by bringing agencies together and sharing information earlier. But I found their introduction was associated with substantially greater increases in Section 47 investigations. Those additional investigations did not identify more children needing Child Protection Plans, and there was no significant reduction in serious harm or child deaths.

A Section 47 investigation is a legal duty under the Children Act 1989. LA children’s services and the police must launch one when they suspect a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm from abuse or neglect.

In simple terms: many more families were investigated, without any evidence that children became safer.

The Government is now proposing an extension of this model through proposed Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams, drawing on evidence from MASHs and the Families First for Children Pathfinder trials. But the Phase 2 Pathfinder evaluation is an implementation and process study based largely on qualitative evidence about how professionals and families experienced the changes. It does not yet tell us whether the new arrangements improve outcomes for children or reduce unnecessary intervention.

Previous MASH evaluations focused largely on how arrangements operated and how practitioners and families perceived them, rather than whether they reduced harm. My new research asks that missing outcome question, and its findings should make us pause before extending the model nationally.

Five changes could create a new direction

This consultation is an opportunity to create a different direction for child protection. I suggest that much of what needs to change does not require significant new expenditure. Government can change statutory guidance, expectations, accountability and the measures used to judge success.

There is also a practical opportunity here to implement much of the direction already recommended by the Law Commission’s review of disabled children’s social care law. That review called for clearer rights, non-stigmatising assessment, independent advocacy and a system better focused on meeting disabled children’s needs. Much of that could begin now, without waiting for wholesale legislative reform, by creating a distinct support-led section 17 assessment route where there is no indication of abuse or neglect. This would give families a clearer route to help while preserving child protection investigation for situations where there is genuine cause for concern.

I am proposing five changes that would make a meaningful difference:

Make sure families asking for help get support, not suspicion. Requests for help should not trigger intrusive checks such as bedroom and fridge inspections where there is no indication of abuse or neglect. Poverty, disability, housing problems and other pressures should be treated as needs for support, not parental risk.
Give children and families a real say in decisions that affect them. Children, parents, wider family and people with lived experience should influence decisions, service design, scrutiny, evaluation and research priorities, with independent advocacy where needed.
Protect disabled children and their families from parent blame. Services should understand disability and neurodivergence and provide specialist expertise, reasonable adjustments and advocacy. Government should monitor whether disabled children are investigated disproportionately.
Record decisions openly and measure whether child protection actually reduces harm. We count referrals, investigations and timescales well. We are less good at answering: Did the child become safer? Did the family receive useful help? Did intervention itself cause unnecessary distress or disruption?
Don’t expand information-sharing between services until there is evidence that it makes children safer. Advice and specialist expertise may be valuable, but broad powers over thresholds and investigations should not be imposed nationally before independent evaluation demonstrates better outcomes and less unnecessary intervention.

Promoted

This is about what we mean by “protection”

Child protection is necessary. Where there is reasonable cause to suspect significant harm, effective investigation is essential. But investigation is not the same thing as protection. For disabled children in particular, we need a system capable of distinguishing unmet need from maltreatment, poverty from neglect, and parental struggle from parental failure. We also need to examine the harm caused when families are unnecessarily drawn into intrusive investigations.

If you agree that this consultation is an opportunity to move from suspicion towards support, please visit bilson.org.uk/consultation for more information and send your views to the government. If enough of us send in our views they may even listen and make these changes.

Change is possible. The important thing now is to show Government both why it is needed and how it can be done.

About the author

Dr Andy Bilson is Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Lancashire where he is associate director of The Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation.
He continues to work as a researcher and consultant promoting children’s rights, parent advocacy and reform of child protection systems.
He is committed to developing systems that support families and reduce institutionalisation and unnecessary removal of children from their families. His current research focuses on the overemphasis and exaggeration of risk in the child protection system and the increasing separation of children from parents through adoption and care. His research includes longitudinal studies of child protection in England, Scotland and Australia. https://bilson.org.uk/

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Special Needs Jungle was founded in 2008 as a personal SEN blog by Tania Tirraoro. It is now a multi-author, award-winning site covering special needs, disability, mental health and rare conditions in children & young people birth-25 years.

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