Wiltshire Police’s response to safeguarding children is ‘not good enough’, a report says.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) carried out a child protection inspection in 2022 – which concluded that the force needed to make urgent changes.
A year on, inspectors paid another visit to establish whether or not the organisation had taken on board their comments and improved how it deals with children at risk.
The comprehensive post-inspection review noted “some areas of effective practice” and “dedicated officers and staff who are committed to keeping children safe”.
However, “overall, we found that the force’s child protection arrangements weren’t consistently providing a good enough response to effectively safeguard children in Wiltshire”, the report said.
It told of how investigation teams “don’t always have the appropriate capability, training and confidence to deal with investigations effectively.”
In one case, police were called to a domestic abuse incident between a male and his female partner. There were two children present – aged 7 and 4 – who had witnessed the incident.
The male perpetrator was already on bail for an assault on his partner with conditions not to contact her, but he had left when officers arrived and no arrests were made.
17 days after the incident, officers still hadn’t arrested the male perpetrator or taken a statement from the victim. The police were called to a further incident four days later, when the perpetrator threatened to kill his partner. But officers again didn’t make an arrest at the time.
“Officers submitted a public protection notice for the children but important detail about ethnicity and the schools the children attend was missing”, the report states.
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It adds: “We reviewed the case 50 days after the initial incident. While it had been taken to a [multi-agency risk assessment conference], details about the male being wanted hadn’t been circulated and he hadn’t been arrested.”
Inspectors found that control room staff “don’t always consider known risks to missing children” and “supervisors are slow to review decisions”.
The report states: “All the child missing episodes we reviewed in this inspection were initially categorised as a ‘concern for safety’.
“It wasn’t appropriate in any of the incidents and no rationale was recorded for using ‘concern for safety’ instead of recording the child as missing. This breaches force guidance.
“Children can remain in this category for many hours without any meaningful co-ordinated activity to trace them. This means that the force may be missing opportunities to safeguard children.”
In one incident, a father reported his 13-year-old son missing after he left school without permission. He said that his son had sent him texts about suicide earlier that day.
An assessment took place, identifying the child as vulnerable – but police personnel took no immediate steps to inform the force incident manager (FIM) and was categorised as a ‘concern for safety’.
“When we highlighted our concerns, the FIM reviewed the incident and graded the risk as medium. The review didn’t refer to the marker for self-harm, the boy’s poor mental health or the suicidal thoughts. This case should have been graded as high risk.
“The log didn’t record whether the local duty inspector had been informed. And there were no initial lines of enquiry set out by a supervisor. The missing investigation tracker wasn’t used, and it wasn’t clear if any enquiries were pursued to locate the boy and safeguard him.”
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It adds: “The force’s response to missing children isn’t good enough. Assessments of the risk faced by missing children aren’t consistent, and many reports aren’t responded to quickly enough.”
The report also said that there were only 35 out of 60 full-time equivalent officers working in the Public Protection Department (PPD) – with the force deciding to move officers onto the team, including Child Abuse Investigation Team (CAIT), from other departments.
“Although the movement of officers into this area is positive, some officers made their views known about not wanting to work in CAIT.
“This, along with the introduction of more intensive performance monitoring, has led to increased referrals to occupational health.”
Inspectors examined 70 cases in which Wiltshire Police identified children at risk. They assessed the force’s child protection practice as good in 16 cases, requiring improvement in 29 cases, and inadequate in 25 cases.
“This shows that the force needs to do more to give a consistently good service for all children”, the report said.
Wiltshire Police, in a statement, said that it had the opportunity to “demonstrate improvements we have made at each stage of our interactions with children”.
Adding that the report “recognises the good work our teams have started in this area and acknowledged a number of improvements.”
Assistant Chief Constable Deb Smith said: “Protecting children is one of the most important things that we do, so I am pleased this updated report acknowledges the improvements we have worked hard to implement.
“Following our inspection in this area last year, we took prompt and comprehensive action to address a number of issues. This included a significant investment in and delivery of enhanced training across the organisation – from our call handlers knowing what signs of vulnerability to spot in children right through to over half our organisation receiving intensive training around domestic abuse -specifically on the impacts of domestic abuse on children.
“We have reintroduced detective roles back into our Child Abuse Investigation Teams and we’ve invested in our auditing functions so we have a richer understanding of the quality of our investigation work.
“As an organisation, we are determined to improve our service and deliver improved justice outcomes.
“Although there are many green shoots of positive practice within this report, we will not become complacent and we will continue to invest in and prioritise the way we protect children and vulnerable people.”
Read the full HMICFRS report here.
