The Whitefield School child abuse scandal: an update

On 27 November 2024, the LBWF Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams released a statement on Whitefield School which included the following:

‘We have worked closely with the academy trust, Ofsted, Department for Education, and NHS to support the police investigation. Now that the criminal investigation into staff at Whitefield has concluded, safeguarding partners will commission an independent expert to carry out a Local Children Safeguarding Practice Review to ensure the lessons of this distressing case are learned’. 

In passing, the timing of this statement is puzzling. 

The casual reader might imagine that ‘the criminal investigation into staff at Whitefield’ to which Cllr. Williams refers had concluded almost immediately prior to her statement.

But press sources suggest that the decision not to prosecute Whitefield staff had been taken many months previously, and that subsequently, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has turned its attention to ‘other professionals who may have had knowledge of concerns’, with these inquiries still ongoing.

Of course, Cllr. Williams may know more than the press about the MPS focus, but it could be relevant, too, that on 26 November, i.e., the day before she spoke, the BBC had published fresh revelations about Whitefield, more appalling than ever, and these had received a good deal of national coverage, so at that moment appearing to be proactive may have had its attractions.

Of greater importance, however, is Cllr. Williams announcement that an independent expert is going to carry out a Local Children Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR).

The main characteristics of an LCSPR are set out in HM Government’s Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 (December 2023), and include the following stipulations:

‘[The LCSPR] should provide a way of looking at and analysing frontline practice as well as organisational structures and learning, and allow those involved in the review to reach recommendations that will improve outcomes for children. All reviews should reflect both the child’s perspective and the family context…

As part of their duty to ensure the review is of satisfactory quality, the safeguarding partners should ensure that:

practitioners are fully involved and invited to contribute their perspectives without fear of being blamed for actions they took in good faith 

families, including surviving children (in order that the child is at the centre of the process) are invited to contribute 

families understand how they are going to be involved and have their expectations appropriately and sensitively managed …

The safeguarding partners must ensure the final report includes:

a summary of any recommended improvements to be made by individuals or organisations in the area to safeguard and promote the welfare of children 

an analysis of any systemic or underlying reasons actions were taken or not taken in respect of matters covered by the report…

Reviews are about promoting and sharing information about improvements, both within the area and potentially beyond, so the safeguarding partners must publish the report, unless they consider it inappropriate to do so… In such a circumstance, they must publish any information about the improvements that should be made following the review they consider appropriate to publish. The name of the reviewers should be included. Published reports or information must be publicly available for at least one year…

Depending on the nature and complexity of the case, the report should be completed and published as soon as possible and no later than six months from the date of the decision to initiate a review’. 

As this suggests, successfully piloting through an LCSPR always will be challenging. But turning to this particular case, there are two additional factors which may well impact on outcomes, one positive, the other most certainly not. 

On the plus side, since the present Leader of LBWF, Cllr. Grace Williams, was Cabinet member for Children, Young People and Families from April 2016 to September 2021, and the present LBWF CEO, Linzi Roberts-Egan, was Deputy Chief Executive for Families from September 2015 to July 2019, the LCSPR will not be short of easily accessible expertise about many matters of consequence.

But on the minus side, the LCSPR will have to untangle a whole series of episodes which currently remain either puzzling or opaque. The following are four of the more important.

The Ofsted report of January 2017

As discussed in a previous post (see links, below), it was the Ofsted inspection of January 2017 that initially brought the use of ‘calming rooms’ at Whitefield to public attention, revealing as it did that the ‘calming rooms’ were like prison cells; a ‘small number of pupils’ were being ‘repeatedly’ incarcerated ‘against their will’ and ‘for long periods of time’; and the records kept about the use of the ‘calming rooms’ were woefully inadequate, blindsiding parents and carers.

But the Ofsted report made no reference to what is now accepted as incontrovertible: that from 2014 to 2017 staff were subjecting children held in the ‘calming rooms’ to substantial and sustained abuse.

This being the case, Ofsted surely has questions to answer. In short, were its inspectors in January 2017 just extraordinarily incurious, or was the extent of the abuse deliberately withheld from them, and if so, by whom? 

The CCTV recordings

Public knowledge of the abuse at Whitefield emerged in October 2021, after a BBC investigation revealed that 500 hours of footage from inside the ‘calming rooms’ had been found on USB memory sticks stashed in an office draw.

It has never been clear why these memory sticks were preserved, nor whether their contents covered the total time that the ‘calming rooms’ were in use, or were a sample, the latter begging the further question: who chose the sample and why?

Moreover, how Whitefield used the CCTV material during the years when the abuse was occurring also requires clarification.

On this, the BBC revelations of November 2024 included the following:

‘the job of reviewing the CCTV was largely left to a single teaching assistant.

Once a week, she downloaded the footage and compared it with written staff observations before sharing any incidents and concerns with bosses.

But she failed to report many of the 20-plus clips showing excessive force – according to a school safeguarding investigation into her conduct, which concluded she turned a “blind eye” to the failings.

It also found that she had abused a child herself by using a pad used for rugby training to push them into the corner of a room. Despite these findings, she was not sacked.

She told the investigation that contacting the school’s leadership was “hard to do as a teaching assistant” and [she] had become “desensitised” to the footage’. 

Taken as read, that is incredible, but why has it only just come to light?

The police investigation

In 2021, the MPS launched an investigation into the abuse at Whitefield called Operation Hopgrove, which involved at its height one detective inspector, one detective sergeant, and 11 constables.

Sometime in 2024, however, and as noted, the criminal inquiry into staff at Whitefield was terminated.

In its November 2024 revelations, the BBC reported that the MPS had been handed the 500 hours of CCTV footage, and then added: ‘Records of police notes…described multiple incidents as potential assault yet the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] did not recommend a prosecution’.

As is obvious, this, too, requires further explanation. At the very least, if the BBC is right, the CPS should publicly justify itself.

LBWF’s involvement

Whitefield is, and has been for many years, run by an academy trust.

But it’s also true that since the Ofsted report of January 2017 LBWF has shown a considerable amount of interest in how the school is faring.

Thus, according to press reports, LBWF on occasion has provided advice, audited safeguarding practices, and even launched its own investigation into the wrongdoing.

Yet, trying to pin down the full extent and character of LBWF’s interventions is difficult, simply because few, if any, have been openly discussed. Indeed, it’s a remarkable fact that a search through LBWF’s published records (including of course the minutes of the relevant scrutiny committee) reveals that references to Whitefield seem to be almost non-existent until earlier this year. 

Two questions follow. First, if the great majority of councillors were excluded from involvement, as this suggests, who was it in LBWF that dictated council policy as the unsavoury revelations mounted up, and who exerted oversight? Second, where is any of this recorded?

The likelihood is that everyone concerned was properly sensitive to legal issues, needless to say. But does that explain everything?

To conclude, at present there is a great deal of cynicism about inquiries and reviews that deal with child abuse, as it appears one follows another without really changing anything.

In this case, the cynicism is magnified because the full story about Whitfield has emerged in public, not because of the authorities, for example the Waltham Forest Safeguarding Children Board, which LBWF shepherds, but because of the determination and perseverance of one, single BBC reporter, Noel Titheradge, and the bravery of victims, whether parents, carers, or children.

It is possible that the LCSPR will prove an exception to the rule, with a report that is patently both truthful and fair.

But this being Waltham Forest, only the rash will put money on it.

PS And then there is the following:

‘Leigh Day investigates allegations of abuse of special education needs pupils at Whitefield School

Leigh Day’s abuse team is investigating claims under the Human Rights Act and breaches of duty of care following alleged abuse suffered by pupils of Whitefield School in Walthamstow, North London, including the alleged unnecessary use of seclusion rooms against children with additional needs.

Posted on 28 November 2024’

The sound you hear is of some people close to the story hyper-ventilating.