Now do not wash your hands

Comparisons between processes for reviewing failures in mental health and their equivalent in children’s services left a room of experienced academics questioning the entire model for change, at the Centre for Social Policy seminar last week.

Family lawyer Gillian Downham presented the Centre for Social Policy (CSP) at Dartington’s quarterly meeting with a talk on her involvement in mental health inquiries, and how they might inform similar processes in children’s services.
 
Mental health inquiries – usually carried out when a patient in the care of mental health services commits murder – serve a similar function to serious case reviews which are undertaken when a child has been murdered or seriously abused. They are a mechanism for learning from mistakes and fixing problems.
 
But Gillian Downham explained how, as part of an inquiry committee, she had been shocked by the lack of connection between the inquiry’s recommendations and their implementation. Usually a committee makes its proposal and washes its hands of the case. She and her colleagues were concerned about how much of what they recommended would translate into real change.
 
The presentation was well received by the CSP fellows who acknowledged the parallels with serious case reviews. The debate which followed was highly critical of the whole report-recommendations-implementation model.
 
Gillian Downham is a family lawyer and also a trustee of The Warren House Group, the umbrella charity of which the Social Research Unit is a part.