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Child Q: Hackney safeguarding report finds not enough done since incident [1]
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Date: 2023-06
Failure to prioritise anti-racism and safeguarding across all public bodies could risk incidents similar to the horrific Child Q case, a report has warned.
A Black schoolgirl in Hackney known as Child Q was strip-searched by Met Police officers on school premises in 2020 after teachers wrongly suspected her of carrying drugs. The search, involving exposure of her intimate body parts, was done without her parents’ consent or knowledge, and without another adult in the room.
Police were aware that Child Q was on her period, and the 15-year-old was forced to remove her sanitary towel. She denied using or having any drugs in her possession. Following the search, no drugs were found on her.
Her ordeal sparked national outrage, with hundreds gathering to protest in support of her. An official report published last year by the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP) revealed that the strip search was unjustified and that “racism was likely to have been an influencing factor”.
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Now a fresh report by the same group – ‘Why was it me?’, published on Tuesday and authored by independent child safeguarding commissioner Jim Gamble – has widened criticism to organisations across all sectors, warning of a “profound sense of distrust”. Gamble cited “inequalities in housing and health” and “the disproportionality seen in school exclusions and children coming into care” as factors that could lead to more cases like that of Child Q.
After speaking to 100 children, parents and carers about the impact of the scandal, the report – set up to look into progress made since last year’s safeguarding review – found many children were “disappointed but not shocked” by what had happened to Child Q.
One told Gamble: “The vast majority of us experience this in different forms. We are desensitised to it. It's like the news – you get used to it and it's normalised. This has been made public, but it’s just another thing.”
The report concluded that views such as these are not “unreasonable or irrational voices or children ‘banging their feet’ for attention”. It warned that, for adults tempted to dismiss them as such, there is a risk of repeating history, where “an ‘I know best’ attitude ignores children’s voices (in this context, mainly Black children’s voices) and opportunities for improvement are lost”.
The review also called out a number of schools in Hackney for “a worrying level of overconfidence” that incidents such as Child Q’s strip search could not happen to them. “Complacency has never made children safer,” it added.
All but one of Hackney’s secondary schools have been turned into academies, largely shielding them from the oversight of the local council. Academies, including in Hackney, have previously come under fire for using overly aggressive, militant attempts to control and discipline children, an approach that has often victimised Black kids in particular – for instance, through the policing of hairstyles.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/child-q-anti-racism-discrimination-hackney-report-schools-police/
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