Bad news about children’s social care doesn’t wait for you to find it—it finds you. For as long as I can remember, stories of child protection failures and institutional abuse have spilled into living rooms, workplaces, and communities. They seep in through headlines, whispers, and the heavy silences of those too hurt to speak.

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I entered the world of children’s social care in February 1976, not long after the tragic death of Maria Colwell. Maria, just seven years old, was killed by her mother’s violent partner after being returned to her mother’s care when the courts discharged her care order. The shock of her death reverberated across the country. At that time, the system was already grappling with major questions: How do we protect children? How do we prevent them from ‘drifting’ in care for years? How do we help young offenders? These questions loomed over everyone in the field—legislators, policymakers, practitioners, and now, me. I stepped into this landscape with hope. I wanted to make a difference. I believed I could.

 

Decades passed, and I witnessed the same stories repeat themselves. The scandals, the inquiries, the promises of change. Each time, we said, Never again. Each time, we failed. By the 1980s and 1990s, I had become a registered social worker and foster carer. I was working in the private sector, overseeing children’s homes and schools. I had seen the fallout from the North Wales child abuse scandal and the horrors of Staffordshire’s ‘Pin Down.’ I’d watched as Childline was founded and as trials like those of Frank Beck in Leicestershire exposed the worst kinds of betrayal. I’d uncovered institutional neglect, misconduct, and fraud totaling hundreds of thousands of pounds. I’d seen the regulatory landscape shift repeatedly—from the Commission for Social Care Inspection to Ofsted—always with the promise of improvement, yet never with the results.

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Failures weren’t isolated to one sector. Public, private, voluntary—it didn’t matter. The common thread wasn’t the sector; it was the culture. It was people, and how they behaved when no one was watching. And more often than not, no one was.

In 2009, I took responsibility for a group of children’s homes. What I found there still haunts me. Dangerous, unauthorized physical interventions were routine. Restraints lasting hours. Injuries ignored. Inspectors and social workers had overlooked these practices for years. One young woman had been restrained 107 times in two years. Twice, she was held in prone positions for over an hour. Eventually, she was admitted to inpatient psychiatric care.

 

The records were undeniable. They were there, in black and white. Yet no one had intervened—not the inspectors, not the regulators, not the social workers assigned to protect her. In one report, an inspector had written: “Sampling these documents supported appropriate interventions and sanctions were being deployed.” This report was written just weeks after the inquest into Gareth Myatt’s restraint-related death. Gareth was 15 years old. He died at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in 2004, restrained by adults who should have known better. His death was ruled accidental. No one was held accountable.

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I raised my concerns with every authority I could think of: Child Protection Services, the Children’s Rights Director, the Chief Inspector, even the Children’s Minister. I was told the same thing, over and over: It is essential to investigate past abuse... we are hopeful this will lead to better inspections... the issues are serious but outside our remit. Eventually, I was told to take it to the Local Government Ombudsman. But they could only investigate complaints made by the young people themselves. A cruel irony. How could these children, so often silenced, be expected to navigate bureaucracy? How could they know they were being abused when those in power told them it was care?

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By 2014, I was called to another battle: a trial involving a childcare worker accused of sexually abusing three girls. Two of the girls had been in homes I knew well. I believed them. I knew their stories were true. I wrote reports, attended meetings, and tried to ensure their voices were heard. But in court, vital evidence was omitted. Inaccuracies went unchallenged. The defendant, described as a "good person," was acquitted of nearly all charges. The trial broke something in me. It was clear that the system wasn’t just failing children—it was protecting their abusers. Worse still, it was silencing those who tried to stand up for them. The girls in this case were betrayed not just by their abuser, but by the very system that was supposed to keep them safe.

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By 2017, I had reached my limit. The emotional cost of staying silent had become unbearable. I wrote to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), believing it to be a safe place to tell the truth. I hoped my experiences would help expose the cult of silence that hides wrongdoing and punishes those who speak out. But their reply was devastatingly polite: Not every allegation of institutional failure can be investigated. This wasn’t new. For years, I’d seen whistleblowers labeled troublemakers, their careers destroyed for daring to speak the truth. I thought of Alison Taylor, the children’s home manager sacked for exposing abuse in Wales in the 1980s. I thought of the countless others who had tried to stand up and been crushed under the weight of a system designed to protect itself.

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When I left the regulated children’s sector, I poured my energy into storytelling. With the support of others, I helped organize Your Life Your Story, a workshop for care-experienced adults and caregivers. Through writing, art, and poetry, we began to tell the stories that had been silenced for too long. One participant, David, grew up in care during the ’60s and ’70s. He had suffered unspeakable abuse. For decades, his voice was ignored, his pain dismissed. But through storytelling, he found a way to reclaim his narrative. His book, Oi, is a testament to survival and a damning indictment of the system that failed him.

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the stories we tell have the power to change the world. They reveal truths that statistics can’t. They connect us, challenge us, and remind us of our shared humanity. The care system has failed far too many, for far too long. But it’s not beyond saving. Change will only come when we stop hiding from the truth. When we listen to the voices of those who have lived through its failures. When we stop blaming and start learning. Because in the end, silence only protects the powerful. And it’s the children—the most vulnerable among us—who pay the price.

 

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Amanda Knowles MBE

(first published 24 January 2020) (Updated 8 Jana