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The Victoria Climbie case has highlighted the difficulties social care staff still have with racial and cultural issues and how the fear of being wrong can create its own problems. Ruth Winchester reports.

When the Laming inquiry finally concludes its evidence-gathering and sets down in black and white what really happened to Victoria Climbie, one of the spotlights will inevitably fall on race.

Victoria was black, as were her abusers, Marie-Therese Kouao and Carl Manning. One of the social workers involved with Victoria, Lisa Arthurworrey, was also black, as were police officers and nurses involved in her case. This initially suggests that while this child was undoubtedly failed by the child-protection system, she was not failed because of overt racism or even colour bias.

But, as the opening statement by Neil Garnham QC, counsel to the inquiry, points out, race has many possible bearings on Victoria's case. "We have seen no evidence of overt racism," he told the inquiry. "But assumption based on race can be just as corrosive in its effect as blatant racism.

"Race can affect the way people conduct themselves. Fear of racism can stop people acting when otherwise they would. Fear of being thought unsympathetic to someone of the same race can change responses."

The social care sector has always had an uneasy relationship with racial issues. The idea that social workers are racist and take only black children into care has been around for many years, and the sector has spent an equally long time trying to refute it. Then there is the opposite argument, that social workers fail to act to protect black children such as Victoria because they are afraid of being labelled as racist.

Both of these allegations have a element of truth within them somewhere. Black children are over-represented in the care system, and research suggests that one of the reasons may be that social workers and other care professionals overlay their own cultural taboos onto families from other cultures. For instance, research indicates that black children are more likely to be put on the child protection register because of physical abuse than white children. But research also suggests that rather than black parents being more violent, this bias is because black parents are more likely to use an implement such as a cane to punish their children. Professionals seem to be influenced by the form that the punishment takes, rather than responding purely to its severity.¹

But are social workers really fearful of intervening when something is clearly amiss because they don't want to face accusations of racism? The answer is probably no. Few people would willingly leave a child in a dangerous situation to save themselves a little discomfort. More likely, social workers are anxious about how to act in a given situation, feel unsure about how to assess risk in an unfamiliar culture or family set-up, and are worried about making a disastrous wrong decision.

Martin Harris is manager of the child protection team in Essex. His authority has a relatively small ethnic minority population, and he says that social workers often feel unsure about how they should deal with particular cases because of differences in culture, religion, race or language. But he argues: "I don't think that's a bad thing - it's better than being arrogant and assuming that we know all about it. It means people acknowledge that they don't know, and they go and find out about things they are unfamiliar with. We have a range of people who can give us cultural advice and information. It's important we don't end up relying on assumed knowledge."

Harris also points to the importance of making sure that families have all the information possible, which includes hiring interpreters and, if appropriate, putting them in touch with independent voluntary groups or advocates to make sure they understand their rights.

The Children Act 1989 puts a duty on statutory authorities to take account of colour as well as race, culture, religion and language when dealing with child protection. One of the themes that may emerge from the Climbie inquiry is the central importance of language. Victoria spoke only French, while her great-aunt spoke English, making it a far more straightforward prospect to use Kouao as the main source of information. It seems that little effort was made, at least by social services, to talk to Victoria in her native tongue.

There have been well-founded criticisms in the past of crude colour-matching between black families and black social workers, when the situation perhaps would have been better served by a social worker with a language in common, or some experience of the culture in question, regardless of their colour. In fact, many observers argue that language is more crucial than race, religion or colour.

Despite the increasingly multi-racial and multi-cultural nature of social work teams, exact matching of social worker to client is always going to be a distant ideal. And some would argue that such exact matching is missing the point. Rather than assuming that someone of similar background would be the ideal, many front-line staff argue that it is more about attitude and sensitivity than what colour you are.

Black families often have very different experiences and expectations of what involvement with statutory services will mean, and many experts argue that it is far too common for the first contact between an ethnic minority family and social services to be a forcible intervention. They argue that social services should instead develop strategies that open doors to families who may need help before the situation gets to crisis point. Running workshops jointly with local community groups, or the local Citizens' Advice Bureau, can help both social workers and people from ethnic minority communities gain more confidence in relating to each other.

Ratna Dutt is director of the race equality body REU. She suggests that cultural factors should not be given undue significance and that social workers should ask for clarification if they feel unsure - either from the family members themselves, or from an experienced professional. "I don't think that not understanding someone's culture can be a reason for leaving a child unprotected," she argues. "The first stage should be asking the family why it is doing something, and the second stage is what your personal views are - we all judge from our own particular prejudices."

She also agrees with many other people when she suggests that although anti-racism and cultural training can help social workers initially, it does not solve the fundamental dilemma. There is no substitute for experience, and the training that social care staff receive tends to focus on broad anti-racist and anti-oppressive principles. There is little concrete information about cultural norms, practices and attitudes that social workers can draw on. As one practitioner puts it: "You just can't go to the library and get a book out."

Perhaps a more fundamental problem is that there is a dearth of research on the impact of social services interventions on ethnic minorities and on how social care professionals can better handle racial issues and cultural differences.

While broad-brush research into child protection and child care has been done by the Department of Health, little specific information about ethnic minorities has been purposefully drawn out of the findings. Many researchers and academics feel that the subject just hasn't been given the attention it deserves, which is unfortunate both for social care, and for vulnerable people such Victoria Climbie.

The impact of race isn't simple, and it's not going to go away. Says one practitioner: "If race was an easy issue to work through, social workers would have sussed it out a long time ago."

¹ Ravinder Barn, Black Youth on the Margins: A Research Review, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2001.