Child Protection Failures: The Tragic Case of Tyra Henry

According to Baines and Edwards (2015), as per the observations of National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), a child is murdered by either of his/her foster parents or guardians on a weekly basis. One particular case in point could be highlighted as the death of toddler Tyra Henry (21 months) who had been bettered 57 times by her foster father Andrew Neil prior to her mortification during 1984 while she was under the protective care custody of the local authorities. The case is of particular significance since reports from the Lambeth Council had revealed that social workers, who were white, committed dereliction of their duties through becoming unnecessarily trusting of the guardians of the child who were from African origins. The problematic dimension of improperly focusing on the element of culture, while, having to work with the vulnerable children and their families, is that, this could jeopardise the needs of protective intervention for children. This had lead to the publication of child abuse related guidelines of social services by the junior minister of social services, John Patten.

From the perspective of a social worker, the case reflects the necessity to grapple with the consequential perspectives of discrimination and inequality in the social services in which adopted and marginalised children are involved. This has brought into focus the realisation that, consistent changes in the increasingly globalised social structure necessitates the social workers to develop a conscious and persistent capacity of adaptation to the new paradigms of social services. Danso (2015) has outlined the requirement of refocusing on the concepts of social justice in the form of Anti-Oppresive Practices (AOP). The three key objectives of such a notion of vulnerability and diversity management could be understood to be the necessity to develop proper protective interventionist policies regarding oppressive practices on vulnerable people such as children who are either adopted or could have been put under foster care, the addressing of imperatives of social justice through such practices and equality and to amend traditional norms of practices through renewed emphasis on AOP.

According to Fraser and Seymour (2017), the focus regarding the debate around AOP discourses involves the domain of theoretical discussions concerning the actual nature of social justice. The reactionary position associated with the dynamics of social justice regarding the impact of intervention practices, is unpredictable at best. According to Thompson (2016), the intractable element of anxiety exists for the social workers in the perception that they could be accused to be discriminatory in their practices while being stringent in their approach. This pertains to the notions of social profiling in case of Tyra Henry where the cultural minority status related to the African origin of the foster parents had prevented the social workers from utilisation of deliberate enquiry into the state of psychological conditions of the foster parents. Thus, the poststructuralist perspective suggests the reinvention of the discourses of critical practice theory so that greater open-ended and collaborative approaches could be instituted in terms of social activism. The core objective of such social activism is related to the promotion of social justice through practical implementation of logical operational approaches and not through socio-cultural perceptions which had been demonstrated by the social workers in case of Tyra Henry. This requires social workers to become greater adept in responding to the challenges which emerge from the perspectives of economic rationalism and conservatism.

Reference List

• Baines, S. and Edwards, J., 2015. Considering the ways in which anti-oppressive practice principles can inform health research. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 42, pp.28-34.
• Danso, R., 2015. An integrated framework of critical cultural competence and anti-oppressive practice for social justice social work research. Qualitative social work, 14(4), pp.572-588.
• Fraser, H. and Seymour, K., 2017. Understanding violence and abuse: An anti-oppressive practice perspective. Fernwood Publishing.
• Thompson, N., 2016. Anti-discriminatory practice: Equality, diversity and social justice. Macmillan International Higher Education.