As city council talks in secret, families won't be silenced - John McLellan

For an authority whose reputation for candour is, shall we say, unenviable, no-one should be surprised to see another mystery item on the agenda when Edinburgh Council meets today.

Item 9.1 is a report from the Council’s chief lawyer Nick Smith, but there are no details, and the public is not even entitled to know what he has been investigating. Any discussion will be behind closed doors and councillors will be under threat of suspension if any information is divulged.

Edinburgh Council faces so many live allegations of wrongdoing it’s hard to know where to start but given the number of complaints let’s assume it’s something to do with the way it cares for vulnerable people.

As readers of this column might recall, a petition is calling for an independent inquiry into allegations of mishandling child safeguarding enquiries by public bodies, particularly Edinburgh, and although I can’t tell if 9.1 relates to this, further allegations show how much has still to be uncovered.

A family which gave evidence to the investigation by Susanne Tanner KC in 2020-21 contacted me to highlight their experience, and it is an astonishing story of collusion, cover-up and complacency, involving a young woman with severe mental health difficulties who found herself in the grip of Edinburgh Council’s care system for years.

She was discharged from hospital into care after a social worker wrongly claimed in writing it was with parental consent, and the result was repeated suicide attempts in her first week. Over the next three years her parents were regularly prevented from seeing her for months at a time.

A promised internal review of her initial care by a senior manager was not held because of ‘miscommunication’ and then a formal complaint was handled by the very manager who had been involved the disastrous decision to move her from hospital, and who was married to another social worker involved.

A further complaint to the Chief Social Worker went unanswered, and when the case eventually reached the council’s Complaints Review Committee, written evidence was contradicted by a senior manager without challenge.

Edinburgh Council's secret agenda item contrasts with families trying to highlight the damage inflicted on their vulnerable loved ones while in local authority care, writes John McLellan. PIC: Creative Commons.

A subsequent Children and Families Committee report was allegedly altered to suggest a Social Work Review had taken place when it hadn’t. Claims that a sound risk assessment had been completed were not supported by evidence and only when pressed by the Mental Welfare Commission did a senior manager admit there had been no such assessment.

At the height of her illness, the girl made false allegations against a family member, and although retracted, social workers failed to inform the NHS or police and repeated them at review meetings and children’s hearings. Her family only found out years later, yet a senior social work manager defended the decision to withhold such vital information.

Their story didn’t feature in the Tanner report, and the obstruction goes on to this day because the girl, now an adult, understandably wants to know why she was so badly treated and has asked the Council for her records. Six months on they have not been provided, but meanwhile, who knows what is happening to the documents.

Edinburgh Council’s most senor directors repeatedly insist all the bad apples have gone, but only when these matters are taken out of their hands can she and all Edinburgh residents have any confidence.