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In ‘Caring for Children: A Postcript to Beckford’, the third Sigmund Freud Birthday Lecture sponsored by the Anna Freud Centre, Mr Blom-Cooper has raised a mirror to the social worker engaged in child welfare and the protective services. This mirror has both a close and a distant magnification, in that the historical perspective of social-work education and training is being tested against the current study of the tragic Jasmine Beckford case, as reported by the Inquiry into the Death of Jasmine Beckford. In formulating our vote of thanks to Mr Blom-Cooper, who was also the Chairman of the Panel of Inquiry, each of us can use the mirror that this inquiry and tonight's lecture has held up for us.
It is not only social work that is in need of constructive criticism, as so fairly presented by Mr Blom-Cooper; the law, the courts, the social services and the mental health clinicians who are child experts (from psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology and social work) can also see themselves in this same mirror. We can perceive multiple flaws in our history, our education and training and we can become aware of our difficulties in maintaining our commitment to the best interests of the child. Once the family has ceased to function ‘[the] state is justified in breaching family privacy and supervening parental autonomy’1, as was clearly the case in the violent physical abuse of Jasmine Beckford by her parents. We agree in discussions that the child's rights shall be paramount but, as in the Beckford case, we allow our concern for parents and for the mystique of blood ties to pervert our perceptions, our knowledge and our judgement.
Those who report the abuse tend to minimize the damage; those who clinically evaluate the child-parent relationships tend to find reasons to support their belief that the parents can be rehabilitated and the