Well first of all this sort of thing is not unique to the UK. Many countries have scandals where institutions that were once held in high regard and entrusted with the duty of care have been found to neglect their responsibilities and have failed to protect the vulnerable.
However, there are a couple of things that make the UK stand out.
Firstly the UK has a vigorous press and there is a public appetite for news about scandals such as this. They will be discussed endlessly in the press for months to come and the government will come under pressure to be seen to be doing something about it. It will become a subject of political debate and there will be a lot of cynical point scoring over the failure of these institutions. The usual response is a government inquiry of some kind.
Looking at the institutions involved, it seems the local government social work department and the police and being held responsible for not protecting youngsters in the care of the local authorities from sexual predators.
We have been here before. The Rochdale case is very recent, there have been many others over the past few decades where groups of men exploit vulnerable girls who are supposed to be under the care of the local social services. The Savile case was a different type of case in that it was not localised and involved other institutions like the BBC and the NHS.
How these institutions respond when a scandal like this blows up is often very disappointing. The managers and executives seem to be able to avoid responsibility and often go on to manage other similar organisations. They are well paid professionals who can afford good legal representation and they do not get to the top of organisations like these without acquiring deft political skills. Instead, the lowest level of social worker is usually hung out to dry. Shamed and pilloried in the press for unprofessional conduct and neglect of duty. Devil take the hindmost.
One of my friends is a social worker in London and tells me that social work departments responsible for child protection operate under a cloud of fear that they may be implicated in some scandal. They are run on the basis that all checks and balances are measured by a bureaucratic system of reports. Lots of forms and ticks in boxes to show that the job is being done in an agreed manner so no-one can point the finger of blame. There is a great fear of being implicated in a scandal and social workers do the job by the book. In the course of the job, they often feel quite powerless to deal with some situations where young kids go out of control and do damage to not only themselves, but to others.
I think there is a realisation in government that beating up social work departments is not going to solve this problem. Many have serious difficulty in recruiting staff at the moment because it is seen as a very risky career and the public perception of social work as a professional is unsympathetic and at time contemptuous. Scandal stories may sell lots of newspapers, but someone has to pick up the pieces and do the job.
The police do much the same, their job is to enforce the law and often they have to deal with people who are vulnerable and inadequate as well as those who are criminal. Chasing runaways takes up a lot of their time.
Kids from broken homes, whose parents may be very immature themselves, suffering from drug addiction and maybe have a history of abuse. The kids get taken into care and they may themselves have serious behavioural problems.
How is a social worker supposed to stop them from keeping bad company? Meeting sexual predators, gangsters, criminals, pimps? How are the police supposed to deal with them? They find them in some bad place, take them back to the care home, they get a call later and a car is waiting for them outside. It takes a concentrated effort by different agencies to break up this sort of cycle and that takes resources which compete with other priorities.
I am sure it is possible to deal with this situation effectively with some sort of organisation dedicated to the task and a proper legal framework. Or simply refocussing existing police/social work/probation service/healthcare/ services.
As it stands at the moment, overworked police and social workers have an unenviable job and it is little wonder that this sort of scandal persists. Police and social services are also local services and what happens in another borough is a different department. There are gaps. This looks like a big one and clearly it was not dealt with and allowed to grow into a significant problem.
There are, I am sure, several other investigations going on and they will be reporting over the next few years. There will be reports, recommendations and eventually changes in the law. Whether it results in institutional reform, that is another matter.
Somehow I don’t think local hoods targeting girls in social services care homes is a problem unique to the UK. Nor is the tendency of public service institutions to protect themselves by whatever means. What is remarkable is probably the wave of moral panic and hand wringing that will go on in the public conversation when public services let everyone down so conspicuously. The public in the UK have high expectations of public services and get very upset when they don’t deliver on matters as serious as child protection.
However, there are some encouraging signs of political commitment and a rational approach towards dealing with problem families on a national scale:
https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-troubled-families-turn-their-lives-around
Makes me wonder how other countries deal with this sort of issue.