Child Q scandal: Senior Hackney politicians demand ‘robust’ oversight of safeguarding reforms

The Child Q scandal sparked protests in Hackney. Photograph: Julia Gregory

Senior politicians in Hackney are calling for “robust” monitoring of safeguarding reforms in the wake of the Child Q scandal.

A council scrutiny commission put police and education bosses on the spot to find out what has changed since a Black schoolgirl was strip-searched at school in December 2020 without an appropriate adult present.

A joint hearing by members of the Living in Hackney and Children and Young People’s scrutiny commissions in June highlighted concerns that Child Q’s was not an isolated case and called for tough oversight.

The commissions have now written to police and education chiefs to demand an update by the end of the year on steps they have taken to ensure children’s safety.

They said a safeguarding review that found racism was likely to be a factor in the strip-search “clearly underlines the need for a fundamental change in the way that the police engage and involve Black and global majority communities”.

When the case came to light in March 2022, people in Hackney staged protests outside Stoke Newington police station and the Town Hall.

Councillors said they wanted to see more oversight of intimate searches on children and said they were concerned other youngsters are being subjected to such a traumatic ordeal.

They said it was challenging to discover Child Q’s case “was far from an isolated incident”.

It emerged that seven other intimate searches were carried out on children in Hackney over the past two years. Across London, 650 children were strip-searched between 2020 and 2022, and Black children were disproportionately impacted.

The Metropolitan Police Service reviewed its intimate search policy for under-18s following the Child Q scandal.

It said: “In all cases, the officers must seek the cooperation of the person and carry out the search sensitively and respectfully.”

Police have also been given advice about “ensuring that children are treated as children”.

Hackney’s commissioners welcomed a local pilot scheme in which senior officers have to give permission for strip-searching children.

However, they highlighted concerns that there is little or no effective scrutiny of this process.

Councillors also want more details on the “practical steps school leadership teams had taken to prevent similar events from happening again in the future”.

They said they were encouraged that the council-run Hackney Education looked at schools’ safeguarding policies, but said it was not clear what steps schools have taken to prevent similar incidents.

They were also “perplexed” that the school where Child Q was a student “did not seek to engage or involve the parent of Child Q leading up to or during the search”.

The school, which cannot be named, previously said it has thoroughly reviewed its safeguarding policies since the incident.

In a letter summing up their findings, Cllr Soraya Adejare and Clare Joseph, chair and vice-chair of the Living in Hackney scrutiny commission respectively, and Margaret Gordon, vice-chair of the Children and Young People scrutiny commission, highlighted how “increasing numbers of parents have spoken about the difficulty of engaging meaningfully with schools, getting their voice heard and not feeling sufficiently involved in decisions about their children”.

They said they were concerned this points to a “growing accountability gap between schools and parents and the community”.

Councillors are calling for a review of governing bodies to “truly reflect and represent the view and interests of parents and local communities”.

They are concerned that “the case of Child Q has further eroded trust and confidence in policing among communities in Hackney”.

The joint commission said it will keep an eye on progress and meet early next year for an update.