Teresa Thornhill is an author and former child protection lawyer. Throughout her long career, working for both local authorities and advocating on behalf of parents, she has been a first hand witness to how the system fails parents, social workers and, most importantly, children.

Teresa sat down with Aaron to talk about the untrained volunteers deciding children’s futures, whether drug policy matters, and how austerity will have costs for decades to come.

You can buy Teresa’s book here: https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/in-harms-way-the-memoir-of-a-child-protection-lawyer-from-the-most-secretive-court-in-england-and-wales-the-family-court-teresa-thornhill

00:00 Intro
02:19 What Exactly is ‘Child Protection’?
07:35 What is a Child in Need?
09:57 What Kind of Judges are Involved?
14:40 What are The Main Causes of Child Neglect?
18:50 What are the Costs of all of This?
26:11 What Happens to Young Mothers Whose Children are Taken Away?
31:19 Lack of Resources
39:34 Sure Start Centres
42:42 How did Austerity Change Things?
47:24 Social Work’s Intense Workload
55:15 How do we fix it?
58:58 Finley Boden
1:03:35 Management Problems
1:11:49 Drug Policy
1:16:12 Boarding Schools
1:17:50 The Effect of Covid
1:23:13 More Solutions

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