Ethical Dilemmas and Child Protection: A Case Study of Daniel Pelka

This report presents a case study on the death of Daniel Pelka, focusing on the ethical dilemmas faced by social workers, school staff, and other professionals involved. It examines the missed opportunities to protect Daniel from abuse and neglect, highlighting the failures in safeguarding and the impact of these failures. The report reviews the media's reaction, changes in government regulations, and the ethical considerations for social workers. It concludes with recommendations for improved child protection practices, emphasizing the importance of identifying and responding to signs of abuse, enhancing training for social workers, and ensuring effective communication between agencies. The report aims to increase awareness of ethical responsibilities and improve child safety standards to prevent future tragedies like Daniel Pelka's death.

Social Work Ethical
Dilemma

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
CASE PRESENTATION................................................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................2
OUTCOME......................................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4
APPENDICES.................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The case study is about the death of Daniel Pelka in context with ethical dilemmas. This
report will provide a brief idea on how the improvement of safeguarding in schools can be done
(Sim, 2014). The study shows about the opportunities missed by school staff, social services and
health professionals to help him. After this case schools and social workers are very active
regarding the health of children because protection of children is the main priority.. This
document will focus on the rules and regulation of government that has changed after the death
of Daniel Pelka (Devine and Parker, 2015). The purpose of this report is to increase the safety
standards of children, so that they will not have to suffer such kind of situations and no children
should die from family abuse.
CASE PRESENTATION
The case presentation is on Daniel Pelka, born on 15 July 2007 died on 3 march 2012. He
was born in Coventry, England, died when he was just 3 years 8 months old (Lucas, 2016). He
was living with his mother Magdalena Luczak and step father Mariusz krezolek. Biological
father of Daniel was Eryk Pelka. Daniel was having two siblings named Anna and Adam. Their
age was not disclosed. The cause of death shown in the police report was head injury and child
abuse but it is more than that. The first language of the boy was Polish, and according to other
social workers this was creating the problem for him in the school (Baier and et.al., 2015). As he
was not able to tell the problem he was facing to anyone. The social worker who was involved in
this case was Chris Horne (Ashley, 2017). He was the first one sent to Daniel's home with police.
His role was to check whether the conditions of other siblings of Daniel's are healthy or not. The
condition of Daniel was very poor as he was beaten by his parents everyday, they starved the
child, forcing him to eat salt and locked him in the room alone for days and nights. Later it was
found that his weight was just 10.8 kg when he died (Sim, 2015). In school, the staff saw him
begging and starving for food on more than one occasion, but they ignored him, and on one day
he was caught stealing the birthday cake of his teacher. There were various missed opportunities
in Daniel's case. First is the ignorance of school teachers, as they are not bothered about the
condition of the child. Secondly, the social service care was not making any kind of efforts to
help the starving children and they are not investigating properly to find out the real problem of
the death of Daniel (Weston, 2014).
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LITERATURE REVIEW
The reactions of media regarding this case was “Blaming and Shaming”. Some of the
reports of media was blaming the social workers (Kettle, 2017). According to them, the social
services was not doing their job properly and the school staff was also blamed for the death of
Daniel. Other media reports reflected that it is very difficult to protect every children because it
is a multi agency work. The legislation has changed quite a bit and they are now more focused
on those child's who are suffering from any kind of family problem. School staff are paying more
attention to their students (Bhatti and Price, 2015). After his death, a campaign was launched
“Do it for Daniel”. This was having 30 new social workers, so that the work load from other staff
can be reduced. A notice was issued in June 2014, in which it was mentioned that the council is
taking positive steps in improving the health care services in Coventry (Drugan, 2017). They
have made some rules for schools also. According to those rules, the staff should regularly
discuss with those children who are giving sign of illness and the agencies will also be in touch
with schools, so that they can observe the progress of children (Devine and Parker, 2015). Just
by observing the child is not protection, but the social employees must pay attention to his needs,
must listen to the child and his problems.
OUTCOME
Ethical dilemmas are the situations when someone has to make a choice between given
options and that person is not able to decide what he has to do (Marshall, 2017). The given
options will not solve the problem in ethically acceptable manner. The decisions made by the
teacher were not good, because they are not focusing on the condition of Daniel. They were slow
in reacting and informing this situation to social care services (Elmer, 2016). Police should have
found out the evidence of the death of the boy, but they were unable because the decisions made
by them was very casual (.Congress, 2017). The social worker was more focused on the siblings
of Daniel rather than finding out the cause of death. Ethical dilemmas risen for the police officers
because they are not able to make correct decisions regarding the death of child (Kirsty, 2011).
Personal relationships, information access and the life style of individual can also affect the
decision making capabilities for an individual which will be a dilemma for him (Reamer, 2015).
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CONCLUSION
From this report, it has been concluded that the safety of children should be the focal
point for the social services and schools, so that the case like Daniel Pelka will not happen again.
The staff of school and worker of social care should give more focus on those students who are
showing the sign of illness or their health is not proper. The most significant point was that no
one was giving attention to the condition of Daniel and for them he was invisible. By changing
the rules and regulation of child safety, the government, social care services and school have
significantly improved the safety standards of the children. New workers were recruited, so that
they will reduce the work load and can give more attention to all the children. By increasing the
safety and introducing new laws, they have certainly reduced the ethical dilemma.
RECOMMENDATIONS
From this case study, it has been recommended that local safeguarding children's board
(LSCB) should respond in a better way for the domestic child abuse situation. LSCB have to
assure that proper evidence must be gathered by the social care workers and then consult those
evidences with police and professionals. Some other recommendations include the improvements
in the identifying process of domestic child abuse and reporting them as fast as possible. The
schools should be better in identifying that no child is injured or suffering from any kind of
disease. LSCB must take the initiative to start the training sessions for their workers with respect
to the identification and detection of very severe family and emotional abuse. They must make
sure that the service agencies use proper staff or mediators for those families who are not having
English as their first language. It is also recommended that these mediators have the right to
interview the child alone, so that they can tell their problem. This will help the worker to
safeguard the child's health and further solve the issues raised by him.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baier, D., and et.al., 2015. Ratings-/Rankings-Based Versus Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis for
Predicting Choices. In Data Science, Learning by Latent Structures, and Knowledge
Discovery (pp. 205-216). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Bhatti-Sinclair, K. and Price, D., 2015. Evaluation of serious case reviews and anti-racist
practice.
Congress, E.P., 2017. What social workers should know about ethics: Understanding and
resolving practice dilemmas. Social Work Ethics. p.1909.
Devine, L. and Parker, S., 2015. Rethinking child protection strategy: Integrating law, practice &
social enterprise into effective safeguarding training and a post-referral family support
initiative.
Devine, L. and Parker, S., 2015. The SAFER Initiative: A case study in applying research to
social enterprise: Creating impact.
Drugan, J., 2017. Ethics and social responsibility in practice: interpreters and translators
engaging with and beyond the professions. The Translator. pp.1-17.
Elmer, S., 2016. 3 Safeguarding, child protection and children in need in the early years. The
Complete Companion for Teaching and Leading Practice in the Early Years. p.76.
Kettle, M., 2017. The tipping point: fateful moments in child protection. Child & Family Social
Work. 22(S4). pp.31-39.
Lucas, S.E., 2016. Interpreting: one size fits all? English language as an essential component of
social work. Social Work in a Diverse Society: Transformative Practice with Black and
Minority Ethnic Individuals and Communities. p.91.
Marshall, J., 2017. RELATIONSHIP-BASED SOCIAL WORK IN FAMILY AND
CHILDCARE PRACTICE. Doing Relationship-Based Social Work: A Practical Guide to
Building Relationships and Enabling Change. p.44.
Reamer, F.G., 2015. 18 Ethical Issues in Social Work. Social workers' desk reference, p.143.
Sim, J., 2014. Prevention is Better than Cure: Did Daniel Pelka Die to Save Britain's Children? A
Discussion of Three Fatal Child Abuse Cases and Their Implications for Prevention.
Sim, J., 2015. Invisible children, dying to save others: A discussion of three fatal child abuse
cases and the prevention of future deaths. Current Issues Crim. Just. 27. p.79.
Weston, D., 2014. Fundamentals of Infection Prevention and Control: Theory and Practice.
Online
Ashley, M., 2017. A List of Ethical Dilemmas Facing Social Work. [Online]. Available through:
<http://work.chron.com/list-ethical-dilemmas-facing-social-work-21946.html>.
[Accessed on 24th June 2017].
Kirsty, M., 2011. Ethical dilemmas for social workers at a time of cuts.[Online]. Available
through: <http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2011/02/04/ethical-dilemmas-for-social-
workers-at-a-time-of-cuts/>. [Accessed on 24th June 2017].
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APPENDICES
Various chances were missed to prevent the child from death. All the professionals were
not trying hard enough to observe the condition of child. 26 times, the police were called at
Daniel's home for domestic violence, but they could not able to found out the actual reason. All
the agencies accepted the stories made by Daniel's mother without doing proper investigation. He
was only 4 years old when he was beaten to death by his mother Magdalena Luczak and step
father Mariusz Krezolek. Because medics, social workers, teachers were failed in thinking that
he was suffering from all these.
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