CAPE History
CAPE was founded in December 1990 following two conferences organised by the Department for Education and Employment at Birmingham and York for staff employed within local education authorities who were responsible for the training of staff in schools for their child protection role. We felt that our perspective was so unique that we had a particular need to meet to share issues and problems and to develop ways of working.
I had had a shot at getting a similar group going in the Midlands, but only two people had responded so I was delighted when I met Kaye Gee when I was delivering some training in Liverpool and she told me about the group in the North-West who had held one meeting. Would Derbyshire count as North-West, I wondered? But this group were the least exclusive and most welcoming I had met, and it was not an issue, as long as I could reach the meetings.
In the early days, we called ourselves (accurately) the North-West Education Trainers in Child Protection Support Network. Try pronouncing that: NWETCPSN!
But from the start, we did significant work. My first meeting featured the issue of Race and Child Abuse, and also had a speaker from the Child Abuse Training Unit, an auspicious beginning.
Early on, we engaged in the task of developing an in-school child protection policy, first by seeing if any schools in our area had devised one, and when this yielded no result began to devise one ourselves. This would later become an increasing need once Ofsted inspections began to include child protection.
We also made the first of our contacts with government, on this occasion to express a concern that no central funding had been made available for child protection training. Subsequently, central funding was granted for two financial years. We also had early attendance from HMI, a precedent which has happily persisted.
A main theme has always been increasing and improving the training of staff in schools and elsewhere in the education service. One concern in the early months was the training of youth workers in child protection. At that time, too, we were awaiting the implementation of the Children Act 1989 and the release of Working Together under the Children Act, which would require more awareness training for schools.
We also wrote to the North-West Regional Examinations Board to query the wisdom of questions on child abuse in GCSE Home Economics examinations. Other issues which we addressed in our first two years were the abuse of disabled children, child on child abuse, child protection in the curriculum, and racism and abuse. We also raised concerns with the Chief Inspector of Schools about the omission of child protection from Ofsted’s initial inspection framework (this omission was subsequently rectified), and with the DfEE about the Sex Education Circular 5/94. We also raised with the DfEE the need for central government funding for child protection training, and there were eventually two years when such funding was provided.
During this period, we began to attract members from farther afield, notably from the north-east. Increasing membership acted as a spur to further development, and it was decided to plan our first conference. Our first try at this, a two-day event to be held in July 1994, ended in frustration due to lack of take-up, and had to be cancelled.
But we had learnt from our efforts, and eventually organised a slightly less ambitious version over a single day, at Woodlands Conference Centre, Chorley. This attracted almost a hundred delegates, and featured Anne Peake, Khadj Rouf, and Ruth Marchant, then from Chailey Heritage.
It was for this conference that we disposed of our unwieldy acronym in favour of ‘CAPE’ – originally ‘Child Abuse and Protection in Education’, in order to develop the beginnings of a public profile. To this end, too, the first version of the CAPE Manifest was written, to explain to delegates who CAPE was (see below). We also agreed that one member should be the contact for a year.
At this stage, membership of CAPE was still free, and it was felt that there might be a need to fund administration costs for meetings and events. We decided to ask for a fee of £10 per year from members. In future, only those paying the fee would receive circulated documents and invitations to meetings.
At the same time, what had been our organisation by default became deliberate policy. Because of the large (and ever larger) area we covered, it had always been our practice to hold meetings at each of our bases in turn. The member hosting the meeting also chaired it. Logically, too, that person would minute the previous meeting, and be responsible for circulating the minutes and other papers, including the meeting invitations. This system worked so well that it had never been felt necessary to have officers or a committee. A result of this is that CAPE is about as democratic organisation as it is possible to imagine. The conference in 1995 was planned by an ad hoc committee consisting entirely of volunteers, and this practice still continues. The only permanent officer is the treasurer – and this has only been the case since the first international conference, when the size of the sums of money we were handling made it necessary.
CAPE has responded to all consultative documents on child protection, including the major consultation on Working Together to Safeguard Children, and, most recently, the consultation on the guidance to accompany s175 of the Education Act 2002, due to come into force this summer. It has also provided a valuable services to member authorities by ensuring that all members were circulated with anything that any of us had produced that might be of value generally, thus saving much re-inventing of wheels.
Steve Adams
(first published in Protection, an Optimus publication, April 2004.