We did a safeguarding course at work many years ago. The person running the course said that the social workers who visited Victoria didn't have the rights to force entry. So when they did turn up, if they weren't allowed in, they just went home. No idea how true that was, but I suspect it was more true that we would like it to be.
Saville's focus on children in care must have been deliberately planned. These were children who were probably already wary/suspicious of authority and wouldn't have wanted to bring up what happened. And sadly as so many horror stories came out later, they may have been abused by other people in the care homes already.
Yes, and just generally - the 70s were a real low point, I think, in children being listened to or believed. It was a cultural thing - society as a whole.
But as for social workers not being allowed in, not sure I buy that. When I taught, they'd come to see the child in school - well I say that, it was rare one would bother to turn up. There'd be an appointment then a no show, more often than one ever actually turned up as promised. And that was after school had paid out a fortune in cover for me to meet with them. They were notorious for it. I think seeing kids in an environment where they are not being manipulated by a parent, would surely have more value, in some ways. For all I know the law has changed and I forget when the Climbie case was, but when I was teaching in the 1990s - early 2000s, my impression of social workers from a teacher's standpoint wasn't good at all and I never met a teacher that had a single good thing to say about them. They seemed very unprofessional, to me. And if they did turn up, they'd say offensive/outrageous things about kids' race, for example - or really callous, hard things about wrestling them from foster homes where they were happy, at the drop of a hat. I was with the kids all day every day and often got to know the parent/family situation pretty well - my opinion counted for nothing in any process and they'd even turn up and not remember a child's name. Which didn't inspire confidence.
I saw a documentary that said one problem with them is the culture in sw since the 70s has been to keep families together - and they are so hell bent on that (esp after the satanic panic accusations of the past) that they will knowingly leave kids with abusers, rather than take them away from the family structure.
I know someone who was in care in the 70s and they hated the care home because they wanted to be with their (mentally ill) parent - but on the other hand, they said they were never hurt or abused sexually, physically or mentally, whilst in care and were in fact treated quite well. I dunno how typical that was but it happened.