That documentary made me feel like kicking in the TV screen....it should have been called "It Wasn't My Fault".
I know that child was killed by a trio of loathsome, psychopathic thugs but the enabling that went on for almost a year prior was astounding. And Shoesmith still passes the buck >:(
Back to where the huge furore started. It was her attitude at that press conference that ignited the firestorm. It really was shocking. Her total inability to take responsibility. The concern being about her team not the loss of a beautiful little boy. It was almost like an occupational hazard.
Shocking and BBC should not be working as her mouthpiece. When Cameron gets blamed for asking question at PMQ's you know BBC are in political agenda mode.
There are some on here who STILL don't get the point this program was making and have been all but brainwashed by the media frenzy around this story.
There were mistakes made by numerous people, things were missed and problems not escalated and when they were they were ignored. There were services - health and social - under immense pressure, dealing with too many cases and with little or no support from those above them (instead they were castigated and bullied or just plain ignored). And the public was baying for their blood.
It's a sad, appalling indictment of the human race- when we look to blame those who were trying to help, those who were under pressures they should never have been under because of understaffing and underfunding - instead of laying the blame squarely where it belongs.
At the feet of the person who was supposed to be looking out for that child - the mother and the two men she allowed to torture him.
I'm sorry but when an obviously at-risk child is left time after time in a chaotic, filthy pigsty of a house by professional social workers because 'mum seemed caring enough to me' there is a hell of a lot of blame to share around. I do not accept that the words 'understaffed', 'underfunded', 'overworked' can be used to excuse away the manner in which this child was abandoned to his fate. He was removed once then returned! how does being uderstaffed, overworked and underfunded apply to this? decisions do not require a lot of money - they require basic commonsense and having ones wits about them. The ambulancemen who attended that house that day and found Peter dead in his cot are on record as describing what kind of environment they walked into - the same hellish environment that Maria Ward et al had walked into time and time again up to 3 days before Peter was killed and walked out of each time believing the child was okay. How much money does it cost to recommend immediate removal to a foster home?
Stop blaming economics and workloads, it was the lack of decisiveness which sealed that child's fate.
The media picked up on Shoesmith because she was in charge of child protection in Harringay, not because of her attitude. They also targetted the people under her including the clearly blameless social worker on the case. Shoesmith's character and attitude weren't really known about, just accusations of what she did or didn't do from the ill-informed media whose main interest was to keep the story going until some heads rolled.
There was no BBC/leftie campaign in this documentary. It was a cold examination of the facts as we now know them. All the media shared in the outcry, but the Sun in particular had its petition with loaded and misinformed wording. The Sun isn't to blame for anything here except stoking up the public pressure in a more directly political way than the rest of the media.
The woman from ITV News wasn't much better. Taking credit for finding the emotive picture of Baby P that increased the public reaction yet going very silent when asked about the police briefing the story to the media so as to keep themselves out of it.
I agree she should have taken responsibility and resigned. Even if she felt she had done nothing wrong, it is the price people sometimes have to pay for being in charge when the system they run, not the individuals in it, has failed.
As you say, the public outcry demanded her removal instinctively, if only from being ill-informed about what had gone on.
What did Ed Balls mess up? He too seemed to instinctively feel that someone, probably Shoesmith, had to go. Why is that wrong yet the public instinct for the same result was correct, according to your previous paragraph? Balls was pushed into a corner by Cameron's outburst in the Commons (also based on very limited facts). His reaction was to rush through a review to be seen to be decisive. Maybe not the best reaction in hindsight but how did it materially affect the outcome apart from the manner of Shoesmith's exit?
=================================================
A number of things struck me.
1. Shoesmith describing how she looked over the borough from her office wondering if the children in her care were safe. That sounds rather like she hoped what her department was doing was enough, not actively seeking to improve the protection she was supposed to provide.
2. The merger of education and child care services under OFSTED after the Victoria Climbie case seems bizarre and flawed in hindsight. How does an education inspectorate suddenly become capable of supervising child protection? Shoesmith came from the OFSTED/education side. She wasn't qualified or experienced in child protection. Yet she was put in charge of the merged child protection service of Harringay.
3. Shoesmith was reliant on OFSTED inspections showing her department was improving to show she was doing a good job. Clearly the OFSTED inspections were not effective if they didn't show that the department was badly understaffed. How could such an understaffed department be categorised as good? I suspect it's more likely a case of hiding faults found, as with the flawed CQC inspections. After all, it's in OFSTED's interest to appear to be overseeing an improving service.
4. The police avoiding blame, when they could easily have forced a decision to remove the child to a place of safety, if only temporarily, was diabolical and never even questioned at the time. The police and heath services were at least as much to blame as the social workers in this case.
5. The poor locum consultant who was hounded to the point of suicide by the press. Vilified for supposedly not noticing the child's broken back, it now seems that injury happened later. She documented his injuries but did not have the experience or knowledge to flag that up as clear evidence of child abuse. She should never have been appointed to that role, but that she was was not her fault.
6. Great Ormond Street denying there was anything wrong with the clinic they ran and trying to buy off the Consultant who was pointing out the problems that existed.
Shoesmith was on Newsnight afterwards and was as smug as she appeared in the documentary. Lots of empty talk about accountability, which by her definition seemed to mean discussing what had happened with the Council and covering her arse.
Let us not forget cameron making politics out of a child's death and getting his facts wrong....the ****ing weasel
Back to where the huge furore started. It was her attitude at that press conference that ignited the firestorm. It really was shocking. Her total inability to take responsibility. The concern being about her team not the loss of a beautiful little boy. It was almost like an occupational hazard.
Shocking and BBC should not be working as her mouthpiece. When Cameron gets blamed for asking question at PMQ's you know BBC are in political agenda mode.
I think if someone is grandioising and making a show at PQT - at the very least they should get their facts right. The BBC were quite right in picking up on this IMO.
I think if someone is grandioising and making a show at PQT - at the very least they should get their facts right. The BBC were quite right in picking up on this IMO.
Cameron was in opposition and did not have the full facts. He raised a critical issue at the top of public agenda. If Cameron had his facts wrong it was up to the Govt of the day to provide the right ones in response to his question.
If a similar situation happened today Milliband would be asking exactly the same questions. No doubt cheered on by BBC. Pure politics that part of the programme.
Every one of the six points above paints a concise picture of the problem. Another poster wrote: It seems everything was about the system and not about the abused child.
Throwing money at a flawed system will not improve anything. For decades now all public services have been hampered by governments insisting that they justify their existence, and this requires constant filling in of charts and tables in an attempt to prove that targets (frequently non-productive and ill-advised) are being met. I wonder why MPs are exempt from these obligations? (Similarly, since MPs are public servants, in the public sector, why are they not subject to limitations on wage increases?)
I would like protocol to be that all whistleblowers are promoted within their organisation whilst directors, managers, and the like are subject to instant dismissal if they fail to address serious malfunctions in the system the minute they are raised by whistleblowers.
It was glossed over, but the commentary stated that after one of Peter's hospital attendances the police wanted to remove him from the home immediately but were over-ruled by the social worker. This is a symptom of a seriously flawed system.
What get's me in all such cases as these are "No One Is To Blame" a child has lost it's life because no one was there to help end of story, I don't know how some people sleep at night for something as bad as these cases, I'm sick of hearing politicians & the like saying Lessons Will Be Learned no they won't so they should shut up & do something & yes I'm so mad at these people.
Every one of the six points above paints a concise picture of the problem. Another poster wrote: It seems everything was about the system and not about the abused child.
Throwing money at a flawed system will not improve anything. For decades now all public services have been hampered by governments insisting that they justify their existence, and this requires constant filling in of charts and tables in an attempt to prove that targets (frequently non-productive and ill-advised) are being met. I wonder why MPs are exempt from these obligations? (Similarly, since MPs are public servants, in the public sector, why are they not subject to limitations on wage increases?)
I would like protocol to be that all whistleblowers are promoted within their organisation whilst directors, managers, and the like are subject to instant dismissal if they fail to address serious malfunctions in the system the minute they are raised by whistleblowers.
It was glossed over, but the commentary stated that after one of Peter's hospital attendances the police wanted to remove him from the home immediately but were over-ruled by the social worker. This is a symptom of a seriously flawed system.
Which social worker was that? I think the social worker, Maria Ward said she felt she had been 'taken in' by Tracey Connelly? Not sure if I heard that correctly.
Another thing that bothered me, is that the SW claimed that Peter went to his mother for comfort. That means absolutely nothing! it doesn't indicate that there's no abuse. Children who are being abused will go to their abuser for comfort, that's all they know. Children trust their parents even if they are being harmed by them. An abused child doesn't know any different, they have no idea that their parents behaviour is wrong or dangerous. It's human instinct for a child to go to it's mother.
I'm sorry but when an obviously at-risk child is left time after time in a chaotic, filthy pigsty of a house by professional social workers because 'mum seemed caring enough to me' there is a hell of a lot of blame to share around. I do not accept that the words 'understaffed', 'underfunded', 'overworked' can be used to excuse away the manner in which this child was abandoned to his fate. He was removed once then returned! how does being uderstaffed, overworked and underfunded apply to this? decisions do not require a lot of money - they require basic commonsense and having ones wits about them. The ambulancemen who attended that house that day and found Peter dead in his cot are on record as describing what kind of environment they walked into - the same hellish environment that Maria Ward et al had walked into time and time again up to 3 days before Peter was killed and walked out of each time believing the child was okay. How much money does it cost to recommend immediate removal to a foster home?
Stop blaming economics and workloads, it was the lack of decisiveness which sealed that child's fate.
Fine. And what about the 260 odd children who have met their deaths (either as badly as Peter did or worse), since? Are you going to blame each individual person in social services etc for that as well? Working in the NHS I can quite see how understaffed departments can lead to mistakes and to work not being carried out in a timely manner. Plus, I'm not sure a social worker can simply walk in and take a chid away so easily. it has to be done legally and with the backing of various departments and management. Otherwise people would be baying for the blood of the social worker who just made a decision to remove a perfectly healthy child from an environment that was mistakenly felt to be 'at risk'. Which, by the way, has happened because now they err on the side of caution.
in fact I just looked it up and it requires a Court Order, which aren't given out like sweets!
The social worker involved did relay her concerns on several occasions. I don't think she had the authority to act alone and remove the child (besides anything else, there has to be somewhere to put him/her which is the reason why there have to be meetings etc!). She contacted the health authorities (who were under their own pressures; the health team there contacting their management time and time again to let them know this unit was unsafe and unfit for purpose and were ignored; and the result was that two staff - one untrained and with no former documentation to go by when she examined children and reliant upon the parents stories - were manning a unit where there should have been four people (who were already inundated).
And let's not forget that the police also bear some responsibility, even though again, no one individual can be blamed.
The system is a mess. I will absolutely agree to that. It is overworked, underfunded and understaffed and it's not as easy as it seems to simply remove a child - especially when (by Tracy Connolly's mother's own words) they were dealing with someone so manipulative. And Peter was not the only child they were dealing with.
It's a shame that the other 200+ cases haven't generated the same response, isn't it? Apparently we only care about this one. EVERY child in danger is important, but it needs cohesive organisation and communication from everyone, from the 'shop floor' (ie the social worker upward to management, from the local PC to their managers etc etc etc) to save them.
And it wasn't them who killed this child. It was his mother and her boyfriend and his brother. It certainly wasn't the social worker, who escalated her concerns time and again and was ignored.
In cases like this the social worker who has any doubts at all should go back to their car call the police & get that child away asap, The adults can look after them selfs baby's can't lets get real this country is pc mad what about the victims in all this.
It was glossed over, but the commentary stated that after one of Peter's hospital attendances the police wanted to remove him from the home immediately but were over-ruled by the social worker. This is a symptom of a seriously flawed system.
Indeed it was glossed over as that wasn't the agenda of the programme. It was a blame shifting / politically motivated piece..
If police were briefing press I can understand their motives. They had wanted BabyP removed. If that simple request had been followed then BabyP would still be alive.
The hospital scenario. This had all been to court with professionals involved in giving their opinion of his injuries before any of us knew anything about it. Why after all this the timing of his injuries is being disputed is beyond me. Media will have reported what they heard in court. Feel sorry for Doctor if she was unfairly criticised but this needs pursuing down legal channels not tv programme.
I found the sight of Sharon Shoesmith whingeing and trying to put the blame on everyone but herself infuriating (let's not forget she got a payout for 600K). Ordinary people lose their jobs every day through no fault of their own and walk away with nothing. Same goes for the doctor - ok maybe he didn't have a broken back, but there were plenty of other signs of abuse she failed to recognise - she didn't even bother to examine him because he was crying and irritable. God forbid that overpaid professionals would have to take responsiblity for their failings - whenever I've asked why some manager is paid a ludicrously high salary the answer is always - because they have so much responsibility. However in the real world it seems that the higher people are the more eager they are to pass the buck.
A piece of propaganda masquerading as informative TV.>:(
Every one of the six points above paints a concise picture of the problem. Another poster wrote: It seems everything was about the system and not about the abused child.
Throwing money at a flawed system will not improve anything. For decades now all public services have been hampered by governments insisting that they justify their existence, and this requires constant filling in of charts and tables in an attempt to prove that targets (frequently non-productive and ill-advised) are being met. I wonder why MPs are exempt from these obligations? (Similarly, since MPs are public servants, in the public sector, why are they not subject to limitations on wage increases?)
I would like protocol to be that all whistleblowers are promoted within their organisation whilst directors, managers, and the like are subject to instant dismissal if they fail to address serious malfunctions in the system the minute they are raised by whistleblowers.
It was glossed over, but the commentary stated that after one of Peter's hospital attendances the police wanted to remove him from the home immediately but were over-ruled by the social worker. This is a symptom of a seriously flawed system.
IMO there are far too many overpaid managers in the public sector who seem to serve no useful purposes at all. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. I've seen it all in my 20 + years of working in the public sector. Cuts start at the bottom, cleaning services etc. outsourced, hard working mid-level staff replaced by low paid temps, while more and more useless managers are appointed, who create a whole new bureaucracy to justifiy their existence.
It was glossed over, but the commentary stated that after one of Peter's hospital attendances the police wanted to remove him from the home immediately but were over-ruled by the social worker. This is a symptom of a seriously flawed system.
I am just watching it again on Iplayer, and on 39.40 it says that the Police had concerns, but the Police and a senior social worker disagreed over what to do. The Police wanted to temporarily remove Peter from the home, but later accepted that he could be returned if safeguards were put in place.
This is such a crucial part of the story but it seems quite muddled, and as you say 'glossed over'. It seems that the senior social worker disagreed with the Police's wishes to remove Peter for his own safety.
Their plan to safeguard Peter, involved a 'family friend' monitoring him at home in the evening, because his mother wasn't allowed to be left alone with him. How could they know that this 'family friend' would be impartial?
I found the sight of Sharon Shoesmith whingeing and trying to put the blame on everyone but herself infuriating (let's not forget she got a payout for 600K). Ordinary people lose their jobs every day through no fault of their own and walk away with nothing. Same goes for the doctor - ok maybe he didn't have a broken back, but there were plenty of other signs of abuse she failed to recognise - she didn't even bother to examine him because he was crying and irritable. God forbid that overpaid professionals would have to take responsiblity for their failings - whenever I've asked why some manager is paid a ludicrously high salary the answer is always - because they have so much responsibility. However in the real world it seems that the higher people are the more eager they are to pass the buck.
A piece of propaganda masquerading as informative TV.>:(
That is down to Ed Balls - nobody else. I was in a national meeting with Unison (as it happens) the day that her dismissal broke. I walked back in to pick up on the national reps talking about it. I said if we (ie: FTSE 100 company) had acted in this way you would going ballistic and taking us to industrial tribunal. They said Unions were going to have to represent Sharon Shoesmith and demand substantial sum as a Govt Minister acting in breach of their own laws just couldn't be allowed to happen. Stupid man it was clear the moment he did it that it was going to cost the Govt mega bucks. She should have been suspended immediately on full pay. They had had a year and investigations so there was no reason why the process couldn't happen fairly quickly and she would have gone and cost the taxpayer only a few weeks wages.
IMO there are far too many overpaid managers in the public sector who seem to serve no useful purposes at all. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. I've seen it all in my 20 + years of working in the public sector. Cuts start at the bottom, cleaning services etc. outsourced, hard working mid-level staff replaced by low paid temps, while more and more useless managers are appointed, who create a whole new bureaucracy to justifiy their existence.
As a HR professional who spent most of my working life in private sector but who has done consultancy work in public sector since taking early retirement my assessment is a simple word - accountability. It is a generalisation but the private sector is very much clearer in terms of who is accountable for what. If someone makes it up the ladder they take the perks but also take the accountability for what happens*. Public sector bits I've seen is just a big muddle & when you sit down with fairly senior people and ask them to tell you who does what & who is accountable for what they struggle. Is it deliberate to make it easier to pass the buck - who knows?
* Before anyone shouts Banks. That is a case of public sector ethos being injected into a private sector company. Banks were bailed out by taxpayer rather than had happened previously (ie: Barings under Maggie) allowed to go bankrupt.
I am just watching it again on Iplayer, and on 39.40 it says that the Police had concerns, but the Police and a senior social worker disagreed over what to do. The Police wanted to temporarily remove Peter from the home, but later accepted that he could be returned if safeguards were put in place.
This is such a crucial part of the story but it seems quite muddled, and as you say 'glossed over'. It seems that the senior social worker disagreed with the Police's wishes to remove Peter for his own safety.
Their plan to safeguard Peter, involved a 'family friend' monitoring him at home in the evening, because his mother wasn't allowed to be left alone with him. How could they know that this 'family friend' would be impartial?
That says it all about the impartiality of the programme. No matter how much they may try to wriggle out of it - it seems to me that's the social worker team's responsibility to take the child out of the home environment. That's their particular area of expertise. The health care worker can report on the injuries, the police stand by to enforce the order - but it is the social worker who has the whole picture and should make that decision. Therefore as far as I'm concerned the buck stopped with Sharon Shoesmith. And I haven't forgotten Victoria Climbie - the same council some years back and I seem to remember the same amount of wriggling and trying to evade responsibility.
That says it all about the impartiality of the programme. No matter how much they may try to wriggle out of it - it seems to me that's the social worker team's responsibility to take the child out of the home environment. That's their particular area of expertise. The health care worker can report on the injuries, the police stand by to enforce the order - but it is the social worker who has the whole picture and should make that decision. Therefore as far as I'm concerned the buck stopped with Sharon Shoesmith. And I haven't forgotten Victoria Climbie - the same council some years back and I seem to remember the same amount of wriggling and trying to evade responsibility.
Yes, we should know why the senior social worker felt it was OK to return Peter to his home. And who this senior social worker was. This show wasn't giving us the right details.
And yes, as you say, the SWs see the 'whole picture' and it's their job to piece it all together. IMO, the Police did their job and wanted Peter removed. We should see the correspondence between them all.
Basically, the social workers thought it was better to put in 'safeguarding measures' instead of removing him. And those measures failed.
I'm still amazed at what Maria Ward was saying about Peter going to his mother for comfort as some kind of indicator that things were OK. If that's how she gauges if abuse is happening in a home, then that's scary.
Also, just because a parent turns up at meetings/ classes or takes the child to hospital doesn't mean they're not abusing their kids. Abusers are excellent manipulators and SWs should be able to see past that.
I would just like to say as someone who doesn't work for Social Services but is often involved in Chlld Protection;
- Most frontline staff go into this kind of work because they want to help children. They dread a child in their care coming to harm.
- These services are massively underfunded and overworked. I can tell you for a fact that the local social services team where I am are practically dangerously understaffed. I know that they have continuously raised concerns that they cannot give every child the adequate involvement needed. However, nothing is done. What generally happens is a new manager comes in. Everything gets re-arranged AGAIN and nothing really changes.
- I can tell you from my own experience that you can do everything in your power to protect a child, go above and beyond your duty to do so, but if another service in the system is not doing their part, you might as well be banging your head against a wall.
- Sometimes even when everybody is doing everything right, children can still slip through. That's not OK, but this is how it is in every single profession in the world.
- Sometimes abusers are so adept at hiding their abuse that even unannounced visits, constant inspections and the like fail to spot it. It never ceases to amaze me what lengths some abusers will go to to hide their abuse so much so that unless you have permission to follow and monitor them 24 hours a day, you simply wouldn't catch it.
- The programme highlighted that actually the majority of children killed aren't known to services. This I think demonstrates the above point.
- No one ever mentions the thousands and thousands of lives that are saved every year because no one cares when services are doing a good job. I regularly see absolutely exceptional child protection work that ends with a child being safe and happy.
- Some people in the various services are completely incompetent and have no place working in them. These people need to be dealt with and removed.
- When a child is killed, services need to admit when they have made a mistake. As is often the case, it is rarely one individual to blame. It is often small mistakes made by various people that come together at the same time. On the other hand I have read various serious case reviews where a service has done absolutely everything possible and still gets blamed. This is not fair.
- Media have no right to name and shame people without knowing the facts or until a thorough fair investigation has been completed. It turns the whole thing into a witchunt with potentially fatal consequences.
- Equally politician's have no right to use a child's death for their own popularity contest.
- People should not be sacked simply because that is what the public demands. They should be sacked if they have been found to have genuinely failed a child, not if they have done their best and a child is harmed anyway. That is not fair.
- Where services have performed exactly as they should have done, this should be said rather than blaming them anyway, which often happens.
- People involved in Child Protection are human, they are not perfect.
- More focus needs to be on the scum that actually do this to their children.
I absolutely dread any child I am involved with under a Child Protection plan coming to harm. I do everything in my power always to carry out my duty to that child. I often grow very fond of those children and think about them a lot. I get upset when they get upset, I celebrate their achievements with them etc. Now if through no fault of my own one of them was to be killed and my name was to be dragged through the mud because the public need a scapegoat and I lose my job and receive death threats despite the fact that I couldn't have done anything more for that child, how is that fair? That is often the reality for the staff at the frontline in Child Protection. They are easy to blame and get rid of.
If as a professional you have gone wrong, you should have the integrity to admit it. Having said that, the reasons why you made that mistake need to be fairly investigated and if necessary action needs to be taken against you. People should not be sacked for sackings sake but if you have made a severe error out of incompetence.
Ultimately children will die, that is unacceptable, but it will happen because no service is or ever will be perfect. Services need the staff, the correct funding going to the right places, allow staff to whistleblow without fear of reprisal. When things do go wrong they also need the support from upper management to be able to defend themselves if they have a right to and not made easy scapegoats. Services simply cannot meet the demand with the current input. Good staff are leaving, leaving services even more stretched. Unless something changes, nothing will change.
I would just like to say as someone who doesn't work for Social Services but is often involved in Chlld Protection;
- Most frontline staff go into this kind of work because they want to help children. They dread a child in their care coming to harm.
- These services are massively underfunded and overworked. I can tell you for a fact that the local social services team where I am are practically dangerously understaffed. I know that they have continuously raised concerns that they cannot give every child the adequate involvement needed. However, nothing is done. What generally happens is a new manager comes in. Everything gets re-arranged AGAIN and nothing really changes.
- I can tell you from my own experience that you can do everything in your power to protect a child, go above and beyond your duty to do so, but if another service in the system is not doing their part, you might as well be banging your head against a wall.
- Sometimes even when everybody is doing everything right, children can still slip through. That's not OK, but this is how it is in every single profession in the world.
- Sometimes abusers are so adept at hiding their abuse that even unannounced visits, constant inspections and the like fail to spot it. It never ceases to amaze me what lengths some abusers will go to to hide their abuse so much so that unless you have permission to follow and monitor them 24 hours a day, you simply wouldn't catch it.
- The programme highlighted that actually the majority of children killed aren't known to services. This I think demonstrates the above point.
- No one ever mentions the thousands and thousands of lives that are saved every year because no one cares when services are doing a good job. I regularly see absolutely exceptional child protection work that ends with a child being safe and happy.
- Some people in the various services are completely incompetent and have no place working in them. These people need to be dealt with and removed.
- When a child is killed, services need to admit when they have made a mistake. As is often the case, it is rarely one individual to blame. It is often small mistakes made by various people that come together at the same time. On the other hand I have read various serious case reviews where a service has done absolutely everything possible and still gets blamed. This is not fair.
- Media have no right to name and shame people without knowing the facts or until a thorough fair investigation has been completed. It turns the whole thing into a witchunt with potentially fatal consequences.
- Equally politician's have no right to use a child's death for their own popularity contest.
- People should not be sacked simply because that is what the public demands. They should be sacked if they have been found to have genuinely failed a child, not if they have done their best and a child is harmed anyway. That is not fair.
- Where services have performed exactly as they should have done, this should be said rather than blaming them anyway, which often happens.
- People involved in Child Protection are human, they are not perfect.
- More focus needs to be on the scum that actually do this to their children.
I absolutely dread any child I am involved with under a Child Protection plan coming to harm. I do everything in my power always to carry out my duty to that child. I often grow very fond of those children and think about them a lot. I get upset when they get upset, I celebrate their achievements with them etc. Now if through no fault of my own one of them was to be killed and my name was to be dragged through the mud because the public need a scapegoat and I lose my job and receive death threats despite the fact that I couldn't have done anything more for that child, how is that fair? That is often the reality for the staff at the frontline in Child Protection. They are easy to blame and get rid of.
If as a professional you have gone wrong, you should have the integrity to admit it. Having said that, the reasons why you made that mistake need to be fairly investigated and if necessary action needs to be taken against you. People should not be sacked for sackings sake but if you have made a severe error out of incompetence.
Ultimately children will die, that is unacceptable, but it will happen because no service is or ever will be perfect. Services need the staff, the correct funding going to the right places, allow staff to whistleblow without fear of reprisal. When things do go wrong they also need the support from upper management to be able to defend themselves if they have a right to and not made easy scapegoats. Services simply cannot meet the demand with the current input. Good staff are leaving, leaving services even more stretched. Unless something changes, nothing will change.
That was a long post, but that is the way it is.
Police wanted to withdraw child from family but was overruled by social worker. It really is as simple as why the hell was the child still in family care?. Diatribes and 90 min documentaries cannot explain away this simple issue. That is what press and public latched onto. Still no satisfactory explanation just blame game.
Police wanted to withdraw child from family but was overruled by social worker. It really is as simple as why the hell was the child still in family care?. Diatribes and 90 min documentaries cannot explain away this simple issue. That is what press and public latched onto. Still no satisfactory explanation just blame game.
It wasn't Maria Ward that challenged the police decision, she championed it. It was her seniors that challenged it. They got it wrong and should quite rightly be held accountable. I am not sure as to what their justification was for challenging it, but perhaps it was seen as justified AT THE TIME. In hindsight, it is easy to see such decisions were wrong, but it may not have seemed that way at the time. They may have made an incompetent decision, they may not have, I don't know. Has their reason for doing so been published? It's hard to know for sure unless we know their justification. I am all for fair accountability.
I have never said no one was to blame in this case. What I was against was the complete witchunt by the media and public before the facts were known and the subsequent scapegoat of several of the professionals by their seniors.
Since when has our free media pursuing a story of national importance like this been so easily labelled a witchhunt. Isn't that what the management said about folks pursuing the deaths at North Staffs Hospital. Dangerous territory when institutions of the state (including BBC) can just dismiss gross incompetence in this way.
As for not removing BabyP. Whoever made that decision will have to live with it for the rest of their lives. The telling fact is that we don't know who took that decision. No child should be left with family in same circumstances today.
Since when has our free media pursuing a story of national importance like this been so easily labelled a witchhunt. Isn't that what the management said about folks pursuing the deaths at North Staffs Hospital. Dangerous territory when institutions of the state (including BBC) can just dismiss gross incompetence in this way.
As for not removing BabyP. Whoever made that decision will have to live with it for the rest of their lives. The telling fact is that we don't know who took that decision. No child should be left with family in same circumstances today.
Yeah, that's interesting that they never gave that name, they are the most important person in all this.
I said in an earlier post that I didn't think a 'family friend' would be objective, and as it says there, the SW thought the friend believed social services were overreacting.
Comments
Back to where the huge furore started. It was her attitude at that press conference that ignited the firestorm. It really was shocking. Her total inability to take responsibility. The concern being about her team not the loss of a beautiful little boy. It was almost like an occupational hazard.
Shocking and BBC should not be working as her mouthpiece. When Cameron gets blamed for asking question at PMQ's you know BBC are in political agenda mode.
I'm sorry but when an obviously at-risk child is left time after time in a chaotic, filthy pigsty of a house by professional social workers because 'mum seemed caring enough to me' there is a hell of a lot of blame to share around. I do not accept that the words 'understaffed', 'underfunded', 'overworked' can be used to excuse away the manner in which this child was abandoned to his fate. He was removed once then returned! how does being uderstaffed, overworked and underfunded apply to this? decisions do not require a lot of money - they require basic commonsense and having ones wits about them. The ambulancemen who attended that house that day and found Peter dead in his cot are on record as describing what kind of environment they walked into - the same hellish environment that Maria Ward et al had walked into time and time again up to 3 days before Peter was killed and walked out of each time believing the child was okay. How much money does it cost to recommend immediate removal to a foster home?
Stop blaming economics and workloads, it was the lack of decisiveness which sealed that child's fate.
Let us not forget cameron making politics out of a child's death and getting his facts wrong....the ****ing weasel
I think if someone is grandioising and making a show at PQT - at the very least they should get their facts right. The BBC were quite right in picking up on this IMO.
Well politicians do don't they, I agree with Ed Balls Shoesmith messed up along with the whole department.
Cameron was in opposition and did not have the full facts. He raised a critical issue at the top of public agenda. If Cameron had his facts wrong it was up to the Govt of the day to provide the right ones in response to his question.
If a similar situation happened today Milliband would be asking exactly the same questions. No doubt cheered on by BBC. Pure politics that part of the programme.
Throwing money at a flawed system will not improve anything. For decades now all public services have been hampered by governments insisting that they justify their existence, and this requires constant filling in of charts and tables in an attempt to prove that targets (frequently non-productive and ill-advised) are being met. I wonder why MPs are exempt from these obligations? (Similarly, since MPs are public servants, in the public sector, why are they not subject to limitations on wage increases?)
I would like protocol to be that all whistleblowers are promoted within their organisation whilst directors, managers, and the like are subject to instant dismissal if they fail to address serious malfunctions in the system the minute they are raised by whistleblowers.
It was glossed over, but the commentary stated that after one of Peter's hospital attendances the police wanted to remove him from the home immediately but were over-ruled by the social worker. This is a symptom of a seriously flawed system.
Which social worker was that? I think the social worker, Maria Ward said she felt she had been 'taken in' by Tracey Connelly? Not sure if I heard that correctly.
Another thing that bothered me, is that the SW claimed that Peter went to his mother for comfort. That means absolutely nothing! it doesn't indicate that there's no abuse. Children who are being abused will go to their abuser for comfort, that's all they know. Children trust their parents even if they are being harmed by them. An abused child doesn't know any different, they have no idea that their parents behaviour is wrong or dangerous. It's human instinct for a child to go to it's mother.
Fine. And what about the 260 odd children who have met their deaths (either as badly as Peter did or worse), since? Are you going to blame each individual person in social services etc for that as well? Working in the NHS I can quite see how understaffed departments can lead to mistakes and to work not being carried out in a timely manner. Plus, I'm not sure a social worker can simply walk in and take a chid away so easily. it has to be done legally and with the backing of various departments and management. Otherwise people would be baying for the blood of the social worker who just made a decision to remove a perfectly healthy child from an environment that was mistakenly felt to be 'at risk'. Which, by the way, has happened because now they err on the side of caution.
in fact I just looked it up and it requires a Court Order, which aren't given out like sweets!
The social worker involved did relay her concerns on several occasions. I don't think she had the authority to act alone and remove the child (besides anything else, there has to be somewhere to put him/her which is the reason why there have to be meetings etc!). She contacted the health authorities (who were under their own pressures; the health team there contacting their management time and time again to let them know this unit was unsafe and unfit for purpose and were ignored; and the result was that two staff - one untrained and with no former documentation to go by when she examined children and reliant upon the parents stories - were manning a unit where there should have been four people (who were already inundated).
And let's not forget that the police also bear some responsibility, even though again, no one individual can be blamed.
The system is a mess. I will absolutely agree to that. It is overworked, underfunded and understaffed and it's not as easy as it seems to simply remove a child - especially when (by Tracy Connolly's mother's own words) they were dealing with someone so manipulative. And Peter was not the only child they were dealing with.
It's a shame that the other 200+ cases haven't generated the same response, isn't it? Apparently we only care about this one. EVERY child in danger is important, but it needs cohesive organisation and communication from everyone, from the 'shop floor' (ie the social worker upward to management, from the local PC to their managers etc etc etc) to save them.
And it wasn't them who killed this child. It was his mother and her boyfriend and his brother. It certainly wasn't the social worker, who escalated her concerns time and again and was ignored.
Indeed it was glossed over as that wasn't the agenda of the programme. It was a blame shifting / politically motivated piece..
If police were briefing press I can understand their motives. They had wanted BabyP removed. If that simple request had been followed then BabyP would still be alive.
The hospital scenario. This had all been to court with professionals involved in giving their opinion of his injuries before any of us knew anything about it. Why after all this the timing of his injuries is being disputed is beyond me. Media will have reported what they heard in court. Feel sorry for Doctor if she was unfairly criticised but this needs pursuing down legal channels not tv programme.
A piece of propaganda masquerading as informative TV.>:(
IMO there are far too many overpaid managers in the public sector who seem to serve no useful purposes at all. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. I've seen it all in my 20 + years of working in the public sector. Cuts start at the bottom, cleaning services etc. outsourced, hard working mid-level staff replaced by low paid temps, while more and more useless managers are appointed, who create a whole new bureaucracy to justifiy their existence.
I am just watching it again on Iplayer, and on 39.40 it says that the Police had concerns, but the Police and a senior social worker disagreed over what to do. The Police wanted to temporarily remove Peter from the home, but later accepted that he could be returned if safeguards were put in place.
This is such a crucial part of the story but it seems quite muddled, and as you say 'glossed over'. It seems that the senior social worker disagreed with the Police's wishes to remove Peter for his own safety.
Their plan to safeguard Peter, involved a 'family friend' monitoring him at home in the evening, because his mother wasn't allowed to be left alone with him. How could they know that this 'family friend' would be impartial?
That is down to Ed Balls - nobody else. I was in a national meeting with Unison (as it happens) the day that her dismissal broke. I walked back in to pick up on the national reps talking about it. I said if we (ie: FTSE 100 company) had acted in this way you would going ballistic and taking us to industrial tribunal. They said Unions were going to have to represent Sharon Shoesmith and demand substantial sum as a Govt Minister acting in breach of their own laws just couldn't be allowed to happen. Stupid man it was clear the moment he did it that it was going to cost the Govt mega bucks. She should have been suspended immediately on full pay. They had had a year and investigations so there was no reason why the process couldn't happen fairly quickly and she would have gone and cost the taxpayer only a few weeks wages.
As a HR professional who spent most of my working life in private sector but who has done consultancy work in public sector since taking early retirement my assessment is a simple word - accountability. It is a generalisation but the private sector is very much clearer in terms of who is accountable for what. If someone makes it up the ladder they take the perks but also take the accountability for what happens*. Public sector bits I've seen is just a big muddle & when you sit down with fairly senior people and ask them to tell you who does what & who is accountable for what they struggle. Is it deliberate to make it easier to pass the buck - who knows?
* Before anyone shouts Banks. That is a case of public sector ethos being injected into a private sector company. Banks were bailed out by taxpayer rather than had happened previously (ie: Barings under Maggie) allowed to go bankrupt.
That says it all about the impartiality of the programme. No matter how much they may try to wriggle out of it - it seems to me that's the social worker team's responsibility to take the child out of the home environment. That's their particular area of expertise. The health care worker can report on the injuries, the police stand by to enforce the order - but it is the social worker who has the whole picture and should make that decision. Therefore as far as I'm concerned the buck stopped with Sharon Shoesmith. And I haven't forgotten Victoria Climbie - the same council some years back and I seem to remember the same amount of wriggling and trying to evade responsibility.
Yes, we should know why the senior social worker felt it was OK to return Peter to his home. And who this senior social worker was. This show wasn't giving us the right details.
And yes, as you say, the SWs see the 'whole picture' and it's their job to piece it all together. IMO, the Police did their job and wanted Peter removed. We should see the correspondence between them all.
Basically, the social workers thought it was better to put in 'safeguarding measures' instead of removing him. And those measures failed.
I'm still amazed at what Maria Ward was saying about Peter going to his mother for comfort as some kind of indicator that things were OK. If that's how she gauges if abuse is happening in a home, then that's scary.
Also, just because a parent turns up at meetings/ classes or takes the child to hospital doesn't mean they're not abusing their kids. Abusers are excellent manipulators and SWs should be able to see past that.
- Most frontline staff go into this kind of work because they want to help children. They dread a child in their care coming to harm.
- These services are massively underfunded and overworked. I can tell you for a fact that the local social services team where I am are practically dangerously understaffed. I know that they have continuously raised concerns that they cannot give every child the adequate involvement needed. However, nothing is done. What generally happens is a new manager comes in. Everything gets re-arranged AGAIN and nothing really changes.
- I can tell you from my own experience that you can do everything in your power to protect a child, go above and beyond your duty to do so, but if another service in the system is not doing their part, you might as well be banging your head against a wall.
- Sometimes even when everybody is doing everything right, children can still slip through. That's not OK, but this is how it is in every single profession in the world.
- Sometimes abusers are so adept at hiding their abuse that even unannounced visits, constant inspections and the like fail to spot it. It never ceases to amaze me what lengths some abusers will go to to hide their abuse so much so that unless you have permission to follow and monitor them 24 hours a day, you simply wouldn't catch it.
- The programme highlighted that actually the majority of children killed aren't known to services. This I think demonstrates the above point.
- No one ever mentions the thousands and thousands of lives that are saved every year because no one cares when services are doing a good job. I regularly see absolutely exceptional child protection work that ends with a child being safe and happy.
- Some people in the various services are completely incompetent and have no place working in them. These people need to be dealt with and removed.
- When a child is killed, services need to admit when they have made a mistake. As is often the case, it is rarely one individual to blame. It is often small mistakes made by various people that come together at the same time. On the other hand I have read various serious case reviews where a service has done absolutely everything possible and still gets blamed. This is not fair.
- Media have no right to name and shame people without knowing the facts or until a thorough fair investigation has been completed. It turns the whole thing into a witchunt with potentially fatal consequences.
- Equally politician's have no right to use a child's death for their own popularity contest.
- People should not be sacked simply because that is what the public demands. They should be sacked if they have been found to have genuinely failed a child, not if they have done their best and a child is harmed anyway. That is not fair.
- Where services have performed exactly as they should have done, this should be said rather than blaming them anyway, which often happens.
- People involved in Child Protection are human, they are not perfect.
- More focus needs to be on the scum that actually do this to their children.
I absolutely dread any child I am involved with under a Child Protection plan coming to harm. I do everything in my power always to carry out my duty to that child. I often grow very fond of those children and think about them a lot. I get upset when they get upset, I celebrate their achievements with them etc. Now if through no fault of my own one of them was to be killed and my name was to be dragged through the mud because the public need a scapegoat and I lose my job and receive death threats despite the fact that I couldn't have done anything more for that child, how is that fair? That is often the reality for the staff at the frontline in Child Protection. They are easy to blame and get rid of.
If as a professional you have gone wrong, you should have the integrity to admit it. Having said that, the reasons why you made that mistake need to be fairly investigated and if necessary action needs to be taken against you. People should not be sacked for sackings sake but if you have made a severe error out of incompetence.
Ultimately children will die, that is unacceptable, but it will happen because no service is or ever will be perfect. Services need the staff, the correct funding going to the right places, allow staff to whistleblow without fear of reprisal. When things do go wrong they also need the support from upper management to be able to defend themselves if they have a right to and not made easy scapegoats. Services simply cannot meet the demand with the current input. Good staff are leaving, leaving services even more stretched. Unless something changes, nothing will change.
That was a long post, but that is the way it is.
Police wanted to withdraw child from family but was overruled by social worker. It really is as simple as why the hell was the child still in family care?. Diatribes and 90 min documentaries cannot explain away this simple issue. That is what press and public latched onto. Still no satisfactory explanation just blame game.
It wasn't Maria Ward that challenged the police decision, she championed it. It was her seniors that challenged it. They got it wrong and should quite rightly be held accountable. I am not sure as to what their justification was for challenging it, but perhaps it was seen as justified AT THE TIME. In hindsight, it is easy to see such decisions were wrong, but it may not have seemed that way at the time. They may have made an incompetent decision, they may not have, I don't know. Has their reason for doing so been published? It's hard to know for sure unless we know their justification. I am all for fair accountability.
I have never said no one was to blame in this case. What I was against was the complete witchunt by the media and public before the facts were known and the subsequent scapegoat of several of the professionals by their seniors.
As for not removing BabyP. Whoever made that decision will have to live with it for the rest of their lives. The telling fact is that we don't know who took that decision. No child should be left with family in same circumstances today.
Yeah, that's interesting that they never gave that name, they are the most important person in all this.
I found this article on the BBC site, it seems to explain it a bit more.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7732193.stm
I said in an earlier post that I didn't think a 'family friend' would be objective, and as it says there, the SW thought the friend believed social services were overreacting.