Emma Tustin is a murderer

[DueyCheatemAndHow]

Finally. We can say it.

I've just utterly broken down for Arthur.

IknowwhatIneed yes we are told that over and over again. However, we are also told that a placement for one child with complex needs cost £20,000. I believe £5000 per week is average.
There is money but it is going to privately run children’s homes.

@Soubriquet

metro

There’s two video clips on there. One of a video of her giving a statement on what happened and the other the 999 call.

I would never in a thousand years believe her through those. If my child, or any child, was “barely breathing” I wouldn’t be ranting away trying to say what happened, I would be begging the ambulance to come quickly. Sobbing and trying to compose myself.

She’s totally disassociated with it all, the way she tells the story - “basically…” and then launches into the rehearsed story - it’s like it’s happened to someone else, that she isn’t involved in her own life.

Yes we will wait for yet another review. We may not have all the facts but we certainly know the end result don’t we. Stop making excuses for these people.

Arthur didn’t need a foster carer. He had loving grandparents and an uncle who would have loved and cared for him. As indeed he had lived happily with them and thrived.

There were so many red flags anyone could have been them waving from space. And still social services did nothing to remove him from that home. Absolutely criminal. They should be prosecuted

SS simply do not have the time to investigate every abuse case or potential abuse that may or may not happen.

So a friend of mine recent told me about her experience, she 2 young children, father absent, she unable to cope, money woes.. then her Mum dies, she went into break down.... went to her SS dept for help - they told her she wasn't a priority and gave her the Samaritans helpline number.

They have a child with bruises vs one that is being sexually abused - they are so stretched they have to prioritise and that means they often get it wrong.

Social Services are funded through councils and central govt funding, these amounts have been slashed, so how many of you on here have continued to vote for these cuts over the last decade?

Their pay is also terrible, you want them to make life and death decisions and to be prosecuted for their failings.

It is, because the government decided that competition in residential care is a good thing and compelled local authorities to reduce their in-house provision for children with complex needs. If you look at threads from parents who need those placements you’ll also see that provision is absolutely woeful, and very hard to access.

Those £20k placements are usually reserved for children who have exhausted every other type of placement, where foster placements have repeatedly broken down, where they haven’t coped in local authority residential care and need a much more specialist support, or for children whose physical needs are so complex they can’t be cared for in a domestic setting. Good care for very vulnerable children costs a lot of money, which needs to come from the same budget as child protection social workers.

Yes we will wait for yet another review. We may not have all the facts but we certainly know the end result don’t we. Stop making excuses for these people.

“These people” are professionals doing an impossible job in awful circumstances - you can make that judgement presumably having never had to remove a child from their home, and presumably never having been prevented from doing so by courts, lawyers and parents insisting the child will be safe. If you think it’s an easy judgement to make, come and spend some time in a children and families social work team.

@Soubriquet

metro

There’s two video clips on there. One of a video of her giving a statement on what happened and the other the 999 call.

I would never in a thousand years believe her through those. If my child, or any child, was “barely breathing” I wouldn’t be ranting away trying to say what happened, I would be begging the ambulance to come quickly. Sobbing and trying to compose myself.

Exactly. Imagine asking about anyone "are they breathing" and being told "barely" 😑 I had to ring an ambulance for my dad nearly 30 years ago and I can still remember how utterly gripped by terror I was. I honestly hate her and hope she suffers.

coatofsomanycolours

An excellent post. I know what you say is true so when they say lessons will be learned, they never are.

I could go on but tbh I’m tired of it and I get so distressed by the sheer hopelessness of these children’s sad lives and the stubborn refusal to change of those assigned to oversee children’s welfare. A complete overhaul is necessary but liberalism and encouraging dependence on the welfare state means these cases will continue to feature in the news. Truly tragic and depressing.

RIP little Arthur x

I don't think the issue is SWers individually the issue is the system. Overloaded and the pressure to keep kids with parents.

But remember if Arthur had been in school he would have spoken too, teachers would see how malnourished he was he would have spoken out too.
The poor might was locked away and the abuse seems to have ramped up during lockdown.

@LizBennet same ! My dad collapsed down the stairs when I was 14 and I had to call the ambulance I was so hysterical that when the ambulance people arrived they made a comment about how hysterical I was, not very appropriate but there you are ! I was terrified

Same age I was lollipoprainbow, I was at home with him by myself. The operator kept telling me quite sternly to calm down because I was near hysterical.

It’s been days since I read about this horrible story I can’t stop thinking about this poor boy, nothing has effected me quite like this, his words no one loves me .

Reading her statements , she has shown no remorse, truly evil person.

@Malibuismysecrethome

The truth is that no one did enough. Not his family, not the police, nor the school or the Child Protection team. No one made anything happen to save this child.

I don't think this is true or fair. I get the impression that his uncle and grandparents were incredibly worried and did what they could.

It's all very well posters saying they'd have just gone to get him etc. But actually the most likely outcome of that is he'd have been taken straight back to that house and whoever took him would've been prevented from seeing him again. Meaning that person would've been even less able to keep an eye on him.

That poor little boy died feeling he was unloved and it's heartbreaking but I do think there were some people trying their best to help him.

@ohfook I agree. The Hughes family reported, reported and reported. They turned up on the doorstep. They reported to the school. The only thing left for them to do would have been to literally break in and kidnap him- and they’d been warned they’d be arrested. How would that have helped anyone? Arthur would have been returned to Hughes and Tustin- social services already deemed there to be no safeguarding issues.

BTW, I used to work right next to children's social care, (I wasn't a social worker but a housing officer) I saw social workers at their desks when I arrived at 8, and they were still there when I went home at 5. I knew some went to work on Saturday mornings (for no extra pay in case anyone wonders). A lot of their work was 'fire fighting', there simply wasn't the time or resources to carry out every single investigation as it should have been carried out. The same applied to my job, too much to do and never enough time. Local government is slammed constantly, people who work in it are 'lazy' and on gold plated pensions (!). For that we are constantly shouted at by clients, verbally abused, objects thrown at us, my colleague was almost strangled by a customer and would have been but for the intervention of a burly security guard. The newspapers who will complain most today will be the first to support cuts in public services. Really good social workers leave because they just can't deal with the constant problems associated with trying to do a good job with a resource that has been cut to the bone.
BTW if I had a pound for the number of customers who thought I and my colleagues should work weekends as well as Monday to Friday I would be rich. There are so many people who feel that it is a vocation to work in local government, and we should be available 24/7.
Yes, there should be a shake up in Children's Social care, but firstly it needs to be funded properly and given the resources required.

IknowwhatIneed
Some social workers work very hard, some are hopeless. As I said we have had 23 changes of Sw while my foster son has been with me.
Imagine a young child ( who has adhd/asd) coping with this. Some of them come in with no idea at all.
My son came to us at 4, a new social worker had been assigned to him. She told me she saw his file and requested for him to be removed immediately. What he had gone through the first 4 years of his life under the watch of Sw we will never know.
He was moved to 3 different Foster carers before he came to us.
Mum and dad were given lots of opportunities to get him back but failed every time. Family members were interviewed but soon gave up.
When I was young I had friends who’s parents were Sw, it seemed to be a job for life, now they move on to other positions really quickly. Never developing a bond with the children they care for.
Not sharing information properly with the next Sw.
We are with an agency, our Sw have a much lower workload than the LA and all their carers are local.
My son has had Sw who have to travel from one end of the country to another for an hours visit.
This can take 2 days. We had one who didn’t drive, she had to travel on public transport nearly 20 miles from the office to visit .
Social services needs a massive shake up, they are wasting our money and giving us a terrible service

@AndreaC67

There were so many red flags anyone could have been them waving from space. And still social services did nothing to remove him from that home. Absolutely criminal. They should be prosecuted

SS simply do not have the time to investigate every abuse case or potential abuse that may or may not happen.

So a friend of mine recent told me about her experience, she 2 young children, father absent, she unable to cope, money woes.. then her Mum dies, she went into break down.... went to her SS dept for help - they told her she wasn't a priority and gave her the Samaritans helpline number.

They have a child with bruises vs one that is being sexually abused - they are so stretched they have to prioritise and that means they often get it wrong.

Social Services are funded through councils and central govt funding, these amounts have been slashed, so how many of you on here have continued to vote for these cuts over the last decade?

Their pay is also terrible, you want them to make life and death decisions and to be prosecuted for their failings.

The fact their pay is terrible has nothing to do with whether they should be prosecuted for their actions. More excuses. Fed up of hearing it to be honest.

Yes there should be more funding. Yes there should be better working conditions / less pressure on social workers - I have social workers in my family, I know how it works, I know the workloads. I also have foster carers in my family and I have been fostered myself. These things should not be trotted out as explanations or reasons to avoid being angry with these people.

I think the NHS and social services have acquired some weird god-like quality in our society where we are never able to criticise them without someone piping up how we should be grateful.

Flapjacker48 the unions for social workers are Unison and the SWU. The reason people don’t want to be child protection social workers is their very poor reputation. Improve the reputation and people would consider applying.

This is such a heartbreaking case, with the technology that allows us to witness the cruel acts, there is no shielding from the horror.

I don't understand how SS can leave a child after many reports bruises comments about dad killing him etc

And then in other cases that seem to have little evidence SS seem to go in with all guns blazing.

Why don't they do this in these in all situations, to avoid chance of harm?

Horrible woman- I hope she has a hell of a time in prison. I cried this morning reading the story - my DS is the same age and it just broke my heart. That poor boy

Social services certainly don’t have any god like quality, the only time their names are lifted in the press or social media is when somethings gone wrong.

When I was young I had friends who’s parents were Sw, it seemed to be a job for life, now they move on to other positions really quickly.

I wonder why that is. When I started in social work I had a limit of 15 children on my case load. It was expected that I’d build relationships with the family, do therapeutic work with them, support them as a family, build good relationships with the children and be able to make constructive assessments over a period of time and so protect children. I was given the time to do that. Very demanding work, long hours but very rewarding too.

When I left frontline practice my case load was 30 children, there was no time for building relationships and no expectation that I’d do much in the way of intervention- my role was to assess risk, which is nigh on impossible without a relationship with the family. I had tight timescales and limited time - I couldn’t possibly do my role well and I left because my case load felt unsafe, a wrong decision on any one of those 30 children could easily end in tragedy.

There’s very high levels of burn out in child protection, workers move on for their own health and well being. Decent hangovers aren’t supported because there’s often no one filling your place when you leave. Maybe we should be asking why good social workers are leaving practice instead of criticising them for doing so.

I just listened to the grandmother reading his mother's tribute, quite possibly one of the most heart breaking things I've heard. Crying my eyes out.

@Bagelsandbrie

But you are not criticising them, you want them prosecuted and i presume a jail sentence as a deterrent against future lax judgement.

What is actually needed is early interventions in childrens lives, even before birth, that way, parents get a helping hand and children may learn skills that will help them become better parents.

Instead we have spent the last 11 years removing help for vulnerable children/parents and even worse, knowingly voted for more of the same.

The reason people don’t want to be child protection social workers is their very poor reputation. Improve the reputation and people would consider applying.

Yep, that’s it. Nothing at all to do with witnessing first hand horrific treatment of children, being responsible for their safety, nothing to do with the level of resistance, deception and sheer aggression from parents and wider family, nothing to do with seeing first hand the impact of extreme poverty and addiction knowing there’s very little that can actually be done to change things. It’s nothing to do with being exposed repeatedly to high levels of trauma, or having your assessment and decision making questioned at every turn by everyone from families, to other professionals and armchair critics. It’s nothing to do with knowing you could one day make a decision that leads to the death of a child.

All about reputation - of course it is 🙄