Emma Tustin is a murderer

[DueyCheatemAndHow]

Finally. We can say it.

I've just utterly broken down for Arthur.

[quote AndreaC67]@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.[/quote]
Yes, I understand what you’re saying. And of course I’m feeling- like everyone here- angry, so my anger is spilling out, some of it without thinking coherently and I apologise for that.

For the record I don’t vote conservative but let’s not kid ourselves that things like this weren’t happening under Labour governments. Awful cases like this have been happening for as long as time itself unfortunately. But yes, of course there should be more funding for early years and children’s services.

I can’t get it out my mind the poor soul, the video has totally broken me ...pure evil the pair of them. Can’t read all the excuses it needs to stop ...it’s indefensible that this happened!!

IknowwhatIneed
I agree, whilst I don’t really support agencies their services are so much better than LA.
The govrnment say they are pumping more money into social care. While the money is desperately needed I see a lot of it is wasted.
People at the top earning hundreds of thousands of pound while those at the bottom receiving too little.
Social work is a vocation so the money shouldn’t matter but when you feel underpaid and undervalued it’s not a good situation to be in.
Some social workers are good and some are awful, some just don’t care.
In 10 years I’ve only had 1 social worker out of 23 who have given my child a birthday card and little present. It doesn’t take much to show you care.

Why should social work be a vocation where the money doesn't matter? How are social workers supposed to live for crying out loud?

@loislovesstewie

Why should social work be a vocation where the money doesn't matter? How are social workers supposed to live for crying out loud?

No one has said that.

People have said they shouldn’t be exempt from being held responsible because of their low wages.

@Cassimin

IknowwhatIneed I agree, whilst I don’t really support agencies their services are so much better than LA. The govrnment say they are pumping more money into social care. While the money is desperately needed I see a lot of it is wasted. People at the top earning hundreds of thousands of pound while those at the bottom receiving too little. Social work is a vocation so the money shouldn’t matter but when you feel underpaid and undervalued it’s not a good situation to be in. Some social workers are good and some are awful, some just don’t care. In 10 years I’ve only had 1 social worker out of 23 who have given my child a birthday card and little present. It doesn’t take much to show you care.

This actually says 'social work is a vocation so the money shouldn't matter'.

For the record I don’t vote conservative but let’s not kid ourselves that things like this weren’t happening under Labour governments. Awful cases like this have been happening for as long as time itself unfortunately. But yes, of course there should be more funding for early years and children’s services

Fair enough, its a very emotive subject, Labour did try to address some of the issues, SureStart was a great idea but disbanded under the Conservatives.

We need to look at the causes of child abuse, not just the immediate aftermath of a terrible killing.

I know a county councillor, she says people have zero idea of the budget constraints they are under, in her opinion, to get services back to where they were just 10 years ago would require a doubling of council tax, her council has suffered a 65% cut in central funding, CT goes up 5% each year, putting more families into poverty, grants for CT support slashed, she is having to vote on closing down all leisure centres (as part of 55m in cuts) again, who does that affect?

It’s quite astonishing really that the three parental figures this little boy had were all murderers. It’s relatively rare in the whole population to habe one murderer as a parent, but this little boy had all three of them. He literally went from murderer to murderer.

BTW going down the whole route of saying that it is vocation won't get better workers. It then becomes a 'hobby' and can just as easily be abandoned when it suits.

She is an evil murderer and I hope justice is fully served.
I do find it interesting though that all the newspaper headlines I have seen focus on her and what she did rather than poor Arthur’s Excuse for a Father who should have protected him from this woman.
One headline even bemoaned her lack of “maternal instinct”, which in itself isn’t actually a crime.
What she did was truly terrible but as with so many cases she will be judged for committing these crimes as a woman rather than just committing them.
I feel that the same will happen to Maxwell

loislovesstewie
By a vocation I certainly didn’t mean to work for nothing but just that you need to be a certain type of person to be one.
The money isn’t the be all and end all, it’s not a 9-5 job where you can just turn off.
I’ve worked in the charity sector and now I’m a foster carer. I certainly haven’t done these jobs for the money.

If you want people to get into jobs like teaching, care work and social work you need to raise wages and improve working conditions. All very well saying it's a vocation, but what graduate is going to work their arse off doing overtime in a very stressful, traumatic job dealing with the general public for 23k when they could easily get 30k+ in a comfy 9-5 office role, getting treated with respect? There's a reason there are thousands of unfilled vacancies in these social/care/teaching roles, while 200 people apply for 1 job as a banker or data scientist.

Social work is a vocation so the money shouldn’t matter but when you feel underpaid and undervalued it’s not a good situation to be in.
Some social workers are good and some are awful, some just don’t care
In 10 years I’ve only had 1 social worker out of 23 who have given my child a birthday card and little present. It doesn’t take much to show you care

Why is it a vocation? is that just an excuse for low pay?

So you expect a social worker to buy 100s of children they may see over the course of a year a card and present? double that as you'd also want a Xmas Card & prezzie too.

It is a profession and as such the salary should reflect the level of expertise. And everyone needs to turn off, otherwise you are suffering from stress and that is not good. (Been there so I can talk about it)

@IknowwhatIneed

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 🙄

This.

@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.

Have you ever taken 999 calls ?

I am a 999 call handler. People react to the unexpected in all sorts of ways. You may think you'd do a,b or c. In the reality of a stressful, emergency situation you may do something totally opposite to what you thought.

@Bluntness100

It’s quite astonishing really that the three parental figures this little boy had were all murderers. It’s relatively rare in the whole population to habe one murderer as a parent, but this little boy had all three of them. He literally went from murderer to murderer.

It is astoundingly bad luck.. There are severely dysfunctional people about, from appalling homes with feckless parents going down the generations~ People from dysfunctional families seem drawn to others with a similar {Familiar?} way of being..Shouting, aggression, physical punishments, substance abuse/alcoholism.

I can’t remember being so affected by something in the news. I was shaking and weeping reading the articles.
I first tried to watch the videos - if i can’t watch it, how could he endure it. But honestly I think publishing these images is obscene.

Aside from becoming foster carers/sw (which isn’t going to be practical for most people) is there anything we can do? The only thing I can think is to write to my MP, but I am not sure what I could say or what she could do. The things i could think of

• enhancing PHSE around children’s rights from nursery onwards so its not just about the declaration of the rights of the child but so children know they have the right to a bed, a mattress, bedding, clean clothes and bodies, food that fills them up, not to be left alone or hurt - and to raise it persistently with adults outside the home if not
• public information so that adults like the hairdresser can identify cruel and unusual treatment of children and how and where to report
• public information for carers to help them identify if their own behaviour os inappropriate and seek help
• all social work assessments or initial visits to be unannounced and to speak to children outside the home and without immediate carers eg with teachers
• where there’s more than one report or significant risk factor children must be medically examined including xrays and blood tests away from their carers

It feels to me as if these are relatively low impact and might help - but maybe not, if it was obvious enough that someone like me could find solutions then presumably these changes would already have been made.

Tustin’s children had already been removed from her, including two who lived with their father.
Surely social services could have looked into her background.

Some on here are getting very defensive of any criticism of social workers and services. However this blind lessons will be learnt over and over while children die, should be accountable. Instead yet again, the Director of Children's Services has retired. Maybe she was due her retirement but it also looked like she jumped ship.

She most certainly is a murderer and I sincerely hope she gets the maximum sentence possible for this and never sees life outside of prison ever again.

And in my eyes that piss-poor excuse for a father is just as guilty of murder although I believe he's been found guilty of manslaughter.

RIP little Arthur

AndreaC67
I haven’t said it is an excuse for poor pay, in my opinion you could pay some people a lot of money but this wouldn’t necessarily make them a good social worker.
Some parents can be very devious and this poor child was failed by a social worker who could have made a difference. No matter how much money was thrown around here it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Who knows why there was failures, lack of training? Lack of time?
Lack of experience? We will never know but it certainly wasn’t down to their hourly wage

Oh and yes, if it were me even if I did have 100 children on my case load ( though it’s usually around 30 at one time) I would buy them a 50p card and a little bar of chocolate but that’s just me.

They should never ever be allowed free, can only hope they suffer in prison ...and fellow prisoners get to them ....they terrified and tortured a defenceless little lad...never seen anything so disturbing and sad as this 😞

Having read through these posts it seems clear that social workers have unmanageable case loads, serious abuse is slipping through the net, there are not enough foster carers for the number of children who need them, it's difficult to become a foster carer. Clearly we need to look at the big picture from the top. Quite simply - the system is not fit for purpose, it's failing. The government needs to take urgent action. There are too many children whose lives are at risk. What shocks me about our country is that we are one of the richest countries in the world yet chronic underinvestment has meant that so many institutions are teetering on the brink of collapse. Look at the NHS, look at public transport, look at adult and children social care. The list goes on - none of these things are fit for service. Children are going hungry. I want to know what the hell we are doing with all the wealth in this country?! It seriously needs to be redirected.