@SallyWD
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.
Totally agree. It's easy and comfortable to blame individual SWs, but the system is failing them, as well as children. The Baby P case led to a huge increase in workload, because everybody's thresholds for intervention were lowered. So it's not true, as many PPs have suggested, that lessons are never learned - they are. But you can't implement the lessons you have learned effectively if you don't have the resources to do it.
The increase in referrals post-Baby P may help a few children who would have slipped through the net in the past, but it has actually made things worse for the kids at highest risk, because there is less SW time to go round.
We are a wealthy country that has chosen to disinvest massively in public services over the last decade. At least half the posters on this thread will have voted for that. And, when challenged, they come up with excuses about waste. Of course there is some waste in SS - just as there is in every other sector. That is not an excuse to slash local authority income by a third, as the UK has done.