To wonder if Sharon Shoesmith is Teflon Coated?

[Mitmoo]

She has won her latest appeal for unfair dismissal following the Baby P death and it is being reported she could be in line for circa £1m.

The courts have prevented the case going any higher than it has already so the government will have to pay up.

Was she incompetent, stitched up by Ed Balls or a bit of both?

She may have been incompetent but the real incompetence was the person/minister/department that dismissed her without checking the rule book first. Basic personnel management stuff. Whoever you are and however bad you are at your job, if you're stitched up by your employer, you deserve recompense.

She wasn't just incompetent, running a department that independent investigators found to be in crisis, but she refused to acknowledge there were any problems at all - even insisting the treatment of Baby Peter was 'good practice'.

Crying shame that her dismissal was mishandled so she gets compensation. The council should have done it by the book.

But then, ne'er do wells always get away with it, while employers get away with treating innocent people like shit.

And she victimised social workers who dared to raise concerns, btw.

I am reluctantly agreeing with you cogito. Ed Balls sexed up an Ofsted report to make her department look worse IIRC, you can't do that. If the rules had been followed she may still have been sacked. IIRC Balls put her out to dry as the figurehead for the chop over the Baby P scandal.

edam I had forgotten that bit. Thanks for the reminder.

I do remember hearing her bigging up her department after the inquest and did think she was totally insensitive.

I don't think Balls interfered with the report, I think it was more that he leant on Haringey to sack her PDQ without bothering to go through the full procedures.

edam It was Balls though wasn't it that took the "heads will roll" approach and I think that was the whole cases undoing. Also she wasn't given a chance to defend herself about the Ofsted report as she hadn't seen it as well.

Procedures weren't followed, if they were the outcome could well be different.

Those quotes of £1m are taken from reckoning that as a 58 year old (56 at the time of dismissal I'm guessing) on £130,000 pa plus defined benefit pension she's never going to get another job and that if the fair procedure had been followed, she would not have been dismissed. It's a lot harder to actually get that kind of money awarded.

In this case, the strength of her case (and the basis on which the Court of Appeal made its decision) was always about the procedure followed - Haringay did completely balls it up (oops - pun not intended). Any compensation awarded is likely to be based on what she would have got had she been dismissed fairly - how long it would have taken to do so. As edam said, the council should have done it by the book and it's fair enough that she should be compensated for what she lost there. I don't know enough about the facts of what she did or did not do to say what the result of any disciplinary hearing should have been.

Don't mix up her competence with her claim for unfair dismissal. Even if you're terrible at your job you still have the right to a fair dismissal process and it appears she didn't get one. TBH I think Ed Balls should be taking the flack for this as he leaned on Haringey to sack her without following the correct procedure.

I agree nocake and cogito also how likely is she to get employment now? i'm wondering what she could do where someone would employ her?