AIBU to be furious that all the finger pointing in the Daniel Pelka case...

[PeriodFeatures]

Is being aimed towards the Head of Children Services and there is no mention of the Doctor that misdiagnosed this little boy with an eating disorder ? I mean FFS what kind of eating disorder leads a child to picking up food off a floor and scavenging in bins...

[edam]

Stupid thing is, it's actually a massive waste of money to get SWs to spend 80% of their time doing data entry. SWs are far more expensive than data entry clerks. Stupid, cheap, cost-cutting costs more, not less.

[LaVolcan]

Who's going to pay for it, though?

Quite, so if we are serious about child welfare, we accept that it will cost money, and we accept that we pay the tax to support it.

Re Shipman, who thankfully does seem to have been a one-off - the end result was a lot more paperwork was put in place. We used to be able to collect prescriptions from the Drs for my parents and take them to the chemist to be made up. After Shipman, there was a whole load of form filling to be done before we could do this. None of this would stop another Shipman, but it made my parents lives that much more difficult.

[Tanith]

Who's going to pay for it, though? The Social Services budget is already so tight. That's why the social workers have to do the data entry - they can't afford to employ anyone else to do it.

[Snazzyenjoyingsummer]

So data entry people are needed to support the SWs. That is one concrete change that could help. Would help the unemployment figures too.

[edam]

Apparently SWs in child protection have to spend 80% of their time logging information into databases and only have 20% left for the rest of their job - saw this stat in several official reports.

[CorrineFoxworth]

Social Services should be considered to be an emergency service.

My Dad had a phone-call today saying that a financial assessment needed doing r.e my Mum who is in a care home from one branch of S.S, and that a visit was needed asap whereas we have been chasing the people needed to finalise her placement for weeks now and have had three financial assessments already done! Months ago!

I am going to ring them tomorrow and ask why they are wasting time and resources. It won't be their fault, it'll be the computer system, but I dread to think how my mother would have fared if she nobody to chase them for her.

If this is how they are forced to operate, can you imagine the delays in the case of poor little Daniel?

[Snazzyenjoyingsummer]

And Shipman would have been able to pass this test year after year! Unbelievable.

I think there needs to be greater acceptance of checks being made on assertions like that of an eating disorder. I have seen posts on here from people indignant that the school won't just take their word for something. Maybe it is a price worth paying that 99,999 people have to have things verified if one Daniel Pelka is rescued as a result.

[Booboostoo]

Here is a good example: in the wake of the discoveries about Harold Shipman's horrific and prolific murders of his defenseless patients some fool manager decided to take action to avoid this ever happening again. The end result (I expect it took them quite a few meetings to come up with this one) was to expect all GPs in the area to write a declaration of virtue once a year and get it verified and signed by two respectable members of the community.

I feel almost embarrassed to point out the many ways this was utterly stupid:

• success in writing about virtue has nothing to do with being virtuous
  
• success in appearing to be virtuous has little to do with being vituous, case in point Dr Shipman himself who was beloved by his patients and community
  
• writing an essay on virtue never stopped a psychopath from killing
  
• failing to write an essay on virtue has never been a good means of identifing a psychopath
  
• perhaps if GPs did not have to spend their time writing essays on virtue they might have had time to spend on their patients and notice a really high mortality rate amongst elderly patients in a one particular area.

[edam]

Very true, booboo.

[DameEdnasBridesmaid]

Good post booboo

[Booboostoo]

My experience is with the NHS and teaching in HE but I expect social services (and other areas of education) are very similar: they are all chronically underfunded and overburdened with needless bureaucracy. There are many good people in these professions, trying to do their best, but it is very difficult because they are continuously forced to let down their charges (patients, students, etc). As a result many people leave these professions, or switch off to protect themselves; meanwhile the ones without a conscience play the system to rise in managerial roles which perpetuates the problem.

None of this can be fixed without money which is in short supply everywhere. However, I don't think that all the money in the world can legislate for psychopaths.

[Biscuitsareme]

jamdonut did you share you concern with the HT and what happened after that?

I still don't understand why so many children seem to remain with abusive parents who are known to SS as abusive, often for years and years, until they are so damaged that they become very very challenging to foster. (I know this doesn't apply to Daniel Pelka because his parents apparently weren't known to the system). Is it lack of suitable foster families in the first place/ early days, or huge delays within the system because of short staffing, red tape etc?

[cory]

To be fair to the doctor, he will also have been aware that there have been other cases where children have died or suffered serious longterm damage because a genuine medical condition was diagnosed as abuse.

Some medical conditions do mimic abuse. And some of them are potential killers.

It is hard being a doctor. You can't hope always to get it right, with every single patient. Every single time.

And misdiagnosis either way can kill the patient.

The situation for the SW is not that different either. There have been plenty of instances of children taken into care and then neglected or abused. The children in the recent sex ring scandal were supposedly in care. They were hardly safe.

Again, there is that dreadful risk that if you make the wrong decision you risk being the one that either brings harm and danger into the child's life or fails to remove them- and you won't know for sure which it is.

[jamdonut]

I'll be honest, until I started working in a school, I had no idea that there really were children out there who were so damaged and had such awful home lives...I guess I lived in a little sheltered bubble.

Sad to say I have seen quite a few now, and it is very hard to not get too emotionally involved.

[Biscuitsareme]

I agree with the above ^^.

[PeriodFeatures]

It is an emergency Service isn't it. At the front line anyway. Actually, if you consider it that way it places a whole different slant on the way we potentially approach child protection. Jabalaya Thank you for this perspective. I think what you have said is hugely important and significant.

[Selks]

^ I agree wholeheartedly.

[JambalayaCodfishPie]

Social services needs to be treated, and by that I mean funded, like the emergency service it is.

^This!^

[soapboxqueen]

Well said eyesunderarock. The media are no different. Papers and news reports full of hand wringing and 'how could they let this happen?' fire this person or that person. It changes nothing.

The public at large don't care enough about social services or social care because for the most part it doesn't affect them. Come election time nobody promises more money for social services, it's not a vote winner.

There are, without doubt, going to be more Daniel's and baby P's. Some are suffering right now, some aren't even born yet, but they are all around us.

Social services needs to be treated, and by that I mean funded, like the emergency service it is. Legislation needs to be looked at very carefully to allow people to do their jobs. Nobody wants to take children out of loving homes for no reason. If for no other reason than there is nowhere to put them because so few people volunteer to be foster carers.

[Eyesunderarock]

'I'm a former teacher and I have given food and money and made calls which would have led to me being sacked if discovered. I plugged gaps for years.

People like me are leaving in droves and they are also leaving social care. This is not a good thing.'

You are not alone there, Corinne.
It's also noticeable on these threads how many of those not involved directly with these issues on a regular basis go down the crying/want to hug him/poor little angel route, and then end with ranting about who is to blame.

Want to make a difference for the next dozen, fifty or hundred little angels?
Stop crying and campaign for a change in the laws that prioritise the rights of the adults over the welfare and needs of the children. Stop giving virtual hugs and get angry instead that these situations will continue until radical changes are made to remove control of events from the abusers.
Learn and understand what is currently legal and possible and what needs to change, rather than suggesting kidnap and hindsight.
Not a single adult in Daniel's life except his carers wanted him dead. But only a few tried to do something about it.

[Lagoonablue]

A comment in my newspaper yesterday was good. Social workers are trained to deal with abuse and neglect and 99% of the time they work with 'normal' if damaged individuals so they are working with parents with the usual range of emotions and capabilities.

Occasionally they come up against psychopaths. Their skills are not up to dealing with them.

Some truth on this I think.

[HeySoulSister]

Just reading more about this. It seemed he was loved by his mother at some point? The cruelty was for 6 months I read

Her mother reported she was ' a good girl' when she left Poland... But she was a drug user

[CorrineFoxworth]

Calculations can be done, yes. I'm just trying to say that what the coroner saw was probably not what his teachers saw.

And that they were not all getting pissed and eating pizza on an INSET day cackling at parents having to fork out for childcare or whatever people think INSET days consist of.

And that they could not in any circumstances have taken that poor child home without being arrested and their own children taken into care pending an investigation.

I'm a former teacher and I have given food and money and made calls which would have led to me being sacked if discovered. I plugged gaps for years.

People like me are leaving in droves and they are also leaving social care. This is not a good thing.

[ExcuseTypos]

weight given not worthy

[ExcuseTypos]

Corrine you are wrong.

Drs carrying out an autopsy would be able to calculate Daniels weight when he died. The worthy given 1.5 stone would have been very accurate.