To think gullibility is a bad qualification for child protection

[friday16]

Or, to be charitable, thinking the best of people.

In the aftermath of the Peter Connolly case, we were repeatedly told how the mother was a clever, plausible, manipulative woman who was able to twist professionals around her finger. Then we saw video footage of her, and saw a dishevelled, incoherent mess with a long history of mental health issues: the precise opposite of the elegant, cool deceiver. This was not American Psycho.

Now in the Daniel Pelka case, we are asked to believe that no-one could have seen through the mother's story that "Daniel's dramatic weight loss was due to a rare genetic disorder". Not a teacher, not a social worker, not (ffs) a consultant paediatrician. We then hear a recording of the 999 call, and (again) it's an incoherent woman who can barely speak English. How was she able to spin a subtle and coherent web of lies which fooled all the terribly clever professionals, when she couldn't string a sentence together?

Biggest problems afaics was lack of a single unified database, we know far more than any person involved at the time. Also, who is going to call abuse if they are not certain.

But I think there is a bigger inconvenient (and unmentionable) truth, ie that no system can be 100% reliable, so there will always be a small % that fall through the cracks, and in a country with 65m people that means probably a small number every year.

in cases like these it often appears to me like that saying
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.
Everybody was sure Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when actually Nobody asked Anybody.
we need to get the information sharing properly sorted so that all the clues can be matched up to give the whole picture. Then intervention can take place earlier before it becomes too late.

the other thing is that no one actually seems to have talked to Daniel themselves.

Yip, we all need to be more sceptical and nosy, less willing to give the benefit of the doubt - especially when it comes to children and especially after some kind of pattern can be seen: there were nearly 30 police visits to the home(s) during Daniel's lifetime because of reports of domestic, physical abuse; there was clear evidence of alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, absences from school, earlier visits to A&E, failing to attend routine health check-ups - so many red flags even before we get to what Daniel actually suffered in those last few months. Those previous red flags should have been enough to get some kind of earlier intervention, surely?

Passedgo has a point about the nhs though. I have had recent experince of this. My ds fell off the monkey bars at the park 3 weeks ago. As soon as he did it I knew from the way he was holding his arm that he had done something more than just a bruise of scrape. I took him straight to the minor injuries unit at the local cottage hospital who x rayed it and said he had a radial head fracture of the elbow. They put his arm in a sling and gave us a letter to attend the fracture clinic the following morning at the main hospital. We duly attended the fracture clinic the following morning and the diagnosis was confirmed and he was placed in a cast for 2 weeks. Last week we went back to have the cast removed only to find that actually he didnt have a fracture but a dislocated elbow which needed to be manipulated back under general. We were admitted that afternoon and the procedure done that afternoon. During this time we had seen 3 different doctors and not one of them looked at the notes and each time we were asked how he had sustained the injury. Everything is on paper which is ridiculous in this day and age why cant they have a computer system linked to your nhs number so that at any one time any doctor can access your records and see what medications the patient is on what allergies they have etc. I know this was the idea behind the failed computer system that cost billions but if the nhs was a business it would have failed years ago.

Birds what are stents?

This is a problem that goes across organisations. I don't blame the NHS, they are all as bad as each other. Schools are obviously best placed to support children. Perhaps every child should have a key worker responsible for their welfare.

I wonder how they do it in other countries? I'm sure it's not just the UK that has these cases.

Surely one of the worst aspects of this terrible case is that,according to the review,no-one at any time spoke to Daniel about his home,his mother,her partners. I can see it would have been more difficult as his first language was not English, but that child's voice was never heard.

Maybe people cannot believe or find it hard to that a mother would do something like this to their child, rather they believe that a child is naughty and thieving lunch so lock up the food.

Clawdy, school staff would have to be careful, as guidelines state that they should not ask children any leading questions regarding potential neglect or abuse.

It's also quite likely that he would have been too afraid to say what was happening at home

The peadatrician should have know he diddnt have a long term illness,the same thing happened with victoria culombia,i think that was her name.

As someone else said,its not as easy as just being hoodwinked,some people can be very clever.

Well social workers certainly ask those questions, or they should. Of course it's all age appropriate and carefully done but they certainly should have sat down with him and a load if paper and colouring pens and communicated with him. It's dreadful that this didn't seem to happen.

The thing is teachers even named cp ones are not social workers,they have no where near the same training nor the same experance (assuming the sw is a decent one) some of them forget this but they cannot just act like social workers because they don't know how to.

I can see it would have been more difficult as his first language was not English, but that child's voice was never heard.

An attempt was made, shortly before his death (SCR, paragraph 6.65). A teacher at another school who spoke "his language" (it's an open question why they can't say "Polish") was brought in. Sadly, "Daniel was clearly unable to use this opportunity to explain what was happening to him – the circumstances may not have been conducive, but in some way it seemed to reflect the complete helplessness that he was no doubt experiencing. It was less than three days later that he died."

More to the point, Coventry LSCB can afford an interpreter to translate the account of Daniel Pelska's death into Polish, but they couldn't afford translators who might have kept him alive had they been used effectively to question the parents, rather than accepting from them answers that would perhaps not have been acceptable had they been native speakers. Again, the "professional optimism".

I'm sorry, but all the bollocks today about 'lessons will be learned'...

That shite has been trotted out time and time again.

We all have instincts. Are we seriously expected to believe that not one person who saw that poor boy didn't have some inkling, some prickling of hackles?

I know I can tell if someone's a victim of DV just by meeting them. These people were supposedly trained in childcare!

Did their instincts not trip?

Too bloody right they did, but i'm willing to bet that they thought it was someone else's job.

Well if one thing IS finally to be learned here, it's that it's the job of a HUMAN ffing BEING to look out for those around us, especially children in our care.

That boy was let down by every teacher, ever doctor, every Social worker, every single person that ever met him.

His 'parent & Stepshit' murdered him, true, but there's blood on more than 2 pairs of hands.

Poor, poor Daniel. :(

his condition was explained by a letter from the hospital

I assume this is an incredibly generous reading of paragraph 7.12 of the SCR, where a referral letter was written and copied to the school.

Why is social workers your onu target here?

I wasn't aware that they were, or that I'd ever actually mentioned social workers.

after years of working in the NHS, being a childminder and now a TA you have to always always LISTEN TO THE CHILD.... non verbal communication is as important as verbal.

does the story make sense? does it add up?

ignore all cultural, racial implications as none matters, if parents are aggressive and 'kick off' tough shit, get the police to deal but keep adk

keep asking the questions.

you are there for the CHILD not the adults.

I think that in the case of Peter Conolly the "dishevelled, incoherent mess" outer projection probably made it easier to disregard signs of neglect/abuse. The report that Peter had chocolate on his face and was sat in his pram the last time a social worker saw him was possibly brushed aside because the mother was dishevelled.

I also think that speaking bad English would be a way of dodging proper investigation. Can you imagine how much money it would cost and how much time it would take to fully communicate with everyone who has English as a 2nd language? I live in Sweden and I do understand Swedish but not as well as I understand/speak English. There are big cultural differences between Sweden and the UK and when they say something I disagree with I just smile and nod, I have told my HV that ds will not eat porridge or välling (strange swedish porridge in a bottle) or anything that is fortified with iron, I have said I am not worried about his iron level because he breastfeeds often and he shows no sign of an iron dificiancy. My friend who is swedish has her hv saying she must must must stop breastfeeding and her ds (the same age as my ds) will not develop properly as he won't eat iron fortified food. Our hv is the same person but because it would cost lots of money to bring in a translator and she would possibly step on cultural issues she just ignores the fact that me and my d-friend are doing exactly the same thing but she will raise it as an issue with my friend but not with me.

What I don't get is how they kept saying on radio 4 this morning that no one was prepared "to think the unthinkable", meaning that he was being abused.
But if you're a social worker or police officer, dealing day in day out with people with chaotic, poverty blighted lives, then child abuse is hardly unthinkable, is it? surely it actually makes up the majority of your day?

People had no difficulty in "thinking the unthinkable" when I took dd to hospital with a condition that was perfectly diagnosable.

I agree with StepAway, if Everybody is supposed to do it, Nobody does.

I also have first hand knowledge of the way social services work (though not child protection, I am talking about one borough as well, but it's actually a well regarded one I've been told! ), and also how cross agency communication works. It is bad I'm afraid. I'm sorry if I get jumped on for 'ss bashing', but this is my experience.

Proper notes are not kept, or weren't in my experience. Continual errors were recorded as fact, as soon as something was written down, even when totally and probably wrong, the fact that 'it was in the notes' is used as evidence that it's true.

Assumptions, identity confusion, miscommunication and an over riding belief that there is no definitive 'facts' but just beliefs that are weighted to the influence of the person saying them. Senior staff who do not know their basic responsibilities or statutory obligations. Staff who make up anything to please their immediate line manager.

The huge amount of inaccuracies make any kind of truth seeking completely impossible, and that's with a case where the person was completely positively engaged and actively seeking correction of basic fundamental errors. In one single document I counted 56 errors (not typos or grammar, actual factual errors!). How can you possibly do a good job with that even if you wanted to?!

Meetings took place using these highly inaccurate sources of information. Decisions were made on them and no discussion was ever allowed and error upon error was used to justify their decisions, and no record could ever be found of the raising / correction of a key fact, even when this was resent again and again.

It's like a whole institution exists to make anyone who works there's life difficult, and any sense of professionalism is buried under a mountain of bad working practise, illogical processes, often failing to adhere to basic legislation set out by the government.

I'm afraid I can see exactly how these tragedies happen. The thing I don't get is why this doesn't happen more often. I believe that it's down to the massively over worked few that work right on the 'coal face' using their brains and doing good even when the entire system is weighted against them being able to do anything.

Doublelife that's the scariest post I've read in a long time, but somehow this is what I suspected.