In wondering what the hell needs to happen for social workers and doctors to be held accountable for their mistakes ?? ** Extremely distressing content **

[SkintAsASkintThing]

I know it's late but as the adult who was one of four brushed aside children of the 80's who as a result suffered repeated abuse I really can't understand why this is happening time and time again. When will these lessons be learnt ??

And I know abusers are manipulative and clever and charming but fucking hell, this has to be one of the worse things i've read. This by the way happened in the same town that little Poppi Worthington came from, why are children being let down like this ?? Does no one care ??

www.nwemail.co.uk/news/Council-bosses-apologise-after-harrowing-report-reveals-social-workers-failed-to-protect-toddler-with-leg-bruises-and-genital-warts-5f0b184a-b6e5-47a6-8d3e-f551420b3adf-ds

Social work funding has been cut, cut and cut again. Then people wonder why this sort of thing happens.
Of course it's not an easy job which is precisely why it needs FUNDING and citizens that demand it from their politicians, not vote for the people who say upfront they're going to make more cuts.

I cant bring myself to blame social workers, they are understaffed, underfunded and not supported

there is simple not enough resource to address these issues

people love to throw blame at them, and yet we do fuck all outselves about the issue

so do we foster, do we mentor, do we want to pay more tax?

I agree its a vile situation, and I wish it wasn't so. I just don't feel inclined to blame social services

The article said it was a fucked up, abusive family with generations of abuse- what can be done about that complex issue?

RonSwansonsMoustache you have summarised the situation in the UK perfectly, where I live the 400/500k developments have not been sold to people living here, they are gated estates and the kids get ferried out to private schools every day by passing the local state schools.There are too many deprived and forgotten places in the U.K, tragic.

I actually think it's great that people feel anger. We just need to direct it fruitfully.

Exactly Cookster.

The biggest problem with places like Barrow that have huge levels of deprivation is that any funding that comes there way is not coming from the government. It's from private investments and big property developers who want to make money. They don't care about the locals or pricing people out of their own towns. It means there's still no help for children suffering abuse because there's still no money in the pot for social workers.

Huge investments from private firms does not help the locals who are struggling day-to-day. How does huge 300k houses and a fancy Marina with shops and watersport centres help people who earn minimum wage, maybe live on 22k a year as a family, and who send their kids to local schools that receive minimum funding, with no help when these children have ASD or are victims of abuse or neglect?

Social services, schools and the NHS are all chronically underfunded and huge investments by private companies and expensive houses for newcomers isn't going to change that.

Yes, I am becoming increasingly worried about the lack of funding in state schools. Well put social commentary.

Comment above for RonSwansonsMoustache.

Of course some social workers are shit. The problem is that in an underfunded and overstretched environment, naturally they're less likely to be identified and helped to improve/booted out, let alone replaced with anyone better.

There's not enough funding, not enough social workers, not enough resources, not enough time. Lots and lots of paperwork, huge caseloads, massive pressures. You get slated for doing anything (bloody social workers stealing kids/ locking up mentally ill people on a whim) and slated for not doing anything (bloody social workers leaving children in danger/ not detaining a clearly unwell person). And yes, there are some awful social workers.

I don't work in CP, I can't do it, I do not have the emotional resilience for it. Lots of friends do, even my toughest, hard as nails friends live their lives in constant terror that today will be the day something is missed and one of the kids on their list dies or is seriously harmed. When things go well, it's not them who are praised, but when things go badly, it's them who are blamed. Not that they particularly want praise- they want smaller caseloads, more resources and services to refer families to, less paperwork, more time to get to know families and children properly, to know management has their backs, to do a good job.

A friend of mine wanted to train as a social worker. She was a very gung-ho, I can fix the world type of person. I was really worried about her because I think ultimately there is only so much social workers can do. They're working with people with very complex needs, people who don't speak English well, people who grew up in care themselves, people who drink too much/take drugs, people with social/mental health issues, chaotic families, teenage females in relationships with much older men, families with kids with different fathers. Taken individually none of these factors (except drinking and drugs maybe) necessarily mean that these kids are at risk but where do you draw a line at what is and isn't ok? You may know that Child A is being raised in a chaotic home but the mum while young assures everyone that she has kicked out the abusive dad, she swears she doesn't drink or take drugs, she swears she's trying her best and loves her children. Maybe she is, maybe it's all bullshit. If something awful happens then the social workers get blamed but how many families are there like that in the UK? Hundreds of thousands?

A school that I used to work in had a Learning Mentor. It was a full-time job. She liaised very closely with the families of children we were concerned about, created support plans, set up appointments with different agencies, visited the families regularly. She did a great job and got to know the families and children really well. Of course, the job no longer exists due to budget cuts. Our safeguarding lead is our headteacher. With the best will in the world, there are not enough hours in the day to run a school and set up and monitor extensive support plans for parents. We also get much less input from organisations like Family Solutions, as they have also had their budgets cut.

However, in the case in question, it looks like enough people were involved and knew what was going on, so the question is why on Earth they wouldn't remove that child. Lack of places? Persuasive parents? Disjointed communication?

I completely agree with accruelintentions social workers, Dr's didn't give this child an sti or abuse her. They didn't murder any of the children in the high profile cases.
Yes they collectively missed something or made a poor judgement under huge pressure and cuts but they are not the people causing the abuse and I think it is unfair to heap all the blame on them.

SW have a tough job with no public or media support. I know locally a lot of the more experienced SW have left and not been replaced because of LA budget cuts.

Sadly I'm afraid this sort of thing is likely to happen more, not less. Whatever you put in place to prevent mistakes happening won't work if you have too few staff who are too inexperienced.