Alfie Steele

[Ffswhatsthepoint]

I checked there was no other thread before I posted this one. Alfie, 9, killed by mum and her bf. Drowned. A catalogue of abuse and many phone calls to police/ss by neighbours. The neighbours often fed him too. We HAVE to find people accountable in this case. It was reported. People knew. Nothing was done. Absolutely nothing. Its harrowing. I feel like I failed him. And I'm hundreds of miles away.

Oh.. I am a full time social worker and I can confirm case numbers across the service

It's sad to see that people think social workers are responsible for the deaths of children. No one goes into the job because they don't care. As everyone else has said, the demands are wild, the pressure is intense, and every single day you could wake up to one of your kids being seriously harmed. There are vacancies because there are not enough SWs and people don't want to train because of the public perception. Some of the kindest, most brilliant and talented people I've ever known are social workers. Some of the laziest and worst people I know are social workers. Like any job, everyone is not the same.

I'm not in a "tizzy" @UpaladderwatchingTV and my underwear is fine. I just think your idea is stupid, ill conceived and unworkable.

@WilkinsonM sure did. Northern shit hole town with a huge amount of people under SS. They probably just can't cope with the amount of calls.
Or I just spoke to the one person there who didn't give a shit.

Not RTFT but, as a recently ex-social worker, it’s bloody hard to get a child removed from a parent. I don’t just mean about the courts. I mean managers literally block you at every turn as the government want less children in care, so managers obsess over reduced figures of looked after children. I’ve lost count of the arguments I would have with those senior above me, telling them that I believed a child might die and being shot down by them (despite them never having met the child or family I was talking about), I would have to fight relentlessly and even be creative with getting police help to get my own way and it was soul destroying.

You need to have a good level of maths and English, a degree, plus the Step Up to Social Work is a graduate scheme whereby you gain another degree in social work. The starting pay is £32000 rising to £40000 with experience.

The comments on here blaming social workers are naive. You only see the ones missed. You have no idea how many children are rescued. A social worker could have a career and save hundreds of children, one gets missed and they are called incompetent.

It is not the fault of social workers, it’s the fault of the abusers. Contrary to popular belief, social workers don’t have the power to remove children, they need to have a high threshold of evidence to present in court and the court decided. Often courts go against social services. Only the police have the power to just walk in and take a child in immediate danger and we all know how underfunded they are.

Who would do a job where you are hated by the service users and you’ve got the general public calling for you to be jailed if you make the wrong call? Not me for sure.

And lessons do actually get learned. Serious case reviews have direct action on new ways of working that are implemented and will have saved many. But you’ll continue to only hear about the failures.

People will continue to berate the workers on the front line trying their best while the government continues to underfund the police, social services, family support, and CAHMS and the sentences given to dangerous offenders will carry on being paltry and ineffective.

Maybe MPs should be lobbied to ensure Police remove and arrest adults from the house in the first instance of complaints of abuse of children, if there is evidence from neighbours, as there was in this case. If it had been an adult attacking another adult with proof or witnesses then the victim would be asked if they wanted to press charges, or apply for a restraining order. Someone in authority should be fighting for the rights of children who are probably too scared to speak up. The threat of a criminal record for child abuse at the first instance may be enough for that adult to leave the house if they are not the biological parent.

Having just heard the sentence - its another single Mum hooking up with a scum bagboyfriend because her needs and wants are so much more important than anything else.

I am tired of hearing that SW's will not want to be seen to 'judge' so they give these scum parent/parents chance after chance. The concern from everyone and still the SW's gave these two another go at it!

I hope they rot in prison and that they will always be looking over their shoulders at what is coming towards them.

they should bring back the death penalty IMO. Controversial I know, but things like this happen too much.

This!

The judge got it right. This man was a sadist who enjoyed beating children, he had done it before and it was probably part of the enjoyment of the relationship for him. He wrote down his rules just so that boy knew exactly what kind of torture he faced and pinned it on the fridge.

Disgusting. He should never be released and neither should she as clearly she decided this was fine and participated. She didn't sound weak to me, just selfish. She approved of this discipline because it made her life easier and a terrified child is easier for her to deal with.

And where are the NSPCC when these things happen? I know they’re always asking for donations but they are never mentioned in child abuse cases. I have never heard anything about them preventing them or helping in any way.

Lovely 🤔do you often resort to name calling when someone challenges you?

The types of reforms needed to resolve some of this are not (despite the outcry on this thread) popular options and not what the general public would agree.

for instance a pp asked why he wasn’t removed as soon as it was know he was living in the house - simply put, social workers have no right to do this or even make this decision. This is for the court to determine.

now you could increase powers so social workers had the right to entry, and the right to remove the same as the police but the vast majority of the public would fight this I expect

You're assuming all the neighbours are nice. Malicious calls are a huge huge proportion of calls to SS.

As a SW, how do you know if a call where the caller said, "the neighbours are abusing their children, you know what those Muslims are like" is just a racist, or a racist with very real and proper concerns? What about the place with neighbours giving the same story in the same words and the disabled mum says they are all out to get her? Same words either means it's rehearsed (and they are lying) or maybe just that they've discussed it before coming to you? Or the alcoholic neighbour complaining about the autistic child making noise at night, and the parents being absent, which sounds worrying? Is he reliable? Does he actually know it happened at 3am as he says when the parents' seem baffled and very scared of their neighbour?

There aren't cases with lovely, reliable, caring neighbours and evil child abusers with 666 on their heads. People all lie, say what they think they should, misremember, embellish. When you find these inconsistencies do you throw out all their concerns? Do you allow yourself to be a flying monkey for the harassment of innocent people and remove a loved child OR do you leave a child in place to be killed?

SW is a field where there is NO right answer. Hindsight with all the information, including the tragic death, makes it seem obvious and easy. 'Just remove' results in SS being accused of baby-snatching and leads to further abuse because foster families and children's group homes are worse than biological parents 90% of the time. Leaving in place means a risk of a poor child continuing to be abused by the parent(s).

That's why I said 'where there is proof'. In this situation the neighbours had recordings of the abuse happening in the garden.

Evidence, that should have said.

The thing is everyone has “evidence” sometimes recorded sometimes fabricate. Social work deal with all sections of society - the caring, concerned, Ernest, the judgmental, biased, prejudiced and the vengeful, abusive, hateful. It’s not always, or even often, clear. It’s the least black and white professions - we constantly operate in shades of grey.

It’s very easy to sit in your comfortable home, coffee in hand, with limited information and the benefit of hindsight, and decide what is and isn’t clear, what decisions were obvious and the absolutely correct course of action. But that’s not where social workers practice, ever.

I've had fabricated evidence submitted. Three other people didn't see what I saw on the video which made the faking obvious once you'd spotted it.

I'm not saying everyone shouldn't strive for constant improvements. We all should, those of us with lives in our hands even more so. But pretending that if random MNers were doing the job all these deaths would have been prevented, while no innocent parents would lose their children is 100% bollocks.

Anyone remember the Orkney child abuse scandal? That's why we don't just remove.

And where are the NSPCC when these things happen? I know they’re always asking for donations but they are never mentioned in child abuse cases. I have never heard anything about them preventing them or helping in any way.

The NSPCC don’t do preventative or active child protection work - they’re essentially a campaigning organisation with a couple of helpline services and some therapeutic services. I always roll my eyes when folk say to contact the NSPCC - they just hand it to the local authority.

I'm struggling to understand how the Police operate in this context. The neighbour called Police whilst one of the horrific, numerous crimes against Alfie was actually being committed. And from what I understand, an officer went round. What happens then? They (Police) had all the information about the boyfriend's prior convictions. From what I can understand, only the Police have /had the power to immediately remove a child in danger.

Can anyone imagine the sort of people who would do this.

Not the sort of people you want to get on the wrong side of. Reporting comes with risk always.

People are putting themselves in potentially harms way to report these people time and time and to me again and yet nothing is done.

@Itisalwayspossibletobekind

In don't personally know in this case but in past cases the boyfriend has hiden, or the mum has lied about where he is eg not there.

Also many times the police don't have access to the back ground files, so they are not armed with any useful information at all.

@MrsTerryPratchett

How many calls from how many people including child screaming including existing sw concerns and a ban on the bf staying over would trigger removal.