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.

I don't believe this happened.

So to be clear here, any concerns expressed about the fact that in this specific case some opportunities missed to help this little boy cannot be voiced unless the individual decides to train to be a social worker?

You can express any concerns you like, but labelling all social workers as incompetent, lazy, deserving of jail time etc is unfair if you have no concept of what the job entails. I’d also suggest that folk don’t actually know of opportunities missed without being involved in the case - because most folk have no idea the amount of hoops that needs to be jumped through - or the time that can take - to put the most basic of supports in place, much less to remove a child. And that’s assuming the parents are willing to engage with you.

It’s very easy to read a media report and jump on the “social work are shite” bandwagon. We know folk think we’re shite, we hear it all the time, from everyone. We also know those same people for the most part could never cope with what we have to deal with daily.

So feel free to comment, but if you think you could do it better by all means come and have a go.

No, and it’s ridiculous to suggest that’s the only way to help. But I do my bit - I report concerns, I don’t vote Tory, I get involved in lobbying MPs etc.

There are incompetent SWs, the same way there are incompetent nurses, doctors etc - and for some reason we can’t say a bad word about SWs the way we can others. Which is a huge part of the problem IME.

This is horrendous! Poor poor little boy! He deserved so much better!!! Social services are shit. They took my daughter off me on the say so of only my parents. I had a very long fight to get her back and eventually an admission that they over reacted.

Everyone always wants it to be someone else's responsibility while they sit at home complaining that 'more should have been done'.

I think people think SW can just remove children at a whim when they can't. And issues of disproportionately, trauma of the parents, poverty, culture etc are all part of the assessment and have to be taken into consideration.

And I've seen the numerous posts from MNetters not wanting to live near a drug clinic, hostels, PRU and no doubt wouldn't want to live near one of these mythical children's homes that should be built using money from God knows where.

So long as they don't have to be near the abused, neglected, addicted, homeless, criminals etc but can make demands that someone somewhere do more. But somewhere else...not near me or the other 'decent' people 🤔

Me neither.

of course you can! As a social work manager I've dealt with my fair share of incompetent social workers and it feels like someone else share too sometimes it would be insane to eat there aren't any! However that's not what people on this thread are saying. 1% of social workers are competent, we are ALL lazy, incompetent, useless etc...that's just unfair and incorrect and we have the right to respond to that.
it's possible Alfie's social worker was incompetent. However they also had a manager who should have had oversight and senior managers who are also tasked with knowing about high risk/edge of care children and who are also responsible. Unless you have a social worker who is actively lying about visiting children and colluding with parents (and of course that happens too! Rarely but it does) then there are many people who were responsible for Alfie's care. Not just one social worker.

I was saying exactly the same to DP this morning. Including the unjustified personal guilt.

I called the police a few months a go after witnessing this boy being hit repeatedly over the head by his step "father". We were in a pub garden and this man was clearly a bully. Got a huge kick out of intimidating him. He then asked the boys mum if he could properly punish him and the grin that came over his face when she agreed was beyond disturbing. He then started dragging him around and smacking him across the head. I couldn't stand it. I called the police who said it would be a priority response, so we left after that. I hope to goodness that the scum bag was charged and subsequently not involved with this family any more, but I suspect even if that was the case, the mum would have moved on to another evil bastard.

I often wonder what happened and even worry that I made things worse.

This CAN NOT keep happening.

The video of him screaming to be let back inside his house made my blood run cold. Poor poor boy.

It would be better if there were more social workers. You can respond to reasoned posts with emotive snippy comments but it changes nothing.

We need to invest so much more on social care. A SW with 100 children and young people on their caseload is a disgrace.

Instead of asking why they missed this child you should be asking why the service is underfunded to the extent these cases happen.

It's not SW who remove children, that only happens with an order from the court and a SW needs masses of evidence to get this. Evidence which will be missed if that SW is juggling a caseload of over 100 cases.

Frankly I am amazed that we don't get more cases like this

Time we invested more money, acknowledged the shit job SW's have and offer support if we see families struggling.

I'm not a SW by the way but I do come across them on a very regular basis, their workload is impossible and when it remains that way we will get more cases like this.

But there are only ever bad words said about child social workers.

Seriously, where are all the threads applauding child social workers? Or posters saying they had a good experience with CYPSS involvement?

Just on this thread you've got posters saying they're lazy, incompetent, don't care and not doing enough to remove children and other posters saying their children were removed because of incompetent SWs overreaching.

No SW or ex-SW here are saying every SW is brilliant or doing a stellar job, they're just trying to explain the complexities of the law, and the ridiculous caseloads, stressors and pressures child SW are under.

It is one of the most thankless jobs there is.

So social services are s for taking kids off people and also s for not taking kids off people? Make it make sense

Thing is we see on here all the time about people not being able to even take in their neglected nieces and nephews because of work patterns, size of house, money etc... How can we expect people to become foster carers when most people wouldn't qualify with their existing work patterns and housing situations? The whole system is a mess

Yes I would be very interested to know how many of the mums involved came from abusive backgrounds

They have also cut other services like children centers and council maintained nurseries which support disadvantaged families in the early years

Pretty much all. And pretty much all abusive men also.

I haven’t done that @Jellycatspyjamas but I do think that concerns can be expressed without peoples heads being bitten off and being told they have to retrain or foster before being fit to pass comment. I’m not accusing you personally of having done that but I’m finding it very uncomfortable.

’You’re not a social worker? Shut up then.’ Can people honestly not see that a system where no comment is allowed is one where abuse can continue to thrive?

It’s absolutely heartbreaking, I was in tears.

And yet another case where Covid was used both as an opportunity by murderers to kill in plain sight and an excuse for the authorities not to do their jobs properly.

”lessons will be learned” well when exactly. Because this has happened too many times and it’s just devastating

I work for Adult Social Services though I'm not a social worker.

So many people on this thread are utterly clueless. You have no idea what we're up against.

13 years of government cuts and we are being asked to do more and more. Cuts to other public services like NHS mental health services and education etc etc mean even if we want to help we can't get placements / support etc etc.

Staff turnover is so high my employer is looking to recruit social workers from abroad. The wages are a pittance given the responsibility that a social worker has.

So yes, it's tragic what happened to this little boy and absolutely awful that opportunities to help were missed. But this will keep happening until the public stands up and demands better. Because one social worker with a caseload of 100 kids is going to miss stuff. And no amount of screeching on Mumsnet about how lazy they are is going to change that.

@BreehyHinnyBrinnyHoohyHah I agree with everything you e said but have a question for you.

You say social workers are being asked to do more and more. What would likely happen if they simply said no?

What do you think would happen?

I know that sounds antagonistic and it isn’t meant that way. But any sort of collective action would have to be done via the unions. Individual or even groups of social workers refusing to carry out tasks would see them disciplined.

I never actually heard the “phone calls” or the cries of him there really is some evil in this world and it usually is men but also women who allow it regardless if they are also abused being a parent should and instinctively come first (also fathers but it’s mainly the parents new partners)
like I have said we had SS involved and rightly so but looking back we were a easy case for them and we could easily be concealing abuse.
I just keep thinking of that poor boy what horror he had to endure and people did try to help ans why was he let down? Give me ten minutes with either of those scumbags

@captainjacksparrow roughly how often would you say 'working' with families actually works ?

This. This guy gets off on it. As did this guy who already had convictions for child cruelty.

Just re read my post. Need to make it clear by "this boy" I didn't mean Alfie himself.

It haunts me to think that the same could happen to the boy I saw.