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.

Judges need to start listening to SW, really listen to them
It's a dreadful guilt to carry when you've tried your best and the courts refuse the removal

There's a really interested podcast on BBC Sounds about social services. It's called Finding Britain's Ghost Children - it's about children that go 'missing' as they're not in school and not registered anywhere. It looks into the issues with SS though.

In short: there are not enough people to manage the amount of abused children, which is really, really sad. And the level of burnout is high, because, well, I'm sure you can imagine.

Anyway, that's not to take from this horrific case, just wanted to drop that in as an interesting read.

There’s always a “something should be done” thread on here with cases like this, yet when schools or SW dare to ask questions of a MNetter there’s outrage at them sticking their beaks in and being nosy.

We need properly funded social services and people need to stop the outrage when schools and SW ask questions (the outrage on the thread when the OP’s children didn’t started their new school as planned because of covid is a particularly memorable one).

If we genuinely want more done, more interventions, then people need to accept that means that you or I should be asked questions if our child says something concerning. That we shouldn’t expect different treatment because they know us etc.

I assume all these outraged MNetters are all signing up to be social workers now then, seeing as SS are apparently all incompetent idiots.

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

What would happen if you refused to do something in your work? Besides which most social workers care about the families they work with, and worry about the consequences of their actions and decisions, and most know they’re one bad decision away from having a dead child on their hands. Which creates an environment where simply saying “no” isn’t a remotely viable option. So they work, get burned out and leave the profession.

That's a heck of a lot of words to say "I don't actually want to help".

First point - what happened to Alfie, and all those other children is horrific and unforgivable.

I used to work in child protection (not a social worker thank goodness but worked closely alongside them.)

Let's do some maths.

Training social workers works on assumption they'll manage between 5-15 families.

But there's a chronic shortage of workers.

So at any given time one social worker might have 50 families on their book. That could be 150 children if there are sibling sets.

They work a 50 hour week - maybe with some overtime but let's face it, they can't go out on visits to families at 5am or 11pm.

So they have one hour to allocate per week to each family if it was divided evenly. It's not, of course. Let's say one family is struggling and is ringing the worker multiple times a day. They might move up the priority list. Then a couple of the children on your books start to self harm. You need to see them urgently. Wait, one of your parents has announced she's pregnant! Quick! That'll need an unborn assessment. And one of your teenagers has run away. Oh and all these families are a 15-20 minute drive apart. And you need to keep a record and write up each visit for evidence. So you can't possibly get round everyone.

Then your colleague goes off with work related stress (very very common, unsurprisingly). So you have to take on her caseload too. Now you've got 100 families, maybe 300 kids.

You finally get to court on one family. The Court system is a mess so you sit all day waiting. The Judge grants temporary removal. You go to pick up the child but there's no placement, so you drive the poor terrified child around and around, through the McDonalds drive through trying to keep them calm whilst your managers ring around to try to find a foster home. There's a whole day gone. No other families have been visited.

Finally you get home at 11pm, drained. You read on mumsnet and the Daily Mail that you're lazy and shit. Then your phone pings. One of your children has broken ribs. Not the family you expected. Never the family you expected. Your heart drops out of your chest. You drive to hospital to sit with the child, support them through x rays and medical procedures, sometimes for days at a time because you're the only familiar face they'll see.

I'm good at my job, really good. I've supported thousands of families. But I couldn't keep going, and had to get out before my mental health was destroyed.

Oh and you're paid buttons too. Not that that really matters.

So yes - there are some shit social workers, but the vast majority are firefighting whilst managing a sinking feeling that something will go horribly wrong any moment.

Absolutely this. Thank you for taking the time to write this. I really hope it helps some on here get a better understanding of the reality of the situation.

OK @Begsthequestion , so what above tells you I don’t want to help?

I would genuinely be interested in an answer to that because at 35 weeks pregnant with a two year old I don’t think I’d be approved to foster, I already work in child protection, and I don’t vote Tory. So what voluntary work should I be doing at this point?

Whilst a lot does need to be done to educate women about having unsuitable men in their lives - we also have to accept in this case AlfieMs mother was the one who drowned him. She fully participated in abuse. She may well have abhsed Alfie without that bastard in her life.

Maybe we need to educate men about being suitable partners?

As someone struggling with infertility who adores, frets and cherishes my stepdaughter and nephews, I don't understand a world in which such evil people are able to carelessly breed and abuse/neglect their children, when I would give anything to be able to have a young life to protect.

YES completely agree...how many more of these cases will it take? My heart broke for Arthur Lubinjo-Hughes last year..another utterly harrowing and disgusting case. What is the answer?? The neighbours were conscientious and responded to what they saw/heard but clearly were dismissed. Would put my vote behind any political party who prioritises children's services reform (and reform is putting it mildly).

This isn't accurate as the supervising social worker just oversees the foster carers, so they are overseeing maybe carers for 100 children. The children have their own social workers. Child social workers have around 30 cases.

162 posts and only 2 of them mentioning lockdown.

We trapped these children in houses with their abusers and stopped their access to safe observant adults.

We stretched the police and social services. We shifted society fundamentally for a time.

How many more children were drowned in the bath, but didn't die? I hope the covid enquiry covers cases like Alfie's.

My heart breaks. How could the police hear this phone call

"It sounds like he's being hit and held under the water or something and loads of thrashing around."

and not remove this child? As the OP said "I feel like I failed him." I do too, I think we all failed him.

Of course not everyone is equipped or is in the position to be a foster carer.

What you can do is not seek to lay the blame at the door of those who are working in child protection, and criticise a whole profession as lazy and incompetent. Maybe we cannot throw up our hands in horror at the thought of a children’s residential home or young persons hostel in our street.

The people who are to blame are the perpetrators of the crime. In my view too few cases of child abuse and neglect end up in court and the sentences are woeful or inappropriate.

I find it quite telling that my son’s birth mother has lost 4 children to adoption or foster care. She has never been prosecuted for any offence relating to the children. Yet she has served multiple short sentences for petty crime. She had a 6 week sentence for shoplifting a box of cigarette lighters.
Maybe that shows were our priorities as a society lie.

This.
Absolutely true of the social workers I know who start out idealistic and end up drained and in many cases psychologically traumatised. The burn out rate for SWs in child protection is frighteningly short.
Easy to criticise but the men involved with these single mothers are crafty, duplicitous and often violent and threatening - did anyone see the video of this particular POS in previous encounter with the police? I wouldn't have wanted to take him on, and the police don't have time to back up social workers.The work loads are immense and if you show signs of being good at your job, yet more cases are piled on you.
This was lock-down tragedy if I've got that right. Cases like this were inevitable.
Agree with@MrsTerryPratchett. Nobody sees all the cases handled by SWs that do have good and positive outcomes.
We need to think about how we treat the poor and disadvantaged in our society and how they can be supported or enabled to do better by themselves and, above all, by their children.

Jesus, another abusive step father and scumbag complicit mother. What a miserable short life that poor boy had.

I haven’t @Ted27

But there is an enormous grey space between ‘all social workers are useless’ and ‘do not EVER question a social worker unless you’re prepared to be one yourself or be a foster carer’

The former is provocative and unhelpful. The latter encourages secrecy, deception and lies and I don’t think should be encouraged.

Child social workers have around 30 cases.

And each of those cases will have multiple children involved. I don’t know of any full time social worker carrying a case load of 30 children.

@Elderflowerraspberry

I wasn’t directiing my reply at any one individual on this thread

Where do you get that figure from?

It's awful but it's not just down to SS. I'm sick of seeing women with children allow men to abuse their children time and time again. I hold a lot of blame towards the 'mother'. She not only let the abuse happen but had an active role. And I'm sorry but even if they were a victim of past abuse, it's not a good enough reason. Plenty of people survive abusive childhoods and strive to ensure their child does not have the same.

Yes. But when they've brought up in violent homes and it's all they've known and been modelled as how adult relationships work, it's as difficult as it is to educate the girls who grew up in violent homes.

And working with a number of young people who grew up in violent homes and are now replicating that in their early relationships; there's a really difficult balance to be found between educating a domestically violent 15/16/17 year old who is still legally a child and often in LAC or in a shitty abusive home that it is not at all acceptable that he behaves this way while also treating him as the traumatised child he is.

There are no specific psychoeducation programmes in my area for perpetrators of domestic/relationship violence under the age of 18. Because they're still children and should be treated as victims of their own trauma rather than perpetrators.

So everyone's stuck in trying to help them in a meaningful way. And once they turn 18 most of the support from agencies falls away. And when they're late teens and early 20s and beyond and still perpetrators of domestic violence, no-one in society really gives a shit anymore that they witnessed their Mum being beaten or raped. They're adults now and should know better.

And as dramatic as it sounds, its really possible that Alfie would have gone on to be an adult man like that, had he lived, given the household he was living in.

But when you are tragically murdered by abusive parents aged 9, everyone falls over themselves to weep about it.

But more boys like Alfie don't get murdered and in 10+ years are the adults like his 'Step'-Dad who murdered him. And then no-one gives a shit and says he was just an evil bastard.

And it goes round and round and round.

And there are always girls and women who come from equally dysfunctional and abusive backgrounds wanting to be in relationships with dysfunctional and abusive men. Because that's what they know to be how relationships work.

You can't just say no. It's your job. We all care about the children in our service. I'm a manager and I've done loads of casework when there has been no social worker available to do it and urgent issues needing done. Nobody refuses to work. Or if they do, they get signed off sick and everyone else has to pick up their slack...