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.

We couldn't tell you the numbers of children who DON'T get hurt or killed because of our interventions. Just yesterday a SW and I worked all day to get in court to protect a child who might otherwise have died due to the risk they were facing. That's not everyday but it's common. People have NO IDEA what we do to keep children safe every day and how many children aren't hurt or killed because of what we do.

Fair enough but I do think as a general sort of point no one should be above questioning.

That includes social workers but extends to teachers, medical professionals, care workers, those who work in finance, in government.

The answer is not ‘you are not one of us, so shut up.’

I do. In my LA caseloads are nowhere near that high. 30 children is common in assessment, in family safeguarding it's more like 22 for experienced social workers. That's still too high but I don't recognise people talking about caseloads of 50+ children. That is a hugely dysfunctional local authority and probably rated inadequate and in special measures, which is not the norm.

Absolutely Social Workers need more support and funding. They are hugely overworked.

I'm puzzled as to if the neighbours saw a poor boy out in the cold in the middle of the night they did not repeatedly call police or intervene themselves? I could not sleep if I knew that was happening.

Apologies, just reading from a BBC report neighbours were also intimidated. It just seems sad no one would stick up for this poor little boy.

Absolutely. Whenever these cases make the news, there's always some brief outrage on MN - posts about how child abuse is everyone's business, society needs to take more responsibility, etc. And then, in no time at all, it's back to "Why are you judging this poor mother? Maybe she was just having a bad day, you just saw a snapshot, she probably apologised and gave the kids a hug as soon as they got home..."

@Zola1

the SW I was referring to in my original post was the supervisor of my foster child’s social worker, not my SW,, That SW left last week, so until a replacement is found her caseload needs to be reallocated or the supervisor has to pick things up.
To my knowledge there are quite a few vacancies in my LA

No-one said that though. Or implied it. No-one was saying that social services or social services don't fail. Or that there aren’t some incompetent, inadequate, lazy or uncaring SW. Because there will always be a small number of assholes in any profession.

They were responding to the extremely critical and somewhat abusive posts on the first few pages saying how shit CPYSS are, have blood on their hands, there are far too many child deaths caused by SW and how SW should be imprisoned for failing to remove children who later are killed.

Which was abusive, offensive and just not understanding at all, the laws involved in removing children, the consequences for those children and how CYPS works.

And incredibly ignorant in discussing a profession which already struggles to find and retain staff. It's not an attractive career for a number of reasons and suggesting there is a risk of imprisonment for 'not doing enough or getting it wrong' would just result in even fewer people wanting a career in that area.

Then all the fuckwits suggesting it will complain even more about how 'someone should be doing something'

One of the SW’s I know through some voluntary work is meant to work in a team of 12. There are current 7 of them, plus their manager. One is working their notice and another goes on maternity soon and isn’t coming back

the shortage of SW’s is massive

Depends where you work.

Large city with large areas of social deprivation, inequalities, crime, etc? There'll be more cases.

If you work in the Cotswolds, a small town or similar you'll obviously have lower need.

A bit like in the early stages of COVID when virtually all health services were shut down and a few major cities were having a shit time in their hospitals when other areas, even major cities but in different areas of the country had virtually empty hospitals for months.

Things vary from city to city and area to area.

I work in a large city. The outskirts of which come under a different commissioning area. Their GP and MH services have massively shorter waiting times and their social services, probation services and youth offending services have massively reduced caseloads in comparison.

Postcode lotteries exist.

Well said 👏 .

It's normal for managers to have oversight of 100+ children. That's not an unreasonable caseload for a manager.

why is this happening to so many children...why are there so many evil people...what can we do to change...would voting labour make it better? I am so haunted by these cases. keep imagining them. I am so fine fed up by reading lessons to be learned. how hard are these lessons to learn? so many phone calls, from everyone. wtf are these government doing

@PointeShoesandTutus thank you for explaining your day, I think it makes it clearer for everyone the load you are under. this can only be resolved by a change of government.

I am though trying to understand whether we always had this many evil people in the country, or has it gone up because of some social reasons? are we going through collective madness?

That is a hugely dysfunctional local authority and probably rated inadequate and in special measures, which is not the norm.

It depends on where you are. I work in a very populous area with high levels of deprivation with 4 bordering local authorities with a similar demographic. Vacancy levels for social workers sit between 40-60% in those areas - recruitment isn’t an issue but retention is due to the complexity of the work involved. Children on CP plans and CSOs need an allocated social worker - if the teams were fully staffed case loads would sit around 20-25 children but teams aren’t remotely fully staffed and so caseloads become higher. And the cycle continues.

Exactly. That's a dysfunctional local authority with that level of staff vacancy. That's not the case across the board.

There's an interview with a peadophile online, which he goes into horrific detail of how he'd target lone parents, especially those lone parents where the father has no involvement, even better when there's no other family to intervene.
I suspect it's the same for these child abuses,they know what and who to look for, they know how to reel them in and they know when to start lashing out at kids.

Yes - look at all the posts on here with biological fathers who aren't very bothered re their kids.

Now contrast that with an unrelated man who want to move and help with your children in a short period of time.

It is a huge and obvious risk. And what is not discussed in these cases is that often domestic abusers are also sexual abusers too. The discipline administered by men and the mothers is a precursor to that happening.

This, absolutely this. . I have no idea why people don't understand this.
A kid, who's case I had in common with a social worker went missing overnight. A court case was pending with a view to removal. It kept being delayed. He had absconded as we both suspected because he had been assaulted again by his parents and he'd made a break for it. Below zero degrees and snow on the ground. The sw was so stressed by this, she actually threw up.
He was found by a dog walker unconscious and hypothermic in the woods mid morning. He could easily have died - whose fault would that have been? He was fine in the end and eventually removed.
Didn't make the papers of course, just a run of the mill (horrific) event. This happened for all the reasons above. And for as long as we don't want to pay more taxes, it will continue to be the case.

It's not the same in most cases.

I don't think most men are targeting single mothers with the intent to physically abuse their children.

What happens is single adult men who are not in work and/or cannot afford to privately rent are last on the list for any kind of social housing. Even if they are care leavers or addicts or suffering from mental illness, there are still lots of families, disabled people, refugees and single Mums with children who are ahead of them.

Their choices are sofa-surfing with family or friends, street homelessness or hostels if they can get one. All shit.

Or they meet a woman willing to enter into a relationship with them and invite them to live with her. Who usually has children.

And the men are often dysfunctional, as are the women. And the drug use that usually is part of these relationships and the abuse which is usually part of these relationships occurs. And you have women who just want a man in their lives for whatever reason and a man who might not even like the woman so much but she's providing the roof over his head and it's preferable to sleeping in the streets or in a hostel.

Or he might like her but it's not his kid he's suddenly playing step-Dad that he has no bond to and it's likely the child is annoying to him crying or needing attention or they can't do the things he wants to do as a couple because there's a child to consider.

So he feels trapped. He could leave but the alternatives are shitter than the way he's living now. So he gets more and more resentful and abusive.

It's not in any way an excuse. He could always choose to sofa-surf or be street homeless or live in a hostel. And he could choose to not be an abuser. But the women could also choose to not move in someone quickly and ignore or facilitate the abuse of their children.

It's just what happens in a lot of cases.

That's an interesting take. Rather than targeting vulnerable women to abuse them/ their children they are targeting them to achieve a stable housing situation. That makes sense.

However, the idea that they become resentful and end up abusing children is a stretch for me. It makes more sense that maladjusted men who cannot achieve stability on their own terms because of, say, criminality/ drug taking and the factors that led to that situation, are more likely to be predisposed to being violent and abusive from the outset.

There's another issue however - and that is of single mums getting into relationships with men who go on to kill the mother's child. This seems to be the pattern. What work can be done to prevent this? Why are women willing to accept abuse from new partners towards children? What programmes are in place for these women? (Because while she is guilty let's face it there was no record of abuse until he came on the scene)

It's called the Cinderella Effect. It has been observed in chimpanzee 'families as well as humans. There is a reason why the 'wicked stepmother' is a trope in folktales and old stories. The introduction of a step parent significantly increases a child's risk of abuse.

Thousands. We close hundreds of referrals every week with support in place and those cases never come back because actually 99% of parents want to do a good job and keep their kids safe.

for every child we remove there are hundreds we able to keep with families.

but the positive outcomes are never front page news.

This!!! And I can say personally my mum ran a charity for SA children after me and my DS were SA by our father she was groomed and actually met my stepfather at said charity event he knew she had daughters and we were victims.
he ended up SA me for 7 years and also almost killing my mum she had no idea what he was doing to me but even after disclosing she kicked him out but as a victim herself she took him back.
He went onto another family and the same happened some people mainly Men are just monsters and prey on children and women is Alfie’s mum as culpable as him yes she is but she was prayed on by that monster

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

Obviously even one child death is one too many. But I think asking the question that you have demonstrates a real lack of understanding about the sheer numbers of children and families that SWs are working with and about the fact that their work is vital and in the vast vast majority of situation have positive outcomes. We will only ever hear about the tragedies. We will only every hear about things that have gone wrong. I don't understand why people don't get that, I really don't.