Baby P witch hunt

[the7Vabo]

I watched a full documentary on Tik Tok about Baby P today.

The thing I’m most struck by is that social worker/s were fired, a doctor is in permanent psychiatric care, social workers received death threats and in the middle of it all the mother receives a minimum 5 year jail sentence and has been in & out of jail since 2013.

There were clear failing but a lot of it was against the background of an overwhelmed system. In particular the clinic where the doctor worked had been flagged as dangerous to senior management by two doctors who resigned and another doctor was on stress leave. There was no access to notes at this clinic. The doctor who last saw Baby P had no access to notes, wasn’t familiar with procedures around child protection in the UK, was working without the assistance of a nurse who might have helped her. She saw Baby P for a specific reason to rule out underlying conditions that might explain his injuries. She was blamed for missing that he had a broken back but it’s not clear when his back was broken.
Her face was plastered all over the papers and she went to train stations multiple times with thoughts of ending her life, asked for her name to be removed from the register and is now in psychiatric care.

The social worker directly involved might have been able to do more but she did a lot including removing Peter, taking him to hospital, contacting the police and immediately contacting the mother when she heard she had a boyfriend.

The head of the area had serious death threats and was fired.

I know people say the different agencies between them had contact 60 times and they shouldn’t have missed it. But that also means there was a lot of effort being made to protect him.

There were reports written immediately afterwards blaming various social workers, the police and medical staff involved with the exception of that doctor seemed to get off more lightly.

The thing that floors me is the mother got min 5 years and was first released in 2013!!! It’s bloody extraordinary. I saw a clip of her speaking to social workers, she was v convincing!

I just can’t get over how a doctor can have a nervous breakdown but the mother is meanwhile out & about!!!! She back in now for breach of conditions I think. I keep thinking about that doctor.

AIBU?!

Ed Balls who iwas Health Secretary at the time sacked the poor woman who was head of Social services and Education for ?Essex publicly in Parliament before she had even been informed -such a big brave man - as if she could have had that much input
She was suicidal.
Babies die 1 to two a week at the hands of carers and I have NEVER heard of a Head of SS being sacked for it.
Feeble government being manipulated by the press.
MPs doing whatever to save their own skins.

The mother & the two men got more fair procedures than she did.

A lot of public ire was and still is directed at that woman.

Did anybody on their witch hunt stop to think about the impact on those women on publishing their faces in the paper constantly.

That doctor never recovered, she’s paid a higher price than Baby P’s own feckless mother has.

Too easy to hunt and blame doctors, nurses or social workers instead of a run down and broken NHS and SS.
People should be ashamed.

For many years, I was a Local Authority child protection social worker in a very deprived area in South East England. I worked closely with the police, health care professionals and education providers. Some parents and families were able and willing to work with us, others not, due to their lack of trust in the system, learning disabilities and/or a belief that they could outwit "the system". I had family members try to kill me, frighten me off by setting vicious dogs on me, my car brakes tampered with, and making unsupported complaints about my behaviour towards them. I survived all this by being calm at all times, validating the family's feelings, having access to supportive colleagues and good clinical supervision. In cases where it was proven that families were unable to work together with professionals, the Family Courts made the final decisions about the welfare of the children and the timescale for the plans made for them which had been agreed.

The professionals definitely made mistakes. For facts read the Serious Case Review. All SCRs are in the public domain.

However it is right to question the witch hunt and to recognise how difficult cp work is in failing, underfunded systems.

Is that the review that was written in two weeks after Ed Balls demanded it? Because the social workers said the facts were inaccurate and they never got a right to respond.

I’m not a social worker and I don’t personally know any, but it seems like an almost impossible job to me.

Im in Ireland where the view of UK SS is that they are heavy handed. It’s not uncommon for people to bring their kids to Ireland to try to escape them.

Constance Marten's case shows exactly why child protection workers need to be 'heavy handed' sometimes.

The case reviews will be available, for Baby P and Victoria Climbie. Baby P, should have been removed at weeks old when bruises were seen on his body. People didn't do their jobs. They didn't follow procedures. The SWs were more interested in having Connelly perform on camera for the department. CP had stopped being about the children. Baby P's siblings were also physically and verbally abused.
basw.co.uk/policy-and-practice/resources/serious-case-review-baby-peter

Do we consider the MET officers as being blamed for the failings of society and working under difficult circumstances? The Firebrigade? Or do we hold them responsible for not doing their jobs?
I'm from Liverpool, so regardless of the failings, I obviously think the Sun shouldn't have been allowed to do what it did. But in the majority of the deaths of babies I read about and the toddler who died of dehydration next to his father, the SWs didn't follow the CP/Court plan. I've experience the Police not following their CP/safeguarding procedures. Posters on here would be up in arms if their children's teachers did the same. Have you not read the threads from Mothers whose SW has got it so wrong, it's farcical?

"I’m not a social worker and I don’t personally know any, but it seems like an almost impossible job to me."

It isn't an impossible job. You might not affect the outcome for the child, but if you've done your job to the best of your ability, then you use reflection and hopefully come to peace with that. If you look at a packed A&E department, it would look impossible for a doctor to get through the workload (especially on a 12/14 hour shift). But the doctor uses their training, the tools at their disposal, their colleagues etc. Are you making excuses over the death of Marina Young, or do you think that simple procedures should have been followed?

OP I don't know if you've googled and read further.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2008/dec/01/baby-p-ed-balls-statement

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Victoria_Climbi%C3%A9

A few interesting takes on it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/27/sharon-shoesmith-baby-p
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/27/sharon-shoesmith-baby-p-case
https://lynnefeatherstone.org/2009/10/08/sharon-shoesmiths-day-in-court/

I don't think anybody is suggesting the people who harmed and killed Baby P weren't to blame. But there will always be people like that with children in their care and the role of social services is to identify which children are at risk and figure out whether they can remain with their parents with additional support in place or whether they need to be removed and put into care.

I don't agree with demonising individuals, but when something like this happens despite multiple interactions between the family and social services/the medical profession, the system has failed to do its job and it's important to try and figure out how and why it was allowed to happen.

The system exists to thwart the inadequacy or malevolence of individuals. We can’t do much about individuals, which is why systems have to work.

There will always be predators- but the met exists to thwart them not cover for them. That’s the issue when protecting the system becomes more important than protecting the public.

Absolutely but is the latter what happened here, or was there a public outcry, a rushed report and a public sacking?

Also, were the government and political figures just trying to ensure no blame could be pointed at them.

SS don’t have a crystal ball, it does seem extraordinary in a lot of ways that Peter wasn’t removed but SS didn’t just see him once shrug their shoulders and not bother, they did stay involved, the 60 contacts from different agencies is evidence of that. Ultimately the wrong call was made.

Was Sharon S guilty of sitting in her office writing reports on fancy printed paper while her service was chaos around her? I don’t know from what I’ve read so far.

I think it's because the services are there to protect and they failed. Social work isn't a job I could do and it's so much responsibility. However, having dealt with social workers frequently when I was a teacher I can't tell you the sheer frustration of reporting constantly and nothing being done.

One instance in particular, this social worker was totally taken in by the mother of these kids who very clearly being dangerously neglected and there were also signs of abuse. The mother was very manipulative and at a meeting the head was trying to tell her this is serious with everything that had been going on and she just would not listen. Every day I reported something on cpoms it was an awful time. The mother then moved to a different council area and no doubt the entire process started again. It was a pattern, they'd moved several times to different local authorities.

God knows what has happened to them since I often think about them, but that social worker believed the lies the mother told over experienced professionals who saw these children day in, day out. If I ever found out something awful had happened to those kids I would absolutely hold her patrly responsible for failing to protect them when she could have, 2 years this went on for before they disappeared to another part of the country. That's negligent.

, the McCann's would still have a daughter if they hadn't left her alone in an unlocked apartment to go off to dinner with their friends.

Yes they're victims but they're victims caused by their own lack of judgement and actions.

Those brothers should have had more scrutiny put on them. Especially from the police and benefits people (long term unemployed, but not hounded like other benefit claimants). On the local news, it was reported they would abuse and torture their own grandmother, but nothing was done.

Yes. It was awful. And social workers (in particular) continue to be especially singled out for pilliory by the media and society at large even now. I work in mental health (older people's now but previously forensic mental health services). There is no money, our t and c are shocking, we are understaffed and resourced, stretched to our limits, and there is very little collaboration or cooperation with the NHS or other services such as the Police. Systemic lack of joined up thinking. It's worse now than ever before. It's literally impossible for us to help people sometimes. Plus a large percentage of our service users are on drugs. But if a service user does something catastrophic it's automatically blamed on 'the social worker who missed it'.
You would think cases such as Baby Peter, Victoria Klimbie etc would have led to improvement and changed thinking. Things have got worse not better.

Absolutely this. I was 17 when Madeleine McCann went missing and my first reaction was, "Who the hell leaves their babies alone and goes out for dinner?"

A list of improvements were ordered to be made in the case of Baby P - but no apology for the underfunding by the Gov which no doubt contributed to the problem.

Or that the procedures that WERE in place (on the advice of Gov or their advisors) were inadequate or unsuitable. They can’t have been great if they failed this badly.

it’s easy to be wise after the event. And to let others take the blame whilst obfuscating your own errors and major contribution to the sad event in a mass of new reports and improvements - that’s for you Ed.

it was terrible how the doctor and social worker received the blame

I worked in the legal department of an authority in SE England throughout the 1990s.

We would see the same families' names crop up time and time again, as one child after another was made subject to child protection orders. One family will stick in my mind for ever. The mother had a baby virtually every year, except for the year that the father was in prison*. And every year, one more child was removed from her care because of abuse and neglect. In the end, there was enough historical evidence for subsequent children were removed at or soon after birth.

It was heartbreaking, and I really felt for the children, but also for the CP workers for whom it must have felt like being on some sort of treadmill.

The impact on the staff was tremendous, and it led to more than a couple of ill-health early retirements. How hard it must be now, when local authority resources are so much more overstretched.

*for threatening to kill a social worker and smashing up the social worker's car.

The untold story of baby p? I watched this about 10 years ago and I was so shocked and have never forgot it. I was at uni at the time studying nursing and I remember at the time in a class we were learning about “the Swiss cheese model” basically tragedies are very rarely one big error by one person or one system. They are lots of little small errors done by good people who usually are over worked and have no choice but to cut corners due to the systems that they work in. Most of the time that small corner cutting with be fine and no harm will come but every now and again lots of little errors by lots of people will line up like the holes in the Swiss cheese and something terrible happens. I think that’s what happened with baby p and instead of saying the system of overworked professionals failed him, people who were trying their best in awful circumstances were scapegoated

Absolutely tragic- I would say that Baby P and Victoria really stand out in my mind mind as being particularly bad but sadly there have been many more since
In my experience, some families are extremely canny in evading questions and procedures. It’s often that after the case is over that multiple failings are exposed but that doesn’t mean that individuals are always to blame. It’s like the dots are there but not joined up until afterwards when it’s too late for the child.
To call Baby P’s killer the mother’s partner is a complete misnomer; this was a guy who she allowed to live in her house with his equally vile brother- an abuser himself.
I will watch the documentary OP

I remember thinking this at the time but it wasn’t a popular opinion, MP’s and tabloids were very quick to point fingers.

Both these women ended up suicidal and the doctor is still in care, and yet the mother strolled out of jail in 2013!!!
The story of the doctor in particular really upsets me.

Social workers cannot save society. If somebody kicks a child to death, you can of course look at what education and support they got while growing up to see how they ended up doing such a thing.

But at what point does it ultimately just come down to the parents alone. To say yes you’re stressed, poorly educated, under pressure. But kick a child to death, while lying to SS that’s just on you.

And I’m not saying SA shouldn’t be involved or so their best but they can only do so much.