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?!

I watched this documentary a few years ago and it
has stayed with me ever since
Now when anything happens and there is a witch-hunt for people, I always think what are the true events that happened.

I think this witch hunt has inadvertently put more children at risk.
-public have less trust in social workers and services, so less likely to seek support.
-Less people want to actually take up such a valuable profession.

Blame culture is poisonous for creating safe services.
-if something does go wrong do you think practitioners will be open and honest. The way this was dealt with I think would lead to even more secrecy and defensiveness.
-Duty of candour brings fear to practitioners, fueled by how this was dealt with, from start to finish.

i really hope lessons are learned about that process.
Appreciative inquiry, is a much better style in my opinion.

It sickens me more than inadequate scum get paid to breed?
Having children is optional they don't have to have them, yet they keep on having them?
Even when arrested she was pregnant again it's disgusting.

I don’t think there are any easy answers to it unfortunately. A lot of it is linked to their own upbringing, the lack of opportunities and the cycle of disfunction continues.

I saw another documentary about mothers coming from a last meeting with their child before their legal rights are terminated and I found it very heartbreaking. I can’t imagine having my child taken off me never to see him again.

And social workers are stuck in the middle of this!

People always forget that if moone worked in those horrible roles, the scum would get away with much worse.

If I was a doctor I'd bever have been willing to work in such a clinic.

I'd never be a social worker for the stress and tragedy.

So who is going to fill those roles?

No malice meant, but it's not going to be people with the best skills and options, certainly not long term. The riskiest jobs need the best qualified and capable and you can't attract those people with excessive workloads of emotionally traumatising cases.

Sick of seeing kids killed and abused and constant blaming of The System as though its some passive situation. Its not. Its wilful underfunding and investment.

You can be different to your own upbringing if you want.

You can better yourself it's possible.

Lack of opportunities?
Opportunities are out there for all.
I

Their lives would be less stressful if they didn't have children.

As bad as things were at the time that these deaths happened, they are much worse now. Fewer people take up the profession and social care budgets have been repeatedly reduced, year on year.

Remember that documentary on Winterbourne View a few years back? What do you think is happening now?

Hang on. Lucy Letby was guilty.

I agree that the McCanns have had vitriol directed at them.

A few people have tried but weren't listened too. Lockdown also made it easier to parents to behave like this.

Absolutely agree with this. Much of the time they have no interest in their own family members or ignore what their own child is doing to their children but then complain about the authorities. What about looking in the mirror?

Wasn't there something like that with Arthur Labinjo-Hughes? His uncle reported the abuse to the police and they said that if he attempted to visit his nephew himself he'd be in trouble for breaching lockdown rules? Lockdown didn't contribute to Baby P's death though.

Have you read the serious case review ? It's a fact that there were failings in the system. I have extreme sympathy for the professionals involved and the way their lives were ruined. Mainly because, they did fucking care. But the system was (and still is) broken ,and they were used as scapegoats and easy targets. CPS Decided not to prosecute after the mum being investigated twice. Why did no heads fall there?

The witch hunt was extremely political and there was pressure from society and the media to see "heads roll ". The higher ups caved to that pressure. It was all a shit show.

The criminals were dealt with by the justice system, not a lot to milk there. A broken system though, generated headlines and campaigns for months and months. It wasn't the system on trial by media though, it was named individuals that did the best they could, with what they had , within the restrictions and laws they had available to them.

It wasn't a single social worker or doctor that had the power to remove the child . It wasn't a single social worker or doctor that decided he was to be returned to his mother.

Baby WAS failed. Primarily by his "care" givers , but also by the system.

The reason why lessons must be learned and procedures scrutinised is that you can't stop people from killing their kids . You just can't. You can ensure there are systems in place to intervene and protect these children. Given all the cuts though, that's just lip service.

SS as they stand atm are still underfunded, overworked, understaffed, under resourced. Lack of sufficient foster carers , adequate placements, funds, alternative support etc. Time lines are ridiculous, the number of chances given are ridiculous.No lessons have been learned.

This reminds me of my aunt and cousin

Aunt and uncle broke up and she brainwashed my cousins (male and female) not to have anything to do with my uncle as 'he left us!wahh!'

Cousins are not very bright and even though they'd seen what had been happening between their parents,they 100% believed my aunt

Long story short,aunt started dating a bloke who groomed her and started abusing cousin (female)

Aunt refused to believe cousin and turned on her,new bloke dumped her so aunt and cousin started seeing men from the takeaway round the corner to their house

Both aunt and (then just turned) 14 year old cousin where sleeping (being raped in cousins case) with two men from the takeaway-cousin was threatened to keep sleeping with (being raped) with her 'boyfriend' as it was her fault aunts boyfriend had dumped aunt and if this new boyfriend dumped aunt,she'd destroy cousins life

Cousin fell pregnant at 15,nothing happened-she went on to have the baby (aunt brought baby up and cousin went on to have 4 more babies)

As a family,we rang the police,ss,childlike,nspcc-you name them,we rang them from the moment aunt started seeing the first bloke

I was 19 and had just had my first baby,was interviewed by a sw (who was a nasty bitch) was called a liar who deserved to have my own baby taken away (with a threatening phone call a week later) and was told to 'keep my nose out-'aunts rules are the only rules for those children'

She believed whatever aunt said without digging any further,even when it became obvious what was happening and then cousin fell pregnant

She was badly let down by ss and it could have been a lot different if only they'd dug a bit further (or saw what was right in front of them)

The family did have a few sw's but I was only interviewed by that one and all believed aunts take on it all

Not one stepped in

i haven’t read the review, from what was said in the documentary it seems it was rushed and full of errors.

But I otherwise agree with you. Peter was clearly being very badly abused and wasn’t removed so ultimately the system did fail.

It is hard to know that the system is worse than it was when Baby Peter died. The population keeps increasing and social deprivation is on the increase. It’s a recipe for disaster.

The media need to be held accountable also for witch hunts and storing up social unrest. A reporter for The Sun was asked why they didn’t report on the police involvement with Baby P and if it had been because the police gave a press conference to charm their way out of things. She said she didn’t want to answer. I find her her & people like her enraging. Happy to push people to the brink to sell red tops.

I think we really really need as a society to invest in parents and their children. All of society's ills come down to parents not parenting well enough for a huge variety of reasons. Knife crime, violent crime, mental health problems...all directly linked to kids being parented by struggling lone parents, abandoned by their dads leading to an absence of male roles models and lack of adequate support generally. We have become horribly individualistic as a society and we are also work obsessed for financial reasons. All our public services are under funded and there are just as a result a huge number of kids who are in real danger at worst and incapable of becoming productive members of society at best.
Its tragic. And yet we tinker around the edges rather than say kids need community. Kids need fathers. Kids need structure. The poor social workers are getting the blame for complete societal breakdown.

The frontline SW in Baby P’s case really did seem like she genuinely tried.

Yet still they wonder why there's a recruitment crisis with doctors and social workers.
Go figure.

I 100% agree with your last sentence - that’s it in a nutshell for me.

And it’s not just SW a lot of teachers end up in a nightmare situation trying to deal with kids who are not being looked after by their parents.

Weighing up the truth (or otherwise) what's written by the scum press should be a mandatory part of the curriculum.
The problem with low quality click bait stories and the subsequent social media frenzy is that huge swathes of the GB public are too stupid or too lazy to see the actual truth.

You are correct. But what happens in all aspects of health and social care, is that individuals are scapegoated rather than looking at the system issues.

Pass the parcel of blame.
The people who killed poor Peter are those people who seem to have been overlooked as far as the press were concerned.
Yes there were failings in a non joined up system.
The sacking by Ed Balls was a chest beating exercise. Poor woman. I'm too am pleased she felt able to stand up for herself.
The rest of the professionals who were publicly named, just unacceptable. They were not charged with any crime, they had a right to anonymity surely?
The fact the poor boys mother cannot keep herself out of jail says everything about her paltry sentence and 'rehabilitation ' .

The Societal breakdown has broken down by more and more people shagging around and have babies,and babies with multiple partners.
Most cases of neglect abuse, murder of children seems to be where a stepparent or mothers new partner is involved or fathers new partner even.

Very rarely are the children products of relationship were parents are happily married.
People enter into having children far too easily and without committment.
Fathers bugger off and start again elsewhere, thinking the social will provide for the mother and the kids.
It's just so depressing.
Wonder what it's like in say France, Spain, and Germany, do they do it better?
If so we should learn from them.
It's all basically about sex and contraception though.
We have more and more contraception than ever, but more and more people having babies that they are not equipped to be able to care for them properly.
We may have laughed at no sex before marriage but at least we didn't have the terrible social problems we have today.
Some people are disgusting the way they carry on.

The mother was released in 2022 and has been recalled to prison for breaking the terms of her licence. Not sure why a poster earlier said she was out in 2013.

I think the problem with this case was social worker and doctor being too trusting and as individuals they cannot remove a child from a dangerous situation. They can however, feed into the senior team that starts the court process. This case did show a clear light on the failings of SS and the police and the NHS. They were not working together for the safety of children. Parents are capable of crime and dc depend on these services. Everyone letting dc down does need investigation.

This case did lead to a shortage of social workers. I’m not sure it’s all about money either. It’s about not wanting to do children work. Who can blame them?

It's awful the mother got such a pathetic sentence and I think the Government has since addressed the sentencing guidelines. It's awful the prpfessionals get dragged through the press and photos released etc. That should never happen unless they have acted in such a way that warrants their own criminal charges. They should be held to account internally or by an independent authority.

I think the government need to stop prioritising keeping clearly neglected and abused children with their parents. It's a gamble of an innocent life. There should be more money, more resources and tougher rules around child safe guarding but that's the same sadly in all essential services.

I also have to add , I could never be a social worker as I'd either end up with a mental breakdown or in jail myself trying to rescue a kid. I struggle enough being a TA and only marginally involved in cases of neglect and abuse. I can't imagine how these people do it day in, day out.