The Sara Sharif case: what is the point of taxpayers funding these failing organisations?

[softstone]

This appalling case has highlighted catastrophic failures of many organisations. If I failed in my job to this extent I would be sacked and possibly jailed. Yet the upshot of this report seems to be oh dear yes it’s a terrible shame, never mind.

Why is my tax funding these useless departments? This is not part of the social contract. We’re supposed to live in a civilised society. It’s awful.

"Lessons will be learned"...until next time. Makes me sick 😡

They're going to implement pointless controls on home education and say lessons have been learned... Until it happens to another child and then they'll have to find a different scapegoat. The cycle will just continue on and on, there will always be someone or something else to shift focus away from their failings.

I find it very hard to even read about this story, it is utterly heartbreaking. That poor, poor, dear little girl.

She was absolutely failed by the system, and it's horrifying to see the extent of the failures. However, I don't think it's necessarily helpful to just point the fingers at the institutions that failed her. We need to properly understand how and why things went so horribly wrong. The blame game just gets in the way of that, because it encourages people to be defensive and hide the truth.

The one that got me is the idiots who went the wrong house and decided they wouldn’t bother at all. Those two people in particular could have saved Sara’s life.

So heartbreaking to hear things like this.

And the fact that there are no professional accounts or criminal consequences for such negligence makes people think they can just clock off, and if anything goes wrong, they’ll pass the buck somewhere else.

Social work teams in particular are never held to account it seems. They seem to fail in every direction.

The main problem highlighted was the lack of experienced social workers and their huge caseloads - I think I read somewhere that they were supposed to be dealing with 6 or 7 cases a day?

Sacking and jailing the few precious social workers we have isn't going make things any better.

Why is my tax funding these useless departments?

These "useless" departments save thousands of children every year. You just don't hear about it.

You only hear about the thankfully rare cases where they fail.

There will never be a perfect infallible system because a system which is staffed and run by humans is always going to have human error.

Or, they had 6 more children to urgently see that day and spending time trying to find another address would have meant another child wasn't seen.

Every social services department is understaffed. The fact that a computer hadn't been updated and the home education team went to the wrong address is an appalling tragedy, but people are human, they make mistakes or get tired. Which of us hasn't left work for after the weekend when feeling low.

The individuals who tried and failed to see Sara must feel absolutely awful, just as those neighbours who heard her cries but did nothing will probably never forgive themselves.

They don't need me pointing out their failings.

If any of you think you could do a better job you could always apply.

She had already been identified as being at risk. They shouldn't have been allowed to home school her in those circumstances imo, but I do think it makes sense to have safeguarding checks for home educated children. Who else is going to check on them?

No, a child died horrifically because someone couldn’t be bothered. If you get the wrong address, you go to the correct property. If that means working half an hour later than so be it.

No one's going to check on them because as this case has highlighted, there already aren't enough social workers to check on the children already identified as being at risk.
There definitely aren't enough staff to go checking up on home educated children just in case.

I guess we’re all supposed to be policemen, politicians, judges and social workers all at the same time?

Of course we can criticise public servants who fail at their job.

The person responsible for Sara’s murder is with the two monsters who did it. Stop blaming everything else and put the blame where it belongs.

Do you think home educated children are locked away from the world?

Sara Sharif was in a school for a long time and the safeguarding concerns weren't acted on appropriately. Many other children in schools are abused at home and the processes aren't followed correctly, either by school staff or those in social services.

What do you think these safeguarding checks should entail?

You don't actually have any idea how many extra hours they may have been working, or what other pressures they may have been under.

It's easy to judge from the outside.

I very much doubt that there are many people going into social work as a career who just don't give a shit. There are many much less stressful paths that they could choose for the same money.

A child died horrifically because her parents abused her.

If it was thoroughly investigated most of the failings are down to understaffing and underfunding.

Systems not updated, probably in a very long to do list of minimum wage admin

Inexperienced staff with too high a case load without adequate support

Managers with too high a workload.

Guardian - again probably too much work, not provided with the full background. Fear of being accused of racism.

Can we remember the blame is with the adults that committed these crimes. We shouldn’t need a service to prevent parents killing their own DC because they are abusive scum.

Look at the cases where parents have committed suicide over the lack of support for their severely disabled children, but no one wants to pay more tax.

Are you doing anything useful?

If parents have chosen to "homeschool" their children in order to hide abuse from concerned teachers, which is what happened in Sara's case, then yes, I think it's quite likely that they might be locked away from the world.

Nobody is saying that schools are perfect or that all homeschooling families are abusive. Merely that schools do generate regular contact with adults outside the family who may spot concerns if they are there, whereas homeschooled children don't have those regular contact points.

It isn't for me to determine exactly what the checks should entail.

There is no need to be defensive about it. Nobody is accusing you of anything.

I think a lot of failures are actually due to lack of proper funding, no communication between systems (again a funding issue), people being expected to work on thirty cases a week and being not trained, not paid enough. And these cases happened during conservative funding cuts. Not saying labour will be better, hope they will, but blaming Labour about Sharif is unreasonable.
And, not popular opinion maybe but disguising abuse as home schooling is another issue we need to face.
Britain has a major problem with child abuse. I've been traumatised reading about cases like Arthur, Sara, Molly, Victoria, baby p, Logan... I remember them all... the government needs to do something. It's horrifying.

And she could have been saved by the people who’s job it was to save her. This is a child known to SS since infancy. Reports were made.

But never mind, because it was her parents fault so nobody else should have to take accountability.

I see it was the home education team that visited the wrong address anyway, not social workers.

So completely irrelevant really.

Home education workers have no rights to see children or enter homes. Even if they knocked on the right door, no one had to answer the door, talk to them or let them in.

There were two of them? Even worse. This shows lack of ownership in a big way. I think most of us, finding ourselves in the wrong place for a work commitment, would find out the address of the right place and shift our arses over there immediately. How must they feel, knowing they could have saved her?

How many children did they save?
You only hear about the failures.
How many cases should each social worker be given? 10, 100, 1000? As many as needed?
How many extra hours should each social worker work? 24/7?