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.

I work in a role where safeguarding referrals come up often. After working in the area for over 2 decades I think the system is deeply broken. I have experienced malicious referrals, serious referrals to then be dropped, power greedy people gravitating towards the top, poor decision making skills, inadequate training, serious deficits in funding… the list goes on really.

Fwiw - I spent my whole childhood being abused. Despite opportunities arising, no one stepped in.

I was training to be a social worker. I switched degrees after one year. That was 2015, things were very bad then and they will be way worse 10 years later. From my shadowing days, it was so obvious to me that social workers are set up to fail. Separate teams have been amalgamated to save money, meaning much higher case loads but no extra workers or time. It’s a case of constant fire fighting of the most awful and urgent cases, with simply not enough hours in the day to even get through them, let alone the mountain of other cases (which could turn out to be just as bad, if left). It is quite literally an impossible task, and SWs have statutory responsibility, meaning they can personally be prosecuted if things go wrong. I don’t think anyone in my cohort is still a practicing social worker, 8 years after graduation, and I’m not surprised. Instead of asking why are we spending money on this, the question should be why are we not spending nearly enough money on this.

"Why is my tax funding these useless departments?"

What's the alternative? Maybe stop funding them? What do you expect to happen then? Privatise child protection?

The issue is that child protection is not really valued is it? Successive "efficiency drives" mean that you have under trained, over worked inexperienced staff paid very poorly expected to sacrifice their own free time and family lives while hearing in the press that gold plated pensions need scrapping ( which is basically another way of cutting pay)

It's cheaper to announce reviews of the inevitable failures than fund the system properly.

It's like the prisoner release mistakes. The cause is underfunded courts and prisons services and privatised transfer systems and apparently often incorrect and missing paperwork. What was the solution - a new detailed comprehensive "checklist". Soundbytes not fixing the underlying causes.

Then eventually a judge gets months/ years and all the time in the world and paid a lot of money to scrutinise every decision / mistake made in excruciating detail.

Ultimately you get what you pay for. The narrative is that public sector is bloated and full of freeloaders and usually the party that says we will cut it gets elected.

Have you considered that these organisations are suffering from underfunding, hence these types of failings and should they therefore receive more funding? Also how many kids were saved and would be impacted if these organisations didn't exist? It's a very narrow view and broad sweeping statement, these things are never as simple as a single simple measure. Also human error will always exist, no matter how well structured and funded any organisation is. That's just humanity, we're not machines ( incidentally AI also makes mistakes...).

Social workers have no legal right to demand to see the child much less speak to them alone. Our work needs parental consent, police intervention or a legal order. We can’t rock up at someone’s door, or school, or wherever and demand to see the child.

I used AI to work out how many hours per week a social worker would need to complete all the tasks required for an average experienced social worker's caseload in my area currently (22 children including child protection, PLO and care proceedings) and the calculation was around 50 hours. They get paid for 37. Miracles are expected.

They are not precious. There is nothing precious about lazy civil servants who do not care about their job they're being paid to do.

SWs don’t remove babies….they don’t return babies…..they don’t have that power…..they wanted to remove Sara…..their report to the court indicated this…..but the courts sided with the view of the Guardian….so Sara remained with her father

Social workers aren’t civil servants, they’re employed by the local authority. And there’s nothing to suggest social workers here were lazy, inexperienced maybe but that’s what happens when you expect people to carry excessive levels of risk - the good, experienced social workers leave.

This

From NSPCC

Findings from the data

• In the last five years there was an average of 56 child deaths by assault or undetermined intent a year in the UK.
• Children under the age of one are the most likely age group to be killed by another person, followed by 16- to 24-year-olds.
• Child homicides are most commonly caused by the child’s parent or step-parent.

edit -the stats have been similar for years, in fact could be improving

Not the same but I work as a Nurse. A few weeks ago I had 56 patients and 3 Nurses to look after them. When something goes wrong and one of those patients comes to harm as the Nurses looking after them tend to other patients who is at fault? Would it be the NHS Trust who put the Nurses in that position in the first place or the Nurses themselves for not working harder? How do you think those Nurses on duty that day felt?

Being a social worker must be the most under valued healthcare job out there.

Screw up, make a poor judgement call ie believe a parent.. or follow the instructions of a court or go to the wrong address because the system is so slow and old, that the update done wasn't applied to their own database..... and the whole world will come down on you like a ton of bricks, even demanding jail time.

All the good work you've done in the past, will count for nothing, you'll be hung out to dry and the Govt ministers who cut child services to the bone, will retire and get an honour.

I do sometimes wonder if one of the problems with social workers is that they need a degree (why?) when experience and common sense would be more useful. That poor little girl.

"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."

This wasn't the social care team and as posters have already said they would have had no right of entry and no right to insist on seeing the child.

You can say a lot of things about social workers as a workforce but that they are lazy and don't care are about the furthest from the truth.
I am really good at my job. I'm a team manager and have some extremely valuable skills. I could transfer my expertise to the private sector and be earning twice what I earn as a social work manager if I chose to, but I don't. I have a social worker in my team who left a corporate job earning double what she earns now to do train as a social worker because she's passionate about improving children's lives and improving the system. Believe me - it's not a job you can fail upwards into. Failing social workers exist of course but they tend to weed themselves out after a while, it's not a career for the weak.

To be fair, guardians are also social workers usually with frontline experience before they move into cafcass. Guardians' views are absolutely privileged by the courts which can be a total farce - I've known social workers who couldn't hack it in frontline move to cafcass because it's easier. They also have zero oversight of their recommendations to court. Local authority social workers have their care plans a) approved by senior managers before it's written b) checked by their manager and c) checked and approved by a lawyer but guardians write their reports and file them. They have far too much power.
Actually having written that I vaguely remember that after the Sara Sharif tragedy there was going to be a review of cafcass? I need to google that

We need a degree because it's a specialist profession. Social work training includes a requirement for 200 days of on the job training and they also have an assessed and supported year of employment after qualifying that they have to pass. We are expected to write high quality assessments and court statements and to understand complex research and theories. It's not a 'get in there and hope for the best' job.

As well as that, if it was replaced by some kind of on the job training it would be more expensive and cumbersome (needing a whole system to support it) than working with universities to get social workers qualified externally.

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.

This. Fucking bastards. That poor, poor girl, failed by every single one of them. It makes me so angry. I can barely read about this case as it’s utterly heartbreaking.

Why hasn’t the judge been sacked and jailed? How the fuck is he/she allowed to get away with this?

Yup. The family courts in this country are a scandal.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/10/explosive-court-transcript-journalists-family-cases-judge-parents-secrecy

What is terrifying is that as far as I’m aware, this incompetent individual has been allowed to carry on in their job with no consequences, free to condemn more children to their deaths. It’s a fucking disgrace.

And sorry for the multiple posts but I am absolutely haunted by this case and that poor sweet girl. It goes to prove that some people (those monsters who killed her) genuinely are pure evil.