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.

If the IT system says its address A, working 1/2hr later isn't going to magic up the correct address.

She and others who have died in terrible circumstances, have been failed because no one cares about Social Work until they do, this tragedy will quickly be forgotten, we'll all go back to slagging off Reeves et for trying to increase spending for public services and then jump on the next SW who, with an overwhelming workload, makes a mistake.

Its an easy target for Govts to make cuts.

We need to get out of the mindset that says we want great public services but lower taxes, the two are incompatible.

Also the pp calling for the judge to be jailed, did you sit in on the court hearing? do you think if he was jailed, would any judge ever go to the family courts again.

If the IT system says its address A, working 1/2hr later isn't going to magic up the correct address.

So are you saying that no one in that office had visited the home before? Or was aware of the correct address? Because if they had, what was stopping those two social workers ringing the office and getting the right address? It’s not rocket science really is it?

Social workers need the critical thinking, understanding of legislation and reasoning that comes with degree level education. Common sense will only get you so far in a court making a legal case for removing a child. Common sense will only go so far in determining whether someone needs to be detained for their own safety.

It’s really not a straightforward job.

You do know it wasn’t two social workers who went to the wrong address don’t you? It was people from education, not social workers.

They were not social workers

Either way, they must have had contact with someone who did know the correct address. Unless these people all work in complete isolation to one another.

Well we can blame social workers, judges, society, but it was the father that killed her. I've spent my whole life abhorring the death penalty, but sometimes you just need people out of the gene pool.

Why not make a few phone calls and track down the right address? That’s what anyone would be expected to do in any other job.

Agreed. Those two sub-humans are a waste of oxygen and precious resources. It’s unarguable that the world would be a better place without them in it.

Mad that you would read the post just above you about how social workers have 20/25 children to manage and decide they are lazy.

Could you honestly safeguard 20 children effectively?

They did and they made a new appointment for September. Home education visits aren't time sensitive, they are often annual or done in writing.

Yet they never are. Look at all of the past headlines and when have they ever learned?

As someone who has complained about children's socail care and had my case upheld by the LGO, none of the things in my complaint have ever changed. All the following socail workers bar one have done exactly the same thing.

When I put my complaint in, the manager of socail care didn't know if they should be doing that thing. We aren't under child protection and never have been. However we are under the same team managers as Sara.

We have had a string of agency SW who come and go like the wind. The LA said they can not hold agency staff to account. So much more I could say but so many are aware in senior positions of power. None have ever cared.

Rachel Wardel got her OBE during this. You never hear her name in relation to this case

Baby P was supposed to be the never again moment in these tragic cases. Yet dozens more vulnerable children have died needlessly since. I have a feeling that if there was individual accountability and the actual people making the fatal decisions in these departments ended up in the dock themselves, far more would be done to make sure these children were not put in dangerous situations in the first place and we would soon see a drop in these tragic cases. All the time the individuals who are failing these children and making such poor decisions do not have to face individual accountability for their actions, this will happen again and again. Baby P wasn’t the last. Sara won’t be the last either.

Yep!

This sort of thing costs a lot of money, uses substantial resources and there's no clear societal will to pay for it.

I don’t know what the criteria for home education is, but it should be that you are not permitted to do so until there has been a safeguarding visit from social services.

I don’t think people who are legitimately home educating would really not be able to show that was their intention.

These disgusting people were actively deceptive. There were various points where they actively lied. They are responsible for this horrific death, but a lot of very well qualified people do not seem to have considered that point at all. Abusers are liars. They aren’t just ignorant people who need help. They do know what they do is wrong. They lie to hide it. The latitude these people got in court was unbelievable. The judge was credulous. Whoever it was that granted this order did not ask or test this enough.

You want to jail individual social workers? Right, that will fix it 🙄

There aren't enough social workers to manage the children who are actively at risk but you want them to start visiting every single family that starts home educating?

You'd see a massive rise in tragic cases as no one would risk becoming a social worker any more.

If we did bring in a policy like that, as soon as the inevitable exodus from social work and increase in deaths began, maybe we should then punish anyone who was stupid enough to call for it.

They don’t work in isolation, but their records systems are completely separate. Parents involved with services often move fairly frequently to avoid detection and because they know it can take time for all the services to record new addresses etc.

This couple removed the child from school, were evasive with professionals, moved house - they were determined to harm the child and while it’s right that we consider where professionals failed to protect, we also need to recognise how limited those services are in what they can do. It’s very easy to cast judgement sitting with your coffee on a Friday morning, very different when you’re literally balancing which job won’t get done today and hoping the child will be ok at the end of it, but you have 20 other kids all of whom are in the same position.

No, what would happen is that no one would ever choose to work as a social worker in child protection. It is already a massively understaffed system. Would you want to do it?

One thing people tend not to like thinking about is that part of this issue is about where we want our mistakes to be located. In any system involving people, there'll be human error. That's a given.

So part of what we need to think about is whether we want a system leading towards more heavy monitoring and involvement, which means the fuck ups will be removing more kids who shouldn't have been removed (and bear in mind our foster systems don't keep kids safe). Or whether we want one in the other direction, which means the fuck ups will be leaving kids who'd have been safer being taken away even in a system that fails looked after children as badly as ours. At the moment we're more towards the latter but that's for cost reasons. People don't actually want to pay for the resources it would take.

So you’d take the two education workers and put them in jail? Or the court judge who ignored the social workers report repeatedly and refused to allow this child to be removed - you’d put him in jail too? Or is it just social workers who should be held to account?

Yep, and if you every read the outraged threads when a nursery or school has 'wrongly' referred a family to social services it's clear most people absolutely would not want professionals to have more legal rights to intervene in their families.

We home educate in Italy where strict regulations, and yearly in person exams take place at the school. I can see endless opportunities to hide abuse, even under these supposedly strict conditions, not least because the schools are disorganized.

They have a culture of letting things slide, and making excuses because there are so many kids to cater for within the school, that reaching out to home Ed kids is way down on their priorities.

We actively try to engage with them, but it does seem a bit pointless. If I'm honest, I think they like the ego boost of a bit of authority, but as soon as it requires any action on their part it never materializes.

Our current example being that we had to pay a private school, to do the yearly exams forced upon us by the LEA, because the local school had completely failed, despite three reminders, to include our kid in the exam schedule.

We aren't ideological home schoolers, we did it because of language issues, but I can't help but describe the school/LEA as a shambles. My door is wide open for home visits and checks, but they wouldn't make any difference to anything.

I can't see how anyone can teach or learn in such a poorly organized mess, and the idea that they might spot anything in the community is a joke.