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.

So the social worker writes a report with a clear recommendation that the child be removed. The family engage a lawyer who, acting on their clients instruction, argues the home is safe. The judge makes a decision to go with the lawyer and returns the child to their abusive home environment. Who are you holding accountable there?

It was the courts that returned her to her father.

The judge should be debarred.

Yes. The fault is with the court system and the law that applies. The presumption that both parents have contact. That is lunacy, and I understand that this government intends to abolish it. It has been the product of men’s rights activists and has meant the destruction of protection as the purpose of court orders

Exactly.

This was a child who had social workers who acted properly. This was a child who was removed to safety, more than once I believe.

Yet the court system returned her.

Whilst the privacy of her older sibling needs to be respected I do hope the inquiry feels able to properly pursue the fact that if that child was removed because her treatment was much worse due to her being a girl, and her safety was at risk, then what protections were put in place for Sara as she grew?

There needs do be radical reform in the family court. The starting point simply must be "Is your child safe with you?" - only after that should the questions be relevant. The first and foremost issue must be children's safety. Too often the family courts are focussed on parents rights, rather than responsibilities.

They will be saving thousands of children every year you just don’t hear about it because the horrific things that could have happened didn’t happen!

Your dedication is extraordinary but it is also punishing on you and your children. I know you can't bear to turn away from what you see but really you need to look after yourself too. You can't fix the world and do it all on your own even if you work yourself into the ground. It's a trap.
Perhaps you can think about ways to reduce the burden of such long hours and being up half the night to finish reports. In the end, you may have to prioritise, however hard it is. At least start small by deciding to finish one evening at 5, then build on that, aiming to do it more often until you get up to, say every other day.

Yes exactly. When you look at who really had the power to stop this known abuser hurting little Sara that family Court Judge is right at the top of the pile. They are unaccountable, it’s so unbelievably dangerous and messed up. I have had to watch my child be impacted by forced contact and the minimisation of countless issues whilst my own hands were basically tied behind my back, they made me send him and essentially collude in hurting him. He is now very traumatised as am I and those many judges we saw continue their lives completely oblivious to the damage they have caused. When we consider how many children are killed by abusive parents, we rarely stop to think about the number who are ”only” seriously damaged. It’s an emergency and the latest change in the law around presumption of contact is likely to take decades to really filter down and even then, I don’t believe things will really change. Judges are not child welfare experts, they are not DV experts, they shouldn’t be making these decisions, but if they are to do so, at the very least, they should be accountable

I know and I think this needs to change either by changing social worker powers or asking police to attend more routinely

^This is so true. It’s the judge who sent Sara to live with her abusive father and stepmother who should be scrutinised. The SWs wanted to remove her and weren’t able to.

The judge who made this order was named. She is still a judge, and her name is Alison Raeside.

Raeside is also the same judge who made a care order for the other children.

Why she did not query this discrepancy is not clear. Why a highly educated judge did not make a connection is a mystery.

What we do know is her gushing endorsement of the stepmother as authentic supervisor of contact between this monstrous man and his daughter. If she is an example of judicial decision making for the safety of children then we should be worried. Raeside was paid a fortune from our tax to make decisions, and she had the power to investigate this case fully. It’s not clear she did, and for all we know, she’s still in post making decisions for children.

Do you think she did this deliberately, deciding oh i'll let a child go back home and see what happens?

She made an error, a very costly one but did rely on the evidence of a inexperienced SW who said that she had no concerns Sara would be harmed & went on her recommendations.
She also went on a report that ".... concluded that the children were being given stability and appropriate guidance by the father and stepmother and recommended that a child arrangements order should be made in the father’s favour"

Not a fan of scape goating people, who have no right of reply.

Perhaps would be better to ask why an inexperienced SW was given this case and why SCC issued this report?

It's not legally possible to confer powers of entry upon social workers and nor would it be appropriate. Police have different training and equipment and procedures than social workers do - they have risk assessments and management plans when they have to enter a property without consent that social workers would never have.

Agree. Why do they accept parents answers so quickly. They should insist on going into the house when they go round.
How many times have they been turned away at the door. They have been told the child is ill or asleep.
They believe lies when people say that their kids have fallen over and that's why they are bruised.
They cancel appointments deliberately.

Baby Ps mother smeared his face with chocolate to cover bruises.

Ask the mother to wash his face.
These parents are sly and try to cover up what they have done. You need to stop accepting their lies. Do you need a degree to do that?

Some people should never be allowed to keep their kids anyway, we are too soft. Alot of it could be nipped in the bud before it happens.

If you read the story of lola james her mother was total filth herself.
Living on benefits, morbidly obese, 3 kids by 3 different dads, none of them involved, and a pigsty of a house oh a dog throw into the mix to contribute to all the chaos and the mess.

Thats before she invited a man she didnt know to move into her home and be around her children. He then went on to injure all her kids and finally killed one, while she was asleep in bed. She knew full well what he was like. Should be ashamed of herself living like that even before he moved in.

Things should be much stricter and good standards should be upheld. Thats the trouble, everything is so slack and anything goes. There is no protection for children and babies of feckless and inadequate parents/step parents. Its embarrassing.
System not fit for purpose.

Raeside did actually say how very upsetting it was. But it was her comments made about Batool which seem particularly concerning to me.

I do not think she applied sufficient attention, and unlike a rather junior social worker, she is paid at least 6 figures a year to make these very challenging decisions. Judges have the power to go through the work of social workers, Guardians and experts in detail. Yes they are entitled to rely on reports, but they can make critical conclusions. Not gushing remarks about stepmothers. This kind of granular scrutiny is not unreasonable imo. It is part of public service; the family court should get used to transparency.

Ok then police need to attend more routinely

I worry about this too. It is a massive responsibility and it seems like the infrastructure is not there to support social workers. They are overloaded and expected to make every call 100% correctly. If they do not, a child might die.

Who wants to work under this pressure, knowing that the system may well let them down? They are not even well paid.

It is not a job I would be willing to do, but it is job that needs doing.

We need to ensure that social workers are properly paid, have better working conditions better support and training and that we can massively improve retention to keep experienced staff and improve the service.

Sadly, we must also accept that every child cannot be saved, because there is no such thing as a perfect system.

Having worked in a role where I was referring to social services, I am not surprised at all by these rare cases. I just know there are endless less extreme but still horrendous cases where concerned people will have sat in meetings pleading with social workers to visit again, investigate further, and watched them minimise and deflect. There are so many children being failed.

I know social services are overwhelmed and understaffed but the complacency I've witnessed is indefensible even by that .

@Netcurtainnelly they can't insist to go in. And the people who got the wrong address were the home education section so assume have even fewer rights than social workers

Why were they "idiots" for going to the wrong house? They literally went to the address on file.

Mistakes were made but I'm not sure how this particular one could have been avoided.

Part of the problem is that professionals like social workers start off working with a family to support them with their parenting. It's all about building trust with the parents and having a good relationship with them. That makes it hard for them to suddenly recommend that the children are removed.

I adopted two children who were seriously neglected. They had huge files - just about everyone day another neighbour, teacher, medic, family member even contacted social services with yet another concern, and it was simply just added to the growing pile.

The birth parents were actively avoiding the social workers too. They were never at home for visits.

But the social workers kept ploughing on with a "be nice" strategy to get the birth parents on side.

I said before, it's only when there is a catastrophic incident that anything is done.

I have the minutes of the meeting where my girls were taken into care. There were 14 professionals round the table at that meeting - social workers, teachers, nursery staff, paediatrician, GP, police, health visitor....the threshold for removal is high, often involves lots of agencies, and is seen very much as a last resort

If there is no catastrophic incident, they just keep giving another chance.

I work in a school and am a safeguarding lead. These cases are heartbreaking, unfortunately social services are under such pressure that we have seen some very risky situations continue and despite doing everything we could and going above and beyond our limits as a school we still haven’t had the support put in place or children protected from harm at home and the worst part is having your hands tied because we can’t do anymore. I can see how these tragedies happen.

Do you think social workers decline to intervene with some families because they are lazy and can't be arsed? It's because in the hierarchy of risk the families you're discussing do not represent the priority. Social services do have to decline some referrals even if professionals would like them to intervene. There aren't enough resources to work with every family who would benefit.

Increasingly schools are having to call on methods to overturn socail cares refusal to look at child protection concerns.

I hope you don't work in child protection. Having Feckless useless parents is neglect

You can not blame children for being abused or look down your nose at "those type of parents" to defend turning a blind eye

Which is exactly how I manged to ignore my socail worker for a year. Because I'm very well educated and wealthy. Someone has decided I'm a nice person and people like me do / do not. . .

The law says my child in need needs to be observed every x months "but we don't do that in Surrey" ie we don't follow the law

What post do you think you're replying to? Because it's not mine!