To think carers should be jailed

[InBedBy10]

That man who threw that poor child into the alligator enclosure is said to be severely mentally disabled. He was out with 2 carers who clearly weren't watching him when this happened. Witnesses have said they were on their phones. AIBU to say they should be charged for this incident?

To be honest this is not the first time i have heard about carers being totally negligent and getting away with it. Instead the care company they worked for was sued. Which will probably happen here. But i think its totally wrong that the people directly responsible can walk off into the sunset with no repercussions. There needs to be more liability put on people in this position.

I strongly disagree. Please think a bit harder about this.

We all make mistakes in our jobs and have moments of inattention. We ALL do. Many (probably most) of us are in jobs where our errors, our actions or our omissions do not risk causing physical injury or death. There are, however, people in jobs where a mistake or misjudgment or moment of inattention could cause injury or death. Emergency workers; medical staff; carers; social workers; even teachers; police etc. We need people who are willing to step up and do those jobs (often despite low pay and tough conditions).

If you potentially criminalise people in those roles for their errors, far fewer people will do them. People should not potentially bear criminal liability because they do vital, high stakes roles where a person in a low stakes role would only bear civil liability.

Oh right. The OP started this thread as a public service announcement, not as a chance to indulge in a bit of vacuous viciousness.

I don’t think Serendipity was suggesting that was the OP’s motive in starting the thread.

Ridiculous, knee jerk, baying for blood response to this awful situation.

Let’s wait to find out the facts and events as will be discerned from a full and thorough investigation.

I used to work at a visitor attraction where a lot of carers brought clients. I saw many examples of neglect and consequently serious incidents, including: clients just being left sitting in the car instead of getting a walk in the fresh air; carers just looking at their phones and ignoring clients (very common); one client being found by another visitor half a mile away walking down the middle of a main 60mph road; someone pulling over a full 6ft tall drinks fridge in the shop; and someone launching an unprovoked attack on another visitor in the car park, leaving deep scratches on their face. The problem is that the job is challenging work and underpaid, and this sort of incident is the result.

I do think responsible people should be legally responsible for the actions of those they are responsible for. If my kids carries a knife and stabd someone, i should be responsible for that. If I leave my car keys around and my child takes my car i should be responsible for that. And if I am being paid to look after someone with limited mental capacity and they commit a crime then I am negligent and should be criminally responsible
Whether that's the case in this particular case is all speculation but I do think we ought to be making parents/carers liable for the actions of their wards.

The OPs intentions may not have been entirely noble. However there is no reason why they cannot nurture deabte.

After all the sweetest rose emerges from a pile of shit.

I love that saying....not sure if it's made up but I'm borrowing it.

Quite. But "Something horrendous has happened and I think due process should be followed" isn't a very exciting thread is it?
Threads like these are the 21st century equivalent of "She's a witch! Burn her!"
I think we need to remember that there are are real people who have experienced something truly horrific here and that speculation helps nobody, including the child and parents. Of course the law isn't perfect but I am sure if any one of us was accused of a crime we would expect it to be followed. It's a great deal better than the court of public opinion and virtual mobs with pitchforks anyway,

Their motives are immaterial. There is no law - even on MN - that posting on a thread means you align yourself with it's authors intent.

Carers are very poorly paid - NMW.

Cares allowance is about 40 pence an hour.

I invented it.

If I had my time again, I'd dump the tech stuff and do English.

Having worked in the so called care industry for many, many years I would not be surprised if the carers were on their phones when this man did this.

I have seen time after sad time carers not in the least interested in their clients, not looking at them let alone engaging and talking to them. I always make a point of staring at the carer and letting them know I am watching them - this 99% of the time results in them realising they should be working and not sitting there with their phones and no interaction.

Sad sad sad.

I hope this results in a HUGE shake up in the Care industry

I think it depends, if there’s a full
investigation and they find out it could have been prevented by the carers and partly down to their negligence then yes there should be some outcome against them.

For me it’s the same if you are a parent with a child and don’t stop them from doing something dangerous there would be consequences.

Starting with not seeing it as an industry ?

No. I dont believe people should be held criminally liable for the crimes of others.

A refreshingly unnuanced stance.

I agree with others that we don't know the full facts and the level of need that this man has. Mentally this man may have lifted the child up as they wanted them to see the animals better so their actions weren't ill intended (but based on their disability what they did was dangerous). Everyone seems to think that it was done with intent to inflict harm on a child but I don't think we could actually say that without being present.

Jonty Bravery made no difference why would this?

I accompany people with a learning disability on various activities.
No one in the group has any known violent or behavioural issues, but if they decided to act out of character, what could I do? It’s highly unlikely though, and risk assessments are made, of which abuse from the public is listed.

I might have 8 people with me, no care needs, but might need help in some form, or protecting from the public. All able bodied with capacity, really nice people.

The worry of this terrible occurrence is that you are now scared, and want genuinely everyday people to be locked up for no reason.

They’ve already been dealt less of a deal in their lives, we can’t make this worse.

I hope if you see us out, you’ll smile and say hello.

It’s an incredibly hard job. The pay is atrocious. We need well trained people doing this role who are paid a fair and decent salary for the job. Unfortunately society has a distinct lack of interest or care towards those with disabilities so you end up with agency staff on practically minimum wage.
We don’t know what happened here so can’t comment on this specific case but in general the quality of carers is often poor due to the fact it is a low paid, high stress job.

Yes, the main consequence of indulging in witch burning of carers will be adults and children with behavioural and mental health issues never go out. If poor old John with dementia is never taken out of his house he can’t get lost or offend people by existing, can he?

Meanwhile in the real world sometimes shit goes wrong, however good the carers and parents are. There is a world of difference between this and actual negligence.

Very unreasonable to jump into conclusion.

Surely if he was that dangerous he should've had RMNs, not just carers?

I don't know about anyone else but if I was employed as a carer to someone and they had the inclination or desire to throw someone into an alligator pit I don't really know what I could have done to stop them? I mean physically I'd be overwhelmed and thrown in myself most probably!

What training did they have to prevent it?

I think there should be consequences but unless they could have been expected to predict that this man would attempt to murder a toddler I think jail time is too extreme.

I think there are serious questions to be asked about potentially dangerous adult men being taken out into the community, especially as they are often taken to places with lots of children. My own toddler was on a swing in a play park when a large adult man with severe LD, who was there with two female carers who were young, slightly built and much smaller than him. This man suddenly rushed up and slapped my son hard in the face. The carers could not have stoped him even if they had been quick enough to react. If he had continued his attack they would not have been able to stop him.

Another time another large adult man was on the swings in a play park, again with two adult carers who were at least male. But if he needs two carers he is obviously a risk so why is he in a park around small children? If he kicked off, it would have been very hard even for those two men to restrain him and he could have caused serious harm by the time he was.

I think there needs to be better recognition of the risk and that carers cannot realistically manage this risk.