How many more children are going to die before SOMEONE takes responsibility for their inaction?

[coventgarden]

This pisses me off so much. I know social workers have a had job to do but they are fucking up big time and have for years. I truly believe that until a SW actually has real consequences for their action, nothing will really change and kids will still be abused and killed.

The last thing the UK needs is vigilante social workers going into the profession because they are angry about how not enough was done in previous cases.

If you're concerned that LEAs are having trouble filling SW positions and want to take on a thankless, difficult, important, and (hopefully sometimes) fulfilling role that you might burn out in after a few years, then go for it.

If you think you would have saved Baby Peter, then probably best to give it a miss.

'Nothing as yet as they said I needed a degree but I am constantly thinking of how I can do something. I am considering fostering too.'

And whilst your thinking and considering and judging, children are dying.
How about offering respite care for families in need?
Working at a women's shelter or refuge?
Getting in at the beginning, to be pre-emptive about the problem, rather than fostering and trying to glue Humpty back together again.

interesting reading on this case

'I just knew this would go this way.'

You mean that people who have first-hand experience of dealing with child abuse and its consequences for years might disagree with you?

Thank you for the link, it explains what I was frothing about much more clearly.

Another interesting point that needs to be made is that in recent years there has been a ban by some councils on allowing Social workers to talk to the press. I believe the GSSC have now looked to encourage councils to look again at bans of this type. This was addressed in a recent community care article that said it meant the public dont get to see the positive work SWs do. It was also address in "Social Work Now" journal that shows how a SW become a "reluctant" local hero after it was highlighted how he saved a local youths life by talking him down.

Unfortunately there will always be evil in this work and until SWs are given the resources and legal powers they need then there will always be tradegies.

Now will someone remind me WHY do I want to go into social work.....

coventgarden - your anger on behalf of vulnerable children is understandable but if there weren't any social workers how many more children would be killed?

One of my relatives is a social work manager, most of her staff appear to be either off sick with stress or inadequate. There is a local government mentality which makes it take several years to get someone sacked for incompetence unless they do something very obviously bad. If someone is just rubbish at what they do, the others try and cover it up by taking on more cases.

If you are really considering taking on social work then bear in mind that there are some really, really good social workers, they tend to be overworked and desperately unhappy with the way things are. And there are some crap ones as well. Like any profession.

And for some of these problems there are generations of fucked up families, abuse is habitual and it's very difficult to stop. If you live in a family where everyone hits everyone else and gets drunk every day, it's very hard to break out of that, with or without a social worker

please excuse typos

'so who is at fault then?'

Fundamentally, the people who choose to inflict the abuse on the children - in this case, the parents who were supposed to be caring for her.

I'm currently doing my a-levels so I can do my university degree.

Like you OP seeing this in the news, has made me want to do something. I have 2 dc one is 4 and the other is 8months, and i'm working to pay for my courses too.

If you truely want to make a difference you would do anything to qualify.

You need to walk a mile in someones shoes before you can critise them

Blaming social workers takes blame away from the actual culprits of these crimes - the parents. Social Services is a safety net, thats all it can be, some will always slip through the net. Its a shame that children suffer but its not the social services fault, its their parents that need vilification.

Also, i wonder if you'll have the same view of SW if you ever become one? i suppose you'll break the mould eh!

I was interested to hear her father on the radio complaining that all of the agencies involved had let his daughter down - this is undoubtedly true - but where was he whilst his daughter was being abused and starved for months?

you are bang out of order to generalise and rant.yes some practitioners are inadequate.but many are also v capable dong a demanding job.huge case-loads,legislation,poorly resourced

I'm actually reading the Kyra Ishaq report now. It is infuriating and devestating.

A lot of people dropped the ball here. There were numerous incidences of DV involving the police, the school was also inadequate, so no point blaming the social workers for everything.

I'm a paeds nurse so I'm familiar with the resources and time issues. I also know that the care system is also underfunded and flawed, hence the use of it as a last resort. In fact I often see families where the mother was in care and her baby is being put into care too.

I agree that sometimes people blame the authorities so much, we forget that the parents were the ones to kill the child.

But, it is not ok or acceptable to get things wrong. It wasn't in the Maria Colwell case and it isn't now.

I agree that hysteria is unhelpful, but preventable death, means exactly that - preventable.

Still reading. A major issue was that the mother was not co-operative. Should she have been made to co-operate, and does that mean that non-coperative parents should be forced to comply with the authorities or have the children removed?

Then people would complain about 'heavy-handedness' and a nanny state.

Child Protection is never easy.

I think that a witch hunt of disciplining social workers, GPs or health visitors or schools after a child is murdered by their parents is pointless. It is the carers of the children that need to be punished.

These professionals suffer terrible consequences. The junior doctor who failed to diagnose baby P's broken back has been sucidial. She has suffered more than the two men and the shit of a mother who were responsible for baby P's death.

When things go wrong various professionals live with terrible guilt. They didn't diliberately make mistakes and I fail to see how punishing them harshly would make any difference.

As a professional, if I make a mistake or am incompetant, I expect there to be consequences. Sometimes it is a training issue, other times someone is not fit for the job. No blame shouldn't mean no consequences.

The Dr you referred to was a consultant paediatrician, her sacking was entirely justifiable IMO.

I cannot understand this obsession with scapegoating social workers.
The only time social workers are evil is when they mistakenly remove a child from a loving mother.

It's the abusers who abuse. End of.

Society needs to look at why the abuse happens and fix it, quickly.
Lack of financial and emotional support for parents? Breakdown of community? Whatever the reasons money has to be invested in finding out why these things happen. That's the only way of ending it, not by demonizing social workers.

That read more harshly than I meant it. I meant when social workers remove a child from a loving mother they are actively committing wrongdoing, albeit mistakenly.
When they fail to realise that a child is being abused, it doesn't make them the abusers. The parents are the abusers.

Social workers, doctors, nurses all make mistakes at work. Everyone makes mistakes at work. The difference is that their mistakes cost lives.

I fail to see how severe punishments are going to help. Being under extreme stress caused by fear of losing your career makes people more likely to make mistakes. They need support. No health or social worker wants a child to die. In general they are very caring and hard working people.

I doult that either baby P's GP or the consultant paediatrian, social worker or health visitor deserve to lose their career. In many ways they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If a child dies then these health/ social professionals will carry about the guilt for the rest of their lives.

unfortunately upon graduation i was not handed a crystal ball or the power of telepathy.

I am sure there are many cases where opportunities are missed. but essentially every day you are forced to make a decisions based on the information you have in front of you.

You are wrong if you remove a child and wrong if you dont.

funny though that you only ever hear about the cases that go bad.
no one ever does a serious investigation into the utterly shite lives some kids are saved from.

far more children are helped by SS than die due to their innaction.

and here i hide the thread

Call me old-fashioned but I always think that it's primarily the responsibility of parents/carers to make sure their children don't die, rather than anyone else.

SWs are damned if they do and damned if they don't. To make them personally liable shows you know nothing about the realities of the job - huge workload, too little funding, lack of alternative care providers, lack of socio-economic opportunities for families in deprived areas to name but a few.

I have just seen that the Op wanted to become a SW and so emailed them and asked to help.

Why has mn not got an emoticon for

So you want to do a job where you yourself think you should be thrown in jail if a parent is able to murder tehir own child because you weren't able to read their mind and know they were going to? or worst still, you did know they probably would but the legalities and red tape surrounding your work means that you are unable to do anything yet?

SW didn't kill
the parents/carers did
why do people always try to shift the blame

nooo 2shoes.

it is the SW who didn't read the mind of that parent. it is their fault.

It is also the police's fault that they didn't know that those teenagers were abotu to mug the old lady, the fire brigade who didn't know that chip pan was going to set light, the nurse who didn't know that the lady was going to have a heart attack.

it is bloody ridiculous.