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.

That's why proper inquiries are so important, to find out exactly what happened and why.

As a HCP, I have no problem with someone loosing their job if they have been deemed unfit for practice by the proper channels (i.e, not media witchhunts). No one would want an incompetent surgeon or ICU nurse to stay in post, so why should child protection professionals be any different?

However, I do agree that in CP work, poor funding and organisational structures, lack or training, excessive case loads often play a greater part then simple incompetence.

I do agree with the damned if you do, damned if you don't. People want children protected by the state, but then they also want no state 'interference' in their parenting. AFAIK, A smacking ban in Scandinavia reduced the rate of deaths from child abuse, but there was outrage when it was suggested here.

That's why proper inquiries are so important, to find out exactly what happened and why.

As a HCP, I have no problem with someone loosing their job if they have been deemed unfit for practice by the proper channels (i.e, not media witchhunts). No one would want an incompetent surgeon or ICU nurse to stay in post, so why should child protection professionals be any different?

However, I do agree that in CP work, poor funding and organisational structures, lack or training, excessive case loads often play a greater part then simple incompetence.

I do agree with the damned if you do, damned if you don't. People want children protected by the state, but then they also want no state 'interference' in their parenting. AFAIK, A smacking ban in Scandinavia reduced the rate of deaths from child abuse, but there was outrage when it was suggested here.

I don't get it, either, 2shoes. The fact that so many people failed to spot Baby P's real situation suggests to me that it was an unusual and difficult situation to assess, and the relevant health professionals were unreasonably over-worked, not that they were idiots that deserved to be fired.

Kyra Isaq's mother and stepfather killed her.

Undoubtedly there were omissions and errors by the authorities, but some of the families that SW deal with are off the scale in terms of violence/drug and alcohol abuse and cruelty.

Issues that SW are now expected to deal with used to be handled by the police.

We live in a society where people expect more and more that govt/authorities will deal with social problems and pick up the pieces of dysfunctional families, but react badly when the same govt/authorities interfere in their lives.

I would not/could not be a social worker for any salary. I would not be able, every day, to deal with the futilities, stupidity and downright evilness of some people.

All I can say is, thank heaven someone is prepared to do so.

It is interesting how we don't blame the police when there's a murder, but somehow we think that social workers should be able to keep 100% of children safe, 100% of the time . . .

The people that could have prevented this death best of all were the child's mother and stepfather.

Just for a change, I agree with Gigantaur.
People's view of SW'ers is so off the mark. My step dad has just retired as a head of dept. worked diligently for ss his whole life.
sw'ers have a very difficult time.
yes there are failings. but good work is done. I had no idea that abuse was so rife till i came to mn. and saw loads of mums posts about having been abused themselves. then it finally dawned on me that as a woman with confidence, who grew up in a very loving family, i am actually the very very small minority. when you actually think about that, how ironic and sad is that .was talking to my mum about this the other day.
abuse goes on. its rife.
all proffessions, as highlighted in baby p, gp's, paeds, specialists, miss warning signs. stop blaming all this shit on sw'ers. it gets on my nerves.
And Op if you care about children who have been abused, volunteer. do something constructive.

Having been a foster mum for 23 years this week and having worked with dozens of social workers over the years I can confirm there are crap ones out there!

Ones who have arrived at our house with 3 non-vocal children at 5pm on a Friday afternoon with the words "I'll get you some paperwork on Monday I'm off out tonight"

Ones who insist a childs mother is always the best person for the child to be with no matter how many bloody drugs she assisted in pumping into it before it ever took a breath.

Ones who never tell the foster carers the truth about how agressive his home life has made little Johnny in case you decide it's unsafe for your own family and they are stuck with trying to find some other mug, sorry fc to take him on.

But, and it's a huge but, there are social workers who are bloody fantastic, who never rest until they've done their absolute utmost for the child.

One of the finest sw I've known is very much castigated by some of his collegues because he's always first into work and last out but he considers his job to be about the children not the sick days or the skiving.

To the op, if you can't cope with crap sw's avoid fostering like the plague, it will drive you mad.

Does it show I've been banging my head off a brick wall all week

Totally agree with consensus here.

One thing I don't understand though is that for all the very sensible views shown here, it doesn't translate the other way round.

ie, when posters here say somebody 'called SS on them' or that a SW 'tried to accuse me of...' etc, they get almost unanimous support to the point of outrage on their behalf.

It seems that what we as a society want in general is for gvt agencies to sort everybody else's lives out while staying the fuck away from our own.

It can't ever work like that. They have to be allowed to work freely amongst us all.

I try and steer clear of those "i have SS coming" type threads as they are generally all screaming that they are fantastic parents and there is no reason at all why SS should be coming.
no of course not. but obviously there is something amiss. SS simply dont have the resources to investigate perfectly adequate parenting.

But no one wants to hear that actually, maybe they aren't doing the best by their children and that yes, they could do with a bit of help.

I was a little nervous opening this thread but I'm pleased to see it's been positive.

For all the stick that Birmingham get they're doing a fantastic job. They have the same amount of deaths annually (and you'll never stop that) as the one in London (I forget the name) that has also been in the press a lot but they are ten times the size!

I know a lot of Birmingham social workers, most of whom have been involved in some way in most of the high profile cases lately, they work hard and do a good job. They can't be made to carry the blame, the chain is as strong as the weakest link and it seems that there were many of them. From my understanding (not press) they had no reason to be following up at that point. If others had done their job and fed up to them then they could have done something.

It's a little like blaming the police when a high profile criminal commits a crime on their patch and saying well everyone knew.

Similarly the police can arrest people but they can't send them to jail - it's the job of the court. Just like the court removes children - or not.

"but obviously there is something amiss. SS simply dont have the resources to investigate perfectly adequate parenting."

So the very fact of SS coming is proof that you are the kind of parent that needs involvement by SS? There's no possibility that there was an error? That someone overreacted to something?

That kind of circular logic is its own kind of evil.

"No smoke without fire" from the same dimwits that think "better safe than sorry" is a sensible motto.

As we can see from the case we are discussing here SWs do (regularly) make mistakes.

It takes a very special kind of idiot to think that all their mistakes are failure to act.

No. What i mean is that i steer clear of those threads because i oly have the "facts" given by the person being investigated.

Very few people will turn around and say "actually your right, i am not doing as well as i should"

most people are utterly indignant and cannot understand why these people would ever report them.

It is totally impossible to know one way or another so i stay away.
I have read a couple and when they have described certain aspects of the report i have thought "well no wonder then" but the general concensus is that SS are just being over zealous and picking on the poor MNer.

The SW involved will do the best they can with the information they have. If the Mner can get support on here then great.

of course there are crap sw, same as there are crap people in all jobs, but not all sw are crap.
over the years we have had quite a few, think they see dd as good training, some have been brilliant(weirdly the best was the one who was still training, he was brilliant)
i think there is way to much sw bashing on here and in the media.
it is unfair that when a kiddie is murdered by her/his parents, who gets the blame, not the people/person who did it, but the poor old sw.
no wonder there is a shortage

Ultimately the SW works under the guidance of their managers, within the budgetary restrictions of the local authority, within the time constraints of the working week with enormous case loads - the budgets, procedures and policy comes down from government. I was a SW before i had dd - never again. I was told to visit children less often and spend more time completing paperwork / assessments and take on more cases - yet was expected to make life changing decisions about children on my case load with very little information - that was not individual to me and won't have changed any. So the SW is on the front line just trying to fight fire with very little support from their managers / local authority or the general public. You try it.

Article in today's Guardian here about the role Khyra Ishaq's father played - or rather didn't play when he should have. Saying he wants 'heads to roll' at SServs. A few mad comments seeing him as helpless but some quite sensible ones too.

"Article in today's Guardian here about the role Khyra Ishaq's father played - or rather didn't play when he should have. Saying he wants 'heads to roll' at SServs. A few mad comments seeing him as helpless but some quite sensible ones too."

Which is typical really as he was involved in perpetrating domestic violence against Kyrah's mother and the children were also physically abused by him too ( as per the report) Would they have been better off with him I wonder? [hmmm]

I am another retired-from-the profession social worker, who couldn't take any more of me raising concerns and managers refusing to allow further steps or accommodation due to "resourcing issues", children beaten badly at home, but not removed? OK, well someone else can deal with it as I couldn't handle the anxiety of being part of the problem where coming in "under budget" was more important than children's safety.

Gigantaur I completely agree with you BTW.

Not a social worker but am involved with volunteer sector family help. one of the things that i have learnt is that we cant deal with hearsay. so if someone comes up to us and says she saw one of our clients deal unacceptably with her children, then we cant actually act on it because its hearsay.
having said that, the parents we have are usually trying very hard tomake their lives better, and the situations that i have come accross, two in two years, have always been in hand, and the kids are fine, (so far)

Ok, so I wasn?t going to post on here, but I could not resist.

I would hope that no one would think that the role of a social worker is easy. It is not the case of wanting to help and therefore doing a good job.
I really do think that we have to think as a society about what we really want. At either ends of the spectrum tragedies will occur, however hard we try to avoid them. Children are removed from parents where they may have been safe to stay, or social services try and keep families together and this results in the death or injury of a child. Both of these situations are tragic.

Social workers get things wrong. There are social workers who are not doing their job properly, for many reasons, because of incompetence, lack of support, lack of resources, others not agreeing with their assessments ? the list goes on.

But, there are many amazing social workers, who work tirelessly to ensure that the outcomes for the children they are working with are positive. Nobody hears about the cases where the worst case scenario has been avoided ? why would they? It does not make good press.

Social workers do not work in isolation. We rely on the expert opinions of a variety of agencies and it takes a lot of balls and conviction to disagree with a senior paediatrician. I have personal experience of having to stand up in court, disagreeing with a children?s guardian and/or the medical profession when it would have been all too easy to roll over and accept their view. It is a very fine line and the difficulty is that social workers are often not viewed as professionals with expertise in their own right.

Sorry about the rant, but it is society, individuals and communities that also need to bare the responsibility of looking out for our children. Child protection is everybody?s business.

About 2 children are killed every week in Britain by their carers.

This sack them cos they can't do their job attitude to SWs, doctors etc make me livid - we'd have none by the end of it if they were all always sacked.

Instead it's just a few unlucky ones that the media choose to destroy.

Baby P, due to his upbringing, could have turned into a John Venables had he survived. John Venables was a cute little toddler once.