Sad story re; baby Chloe.

[LIZS]

Story here - WARNING : don't read if sensitive to baby cruelty stories. Just beggars belief .... poor baby, where were those who should have protected her ?

Overrun, the media played an important role in trying to help the parents who were wrongly accused of satanic abuse. It was the media which exposed the scandal. The authorities were merrily playing along with the mad social workers. If you look at the tapes of the interviews, you can see social workers being cruel to frightened children, persisting in questioning them when they are clearly in no fit state. And they then told downright lies about what had happened in those interviews. Those tapes are only available because of media pressure. No doubt it would suit those social workers if the media was barred from investigating them. But you would be doing a huge disservice to those families. The children - who are now grown up- are still suffering as a result of what was done to them by social workers. And those people are still working which, as Caligula says, makes it difficult to have much confidence in the profession. Neither does the fact that while Victoria Climbie's social worker was vilified, her bosses are still working, and indeed have been promoted.

I know most social workers want to do good, and work in very challenging circumstances, with overstretched budgets. But refusing to face up to real wrong-doing by some colleagues won't help them.

Edam,
I agree that the Media does do good things as well, and I am suprised that those social workers are still working.
In my experience, social workers are much less protected if they make a mistake than say Dr's or Lawyers.
It's always the underlings who get done over, and managers some how manage to escape. I agree that this is wrong and doesn't promote confidence.
You mention Victoria Climbie's case, which was apalling. It's interesting how the social worker who was involved in that case, was named and attacked by media (not saying wrongly necesscarily) but the junior doctor who said it was scabies and on whom SSD would have been dependent on for diagnosis and therefore action, is also still working, and nobody really pays her any attention, or or the other agencies that were involved.
Anyway, I know feelings run high on this subject, but just wanted to put another point of view across.
Who would want to be a child protection social worker hey?

I take on the comments about SS but I think we should all be accountable for our actions, we live in too much of a nanny state.

Ok these kids had a bad start in life themselves, so does that mean that as they had wrong done to them they shoud then be allowed to do wrong to somebody else. What kind of message is that giving out, they should have been punished.

SS should only been seen as a safety net, the health and welfare of every child in the country is not the responsibility of SS. Ok this time the safety net failed but the responsibility should lie with the parents.

But the point is, that parents who have themselves not been properly parented, may be incapable of parenting. So the issue of responsibility is not even in the running. The issue is how to stop it happening and it's not going to stop unless the cycle of bad parenting is stopped. And that can't be achieved by a social service which only intervenes once a child has been injured. However, the problem with allowing SS to intervene at an earlier stage, is 1. resources 2. enormous civil rights implications and 3. the horror of allowing the calibre of people who appear to be allowed to enter the social work profession, to have more power over the lives of normal families.

Long term, it looks like no-one is interested in finding a realistic solution to the conditions which produce these sorts of horrific cases.

I agree to some point, but not totally. I still think people whatever the circumstances should be accountable for their actions. Some people who had very good parents and a good childhood go on to abuse their children, so I dont think you can make excuses that they are young and had a rough start in life.

My Mum and all 8 of her siblings had a terrible childhood, they were all violently abused by their father, but she didnt go on to abuse me or any of her siblings and their children.

Unfortunatly this sort of thing has always happened and it probably always will. I dont think the whole blame lies at the door of social services, certainly perhaps part of it but by no means all of it. I still think the parents need to be punished.

Jenkel, you've hit the nail on the head in respect of it has to be the perpetrators who hold responsibility for their actions, what about their families, neighbours, why did they stand by. By this I don't mean that SW's shouldn't be accountable when they make serious mistakes, but sometimes they are more hated than the person who murdered the child - ridiculous.
Caligua, your comment about the calibre of social workers is unfair. Have you any idea about how many social workers there are in the UK, and you base your judgement on a limited no of cases.
Every one talks about child protection as it is newsworthy and when things go wrong they go drastically wrong, but forget about hospital social workers, sw's who work with the elderly, mentally ill, people with drug and alcohol problems etc

Maybe I am unfair Overrun. I do work with SW's (working with the elderly) and they seem reasonably nice people, but tbh I don't get any sense of brightness and professionalism from them. But perhaps that's a presentation issue rather than reality. And perhaps it's asking too much to expect everyone to be shit-hot brilliant, especially when they're being paid peanuts and asked to do at least two and a half people's work by themselves. My impression is tht for all the shock and outrage expressed around cases like this, real long term child protection is simply not on the political agenda.

Caligua, I do agree that Child protection is just not on the government agenda, and it should be, too often policy in social care ends up being a knee jerk reaction to a particular set of cases and we end up yo yoing between two extremes.
As for the sw's you know, as you may have guessed I know plenty and as in every profession it's a mixed bag. God I know lots of Doctors who come across as completely clueless.
A lot of sw's are educated to MA level, at the very least degree and the course was two years and has now been upped to three.

Anyway, defence of sw's is now officially over!

Oh and re the calibre thing - that's referring to the credulousness of the profession. There have been so many reports of parents being investigated for MSbP because their children have ME or some other debilitating condition - and that's what makes me believe that there's something wrong with the profession at an institutional level (plus the fact that the loons responsible for the Cleveland fiasco are still working) - it's not an opinion based on a few highly publicised cases, it's an opinion based on a constant, drip drip of disturbing reports about many many cases and the extraordinary, amazing fact that the cleveland lot are still working. FFS, msbp is being grasped at gladly as a solution for a problem that isn't there; and I do wonder what sort of people, with what sort of training, have a consistently hostile approach to mothers and parents. However, I wouldn't accuse just social workers of being vulnerable to the latest witch-hunt - the legal and medical professions don't come out very well when it comes to msbp.

I don't usually post on this site but like all of you I am very angry at what the judge said about their immaturity and bad upbringing, using it as an excuse.
The baby's father 'Thomas' was adopted by a very loving family, which my parents knew. They fostered several children over the years and adopted Thomas and his brother. He used to steal from them and was always in trouble with the police. I am not sure what happened to him after. I heard the parents 'washed their hands with him', so to speak as he was always in trouble.
Scott has had another baby since which has been taken into care, I don't know whether Thomas is the father as they have split up.
This case shocked everyone where I live, especially as it happened so close to home.
Anyway sorry to butt in, as I said I only manage to come on here now and again to read the posts.

not going to try and defend the Social services as there is no defence but would like to say just a couple of things.
the article says that they had been in touch with the family and they had refused help. it is very common for parents who have had poor experiances of SS to mistrust them and be so fearfull that they will have no dealings with them.

it may be that because both parents had such difficult childhoods they simply did not know how to care for a baby correctly.....how many threads have we seen in MN asking "can i do this....Can i do that..?" luckily for those mothers they have the advantage of the support networks....others dont.

Please do not think for one moment i am denyine what these two have done is anything but barbaric and they should be seperated from their reproductive organs so as to never allow another child to go through that again.
BUT i can see why it is possble the judge reached that decision....i dont necessarily agree, but i can see why.

Also SS get a bum rap no matter what happens. theyw ere being investigated but without access to teh child there is little they can do. it takes a court order to remove a child from its parents and those arent pbtained overnight. this child died at age 4 months....that doesnt allow long between refferal, first visit and then attemptig to work with the parents.
it is never SS policy to remove a child first, investigate later.
In some cases that policy proves fatal but in the majority it works. many cases like this the parents just need educating in the ways pf being a good parent.

one of the things that sw are up against is in fact Law. They have to provide significant evidence that a child is at risk. It is not there decision to remove a child. this has to go to court and a sheriff/judge then make the recommendation. In cases that i have been aware of the swd wanted the child removed but the court said no. Many children are removed from dangerous situations and the media do not pick that up. You cannot legislate agasinst everyone and thing.

The parent's were being very uncooperative with health professionals and when the HV's turned up at their house they weren't aswering the door, obviously making it very difficult to see if any abuse was going on.
Im not sure why the Doctors at the hospital didn't contact social services the first time chloe was admitted with bruising and being exremely underweight. They were only feeding her cold tea.
I think social services got involved too late didn't they? not too sure.
At the end of the day, like someone else posted in this thread, they needed help from the professionals as they didn't have a clue on the basics of looking after a baby, but if they weren't answering the door to the HV's what can you do? They only took chloe to baby clinic once apparantly.

Sorry i chanced upon this again before bed

Caligula, since you quoted me,
" It is also easy to know the basics of being a human being though maddie. Basic instinct is you don't hurt babies."

i feel i have to respond.

I have worked with children in care who have been horrifically abused and i can honestly say that all of them deep down knew basic humanity. However bad your upbringing i do believe you get to an age where you know that letting a baby who can't protect itself fall flat on it's face time after time after time after time till it's dead is wrong.
I know there are alot of sceintific studies and my DP is actually right in the thick of that, but i just cannot beleive that deep deep down they didn't know that was wrong.
Also, sorry but i also cannot beleive they don't know that babies drink milk.

BTW Caligula i totally agree with your post of
Thursday, 6 July, 2006 11:14:40 AM
i just wanted to say why i though what i did.
I also agree with your first post as i was called after taking dd to A+E with a bump on her head. Had a right old grilling from the H.V and it makes me incredulous that this happens on the flip side and nothing is done

Hello Ladies. I have been trying to put the link to the "Glamorgan Gazette" newspaper on here about this story. It was in this week's edition. I can't seem to put it on here. Anyway, as you know the parent's of baby Chloe were cleared of murder but this case may be reopened. Does anyone know how to put the link on here? Sorry but not sure.