SHARON SHOESMITH ON RADIO 4 NOW

[NAB09]

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I listened to the interview and feel that she made a few good points.

First of all, a few days before, Baby P was examined by a doctor. If there was abuse, it wasn't obvious. (and also believe Baby P saw his father a few days before also?)

Sharon Shoesmith points to the fact that the police and the CPS agreed there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute the mother.

However, what Sharon Shoesmith fails to mention is that social services operate on a different standard of evidence...

Listening to the whole story, I don't know what social services could have/should have done.

The damned if you do, damned if you don't thing, well

I was in care as a child. I was taken from a happy home bcecause my mother caused problems. I was left in a home where I was unhappy because the SW were blinding by the big house and the fancy jobs and left there even when they found out I had been left alone in the house while the parents and their real children went out for a meal and after the SW had been told I was being physically harmed.

Someone will say that lessons will be learnt. I won't hold my breath.

NAB. The system fails many children. I have heard children say how they have been taken into foster care and the life the carers show SS they will give to the child bears no relation to the grim mistreatment many of them get.

I don't think inadequate to pursue a prosecution is enough of an excuse to have allowed this woman access to her children though. I'm sure we are all aware (or I hope we are) that many rapes never make it through to prosecution because the CPS don't feel they have enough evidence to pursue the case. That doesn't mean they didn't happen

Agree with op.
She wasn't hounded just for making a mistake it was her sheer inability to acknowledge it and show some humility that upset people more.
Her comparison to police chiefs not getting the sack if there's a murder on their patch shows how she misses the point. It wasn't the fact that he died (as she also said what about the 50 children dying of abuse every year) it was the fact that it seemed clear to everyone except her that it should have been prevented. What is actually like is if someone is murdered despite 60 visits from the police!

I never said Sharon Shoesmith was blameless, I just think she has been unfairly singled out for blame and the way some of the tabloid press handled this case sickens me. However, Shoesmith should have fallen on her sword much sooner whether she thought she was to blame or not.

I dread to think of how many other child abuse cases there are going on like this not just in Haringey but elsewhere and with the best will in the world I don't think social services is going to be able to protect all children.

How could it have been prevented?

From what I understand, the mother lied about having a partner and went to obessive lengths to deceive social services, who even visited unannounced and at irregular times.

What should have social services done?

I think people are confusing her personality with her responsibility. She didn't sound like a caring woman, as we would want someone in charge of child protection to be, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have a point. Baby P was failed on various occasions by the police, the NHS and by Haringey Social Services. Will people only be happy when everyone at the top of those organisations loses their jobs?

As I said earlier - an adult who is determined to murder a child in their care will succeed.

I only heard her on Today and was a bit nonplussed by her argument that if a teenager is stabbed in London this weekend, no-one will expect the chief inspector to resign. I wasn't sure whether this was comparable, what do other people think of this?

of course it's not comparable! Unless the chief constable has been sending officers round several times a week for two years to see whether everything's OK with that particular teenager. Stupid woman can't even get her bloody excuses right.

Oh yes, I was struggling to formulate why the two weren't comparable...

Sadly the bloody doctor who saw Baby P just before he died didn't bother to examine him - because he was 'cranky'. The poor kid was actually in terrible pain yet this doctor didn't bother to investigate. He was on the child protection register, yet the doctor didn't bother to investigate. Shocking. But doesn't excuse Shoesmith.

If you read the summary of the report prepared for Ed Balls after the mother/boyfriend/lodger were convicted, this wasn't one isolated error. The whole department was rotten to the core. (None of us are allowed to read the full report, it wasn't made public.)

One social worker who tried to raise concerns was not only demonised but framed for abusing her own child - that's how terrible Shoesmith's regime was.

Edam I'm not sure Shoesmith's regime was terrible - an open letter later signed by 61 headteachers said she was "outstanding". I do know people that work in Haringey (not social services) and people seem very sad that she had to go, she was well respected amongst staff and colleagues (apparently). Haven't read the summary report btw. So far as I am aware these reports are never published in full so that is not unusual.

What about this as an example: police being called regularly to same address due to reported domestic abuse/violence, and then the wife dies due to a violent attack.

Here's what I find bizarre. The case of Baby P only came to light when the mother and partner were on trial. So, the span of time was about 18 months from when Baby P tragically died to when it got to court.

So, the politicans would have known the details for some time before it even got into the press.

The fact that Sharon Shoesmith was sacked only after it hit the national press means that public opinion was an important factor in her being dismissed.

That's the problem, pink - she was from education, not SS, and it seems clear she was out of her depth.

That's a comparable example.

I can't believe the Sun is allowed to print phone details. Surely the right to privacy is being breached there?

Ah, that's why all those teachers liked her so much.

The woman has no shame. I've only read the interview, I couldn't bear to listen to her. She lives in a bubble of delusion, self pity and complete lack of accountability, and seems to regard the "local tragedy" as what happened to her rather than that poor child.

Agree totally with edam.

The Ofsted inspector who gave a glowing report to Haringey social services just before Baby P hit the news used to work with Sharon Shoesmith when she was in education.

Hand in glove, along with the initial Sharon Shoesmith-sponsored self-serving serious case review of Baby P which claimed to clear her department of blame for Baby P's death (a report which has now been discredited) it stinks to high heaven.

It is unseemly that she is only interested in clearing her name and not in finding out what went wrong in Baby P's case, hiding behind the glib statement that you cannot stop people who are determined to kill their children. With such a defeatist attitude, she is the wrong person to lead a service that is supposed to have the protection of children at the very heart of its agenda.

I found listening to her really uncomfortable, then I made dh listen too ,to see what he thought.

She came across as very hard, unfeeling and self serving, as a couple of you have already said.

She seemed so detatched from what had happened, and as Jenny Murray said, was more concerned with Quantitive Data than real lives (and deaths)

I've rarely felt so angry towards a public official as I do towards this woman. She presided over a department that believed the mother's account that the baby had "behavioural problems", amongst numerous other lies and excuses. He was 17 months old ffs. There were so many blindingly obvious signals and failings in this case (all of which discussed here before) that the old excuse "you cannot stop a parent killing their child" is just ridiculous. Let's just give up child protection work altogether then shall we?

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And what precisely did she do about the excessive paperwork when she was in charge? Did she use argue for extra resources? Did she tell her staff to focus on families, not paperwork? Did she listen to whistleblowers, or collude in framing them? Did she press central government to lighten up on the paperwork?

She was in charge, she carries the can and should stop belly-aching about 'poor little me'. There's only one victim in this story and it ain't Shoesmith.

Message withdrawn

Agree with dilemma and pinkteddy and others. Shoesmith is an unsympathetic individual (to put it mildly), but she can't be expected to take sole personal responsibility for what seems to be an entire system in crisis. EVERYONE professionally involved in this case - OFSTED, social services, police, HPCs - made terrible errors. (That's not to mention, obviously, the people who are actually culpable for the child's death.)

I wonder what would have happened if she had told her staff to concentrate on families instead of paperwork. Wouldn't this have been in breach of child protection legislation?