How on earth did the the authorities let this happen?

[Pebs]

I have taken 2 children into police care and 100% of the time Social Services have been an utter utter waste of time. I'll elaborate later when I have more time, but for one of them I was literally crying with frustration at them.

[phykell]

OTOH, social services personnel often have unfair and unworkable constraints imposed upon them. A friend of mine works in the field and she's about the most caring person I know. There's no way she wouldn't do everything she possibly could to protect a child.

[Pebs]

I'm not sure it's a criticism so much of the individual (although in this case, who knows) but of the service. Or both.

[AboveTheSalt]

Let me offer you another perspective on this type of case.

I know a professional who has an involvement with social services. She was told by the father of a child that the mother punished their child by threatening to drown it and pushing its head under the bath water. She reported the child as being "at risk". An extensive but inconclusive investigation took place and in due course, the child was taken into care. Some time later, the devastated mother committed suicide.

The father admitted that he had made up the whole story and the lady I know has received innumerable threatening phone calls and letters, she has given up her job and moved to another part of the country. Despite being convinced that she did the right thing, she would think VERY carefully before reporting a similar claim in the future.

It is easy to say that she should just accept that sometimes you get things wrong and that she had no choice but to report the allegations, you haven't had to give up a job you loved and in which you worked incredibly hard and move house. I wonder how reluctant her friends and colleagues will be to report similar unsubstantiated allegations in the future?

[phykell]

I imagine that social work, especially where kids are involved, can be extremely demanding and stressful. You're dealing with people's lives and your decisions can lead to a lot of heartache, sorrow and grief. People aren't perfect and they make mistakes and having said that, I'm happy to judge the procedures they have in place to prevent such tragedies occurring but I'm much less willing to judge the individuals themselves.

[Pebs]

I'd imagine so much time is being taken ticking boxes, replicating data and getting various authorisations that not a great deal gets done.

My experience is such, 100% true -

Child 1 is about 9 but is tiny, size of a 6 year old due to malnourishment at the hands of his birth parents. His parents actually died in an accident before he was taken into care and he was sent to a foster family who told him that talking about his parents was not allowed in order to 'help' him move on. They had him a while and then moved him on, I don't know the details surrounding this. Foster carers no 2 have him a week. They live in a fabulous house, everything is just so and they spoil him rotten, taking him to 2 theme parks, cinema etc in his first week. He visits a family who live around the corner who he has known since foster carer1 and who do not live in a fabulous house, have kids crawling out of every crevice and its all a bit haphazard. Happy family, happy kids, just a bit of a mess. Fosterers2 decide he is not allowed to see these kids and ban him, for no better reason than this. He goes to see them anyway ( as kids do from time to time, especially messed up kids!) and we get called (wtf?!) They tell me where he is, so I go and find him (why they couldnt do ths is a mystery) and he's sat on the floor noshing on a giant bowl of pasta, happy as a pig in poo surrounded by this family. I take him home, tell him he shouldnt really be running off, ruffle his hair a bit and ring the doorbell feeling job well done. The fosterers tell me they dont want him. In front of him. He's a trouble maker and after all they have done for him this is how he repays them. The wife is on the phone to Social Services as they speak and I'm left WTF with a kid stood next to me visibly shrinking. I try to talk them round, I try to get a bit mean, and nothing. All they could talk about was he wasn't worth the monthly payments and they'd been doing this 20 years and it just wasn't worth the trouble with these types of kids. WTF do you expect from the type of kids you get in care ffs?!!? So, I speak to SS. Well, we can't do anything at this time of night (it's about 8pm) they say. Well you're going to have to, I have a child here who is now essentially homeless I say. Nope, they say, nothing doing. I swear to god if I'd heard her filing her nails I wouldnt have been shocked she sounded that disinterested. So I say I'll be taking him into police care and he'll be taken to a police station (which is considered a place of safety for kids at risk but is far from ideal) then and then you'll have to sort him anyway. Fine she says, do that and she HUNG UP! So I'm stood like a goldfish in front of this kid, and the woman walks over and hands me two carrier bags. For his stuff she says. So me and this kid go to his room and his entire wordly goods are packed into two carrier bags. I'm not ashamed to say I was really biting back tears at this point, I just could not believe just what the hell was happening. Social services finally deigned to arrive at about 2am and took him to Norwich. Thats the last I heard. 2 foster homes that shouldnt be allowed to have children set foot in them and a disinterested social service. No wonder these kids are like they are when they hit teenaged years.

Child2 is from a family who has more than 5 children on the 'at risk' register. We are there all the time, doing such basic things as checking the kids are in bed after 10pm. Single dad, alcoholic, they're not abused as such as far as I know (but I'm at the bottom of the 'need to know' chain), they're neglected, grubby, wild, naughty and are well on the way to being prolific customers of ours. Anyway, one night one of the old kids (under 14) was found very late at night very drunk. At Social Services request if we find anything amiss we PPO the kids (police protection order, same was what happened up there ^^) and they'll come and take over asap as they are 'building a case'. So, after a very very heartbreaking removal from the family (yeah, they're a nightmare but she loves her parents and was scared to death. It's just not nice taking kids, even if they need it for their own good) we physically took her away. She sat in one of our interview rooms for 5 hours, asleep upright on a chair, with one female officer or two male officers with her at all times until SS suggested that we just return her home as they wouldnt be able to sort anything out until 9am the next day. So we took her home. What a total and utter waste of time which makes a total mockery of the process.

It's hard not to be cynical. Even harder not to let emotions get involved...not something I've mastered yet.

[Admiral Huddy]

Originally Posted by phykell

OTOH, social services personnel often have unfair and unworkable constraints imposed upon them. A friend of mine works in the field and she's about the most caring person I know. There's no way she wouldn't do everything she possibly could to protect a child.

If we can't rely on these people to do their jobs or the system is failing, then what hope have we of proctecting our children.

I read this morning, that Brown has pushed for an urgent publib enquiry. Like everything, it's always a little too late.

[Admiral Huddy]

Not sure if anyone watched Panaroma last night but this made me physically sick. My wife was actually not well last night. I don’t think there has ever been a case were I’ve actually felt as upset and angry as much as I have this one. I guess having a lad the same age and looks hasn’t helped.


In my opinion, the child should have been taken into care if not after the first hospital care but certainly the second. It saddens me that not one person was brave enough to make a stand. Both the birth father and grandmother have come forward and declared that they knew something was wrong and they loved the child dearly. Rubbish, If that was my child, I would have taken him somewhere were no one knew were he was despite the consequences I’d face.

As the program said, and I agree, there was too much emphasis on the family and that the child is always best off with the mother, which as we know, is not always the case.

The there was the doctor. Why did he or she let that child go with a prescription without a check-up. That check up could have finally have sealed that babys fate. Another fail.

I wondered last night, why if the mother thought the baby was in the way of her life, why on earth she didn’t give the boy away and accept that she couldn’t give the boy the love and attention he deserved. Then it dawned on me. She didn’t want the boy taken away because I believe the mother used the child for benefits, to feed her smoking and drinking habits.

I'm not that naïve to think that this sort of thing hasn’t happened nor the fact it won’t be the last but it’s the gross neglect of other people in this case that could have prevented this happening and those people are just as guilty for not acting appropriately. Those people do have blood on their hands and I hope they never learn to live with the guilt.

[AboveTheSalt]

Originally Posted by Admiral Huddy

... the child is always best off with the mother, which as we know, is not always the case ...

As you say, the child being kept with the mother is not always the best solution - however, what are you suggesting, that children should ALWAYS be separated from the mother if there is any evidence of child abuse?

Originally Posted by Admiral Huddy

I'm not that naïve to think that this sort of thing hasn’t happened nor the fact it won’t be the last but it’s the gross neglect of other people in this case that could have prevented this happening and those people are just as guilty for not acting appropriately. Those people do have blood on their hands and I hope they never learn to live with the guilt.

That seems incredibly harsh. People make mistakes. To suggest that someone should never recover from the trauma of a mistake is tantamount to suggesting that people should never learn from their mistakes.


I genuinely think that all those people who are up in arms over this one event should either give up their jobs and apply to join social services or keep quiet - after all, we all know that working in social services is a dead easy, very well paid and stress-free 9 to 5 job.

I am sure that there will now be a flood of applicants eager to fill the many unfilled posts in Haringey Social Services, that workloads will significantly reduce and that every social worker will become infallible.


Incidentally, Admiral Huddy, this isn't particularly a dig at you, it is very much a dig at the sensationalist Panorama team and at the many journalists who have chosen to jump on this particular bandwagon this week and will move on to something else next week

[Matblack]

I heard a woman on the news the other day say that the whole of Haringay social services team should step down hmmmmm, what are the consiquences of that then?

I can understand the emotion involved in this but this is reality, child protection is not a routine problem with a routine solution, if a childs life is broken the diagnosis is always unique, you can't pull the motherboard out and slap in a new one, you have to arrive at a unique tailored solution for the case. In this case 90% of the people involved seem to have followed the new rules since the Climbier case BUT a number of decisions were made which weren't right, they weren't universially wrong but in this case they weren't quite right and a child dies.

Before we lay blame lets think about the number of abuse cases that the new rules have prevented, its a sad fact that it some point something or someone is going to slip through, in this case its a little boy and NO, ITS NOT ACCCEPTABLE but it IS ENVEVITABLE. Especially when you have a number of people surounding the child (family and friends) who have deviberately mislead the authorities.

Being a social worker is HARD it is one of the emotionally hardest worst paid roles with a requirement for a higher education qualification and with this come the hatred, dislike and distrust of just about every other agency and parent around. If you think you can do it better then have a crack at it, first you will need to get a Social Work degree, then you will almost certainly need to take a massive paycut and a massive work load increase, go through huge amounts of emotional anguish, take crying children from crying mothers and fathers. If you screw up and remove a child who isn't in an abusive situation you'll most likely have to leave your job and move because it will be in the papers, if you don't take them and they are you'll most likely have to leave your job and move because it will be in the papers.

This child should never have died but people need to level their hatred in two directions, the professionals who made mistakes should be scrutinised but remember they didn't deliberately break this child's back.

I'm sorry if this isn't the party line but its hard being in a job where you have to be responsible for these things, its part of my job and EVERY time I come close to a CP case I wonder if I did the right thing and I'm not even close to the role of a social worker but I could very well be one of the professionals who missed something which would have led to the prevention of a death and its not an easy thing to do.

MB