The irony must have escaped the BBC. Earlier this morning they read a news report on the jailing for life of the monster who fathered seven children by his two daughters despite doctors, nurses and social workers remaining oblivious to the abuse going on over decades in front of their very eyes. This then segued into an interview with Margaret Eaton, Chair (sic) of the Local Government Association whose primary concern was for those poor at risk…social workers – following the public outcry at the death of Baby P. She got a very sympathetic hearing from the BBC as she waffled on about putting in place best process and having urgent reviews, joined up multi-agency thinking and other gems from the lexicon of the bureaucratically anaesthetised. What struck me most was that Margaret Eaton fails to understand that social workers have a fundamental responsibility to exercise best judgement and so you can perhaps understand why the Jonathan Ross loving BBC is so sympathetic to Ms Eaton and her comrades in the LGA.
(SOCIAL)WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.
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Ah those poor social worky workers. Such a bloodu waste of time. My old dear used to foster kids when we were young and only about 20% of them could be considered in any way professional but they were all malingerers and it’s a Herculran task to complain about them – they inyimidate, threat and lie. If coppers acted like that they’d be sacked by the end of the week.
Dick
The police were not sacked when they were found to be shooting innocent civilians.
They are not answerable to anyone anymore.
That though was a singular circumstance and you don’t hear about all the successes they’ve had. Yeah, sure a complete dog’s breakfast but can’t be seen as systemic failure. I’m not trying to excuse them – I’ve been through this loads.
However, reports are coming out now that shed loads more kids are being taken into care on the back of Baby Peter’s case as a reaction – dunno – fair enough one might say. The Rozzers lost the plot after 50+ dudes were killed and hundreds more injured.
In normal circumstances though – the complaints procedures in place by the feds is infinately better than that of Social Wankers – I worked with both.
I dont think its the social workers who are the problems…but the many MANY layers of management above them who’s only task is to meet financial targets, not social targets (ie. looking after the very people they are meant to be looking after).
Tell you guys what though, I wouldnt want to do their job. Having to deal with the dreggs of society day in, day out, must eventually take its toll on you.
Look at BabyP, when the police and social workers tried to do something for the baby…who stepped in and f8cked it up? Yes thats right, senior management!
Plenty of stories of budgets being cut but the money being taken from social services instead of thining management services.
So, for anyone to say social workers re a waste of space….I challenge you to spend a day doing their job, earning bugger all!
Mailman
I agree with Dick: remember, the police are institutionally racist, not insitutionally shooty.
I have a BBC friend who insits that things like Baby P happen “all the time”, and that this case has acheived prominence only because people have a vendetta against Haringey Council.
To be frank, I don’t know enough about these things to form a judgement on whether that’s remotely true. Anyone else know more about it than I do and care to illuminate me?
I have stated in the past that social workers should be more interested in doing their job that being guided by left wing ideology. I still stand by that statement.
henryflower | 26.11.08 – 11:28 am
I have a BBC friend who insists that things like Baby P happen “all the time”, and that this case has acheived prominence only because people have a vendetta against Haringey Council.
Your friend is, predictably enough, talking out of his/her arse.
There are typically c.60 homicides of children in England each year, of which c. 40 are of children under five.
A large number of these are infanticides – children under 1 who are killed by mothers suffering from post natal depression. Only about 10 of that 40, in many years fewer, are killed by someone other than a parent.
The chances of being one of those 10, while at the same time being one of the c.2000 kids who are on the at risk register because of fears of physical abuse, and having been seen by police/doctors/social workers >60 times in one’s 17 months of life, are so small that it could probably only happen in Haringey.
“I have a BBC friend who insists that things like Baby P happen “all the time”, and that this case has acheived prominence only because people have a vendetta against Haringey Council.”
Thses things happen all the time,a vendetta is surprising?
The bottom line is that local councils have arrogated to themselves the power to intrude on society’s problems.As such councils have a duty to get it right,that is the social contract,just as it is in the criminal justice system.
What we have is a monopoly provider serving its own ends rather than the public.
Tom – many thanks for that information, that helps.
Garden Trash – I take your point entirely. The State has happily (as well as actively) let old-fashioned ideas of family and community erode, and family and community were bonds that might have prevented such a tragedy – far more ably than the incompetent state-funded ideologues and pen-pushers working for the council.
I can’t work out why the state-funded ideologues at the BBC would want to defend Haringey Council/social workers in this instance…
Oh, Silly me.
Tom – are you saying it’s predictable that a friend of mine would speak out of their arse, or that a BBC employee would?
Maybe don’t answer that.
I have watched this unfold.
It is silly to imagine mistakes will not happen, but there seems to be a slight disconnect between how mistakes are handled in the real world (hence I exclude the City and most major corporations) and wherever it is that the BBC and those it invites on to witter away inhabit.
In the case of Baby P we seem to have series of folk participating, some through being plain useless, some from being spineless, but most through being careerist drones, in the death of a child. It happened before, lessons were not learned, it has happened again, no one has been held to proper account… and so it will keep on happening.
I have lost count of the number of times I got fired in the advertising world for telling a client he was a prat or missing a line of copy when proof reading. Fine, I wouldn’t want to work where I was not wanted, and ended up with my own agency. And if it was all falling around me I usually was smart enough to bail first. Rule 1: if you can’t do a good job and know it (for whatever reason, even if nothing to do with you), don’t try. It will go wrong and you will carry the can. Unless in the public sector, where it will go wrong, people may suffer, taxpayer money will be lost (and ‘found’ mysteriously to pay off whatever or whoever needs to be) but no one will be held to account, lose pay or status, much less their jobs. At least not without an eyewatering bribe from the public purse to spare those who surrounded them and will remain’s blushes. Witness the harridan in the NHS who oversaw old folk left in soiled beds.
Now I have this latest Local Gov exec, who seems to have spent a long time at the hairdressers in advance of her day in the spotlights, giving us the ‘only’ ‘alternative’, namely the goon squad knocking down doors because our Tracey lobbed up at school with a grazed knee.
This is also an outrageous cock-up, and those who cover their backsides to ensure no deaths on their watch in this manner, are also a waste of space.
Life is cruel, and seldom clear cut. So there will be lots of grey areas. In these cases I have every sympathy for those making tough calls and will always defer to innocent until proven…
However, what the BBC is presenting me with is an either/or that is based on cases which simply have no justifications, yet many still seem to think they do.
If you have clearly blown it, and blown it a lot, maybe you are in the wrong job. I think a few dead kids and a few unjustly abused/accused parents might think a wee purge of the ‘job security at any cost’ system that currently prevails might agree.
ae1, do you KNOW for a fact all social workers are lefties…or are you just doing what Al Beeb does, throwing a generalisation around like it was a fact?
Mailman
Peter, very well said. The job is to protect children; they watch a child carefully; the child is horribly murdered. I don’t understand what sort of human being doesn’t resign the job in anguish and horror.
Not that I wish them pain; I could not do the job they do. The point is, as Peter has said, neither can they.
Why would you not resign? What greater index of failure could there possibly be than the fact that a defenceless child is murdered thanks to your failure to do your job right?
If you have any decency, you resign immediately.
Mailman – Yes you are correct, I accept that not all are biased to left side of politics, but I think a very large proporton are, and (regardless of political beliefs) nobody should let their common sense/judgement be affected by politics. The two should not cross.
How many times were you fired, Peter. I dont recall you being rude once on here.
Most people i see in any sector think that their job is for life. If they lose it they blame someone else, like Thatcher.
henryflower,
Sorry to add to the pile-on against your Beeboid friend, but he or she obviously misses the point: the child was seen endless times by care workers, and especially by a doctor just a few days before he died.
Your Beeboid friend may be accurate when saying that “these things happen all the time” in regards to the general concept of children being abused, even fatally. But a doctor giving the “all clear” to a baby with obvious external injuries, missing teeth, and a broken back most certainly does not happen every day, all over the country. Baby P’s tragic circumstances are not common, and it’s pretty callous to ignore the failure of the health services, and just say, “oh, people beat their children all the time”.
That’s a real moral disconnect. And this tragedy isn’t even the first time it’s happened in Haringey.
David Preiser, this was my initial response too; I said it was impossible for me to believe that it was routine that a child’s welfare could be so frequently scrutinised by so many professionals and yet s/he be subject to ongoing and horrific violence in this way without anyone intervening until s/he is dead.
It seems rather incredible to “normalise” the torture and murder of children in order to defend a left-wing council, but nothing this friend says really surprises me anymore.
How many times were you fired, Peter.
adam | 26.11.08 – 3:45 pm | #
Oh, more than a few, adam. I think most were more what is today called ‘constructive dismissal’, only without the compo.
I came into my office once to see a guy at my desk.
‘Hi. Who are you?,’ I asked.
‘Oh, I’m the new Caterpillar copywriter,’ he replied, ‘who are you?’
Best I could manage was ‘the old one, apparently.’
I could blame many, if pressed. But ultimately it seemed more productive to move on, DO something and get rewarded by those who appreciated my work.
Frankly not an option for many in public service, so I admire such tenacity in the face of a system it must take a lot to endure. However, still no excuse for clinging on when you are damaging all around.
And certainly not for the BBC to be wheeling out some nice single mum who had to go to court to get her sprog back by way of ‘See… this is the result of all the kneejerks!’. At least not if it was meant (by their mindset) to suggest that the best route is doing zippy. Two uncorrected wrongs may make a good segment, but is hardly a ringing endorsement of social care systems.
This is a common problem throughout state services,your life is only as good as the paper work.
An example.I was in hospital and being a very light sleeper got to observe what wen on.
Personnel changed frequently,it was obvious that nobody had time to read patient notes,or even make contact with patients.
An elderly gentleman came in late Friday,assigned a bed and left.As the weekend progressed he became delirious,kicking off his bedclothes and tearing off his pajamas.This I reported to the night nurse and he was covered up again.
On the Sunday he was worse,when I passed him on the way to the day room
I noticed that his water had not been touched and his urine bottle unused,so I told the new nurse that it looked like the man had not had a pee for nearly three days.Bedlam ensued as she tried to find the one house doctor on duty.
Sadly the man died on the Monday.Modern care is like this,box ticking,processing,going through the motions without heeding the product.
People,
Although overall the BBC is supporting the social workers, they are allowing some criticism. Compare this with the attitude of both the BBC and the establishment in general to judges, magistrates and parole boards whose mistakes lead to the deaths of innocent people. Social workers have been sacked for failing to protect people, but I know of no case where a judge, a magistrate or a member of a parole board has been sacked for their failure to protect the public. Surely these people should have some duty of care to the public.
“responsibility to exercise best judgment”. Thank you for that.
The R word doesn’t go down very well of course.
Cameron writes: “The police were not sacked when they were found to be shooting innocent civilians”.
Are you referring to de Menezes? The police were mere tools, albeit it somewhat harsh, of his karma. He was an illegal alien, not an “innocent civilian”.
Verity…..
…what….?
Henry Flower writes that the state has: “… let old-fashioned ideas of family and community erode, and family and community were bonds that might have prevented such a tragedy..”.
The state didn’t “let” it happen. The state engineered it. Deliberately. With malice.
Henry Flower, what do you mean “what”?
“The court also heard that none of the doctors, nurses or social workers the victims saw in the course of their several pregnancies thought to raise questions over why they were repeatedly becoming pregnant. ”
There seems to be no facts reported in this case – but my first question would have been, did not one nurse or doctor ask the girl who is the father of your child.. With lapsing morals and now the modern thinking that a young girl can have a baby with no questions asked.
If anyone let these girls down it was not “social workers” it was the non-judgmental liberal society. It was the BBCs idea of society where people with morals are right wing lunatics.
Verity | 26.11.08 – 7:53 pm |
I agree
Verity, I think that the breakdown of community and family are not things that government alone would have the power to engineer. I think there are many reasons and contributing factors, but I do say in my comment earlier that the government’s role in the process of decay has been “active”. The process has been ongoing for several decades, encompassing governments of both parties, and I don’t think for one moment that at any point a malicious government sat down in Cabinet and discussed maliciously how they could begin to tear down community and family in this country.
As to the “what” question, ignore it. I don’t want to go there. If I could withdraw it I would.