Baby P Is For Baby Porn
Maybe the answer is to employ more social workers, more trainers of social workers and more people to oversee the social workers and their trainers?
Sharon Shoesmith, 55, director of children and young people’s services for Haringey, to mount a robust defence of her department at the end of the court case on Tuesday after the three perpetrators of the abuse were found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child.
She twice refused to apologise for the borough’s failure to protect Baby P. “This child was killed by members of his own family. The agencies are not responsible,” she said, a claim seized on by critics who accused her of “breathtaking arrogance”.
Deborah Orr translates it as: “”Don’t expect much of me or my staff.”
But expectations are always high. Why not expect civil servants to do their job well? What are they paid for if not to perform? There are questions in the House:
The Conservative leader David Cameron yesterday demanded that Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, release all internal memos about warnings from a senior social worker about apparent failings in the authority’s social services department.
And once he’s looked at those, Cameron can go over all other cases on file, what with prevention being better then cure:
Despite signs of the abuse being clear to authorities, infants who died from forced starvation, broken ribs and smashed skulls were all missed off the register, which lists 29,200 children “known to be suffering harm”. Just 33 of the 189 children whose death or serious injury prompted a local authority serious case review between 2005 and 2007 were on the register, according to the analysis of the most serious cases to be submitted to ministers next spring.
Then we will all know what to do and no child will ever be abused again…
Posted: 15th, November 2008 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (37) | TrackBack | Permalink
