Baby P: Ed Balls Statement In Full And Sun’s Failed Campaign
TOUGH luck on the Sun and its legion of campaigners. Only three people have lost their jobs over Baby P.
Sharon Shoesmith, the head of children’s services at Haringey Council, has been sacked. The council’s leader George Meehan and the cabinet member for children and young people, Liz Santry have resigned.
Says Ed Balls: “In the case of Baby P things did go tragically wrong.”
No doubt about that.
But it does mean that the Sun’s campaign to have Maria Ward, Sylvia Henry and Gillie Christou sacked has failed.
Still, Balls says there will more reports, so he can yet appease all those Sun readers, sorry, voters.
The Sun demands that the three be “forced to quit”. Who needs evidence and due process when the torches are lit and the people are on the move..?
Ed Balls Statement In Full
The whole nation has been shocked and moved by the tragic and horrific death of Baby P. All of us find it impossible to comprehend how adults could commit such terrible acts of evil against this little boy. And the public is angry that nobody stepped in to prevent this tragedy from happening.
I want to say very clearly at the outset: social workers, police officers, GPs, health professionals, all the people who work to keep children safe, do a very difficult job, often in really challenging circumstances – all around the country and in particular in Haringey. They make difficult judgements every day that help to keep children safe – and many of them are unsung heroes. But they must also be accountable for their decisions.
And where things go badly wrong, people are right to want to know why and what will be done about it. In the case of Baby P, things did go tragically wrong.
Posted: 1st, December 2008 | In: Key Posts, Politicians Comments (13) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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December 8th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Is everyone missing the point of who is to blame for Baby P’s death - the parent ***edit***! The social workers, doctors and police did not kill this child. Yes they were negligent in their enquiries and perhaps more training is needed but to have them sacked for an error, i don’t wish to underestimate the severity of losing a human life. Why are the professionals being blamed. There is a huge shortage of social workers who are overworked and stressed. The salary isn’t particularly brilliant to cope with the stresses they take on, yet we wish to sack them so that the parents never do this again??? Can we ensure that the parents are named and shamed and dealt with accordingly. Money needs to be put into educating and training more social workers to cope with the demands of our evil society. There will be more deaths as there are more and more sick adults who feel that its ok to kill their children and yet they don’t seem to be held responsible. Who really should be educated here? The parent - do we now blame education for letting them down? Where does it stop? Why blame, can we not just do something positive about it.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
The Baby P episode, as horrible as it is, is just one more error in a catalogue of disasters under this inept Government.
Sharon Shoesmith has rightly been suspended, also could there be a case for her to be prosecuted? Especially when one dwells on the nightmare and horrors that Baby P had to go through, due, no doubt, to the failures of Jaqui Smith and her cronies to spot what was going on.
We can only hope that that Gordon Brown, who incidentally, should go back to Scotland where he belongs, takes some drastic action and perhaps redeem some of the Labour Party’s atrocious record, although I and thousands of others doubt this very much. One would also hope the salaries of those guilty persons should go to children’s charities where it could go a long way to perhaps alleviating more suffering.
CJ
December 1st, 2008 at 8:06 pm
There was one whistle blower , and she got shouted down
December 1st, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Well if nothing else it’s given us another question; we are all used to ‘who watches the watchers?’ but what we need to know is ‘who reviews the reviewers?’.
I would perfectly happily see the editorial staff of the Sun tossed off the top of Canary Wharf, but the Serious Case Review carried out by Haringey was abysmally flawed.
If Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary hadn’t been called in, we would still be being told that it was all very sad but there was nothing which could have been done about it.
That clearly wasn’t true; safguarding in Haringey, and possibly a lot of other places as well, ‘needs urgent and sustained attention.’
It won’t get urgent and sustained attention if no-one knows it needs it.
However tainted the motives of the Sun, it can reasonably claim that, without the media coverage, there would have been no critical appraisal of what went wrong…
December 1st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
the lower echelons may be heaving sighs of relief, and perhaps ready for promotion? not only that if they have been working under the duress of bad management better people might emerge.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:37 pm
and who on earth would ever want to work in Haringey to plug the gaps? or any other lousy catchement area come to that. I know I wouldn’t.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
If everyone is sacked, then what? A chasm… The Sun is going to f*** it up
December 1st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Cool and Calm
The report seems to be heavily critical of the management, which is something of an advance; whether it will be carried through into senior people actually taking on responsibility for junior staff is another matter…
December 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Spot on June. fingers crossed.
I’m happy that the people at the top are having to take responsibilty instead of the individual Social Workers who had little or no supervision and huge unmanageable case-loads.
Like the Social Worker who had to carry the can for Victoria Climbie,
However, I’m sure the Sun disagrees and will hound them as infinitem coz that’s what they do best.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Well, according to the Evening Standard:
‘Two top councillors at Haringey fell on their swords today’
Funny, I could have sworn they were pushed…
December 1st, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Perhaps the focus of the ‘targets’ will move now from paperwork etc to where it should be on vulnerable people
December 1st, 2008 at 5:07 pm
The Sun will undoubtedly claim that, were it not for the Sun, Haringay would have carried on in its own inimitable way, and battalions of children would have been slaughtered to appease the requirements of breaking news and reality tv.
The really nasty bit is that the Serious Case Review was so abysmally badly done that every other Serious Care Review in the country is put in doubt; I wonder what’s happening everywhere else?
December 1st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Will the Sun let it lie?