I Hate Child Abuse

I can see that case making it even harder to recruit anyone into the profession in future, if the carers are successfully prosecuted.

There have been similar killings of children in the UK over the least few decades, and every time, no-one calls for prosecuting anyone, least of all the unfortunate case-workers though they risk being conveniently shunted out of their jobs. Instead, the outcry descends into party-political point-scoring and parroting of time-worn phrases like "heads must roll" (meaning those of the senior management) and "we must learn lessons and put procedures in place to ensure it never happens again".


Only, tragically, it does happen again, because no-one stops to think the main problem lies in those parrot-calls.


I am sure there are differences between the US and UK systems, but here social-workers come under local-authority control paid for via local and national taxes, with the budgets set by Government policy and Treasury accounting..


Over the last few decades, successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, have steadily undermined all the public services - selling off parts at cut prices, usually to foreign companies or states; reducing budgets, initiating all manner of "reforms", "targets" and other well-meaning but ultimately needless experiments; keeping pay down while fostering downright lies about Civil & Local Government Service pay and pensions; and generally demoralising and weakening the services.

At the same time society at large expects its growing population to have more and more for less and less, with less and less staff to provide it.

On top of it all is a growth in Managing By Theory, or Managing for Management's sake - in private firms as well as the public sector. Unlike past recruitment of managers by promotion of sufficiently skilled and experienced "shop floor" staff, many now are recruited directly from universities, where they learn all about spread-sheets and talking the right sort of pretentious jargon of the day; but whose knowledge of the field they enter, is low at best.


Management for Management's sake leads to bureaucracy. Calls to "Put Procedures in Place..." lead to bureaucracy. No-one can do anything without completing the right forms, having the right "qualifications" which may simply mean they "Successfully Attended..." some internal day-course at work. No-one stops to ask if the right forms actually do the right thing or just jam the system.

No-one stops to ask, "Do our procedures help the work or merely show we have Procedures, [i]al la[/i] ISO9001?" (An administrative, not "quality", control scheme; and a bureaucrat's gift.)


Meanwhile cruelty to children continues...
Why? We've all the right forms, procedures, people with ologies in spread-sheets and jargon, etc, so it shows the politicians and journalists we've Done The Right Thing.

Another child dies horrifically....
Sack the poor case-worker, slide a senior manager into another role, hold a Public Inquiry at vast expense to give answers that may be true but always wrong to the campaigners who wanted it to "prove" their own case.

WHY?

We have over-looked something too simple for the politicians, crusading journalists, grasping lawyers and spread-sheetologists to spot...

We have made the system too complicated for its own good. Different agencies cannot exchange vital information properly and efficiently.
Everyone is paralysed with fear for their own livelihoods and possibly of legal action (less likely in the UK). No-one dare show any initiative; let alone "whistle-blow" if they see obvious weaknesses.
At the same time their work-load is increasing to breaking-point - easy to miss, to forget, to err.


After poor little Peter Connelly was murdered, the head of the Social Services concerned, Sharon Shoesmith, was crucified in the Press and elsewhere as if she was directly responsible for his death. Her defence - that she'd done nothing wrong and had followed all the right procedures - seemed lame but it was cogent. Unfortunately everyone listened but no-one understood.


Sadly too, Society at Large is becoming desperately unforgiving and vengeful. We cannot be allowed to make mistakes - any mistake must be read as wilful and people punished for them, not helped to ensure they and their agencies don't repeat the mistakes. Gabriel Fernandez was not murdered by the Social Services, any more than was Peter Connelly.



The Social Services are not alone in this desire for vengeance rather than constructive support and genuine help.

Over the last few years...

Italy: The head of its state geology organisation prosecuted because the seismologists had under-predicted the strength of a forecast earthquake. Hardly surprising they did, to anyone with a basic grasp of the natural sciences.

Germany: a railway official prosecuted for manslaughter after he mistakenly allowed a train to enter a single-line section already occupied from the other end, so causing a head-on collision. Whilst the official was found negligent, to my knowledge no-one asked why the German State railway system appeared to lack the basic, effective signals-interlocking that would have presented a clear, unambiguous stop signal to the waiting driver. This was something learnt in the 19th Century!!

They neglected to protect that child. Evil prevails when good people sit back and do nothing.