The State is failing the most vulnerable
James Forsyth 6:47pmThe Guardian reports today on the horrific state of child protection. The evidence it has uncovered suggests that the failings that led to no one intervening to protect Baby P are hideously common.
“More than 80% of children who are killed or seriously injured as a result of abuse or neglect are missed by the national child protection register, the Guardian can reveal.
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The figures, obtained from unpublished government-commissioned research, show a widespread pattern of missed opportunities where police, social workers and health professionals fail to communicate or act on evidence of potential abuse. Postmortem case reviews included in the research where children died in the care of their families reveal that midwives, hospital staff and social workers saw evidence of abuse while the children were still alive but councils did not place them on the child protection register.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.”
There appears to be a variety of causes for this including a lack of coordination between the social services and other branches of government, incompetence and complacency. But there also seem to be some perverse incentives at work. As The Guardian notes:
There is clearly an urgent need for an urgent review and reform of these procedures. The current state of affairs is simply unacceptable. There also needs to be far greater accountability: Haringey’s attitude to the Baby P case seems to sum up what is wrong“Concern emerged this week that government policy has discouraged councils from decisive intervention in suspected cases of abuse and neglect. Ofsted, the government agency that rates local authority children and young people's services departments, docks marks if children remain on the register for more than two years. Child protection lawyers also believe a steep rise in legal fees associated with taking children into care is putting children at risk. In May the court fee for a local authority to bring such a case to court rose from around £100 to £2,225.”
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November 16th, 2008 12:53am Report this commentGood piece, James, but the state failed children by failing to maintain a two-parent home as the norm for bringing up secure and balanced children, and for sliding the authority of the father - and now both the parents - out from under them. With nary, it must be said, a whimper from the beaten citizenry. The Brave New World Advances.
From the Seventies feminists, the plan was always to get rid of the male in the household. How males actually became complicit in this programme puzzles me. But marginalise males was the progamme. (Except Islamic men, of course, who absolutely never abuse women or female children by murder for falling in love with the wrong man, or through horrific genital mutilation so they will never be motivated to run off with a man in the first place. Do children get removed from Muslim households? I'd be interested to learn.)
Jacqui Smith and all those fat Labour cabinet women with indistinguishable hair styles and fat backsides and identical clothes - I sincerely can't tell them apart - don't seem to be intent on preserving the family which is the underpinning of the human race throughout the entire planet.
We understand that the fat-faced, bad-hairdo-ed Harriet Harman was brought up by a mother and father. Why does she want this privilege to be exclusive for her own class (such as it is) and want to destroy it for other families who are equal in value?
What is this destructiveness towards families and the male, yet doesn't apply in upper echelon Labour households?
God, they're vicious and I hate them.
JohnAnt
November 16th, 2008 1:49am Report this commentOfsted told Haringey in 2006 that it was impressed that so few new children's cases were being placed on the child protection register. If you were told that, as a council, what policy would you adopt?
The government has been back-pedalling on protection since the reports critical of the NE England and Orkneys cases, where many children were taken into care without sufficient reason.
What we have - exactly as with the banking crisis - is another problem caused by the government's half-baked regulation and media-sensitive non-policies.
Haringey is indeed a basket case, like a few others - but the responsibility for this lies with national government.
dan
November 16th, 2008 7:20am Report this commentthe way you're covering this story smacks of poor statistics.
Wouldn't it be a far bigger scandal if 80% of killed children were on a prote toon register rather than off it?
A non-story that'll be easily batted away by the government.
the duke of putney
November 16th, 2008 4:45pm Report this commentThe emphasis of child abuse at the hand of the male of the species has diverted attention from a more general problem. For example, abuse from the female of the species is denied and or soon forgotten or overlooked.
In my role as a district nurse I encountered a Police Officer attached to the local child protection unit. I was gob smacked when I heard her say that there was as big a problem with child abuse perpetrated by the female of the species. Being somewhat puzzled by this apparent contradiction I asked “How come”. The answer was “Because they have access”. Scary init? Wait for the reaction from Blair’s so called babes to that.
jean baker
November 16th, 2008 8:12pm Report this commentWho would trust this government's research ? They met strong opposition to their controversial plans for 'child databases'- Nulabor deals with 'opposition' in sinister ways - media sleaze and sensationalism is rife since Mandleson's/Campbell's return.
Who is 'baby P' and why is he deprived true identity as were Victoria Climbie, Jamie Bulger etc. 'Mysterious' and sinister.
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