The case of Baby P is stomach-turning, it is hard to conceive of how anyone could do such things to a child. It is a tragic illustration of more general problems, though. There is the incompetence and seeming unaccountability of the local authority and the whole issue of how society reached a place where something as awful as this can happen.
Camilla Cavendish, in a quite brilliant column in The Times, writes that:
“In my bleaker moments I feel that the welfare state has pulled off a truly brilliant stunt: not only has it managed to institutionalise shamelessness among people who might once have been forced to take heed of social taboos. It has also sowed widespread fear of professionals in most of the people who could still uphold taboos – taboos such as refusing to accept as normal the cycle of women having a baby, moving on, having another with another man, and moving on again, with no apparent expectation to care for anyone.
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