Thursday, February 14, 2008

Never let the facts

get in the way of a story with which to beat social workers.

This is a horrific case of a baby girl who was abused and murdered by her father and it happened in my area.

Up to 30 medical workers saw her but took no actions which could have saved her - like for example inform social services of their concerns. However, as you will see from the Daily Mail, the fault for this poor child's death is placed fully at the feet of social services workers...even though we knew nothing at all about her until after she had been killed.

Reidski is so right about journalists.

STOP PRESS: Obviously I wasn't the only one offended and it has been changed.

The previous headline was: How 30 social services workers allowed a sadistic father to murder his 54-day-old baby girl.

7 comments:

Gill said...

My friend's husband is a social worker working in child protection and I don't envy his job at all.

Yorkshire Pudding said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yorkshire Pudding said...

I have enormous sympathy for our nation's vast army of social workers. The job is exceedingly difficult and when all is said and done it isn't social workers who cause the problems - they are trying to soothe or solve situations that are often very complicated and hemmed in by "rights" and legislation and pressures of time and other pressing caseload issues. That madman who brutalised his innocent baby - he was the one to blame - not social workers - and not the health workers who missed the clues, perhaps they were scared of getting it wrong. Can we really blame them?

Fire Byrd said...

I wanted to write about a personal experience that is happening to me right now at work. But I can't, and I do know that I may be held up to account for someone else's behaviour, and there is nothing I can do about that.
We who work in the caring professions just try and do our best. We do not hold the gun to anyone's head let alone press the trigger.
But we get blamed.
So if I tell you not to jump off the bridge, and you want to, will you take any notice of me.

timesnewroman said...

Reidski's right about journalists being the scummiet "profession" on earth and the really scummiest work for the Mail. Social Workers on the other hand, particularly those who work in child protection have a bloody difficult and at gruesome job, with little thanks when they get it right (most of the time) and a torrent of abuse from the media when something goes wrong (much more rarely).

Reidski said...

Nah, scummiest work for the Guardian - utterly despicable bunch of fuckers!

J.J said...

Gill, I've done that job - it keeps you awake at night.

YP - so much I could say here. In fact legislation now is centred on trying at all costs to keep a child at risk with its family through provision of family support. When after years of this, the child still needs to be removed, the child had often been so fundamentally damaged that his or her life chances are basically screwed. And of course as you suggest, workers get pilloried if they remove a child 'unfairly', and slaughtered if the child left at home gets hurt.

Pixie, sorry to hear that you are having problems. The media and commentators always need someone to blame, and the carers are convenient scapegoats. Management find some minion to take the flack.

TNR and Reidksi, I know how you feel about the Guardian Reidski, and agree with you in many respects but for pure bile, the Mail surely takes a bit of beating?