Saturday 6 December 2008

Social Services

Ever since the 'Baby P' case I have been concerned about the way that the Social Services operate. Instinctively I had a gut feeling that the fault lay with NoLab but as I was completely ignorant of the procedures of the Social Services it was difficult to comment with confidence.

Today all the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place when I read an article in the Daily Mail. Social Workers are forced to comply with government protection targets. These targets insist that children are removed from the Child Protection Register after two years. They are also 'encouraged' to reduce the number of children that they put into care or with foster parents. This means that children are quite routinely returned to inadequate or dangerous parents even if the social worker concerned feels that it is the wrong decision.

This is why Ofsted inspectors rated both Haringey (Baby P) and Kirklees (Shannon Matthews) as 'services which consistently deliver above minimum requirements for children'. These are the politics of madness! How many more children have been returned to families who are not capable of looking after them? Now we know what the problems are and as I suspected Ed Balls has to take his share of the blame for the despicable cases which have recently made the headlines.

Government targets should never be allowed to supercede the experience and common sense of the people on the ground. The misery that these targets must have caused children all over the country will probably never be calculated.

NoLab have interfered in every aspect of our lives in this country. They are fouling everything up and yet some of the electorate still think that they are worth supporting. What can we say about people who put their warped targets against the safety of the nation's children. It is nauseating!

3 comments:

marksany said...

Targets are the problem. Read some John Seddon

Anonymous said...

Mark yes, targets are everything with social workers. They are paid 5k (or more) to get a child adopted, if they fail within the allot4ed time or at all the child can be returned to parents good or bad, it's all about the paramount interest of the child', not. I know a 'man'who has two vulneable children previously on the çp'register from his abuse, he wont allow the (good) mother contact and the kids are now scarred for life, and this is Brown Social Work. It's like hating children isn't it?

bryboy said...

Tks for your interest folks. I cannot believe what a mess this is and the deeper one probes the worse it seems to get. As you say Elizabeth it is as though someone in charge hates kids.