BS: Baby P

Subject: BS: Baby P
From: Fiolar
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 08:15 AM

I am most surprised that no 'Catter has commented on the horrific death of toddler "Baby P" who died in Haringey, London in August 2007 aged 17 months. Three people including his "mother" were involved. Apparently according to reports he had been seen from 60 to 70 times by various agencies including social workers and the police. He was examined two days before his death by a "doctor" who failed to diagnose the fact that he had six broken ribs and a broken back.
Several pictures of him have appeared in the papers and he was a beautiful child - blond hair and blue eyes.
I certainly hope that there is a "Hell" and that one day those bastards who tortured him will go there.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Paul Burke
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 08:28 AM

The computer system introduced to address the Victoria Climbie murder has in fact exacerbated the problem. I know of at least one social worker who was threatened with the sack for preferring to spend their time looking after clients rather than filling in on- line tickboxes.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 08:29 AM

There is no hell, if there was, there would also have to be a heaven, meaning there is a god, what sort of a god would allow things like this to happen to innocents ?

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:11 AM

--A four-year-old left out in an unheated garage for three days during temperatures with a HIGH of -10F so mom and boyfriend could play.

--An infant repeatedly thrown against a cement wall for crying.

--A two-year-old whipped to death with a car aerial.

--A toddler raped to death by mom's boyfriend while mom was high on meth.

Shall I go on?

Emergency responders who have to deal with these things are (here) required to get immediate counseling and stay with it as long as necessary.

There is no hell because there is nothing which can punish people like these. Perhaps, after death, they are simply snuffed out.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:41 AM

BTW, I include in that last statement those who fail to do anything when they could or who are prevented from doing something.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: jacqui.c
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:44 AM

What a sickening list of abominations.

I feel for the people who have to deal with the aftermath. I just can't imagine how one could manage to do that job for long.

One can only hope that the perpetrators will get a bit of their comeuppance when they, hopefully, land up in prison. To my mind they deserve the same treatment as they have meted out on these poor kids. There may have been reasons behind their actions but no reason is good enough to excuse these sorts of crimes. I would put them in general population and hope that word got out as to what they had done.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Paul Burke
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:55 AM

Shutting off your brain, labelling people as monsters, and thereby distancing ourselves from them, is no way to make things better. Read this- which asks among other things, what woulkd have happened to Baby P had he NOT been killed- and think.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 10:17 AM

No Paul, if this child had been saved, he may well have live a good life, he was 17 months old for fucks sake and it had been going on a long while.

Honest Your Worship, I only broke a 17 month old babys back to save him from a life of crime.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 10:18 AM

Read "What Came Before He Shot Her" by Elizabeth George. Not quite as extreme, physically, as the above cases, but it is a brilliant, imo, study of how kids come to such horrible places as they grow up in a miasma of fear and violence.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 11:19 AM

There is no hell, if there was, there would also have to be a heaven, meaning there is a god, what sort of a god would allow things like this to happen to innocents ?

eric

I share your outrage, but this is actually poor logic driven by that outrage. The answer is, "God who creates free will, and holds people accountable for their use of it."

The solutions are the people's, to create.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 11:32 AM

I really can't discuss this topic without becoming...extremely emotional. I've seen too much.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 02:09 PM

Damaged people damage people who damage people...

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:05 PM

It is very upsetting what happened to the poor innocent child. In the photos his eyes are full of hope when he had only known pain and abuse. As a mother I don't know how anyone could treat anyone, let alone a child like that. I hope the people responsible are locked up for a long time and banned from having anymore children.

May Baby P rest in peace and the Goddess hold his soul close. At last he is free from pain and hurt.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 05:18 PM

"Shutting off your brain, labelling people as monsters, and thereby distancing ourselves from them, is no way to make things better."

Indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: goatfell
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:59 AM

When a man does these things to children/adults some people say well I thought so, but then they are surpirsed/shocked when a woman does the same thing, so what is the difference about this, and why is that when men/boys det these terrible things done to them some people just say well they'll get over it, because there is hardly anywhere in Britian that they can go but there is a lot of places for women/girls to go , for example there is quite a lot of refuges for women/girls in Scotland and yet for men/boys there is only one refuge for them, is this is not a form of abuse, even though it's tiny amount for men/boys, it's still happening.

So what about men/boys that get abused by their partner/parents what about them, the usual a tap on the wrist and told that they mustn't do it again

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: GUEST,caroline
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 05:28 PM

this story of Baby P has brought tears to my eyes
I hope there's a hell for those scumbags

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Cluin
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 09:22 PM

People like that make their own hell. Unfortunately, the people around them also have to live in it.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: goatfell
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 06:42 AM

Does that include the councillors, and the social workers and everyone else that helped to murder Baby P? When you say those scumbags, as I say I hope that includes these people as well, because they did nothing really to help baby P
But there you go, we have a situation where I live where the local council have put vulnerable people lives in jeopardy by not allowing them any wardens to make sure that their shelter housing is safe.

But that's councils for you

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: GUEST,Comrac
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 07:29 AM

I can´t believe the so-called Social Workers are still in their jobs. This isn´t the first time they have allowed kids to die while they boast about the wonderful work they do on ego trips. These bastards involved in this case need charged with murder, maybe then they would do the job their paid to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: goatfell
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 09:15 AM

http://ericbogle.net/lyrics/lyricspdf/atrisk.pdf

but Ihave changed the first verse, the last two lines because it's about time women were reconized for their abuse,

so
I have changed it to

her mother's little princess her pride and her joy
and since she was four years old her favourite sexual toy,

Mayra Hindley comes to mind

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Amergin
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 03:28 AM

Over in New Zealand there were a few people including the mother of young Nia Glassie, who were recently found guilty of her death. I wept when I read what they did to that little girl. One of the worst things bout this case was the neighbours knew....but did nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 08:06 AM

Does that include the councillors, and the social workers and everyone else that helped to murder Baby P? When you say those scumbags, as I say I hope that includes these people as well, because they did nothing really to help baby P

I can´t believe the so-called Social Workers are still in their jobs. This isn´t the first time they have allowed kids to die while they boast about the wonderful work they do on ego trips. These bastards involved in this case need charged with murder, maybe then they would do the job their paid to do.

With all due respect, go and fuck yourselves.

I'm a social worker. I'm bloody good at my job and take pride in what I do and the difference it can sometimes make in people's lives. I try to remain optimistic and focussed despite the fact that my colleagues and I are the whipping boys of every half-arsed know-nothing with a bone to pick and a shitload of ignorance to display.

Calling us 'murderers' and 'scum' and 'bastards' isn't going to make us do our jobs better. It's just going to contribute to an increasingly hostile environment where our jobs become harder and harder. And that's on top of the cuts in resources, understaffing, high caseloads, unpaid extra hours and so on.

I'd like to take people like you two out on the job with me for a week. Then we'd see if you still felt good about spouting shit about social workers on a world-wide forum.

Baby P's short life and death were tragic and horrible. Haringey Council clearly needs to make serious changes to its policies and practices. Extra funding, as always is desperately needed.

What's not needed is blanket abuse of social workers.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: jacqui.c
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 08:20 AM

What's not needed is blanket abuse of social workers.

I can't see that there was blanket abuse - just condemnation of the particular people involved in this child's death. ("These bastards involved in this case")

I know that there are many good workers in the field - we simply hear about the ones who do not pick up on what seem to be obvious signs of abuse. It happens, as is demonstrated by the death of this child and others before him.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 09:18 AM

Fair enough, Jacqui. But it can also be demonstrated that both posts are indicative of the commonly held assumption that open season on social workers is somehow acceptable ... and that its our role to continually soak up abuse founded on ignorance like we are a battalion of human sponges.

It also leads to a position where social workers are almost embarrassed to admit what they do for a living, or feel they have to apologise for it or make a joke out of it. Because there are a few bad ones (as in any profession) we all get tarred with the same brush. I think its about time that as a profession we took a more militant, assertive, combatative stance and held our heads high about the thousands and thousands of interventions that take place up and down the country every day that don't get in the news - because they were successful. Social workers - and here I'm talking about the vast majority of us - doing their jobs well just isn't sensationalist enough to get on the news and doesn't fulfill the revenge-fantasies-by-proxy of people like our two posters above who I quoted in my last post. Yet - if it wasn't for the hard work and dedication of thousands of social workers up and down the country, I really shudder to think what sort of society we'd be living in. One that makes this one look utopian by comparison!

Its also notable that in awful situations like this, the press and their copyists seem more angry with the social workers than with the actual perpetrators. And they're certainly far more angry with the social workers than they are with the doctors, police, health visitors and other professionals involved. To me, that makes it as much about another opportunity to vent society's 'common sense' received wisdom about social workers as it does about the particular case.

By the way, if anyone's worried I'm neglecting the job, I'm on leave today and actually neglecting the DIY...

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 11:43 AM

If I cock-up in my accountancy job, the profit line looks wrong and I get a bit of a bollocking and have to put in a journal entry to make it right.

If a social worker cocks-up, babies die and the social worker gets sacked, hung, drawn and quartered - he/she's finished.

That's a hell of a responsibility. I know which job I'd prefer.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 11:54 AM

Hmmm... accountancy... I wonder if 45 is to late to retrain?

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:09 PM

Yet - if it wasn't for the hard work and dedication of thousands of social workers up and down the country, I really shudder to think what sort of society we'd be living in.

True. And I have a nasty feeling that it might not be too long before we'll increasingly be living in that sort of society, because there won't be too many people queuing up to train and work as social workers. In some places we are already living increasingly in that kind of society.

We've got a vicious circle in which inadequate staffing means increased risk of mistakes, leading to increasingly complicated procedures when things go wrong, making the staff shortages even worse, meaning increased risk of mistakes, increasingly complex procedures, loss of staff, difficulty in recruiting...

There are ways of doing social work which actually do help people deal with difficult circumstances, and which make it much less likely for vulnerable people - children, old people, disabled people - to be hurt or worse. But increasingly those ways of working have been marginalised and abandoned, and systems based on form-filling and buck-passing have been imposed by managements which may have no real understanding of what they are dealing with.

It's worth noting that Sharon Shoesmith, the director of children's services who has been sacked following this case, was not a social worker, but had a background in teaching and in school inspection.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:23 PM

I was speaking to an elderly lady the other day, who was a social worker amongst a multitude of other socially active roles during her life, both paid and unpaid. And the Baby P case came up. I asked her if in her opinion anything had changed since her years in social work. Was it simply a case that more child abuse cases are publicly discussed now than during her day, or are there more incidents?

She didn't exactly answer my question, but said that in her opinion, modern problems in social work stemmed from a break-down of communication between different departments, she said inter-departmental communication had deteriorated over the years since she was working. And it was this which made the job of efficient action and intervention, which in her day was much easier, increasingly difficult for modern social workers.

I think it's of course a terribly sad case. My Mother knew a teenage girl at school, who was universally hated for her violent bullying of other girls, this girl used to wear whip scars on her back from her religious Mother regularly beating her with electric flex. All the girls knew of it. And apparantly plenty of the parents and teachers too. No thoughts of any action were ever taken. How many people in there own lives can look back and recall times they could or should have noticed or said or done something, but missed the 'obvious'?

For whatever it's worth, I speak as someone who was seriously abused myself. Public awareness has changed greatly, the system has to cope with more cases. There needs to be greater support of those who work in these areas, not greater condemnation.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:24 PM

You'd be bored witless within six months, Spleen! Trust me, I've had 41 years of it! :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: jacqui.c
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:24 PM

I think that it is up to all of us to try and be aware of problems that might be occurring in our own communities. It's a shame that we can't find some way of making people in general more aware of and feel more responsible for what is happening in their own neighbourhoods. Too many pass by on the other side, say nothing for fear of being thought to be interfering or are just too plain scared of the consequences.

Maybe we, as humans, have become too successful - there are too many of us crowded into too small a space and we turn inwards to maintain some sort of sanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: folk1e
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 08:21 PM

I do not understand how this happened after 60 visits!
I do not understand how with the police wanting baby P taken into care it did not happen!
I Realy do not understand how a baby can be medically examined with broken Back /ribs ends of fingers / fingernails missing and judged fit!
I do not understand how Haringey were inspected and all found in order whilst this occurred!

I want answers to the above questions, and I want everyone responsible for this abomination to be removed from positions of power and trust!
I want to know that it will not happen again!

Am I being unreasonable? ......... I don't think so!

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:42 PM

I find it difficult to come to any balanced view as my emotional response to the torture inflicted on the child is so extreme.

I think it would probably be a bad idea to leave me alone in a room with his mother and her friends though - even more so if I were given a length of rope and a lit cigarette.

Subject: RE: BS: Baby P
From: semi-submersible
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:22 PM

Rapaire said:
who fail to do anything when they could or who are prevented from doing something.

McGrath of Harlow said:
There are ways of doing social work which actually do help people deal with difficult circumstances, and which make it much less likely for vulnerable people - children, old people, disabled people - to be hurt or worse. But increasingly those ways of working have been marginalised and abandoned

jacqui.c said:
try and be aware of problems that might be occurring in our own communities... find some way of making people in general more aware of and feel more responsible for what is happening in their own neighbourhoods.

HOW? I'm not asking why. I don't need to know there's divine justice or payback or even healing. Responsibility's a given: we're all in this together and we really are doing this to our collective self (adults and babies and songbirds and algae - send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for me). What I don't know is HOW the **** to do better than we are.

If one's in an agency or a government, where can one find the tools you spoke of, McG? How do you distinguish them from the ineffective ways of working? As a citizen, I can demand that my district, province, and country use the best, but only if we can find them and demonstrate that they're better.

Is there any standard measure of effectiveness authorities can use to identify the most useful ways of working? How can they recognise the best methods to evaluate their departments without interfering too much with the essential tasks their people are doing? When out of our specialty (everyone is, most of the time) how can we find and evaluate the evidence we need to understand our options and make good choices?

Tools, Rapaire, tools for understanding and choosing. How? Where? Which? That's what prevents most of us from doing something: ignorance. Once you've taken a first aid course, you have some idea of how to approach a sick or injured person. What about a sick family or country? What can one person do? Which are the top few most effective things we can do to make our communities more humane?

I've already begun a lot of changes to make myself a better citizen in the community of species (David Suzuki's Nature Challenge gives simple high-priority ways to start or continue) but I'm still looking for where to start at practicing the skills of making my human communities better (while keeping most of my evenings for my family). I am sure there are things I could be doing to prevent these tragedies. What are they? Help me to help!