Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Sharon Shoesmith speaks to BBC Radio 4
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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One third of the available posts in Haringey Social Services are empty. Maybe that answers your question Bob. One seventh are empty on average across the country.
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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Baby P was murdered on shoesmiths watch.
shoesmith did not want to take responsibility for Baby Ps death on her watch.
shoesmith as acting chief was sacked.
shoesmith did not like this because she missed being paid a large bonus.
shoesmith took haringey council to court to get the money.
she lost the court case.
shoesmith wonders why the media chased her around.
could she have handled things a bit better ?
what happened to the doctor at A&E that failed to spot Baby ps injuries despite a physical check up ?
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I LISTENED to the interview of Sharon Shoesmith by Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour which can still be heard on BBC's iPlayer.
I found Shoesmith's answers irritating. My main impression is that for Shoesmith, management is an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. It seems almost incidental that failures of her department (she repeatedly referred to the department as "my department") have consequences and consequences of the most severe kind.
She also mentioned how many children are killed in the UK on a weekly or annual basis: but how many of those children were on council child protection registers and is that not the whole point? To my mind, it begs the question, what is the point of Shoesmith's old department? Does it do much good in its present form?
The analogy that Shoesmith gave, of a Police Borough Commander not being expected to resign over a street shooting, is spurious, as Murray was quick to point out. A Borough Commander might be expected to resign if such a crime happened inside the cell of a police station, which would have been a closer analogy.
Shoesmith started off with jargon and sometimes ended her assertions with her own comment: "yes?" and avoided the use of the word baby: she usually referred to Baby P as "the child". She contradicted herself on occasion (the issue is complicated; the issue is not complicated).
I thought the interviewer Jenni Murray did an excellent job in keeping her cool and repeatedly bringing Shoesmith back to the matters that rightly concern the public.
Interestingly, Shoesmith said Haringey supported her continuing in her job up until a week before she was sacked. Having now heard about 50 minutes of Shoesmith in her own words, I feel more sure that Secretary of State Ed Balls did the right thing in requiring her to go.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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I had thought of trying to get back into employment by applying for one of the vacant Social Worker posts (28K a year- not bad) but am not qualified. I was interested to see that -
" The core skills required by qualified social workers are defined as:
• ICT and Numerical skills
• Problem solving skills
• Communication skills
• Skills in working with others
• Skills in Personal and Professional Development "
Not a lot there about recognising bruises and fractures: no mention of street smarts and healthy cynicism as regards the "customers " and their stories about how their child fell down the stairs.
The required skills seem to be all about drafting reports, circulating them to colleagues and ticking boxes. As Clive said, it looks as if management is an end in itself.
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Permalink Reply by phippsofacto on
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ICT and Numerical skills are required in most, if not all, professional jobs - more so now due to the information recording systems brought in after the Victoria Climbie case.
Problem solving skills are necessary due to the nature of the job. Lots of different service users with vastly different needs requires someone who can adapt to different situations.
Skills working with others - this is the one which involves the multi-agency working that failed in the case of Baby P.
What you haven't mentioned is that you need a degree in social work, and that at £28000, whilst not to be sniffed at, the wage is around £10000 less than the average for London.
Also, it is not the role of a social worker to inspect a child for bruising and fractures. Though if they were to see either I am sure they wouldn't just add it to their report for circulation.
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Well I did say I wasn't qualified :-)
So they need to be able to use computers, calculate ( I hope they are taught to beware of the use of "averages " ) and to liaise with other agencies. I take your point about problem solving if "Service Users" are the people the Social Worker is there to help.
I'm not decrying the need for these core skills which, as you say. would be a requirement in most jobs, but I was surprised that there was nothing which was specific to Social Work.
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I'm sure they could do with more people like yourself John. Maybe you could re-write their job descriptions! :)
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What's a 'professional' job? One that requires "ICT" and numerical skills? This is vague nonsense and you could apply these criteria to almost any desk job these days. These criteria should not be first-order considerations for officials monitoring delinquent parents:
What's needed, at least in those directly responsible for Child Protection Registers, are tough character, a no-nonsense approach, experience and wisdom – these ought to rate higher than the above so-called core-skills. And "street smart" as John said. And, both a structure and superiors who support social workers in the field.
What I beleive John was getting at was, what are the special abilities needed for social work and are these being sought?
The amount of information recording systems brought in, is thought to be an important part of the problem and not part of the solution. Ask a social worker, as I have. This phenomenon happened partly as a result of the Victoria Climbie case and partly it is a general malaise from which many institutions suffer, notably the Police and which also gets in the way of their ability to do their job. It is part of a bureaucratic mania to quantify everything at all costs and regardless of consequences. It is the triumph of the bookkeepers!
The level of information recording required was identified by Shoesmith herself in her interview ("far too much pen-pushing"). She's right about that, but pen-pushing became an end in itself and the real goals of the organisation were lost sight of. Shoesmith was reported to have displayed charts at a news conference and although she denied that, there is no doubt that she has brandished figures at various times to justify her position.
My impression, having attended the Children's Strategy Committee in December, is not so much that agencies didn't talk to each other (which they didn't), but that there are too many different agencies involved in the first place. There were about 30 (thirty) people there around an enormous table in the council committee room and in the main, the contributions comprised warm words: i.e. business as usual, no real change, which is normally Haringey's determination after criticism.
The agencies involved are too big and too many, and the whole Borough is too big to administer efficiently (that is not about to change but it needs to be recognized). How agencies relate to each other are strategic decisions. It will not matter what 'people skills' that an individual employee might have, if the whole structure is dysfunctional, as with Haringey's Children's Services.
It doesn't matter how good individual employees in one agency are in talking to other agencies: it's a matter of chains of command and who decides in the end. With Baby P's death, it was difficult to find where the buck stopped. My strong impression is of weak leadership. Again, it will not matter how good are the problem solving abilities of a particular social worker, if the problem-solving abilities of their managers and political masters are weak or absent.
Is it really any wonder that Haringey finds it hard to attract quality staff? Most of the recruitment difficulties are of their own making. Social workers took all the blame over Victoria Climbie and have taken too much of the blame over Baby P. Just as with an army, the morale of the solidiers is the responsibility of officers and generals; this time, unlike Victoria Climbie, some of the officers responsible were court-marshalled.
The average wage suggested for London is probably skewed artificially by the erstwhile enormous incomes of a relatively few in the City, whose employment numbers and probably incomes, will drop off sharply. It is probably not the size of salary that is putting off possible new social workers in Haringey.
Is the new director coming for all the right reasons? The salary of Shoesmith's replacement, at a reported £200,000 and probably more, is greater than that of the Prime Minister: it's enough to employ four senior people at salaries of £50,000 each.
While the qualifications listed for social workers (depressingly) remain as "core skills" we cannot expect better outcomes, only more of the same.
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Not all of the parents are deliquent I'm sure.
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MOST parents are good and loving parents and are not delinquent, but in the Baby P case and in the case of those unfortunate to be in need of protection by the authorities, i.e. those on the At Risk Register, we are not talking about most parents, but a small minority.
I am no expert in Child Protection, but try to proceed on a commonsense basis. I do not know what are the exact criteria for inclusion on an At Risk Register, but at least one criterion might reasonably be some evidence of harm from a child's parents or guardians.
I don't imagine the names on Child Protection Registers are placed there lightly or for no good reason. Probably at least one of the parents or the guardian of a child at least gives the appearance of being delinquent.
What is the purpose of a Child Protection Register?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Apologies if you've already seen this link which I posted in a parallel HOL discussion. Its the Podcast of Sharon Shoesmith's interview with The Guardian.
James is of course correct that this happened on Sharon Shoesmith's 'watch'. But it's worth listening and reading very carefully what she says about the sequence of events prior to Baby P's death. And she is right to raise the very real issue about the point at which the facts of a case show that we're looking - not at tragic and avoidable mistakes by one or two individuals - but systemic underlying failings.
It's interesting to read Bob Cant's comments, as someone prepared to come to this issue with an open mind - rather than focus on words and phrases which support an already fixed view. I fully agree with Bob about what happened after the murder of Victoria Climbié. Anyone who reads the Laming Inquiry - and especially the transcripts of evidence - will be in no doubt there were very significant systemic failings in every single agency which had contact with Victoria: three Social Services Departments; two hospitals; the Police Child Protection Team, and an NSPCC run Family Centre.
Sharon Shoesmith is entitled to challenge whether or not this was the case with Baby P.
A small point of accuracy, James. She hasn't yet gone to Court. The appeal which failed was to a panel of councillors. Sharon Shoesmith now has the right to apply to an Employment Tribunal.
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