Doncaster Council – the true murderers of innocence?

:mrgreen:

Someday people might just quote so we know whose said what cause you can bet your bottom dollar i aint trawling back through posts to decipher

there is always hope :)

The failings don’t lie solely with the local authorities, in many cases they lie with the neighbour who could hear the child crying night after night but did nothing in case they were being too nosey or wrong, or the gp who couldn’t see consistancy because they only saw the child once or twice or never followed up a second appointment when they had a gut feeling something was wrong, or the child’s nursery or school worker who looked beyond the child constantly being unclean on arrival coz ‘ thats just how the family are’… need I go on? When a child at risk is notified to the local authorities its only then they can do something about it. This usually involves having to contact the child’s education setting, their health visitor, the gp, any social workers involved with the family, etc etc etc to build a big picture of any evidence or whether its a one off event causing the referral. This all takes time. People have to reply to all of their requests, they have to then bring together a ‘board’ type meeting where the case is heard and this board can consist of any of the affore mentioned ppl and local authority workers and child protection workers. At the end of this meeting they will decide if and how the child is at risk and whether they would be more at risk if they remain where they are or if they in removing them the effect of that alone would be as risky to their wellbeing. In most cases a child has to seriously at risk for them to rehome the child and where possible they will always try to keep the child where they are and work with the parents to educate them about their failings. The whole process stakes a long time and that is why children fall through the loop – tragic as it is. We must remember that child abuse happens in many levels… from the parent who doesn’t bother to take a sick child to the dr because work commitments are more important to the adult who murders or sexually abuses a child…. or the emotional abuse some children encounter… its all abuse… it just has to be defined and thats where the problem lies in leaving it all up to social workers who know nothing about the children or family… it should fall on the hands of anyone who knows them and sees a problem to report it and get the ball rolling.

It’s not my intention to dampen anyone’s righteous indignation at tragedies of this kind and, of course, one case is one too many, but it should be remembered, I think, that the country is actually making good progress with this sort of thing: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8497277.stm