public+services+-+Social+Services+-+Baby+P

=**Baby P**=

HFRA Statement, 24.11.08

We have been contacted a number of times by individual residents and the media for our views about the tragic death of 'Baby P' and who may be responsible. We have declined, as the Federation, to make any public statement for reasons set out on the linked page. We've not been formally contacted by any local residents association about the issue, but we feel that we owe it to local RAs and residents to inform you of our internal discussions on this matter and circulate some informative material. We will certainly put this issue onto the Agenda for the next Federation meeting in January.

Please find enclosed:

- Article for publiciation by Sue Hessel (HFRA Vulnerable Groups officer) written in her personal capacity - HFRA Secretary's letter to local resident - Article with views of a St Ann's Hospital mental health professional - Article from an experienced former Haringey social worker

From: Sue Hessel, HFRA officer for vulnerable groups

I believe we must have an independent inquiry. It needs to be conducted by a Judge - not the health authorities, the police or social services - they will be all too tempted to collude with their professional colleagues. I would hope it would have as wide a remit as possible so that many people are given an opportunity to speak. It is the truth that is important.

There was a moment on television last week when, upon learning of the terrible death of Baby P, the nation’s jaw collectively dropped: No apology, no independent inquiry (until forced) - the usual Haringey notion that officials were in the right and we are wrong even to wonder. It is an experience known only too well by Haringey residents who have dared to challenge them.
 * Article for publiciation by Sue Hessel (HFRA Vulnerable Groups officer) written in her personal capacity **

Sadly, this malaise of indifference runs right across Haringey - it is not only in Childrens’ Services.

I represent vulnerable groups on behalf of the residents’ associations on Haringey’s Learning Disabilities Partnership Board. It is supposed to meet every six weeks. But it has not met since July. The last two board meetings were cancelled without even an explanation. My letter to the Lead Member of the Haringey Primary Care Trust (PCT) asking if they have implemented the 21 recommendations of a Scrutiny Report last year, into gross inequalities and poor quality health care for people with multiple learning disabilities, remains unanswered - after 8 months. A letter to the Chair of the Haringey PCT asking if top health managers would consider meeting carers for a day, to help them to understand how difficult it is for them, dated 11th. March - still no reply…

If these are the people at the top – to whom do you turn?

There seems to be a culture in Haringey of distrust and fear, even of dialogue. Management in one bubble – and the rest of us, even though we’re paying for it all, shut outside. When yet another service is cut, or changed, the views of front line staff, service users and residents are not sought until the decision has already been made.

When residents finally found out that the Red Gables Family Centre was being closed by Haringey back in 2005 (through the local press and not Haringey!) residents eventually forced a public meeting. But the staff were not allowed to speak and we felt we couldn’t speak to them.

I suspect that the same culture pervaded the Haringey Childrens’ Services responsible for Baby P. We have now seen social workers so concerned about the children in Haringey’s care that they were prepared to blow the whistle on Panorama, but they felt so frightened that they had to do so in disguise.

Haringey’s "tick the box and keep your head down" culture, that precludes dialogue and working together, is simply inhuman. And until its top heavy management (whether of social workers or any other group) learns to listen with proper respect, and to tolerate different views, in the hope that eventually a better decision might be made, it will never improve.

Meanwhile a seventeen month old child cruelly dies. People with learning disabilities suffer. Carers weep, feeling abandoned. A couple of miles from our front door. In our borough.

Sue Hessel Qualified social worker and counsellor (Worked as a Probation Officer in Newham - 1980-89)

From Dave Morris, HFRA Secretary

Hi Perdeep bcc HFRA officers

Ta for your note and the previous emails re the Baby P tragedy. Sorry for not replying sooner but the HFRA officers have been discussing whether to make a public response to the situation. I forwarded your emails to them. We have decided not to make any public statement for a number of reasons, mainly because:

- its an issue we've not discussed before and don't have a policy about - we have little or no direct knowledge about the situation - between meetings we can only establish new policy if all officers agree - many other people in Haringey, and across the UK, were already expressing strong criticisms so a contribution from us was not essential - we were concerned not to be pushed into joining the Council-bashing agenda of the media

I guess you'll find that all a bit unsatisfactory. However, as a Federation we are accountable to local RAs and need to reflect their views as best as possible. If any officer or RA wishes to bring it up at our next meeting (which I should think they probably will!) we will discuss it then.

My personal view, for what it is worth*, is that there is a scandalous lack of resources for all front line public services in Haringey as a result of constant Government cuts over the years. This is especially true of health services and social services which seem to be plagued by constant cuts, 'efficiency savings', understaffing and high turnover of staff. These problems seem to be replicated across the UK. This will unfortunately but inevitably lead to individual mistakes in various situations. I enclose (at end) an article from the Ham & High Broadway edition in which a professional from the child and adolescent mental health service at St Ann's Hospital (where Baby P had been taken) speaks out about the effect of lack of resources in her team.

Of course individuals need to be doing their best and procedures need to be in place to try to ensure the best possible services. Where they fail through incompetence or lack of accountability then improvements need to be made. But I cant see how calling on resignations of lead Haringey Councillors and Heads of Depts will address the systemic problems across the UK. **What I think we need from the Council is __honesty__ about the extent of this problem (rather than 'everything's great in Haringey under Labour' propaganda), and a demand for a massive increase in resources and staffing in all the public services. It doesn't help that the Government, which has earmarked £500 billion to bail out the failing banks (who have largely caused the economic crisis) has so far refused to underwrite the financial losses of public organisations (like the £37m lost by Haringey Council) caused by the collapse of the Icelandic banks. We must all demand that that £37m be returned, and be used for the services we need here.

best wishes

Dave

//* based upon heavy involvement in general campaigning around public services, and around eg health services, parks and traffic calming in particular//**

//we have a slightly different situation in Haringey's health services where the PCT Board has systematically and consciously imposed Government-driven cuts and 'reforms' against the wishes of residents, patients, healthworkers and GPs, and backed it up with a continuous propaganda offensive. I think in that case health campaigners are right to call for the Board to resign.//

At 12:19 23/11/2008 +0000, you wrote: Hello Dave As you probably already know another demo has been called this Monday (24th November - 6.45pm at the Civic Centre) to take place before the full council meeting. I hope people will come and join us and show that residents of this Borough care about all our children. I understand there is myth flying around that the uproar in regard to Baby P is outside of the borough and that the supposed silence of those of us who live here is conveniently being mis-read as somehow as the vast majority of Haringey public are neutral in regard to this matter. Could you please do me a favour - if you haven't already forward the details of the demo on to all RAS. Best Wishes Perdeep

__From the Hampstead & Highgate Express - Broadway Edition__

A MENTAL health professional at St Ann's hospital, where a paediatrician missed signs that Baby P may have had a broken back two days before he died, has spoken out about failings in her department.

The woman, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing her job, works for the child and adolescent mental health service run by Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust.

Baby P, the 17-month old who died from horrific injuries at the hands of his mother, her lover and their lodger, was examined at the child development centre at St Ann's Hospital on August 1 2007. By this time he was probably suffering from fractured ribs and a broken back, paralysing him from the waist down. But Dr Sabah Alzayyat did not carry out a full examination because the baby was "miserable and cranky". He died two days later.

Although Dr Sabah is no longer working at St Ann's, the government ordered independent inspectors from the Health Commission to review procedures there.

But on Monday, a source at the hospital said she had "grave concerns" about the review of her department. She claimed that of a team of 20 mental health care clinicians only three had been asked to give their views on the department.

"I think this makes a mockery of the investigation into child protection services in Haringey," she said. "Three people have been selected to talk to the inspectors and everyone else has been told to keep quiet."

The trust has issued a statement saying the source's accusations were "groundless".

The child and adolescent mental health service comprises of 20 child therapists, psychologists, primary health workers and family therapists, who work closely with GPs and social workers to assess whether a child is displaying signs of behavioural problems. About a third of their case work involves making recommendations to Haringey social services on whether a child is at risk.


 * She alleges the trust has been trying to obtain foundation status for the past two years, which has led to financial cutbacks "to balance" the books; five members of her team have left in the past two years and they have not been replaced which has put pressure on remaining clinicians; and clinicians are under pressure to "push patients through" to meet a 13-week target of government waiting lists.**


 * The source added: "In my view, patients are not getting the care that they should be getting because we are being pushed to see more and more people and the service has become like a conveyor belt." She added that in order to make a proper assessment about a child, clinicians needed to be able to spend time with individual patients.**


 * She claimed: "We currently have one person on long-term sick leave from stress and another who was dismissed. Anyone who makes a complaint seems to be frowned upon."**

A spokeswoman for The Health-care Commission said: "We are working with Ofsted and the Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to undertake an urgent Joint Area Review of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in Haringey. We will be interviewing a number of people we consider it appropriate to speak to complete our review and we will be in a position to comment further once the review is completed.

Evening Standard - 13.11.08
 * Ticking boxes and filling in forms is just no way to be a social worker **

When Pauline Bradley, a former Haringey social worker, heard about the horrific case of Baby P, she buried her head in her hands and felt "a profound sense of shock but not a bit of surprise". "I take no pleasure in saying 'I told you so' but I was expecting another tragedy like Victoria Climbie," says Bradley, 46, who resigned in 2006 after 13 years in the job because she was "disgusted, dismayed and exhausted" at trying to tackle problems that are "endemic" - and "not just in Haringey but countrywide".

In many ways, she says, social services departments have gone backwards since Lord Laming's Climbie inquiry led to recommendations that were meant to help prevent catastrophic mistakes by social services. Bradley spoke out as Children's Secretary Ed Balls sent an emergency team of inspectors into Haringey council to determine who should be held responsible.

But Bradley, echoing influential voices within the social work profession, says the Government itself should also bear some of the blame for imposing a bureaucratic system that keeps social workers in their offices attending to form-filling and financial constraints that fail to recognise the enormous difficulties faced by inner-city boroughs such as Haringey.

Members of the public will wonder how a 17-month-old baby could sustain 50 injuries - including a broken back, eight fractured ribs and severe cuts and bruising - in eight months and be visited 60 times by social services and still not be taken into care, she says.

"The problem is that after Victoria Climbie's death in 2000, a new group of managers came into Haringey council and, desperate to cover their backs, tried to turn social work into a business model," she says.

"The focus was relentlessly on filling forms, ticking boxes, attending the requisite meetings, and if you did all that, the theory was that everything would be fine. Management became obsessed with procedures, as if social work is an exact science, and experienced social workers like myself who tried to exercise independent judgment were slapped down."

The culture became so oppressive, says Bradley, that it led to rows between the then social services heads, Anne Bristow and David Derbyshire - both have since left - and front-line social workers, many of whom Bradley would later represent as their union representative.

"In a reflex response to Climbie, social workers were being forced by management to take children into care in situations they sometimes felt did not warrant it.."

As the number of Haringey social workers fell to alarming levels due to poor morale and low pay (at one point it had 47 per cent vacancies), Haringey responded by hiking salaries by £8,000 to £32,000.

"Overnight it went from the second worst payers in London to one of the best and had the pick of the crop," says Bradley. "It was particularly keen to recruit newly-qualified social workers straight from university who would follow the new procedures without question. Staff who challenged managers were written off as troublemakers. It was no way to run a social services department."

Although Bradley had only brief dealings with the current head of children's services, Sharon Shoesmith, who joined in 2005, she believes that the system created an environment in which trained professionals were not encouraged to develop the "art" of social work and as a consequence could be "too easily duped" by Baby P's 27-year-old mother.

In Baby P's case, the allocated social worker, Maria Ward, 39, and her manager, Gillie Christou, 50, had sent the baby back to his mother and her boyfriend on numerous occasions, even when explanations for his multiple injuries seemed implausible. "They failed to exercise the one thing they were trained to do: see through the parent's deceit," says Bradley.

"There is no doubt," agrees Ian Johnston, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, "that fundamental errors of judgment were made by the social work team and that Baby P's death was preventable. I wouldn't want to defend what happened. It was far from best practice. But we also need to look at how management have disempowered social workers through their prescriptive policies."

Liz Davies, 60, a senior lecturer in social work at London Metropolitan University and a former Islington social worker, believes that "ultimately, myopic government policy" is to blame. "The Government rates councils on the basis of their meeting performance targets. In practice, this means that every time a social worker arranges a child protection conference, they have to fill out a ridiculously detailed 40-page care assessment form that takes eight hours to complete, because otherwise the council will not get its star rating. So the Government pushes the councils, and it means that social workers are tied up in the office instead of being out in the field saving lives."

Lack of government funding also plays a critical role, she adds. "In the past few years, there has been a big move countrywide away from taking children into care and towards trying to make things work within their families. That's all very laudable but I can't help wondering whether it's because the cost of obtaining a legal care order used to be partially borne by the state, whereas these days the council has to fund the whole amount."

While it's true that the £4,000 cost of instigating care proceedings may not seem much, it can skyrocket if the care order is contested. The Family Law Bar Association reports that, in the face of financial restraints imposed by government, care proceedings are down by a third this year, and in some boroughs, down by half.

In Haringey, where poverty profoundly effects the Tottenham side of the borough, this issue is particularly pertinent because the funding shortage is so acute. Although the Conservative leader David Cameron yesterday told Parliament that "this case is about a social services department that gets £100 million a year and still can't look after children", there are many who think that in challenging boroughs such as Haringey, this is simply not enough.

Bradley, who now works as a social worker near Glasgow, says the chronic lack of funds in Haringey meant there were never enough social workers to go round. Back in 2002, the social services budget was £65 million, there were 65 social workers and 220 children on the Child Protection Register. Today the borough has 80 social workers but 20 per cent of posts remain unfilled.

"I remember visiting a mother with three young children living in a single room infested with cockroaches," says Bradley. "They had to share a bathroom and toilet with 11 other council flats, some occupied by men who were alcoholics. I found nothing wrong with the mother's ability to mother her children. I tried to get her fast-tracked for re-housing but nothing shifted. Later the case was allocated to another social worker and I never got to find out what happened. That sort of case is typical in Haringey."

Bradley qualified as a social worker in 1991 after studying at North London Polytechnic and joined Haringey Social Services on a salary of £23,000 in 1993. Her salary was £32,000 when she left in 2006 but apart from a spell as a full-time union representative when she was seconded to Unison to champion her colleagues, she remained a rank-and-file frontline social worker and never progressed to senior ranks.

One of the things that most concerns her about the case of Baby P is that, despite being on the Child Protection Register, there was a five-week period in which the child was not seen by the social worker team.

"One of the problems we face is that there is no guidance as to how often a social worker should visit a child," she says. "All it says is that it should be 'regular' but that is inconsistently applied across England and it could mean once a week, once a fortnight or once a month. The situation is much clearer north of the border and I think that needs to be urgently addressed."

Even if the system is tightened up, I put it to Bradley, it beggars belief that a baby could sustain so many injuries and still be left with the mother. How many times does a baby need to be hit before social services take it into care?

"In my view," says Bradley, "just once." She pauses. "But that's as long as there's not a feasible explanation. The challenge is that things are rarely simple in practice, especially when you're confronted by mendacious parents who tell you the injury was an accident or self-inflicted and your job is to decide whether to believe them or not. "The cost of getting it wrong is terrible."