Sharon Shoesmith - A systemic failure?

The death of Peter Connelly probably wasn't the fault of a single individual and the recent successful appeal upholds Sharon Shoesmith's contention that she was treated unfairly.  In the context of this finding we can all expect Ed Balls to come in for a fair amount of stick as a result of the way in which he handled the affair, which was undoubtedly flawed. Most people will argue that Shoesmith's disciplinary was used as a way of scapegoating her and making her responsible for the death of Peter Connelly, when in the end it was not the failure of an individual but the failure of a system. This was acknowledged in the Judgement of the Appeal Court and in the Laming Report that followed Peter's death.

But systems are not separate from the people who sustain them and ultimately Peter Connelly died because of the cruel actions of three individuals and the failure of Haringey Children's Services Department, that had a  corporate responsibility to protect him. Sharon Shoesmith was the manager whose department was tasked with protecting Peter Connelly, Sharon Shoesmith was unquestionably one of the reasons that the system failed. However, the failure of that system is not the sole responsibility of any Director of Children's Services all of whom tread a fine line between best value and the unwanted attention of the tabloids.

The failure to protect children and young people begins with the ambiguity of the role and function of government. Most people operate under the delusion that the vulnerable within our society are protected by a comprehensive social care infrastructure, that will be there for you should you yourself ever need it.But as any carer would be able to tell you, that infrastructure is neither comprehensive nor is it always available. Yet the illusion of the existence of this comprehensive social care infrastructure is something that politicians of all persuasions are guilty of projecting. They have a vested interest in trying to convince us that their party can provide comprehensive social care without it leading to a increased taxes.

In order to get away with this deception politicians at all levels require the co-operation and collusion of managers within the Civil Service. But rather than protecting the professional standards and working practices of frontline practitioners, these managers come up with increasingly complex ways of increasing workloads and saving money. Ultimately the social worker's ability to spend time with the people they are working with is undermined and their ability to develop an insightful and genuine picture into a family's dynamic goes with it. Early intervention and time with the child lie at the heart of protecting children. If practitioners do not spend time with families even the best will fail to identify the signs of an abusive relationship, especially where parents have become expert in representing themselves in the best possible light.

It is in this sense that senior managers within the civil service have failed the vulnerable children of our nation, by failing to protect the social worker's relationship with the child, because it is this relationship that lies at the heart of effective child protection. However, the con doesn't stop with the politicians and their civil servants, as voters we are more than willing to accept the illusion you can have a comprehensive system of social care and child protection without having to pay for the social workers who are needed to deliver it.

Ultimately Sharon Shoesmith was an integral part of the system that failed Peter Connolly; but so are the politicians who peddle the delusion of comprehensive social care you don't have to pay for and us, the voters who pretend to believe it.