Baby P and the Witches of Salem

I have refrained from posting about Baby P until now.

Of course, Haringey Social Services are crap. Almost all of our social services departments in England are crap. I hold no brief for the inadequate provision we make for children or their protection in this country. See previous posts.

BUT the media hysteria and their love of finding people not only to blame but to demonise is now beyond a joke. Well, there is an exception.

Sharon Shoesmith (Haringey's Head of Children's Services) hardly covered herself in glory by spending £19k on media training presumably designed to pad her bottom from the impending storm. She is also, but this is simply my impression, not particularly children friendly in appearance:

Politicians in Haringey have resigned. That was honourable. That the operational head of children's services should fall on her sword was immediately obvious to the whole population of the planet except, perhaps, just one. She seemed to think that the marketing guys could save her.

Perhaps, we should require potential heads of department at local authorities to sit a basic intelligence test. Possibly also, they could be asked to take an "emotional intelligence" test (whatever that it is). Almost certainly, a basic humanity test should be mandatory.

Local Authorities are very good at setting tests or performance targets or whatever so this should not be difficult. However, these are tests that would apply to them and not others. Oh, it might take a little longer then!

I forgot to mention: they would be required to pass the tests! Oh, and they should not be allowed to set the pass mark.

The caveat I started out to put forward is that we should not conduct a witch hunt of the troops on the ground. In my experience (as a lawyer in care cases - a period of my life that is, thankfully, over) social services personnel begin as idealists but quickly become corrupted into judgmental harridans - or the male equivalent - I incapable of not absorbing the departmental assumption of infallibility.

Don't worry about the Pope. He is an intelligent man and I doubt very much whether he really believes that he is infallible. He is probably too intelligent to believe in a divine being (whether called God, Allah or the Spaghetti Monster). Social Services (is it genuinely a coincidence that they managed to choose a description that abbreviates to SS?) really do believe that they are infallible.

I have now entirely forgotten why these people do not deserve to be persecuted (sorry, I might have meant prosecuted).

Oh, it is lack of money. We get the Social Services we deserve and are prepared to pay for.