h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7454302.stm

Victoria Climbie's social worker claims she was made a scapegoat. Following the tragic death of the little girl, Lisa Arthurworrey was sacked and banned from working with children for failing to spot the signs of horrific abuse suffered by the eight-year-old.

A Tribunal has just ruled she should continue to be allowed to work with children.

Was she a scapegoat or ultimately the person responsible?

Quite possibly the system is/was flawed and mistakes were made throughout the management chain, but does her response smack of "I was only following orders"?

We don't know enough facts to pronounce an informed opinion. I suspect that there were a variety of faults both in the system and by individuals. Lisa may have suffered from being the public scapegoat more than is warranted - I wonder how many other people felt some guilt and if procedures really have improved since.

How often did she see the child? How long was the child abused for? Was the abuse easily concealed by clothing?

Based on the 1 sentence of information in the article, I'm guessing that the answers to the 2nd and 3rd question are going to incriminate Arthurworrey.

Is the social worker system under funded, under-staffed, too many cases?

How difficult is it to get enough evidence to remove a child?

Do they remove children as a first choice or try to get families to change their behaviour to ensure children are in a better environment?

A social worker probably works 40hours a week? How many families could they visit in a week taking into account travelling and also filling in reports etc?

Out of the thousands of families and children how many do actually die? How many families get away with abuse without it being seen?

No system is perfect. There is always a probability that children will get missed and these are the ones that get missed. Ironically, it is probably the people who abuse their children most who are the ones that can hide the abuse from the system the best and hence these tradegies happen very infrequently.

>We don't know enough facts to pronounce an informed opinion.

I agree with this. We're simply not knowledgable enough to make a judgement here, all we can really do is speculate.

The thing that sticks out for me is that she was banned form working with children.

Now the strongest charge levelled at her as far as I know is that she was not very good at her job in one particular case.

Who hasnt dropped a clanger at work?

Now im not equating the death of a child with forgetting to order ink for the printers but lets be realistic about this employers dont sack firfighters if a house burns down nor doctors if patients die and they only get ommitted from practising in their jobs if they are proven to be seriously negligent.

I think its out of order to ban somene from working with children for a very specific mistake in a very specific role. The ban would stop her becoming a teacher or youth worker too is that necessary? I think she was scapegoated because of the high profile nature of the case. Children on the at risk register do continue to be abused and in some cases even die but that is not to say that the people in charge of handling their cases are not doing their jobs.




Ive just come out of a case meeting where I had to "grass" on a friend for not doing their job properly and essentially own up to not doing my own job properly for not spotting it earlier. I have a good boss who takes it on the chin and blames herself for not proding me enough to chek my colleagues work and not monitoring us both closely enough. Sometimes people arent as good as they can be or are supposed to be but those things dont happen in isolation and if they do then its a poor system that lets it happen.

In short if she was so bad it should have been spotted long before Victoria's death then the failing was the social workers and she should bare responsibility for what she didnt do but what the ghell were her bosses doing lettting someone incompotent do the job in the first place?

If we take a theoretical person in a theoretical position...

Well, in the first place they might not have known she was incompetent. When they do find she is incompetent, and she works for a government department...where the unions are VERY VERY strong...you have to have an absolutley cast iron case to get someone removed...and it being the government there will be plenty of people covering up their own incompetencies as well and trying to brush it all under the carpet and keep her where she is.

The things I hear about the unions and the way they are keeping lazy, dullards in their jobs at our expense and the expense of good servcies I dispair.