Do we need to think differently about child welfare?

So the predicted 'night of the long knives' following the report into the Baby P case has taken place. Ed Balls, the Secretary for Children, has done what was expected and suspended or sacked a number of senior child welfare staff in Haringey.



I have spoken to a number of social workers on line over the last 24 hours and there isn't one who thinks this is anything more than window-dressing. The problems still remain of a government which wants to see statistics which look good, furnished by a social services executive in every major council which ticks all the right boxes, and case workers on the ground who feel their bosses are too far removed from the action and don't understand their concerns.

It would seem that we need to change a number of things within the machinery if there is to be any perceptible change in the success rate within child protection. The obvious one of these - and I'm sorry if its TOO obvious - is that it wasn't Sharon Shoesmith, Cecilia Hitchen, Maria Ward or any of the other people who were sacked or suspended yesterday, who knocked Baby P about until the poor little mite was almost unrecognisable - it was the guardians with whom he lived. There may have been failings in Haringey and I am sure they are repeated in child protection services across the country, simply because these people have a thankless task and are battling under legal constraints and red tape which make their job often difficult and sometimes impossible.



And that, I believe, is the first and most fundamental change we need to consider - the culture that says a child is always better off with its parents. There seems to be some romantic delusion about parents and children bonding when facts would tell you that while giving birth to a child is a biological fact, loving it afterwards is far from a given.

Seems to me that we need to be a bit tougher in this area, no matter how many heartfelt cries and tears from 'distraught' parents when their children are taken away. Most people,I believe, no matter what the stresses and strains of daily lives which prompt anger and frustration would NEVER in a million years take those frustrations out on a baby. It is a mind set. If you are capable of beating up a child once, then frankly, do you ever deserve to be trusted with children again?

The second step has to be legal. I understand that the costs of obtaining a child protection order have increased over 20 times in the last 12 months, prompting councils to be more cautious about even taking such a step. Surely this is wrong and needs urgent review. Nobody wants a situation where social services act like the Gestapo. But at the moment they clearly do not have the balance of the law on their side. And that needs to change..and change fast!