Recently the country has reacted in shock and horror to the murder of 21-month-old toddler Ayeeshia Jane Smith. The immediate reaction to such an horrific death, as always, is a baying for blood. Everyone wants to find someone to blame: if it is their fault then it cannot be mine.
I can understand why members of the public, who may know very little about child protection, see these terrible cases in such simple terms. If only the social worker had done X, this child would still be alive. It looks so clearcut when you look at the timeline of what happened. The trouble is everyone can be wise with hindsight and the world is not so linear.
When we look back at past events it seems so obvious that one thing led to another. But when you are in the midst of it nobody knows what is going to happen in five minutes time, let alone a week. The professionals working with children and their families make judgements every day as to the level of risk. It is their job to manage risk, but no one can completely eradicate it.
We know the greatest risk factors for a child are living in a family where there are domestic abuse, mental health problems and substance misuse. We could not possibly remove every single child from homes where there are these factors and it would be entirely wrong to do so. Most children who grow up in these circumstances survive, and indeed many thrive, with the right professional support. It would be so easy if we could predict which ones will not.
What is so unhelpful is when people in positions of power and privilege and so-called experts who are called upon to comment on these terrible events speak as if we could prevent every child death. The prevailing subtext is “if only the quality of workers was better”. It appears that popularity is more important than integrity. It is these people who act so irresponsibly and do even more damage.
This time it was the local MP, Andrew Griffiths, calling for an inquiry. He was quoted as saying that he is not “particularly satisfied” with the serious case review. He talks of the need for there to be an “open investigation” – but that is exactly what a serious case review is. We do not need another inquiry, costing millions of pounds, to tell us that children’s social care, along with other statutory services, are on their knees from funding cuts and early help is being decimated. Griffiths is also quoted as saying “We need to work out why this child was not saved and why her life was lost needlessly and pointlessly”, again creating the illusion that we can prevent every child from being abused or killed.
What Griffiths has said could be seen as pre-empting the findings of the serious case review. This is wrong. We should wait for those before we have these conversations.
The blaming then starts all over again when the serious case review is published. Naysayers point fingers at individuals, when the reality is so much more complex. In the last eight years I have undertaken 11 reviews. In not one of them was a particular professional responsible for the child dying. It is a ridiculous concept, in the majority of cases.
There has been so much discussion about the purpose and value of serious case reviews over recent years. Successive governments say they want to move away from blame, but some MPs and ministers are as guilty as any others at pointing fingers. Some politicians, journalists and commentators will pick one or two lines out of the review, take them completely out of context and so the story runs. Are these people disingenuous, or ignorant? I don’t know which is worse.
It is awful enough when children live and die in such terrible circumstances. For those who should know better to use that life and death to score points and cast blame is a dismal state of affairs.
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