My favourite piece of reporting was the very serious announcement that "Several social workers had been reprimanded but nobody had lost their jobs." As though this in itself was some sort of failure of the system, and any time the media reports on any bad thing happening to anyone somebody should lose their job, as that's the only possibly way of responding to any degree of culpability.
Indeed certain media circles are calling for blood.
It is far too early in the proceedings for all the facts to have been investigated. Once that has occured and someone is found to be at fault then yes at that point they should loose their jobs and possibly be subject to criminal charges. We are supposed to be a democratic society and have a justice system; "innoccent until proven guilty".
In many of these cases it is a failure of systems rather than 1 person's fault. For example the stabbing that happened in my school was a total failure of the system. If someone from the 3 other agencies involved had bothered to tell us, the school vital child protection information involving the attacker and victim then it may have been prevented.
Very well said. The media damn social workers whether they act or whether they don't. A proper enquiry is needed into *every* death from child abuse, and only on the outcome of that can any negligence be attributed.
Every such death does have an enquiry in the coroners court. Perhaps what is needed is some proper reporting on the findings of coroners court. We can live in hope.
The media always tell 'a story' and those stories are always blown out of all proportion. If there is no story then they don't publish anything they find out until something happens to make a story. This means there will always be a certain amount of bias in the media, no matter how much they think that they are being 'equal' in thier reporting.
The real scandal is not that social workers are not 'doing their jobs', whatever that may mean, but that they are not given enough funding to ensure that they can do their jobs. Its the same across the board - education, social work, etc are all underfunded and yet expected to fulfill some quite demanding goals with very little support but an awful lot of 'vigilence' from the public, the media and the government.
Indeed.. after all it is all about selling more papers. If people stopped buying such tosh and bought a paper that had more balanced views they'd soon change their tune. The public don't see the whole machine of the system just one bit.
As far as I know part of the problem may have lied with the fact that the grandmother who reported the abuse had the tables turned on her. She was blamed, arrested and only cleared the day before he died.
A doctor who looked at him for a cold and had no idea there was CP concerns has been sacked. No one is calling for blood at the Crown Prosecution Service; they told the police to drop the case due to lack of evidence.
Brings to mind a quote from one of my fav books: "People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true."
Oh yes, definitely true. The trouble is that the media is in a position where it influences events rather than just reporting them (which is the ideal) so you end up with a vicious circle of positive feedback where 'the people' say one thing, the media report it but add a spin, 'the people' read it and respond with greater reaction and ad infinitum. Is the media a mirror or a magnifying glass
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How did they respond?
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It is far too early in the proceedings for all the facts to have been investigated. Once that has occured and someone is found to be at fault then yes at that point they should loose their jobs and possibly be subject to criminal charges. We are supposed to be a democratic society and have a justice system; "innoccent until proven guilty".
In many of these cases it is a failure of systems rather than 1 person's fault. For example the stabbing that happened in my school was a total failure of the system. If someone from the 3 other agencies involved had bothered to tell us, the school vital child protection information involving the attacker and victim then it may have been prevented.
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Every such death does have an enquiry in the coroners court. Perhaps what is needed is some proper reporting on the findings of coroners court. We can live in hope.
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The real scandal is not that social workers are not 'doing their jobs', whatever that may mean, but that they are not given enough funding to ensure that they can do their jobs. Its the same across the board - education, social work, etc are all underfunded and yet expected to fulfill some quite demanding goals with very little support but an awful lot of 'vigilence' from the public, the media and the government.
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As far as I know part of the problem may have lied with the fact that the grandmother who reported the abuse had the tables turned on her. She was blamed, arrested and only cleared the day before he died.
A doctor who looked at him for a cold and had no idea there was CP concerns has been sacked. No one is calling for blood at the Crown Prosecution Service; they told the police to drop the case due to lack of evidence.
Brings to mind a quote from one of my fav books: "People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true."
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Re-read that with 'People' instead of 'media' and you get a much more telling yet sadly accurate take on things.
If we want to get things done we need stop blaming the 'other' and look at 'ourselves'.
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