Baby P and the Witches of Salem Part 2: More About Sharon Shoesmith

Yesterday I posted the first part of this comment series. I barely got to the point of the title.

The point is that we should not be hunting down and burning the foot soldiers. I will get to that point in Part 3.

Yesterday I focused on Haringey's Head of Children's Services and her shameful belief that she could save her hide by employing media consultants. Well, they sacked her anyway. An intelligent person should have foreseen that inevitable outcome and would, out of mere pragmatism, have gone before they were axed. Her strategy has simply humiliated her further and made future rehabilitation less likely.

Sharon Shoesmith seems to have perceived herself as being in a similar position to the Chief Executive of a private sector company that fails and fails catastrophically.

She read the newspapers and discovered that catastrophic failure and breach of duty seemed to result in lottery style payments on termination of office. She discovered that the bigger the failure the bigger the payment might be. She discovered that if they toughed it out for the longest possible time the employer would pay even more. They would pay almost anything to get rid of the problem.

What she forgot was that she is not a private sector CEO. She presumably also forgot to employ expensive lawyers to make sure her original agreement contained CEO type compensation provisions on termination of employment.

What she failed to remember was that she was a public sector employee and was therefore expected to perform a public service.

The public may resent payoff's to private sector CEOs but this is nothing to the bitterness they feel if someone responsible for protecting children cynically decides that whatever tragedy may have occurred under their watch their own financial interests are more important.

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.

Walsall Social Services Condemned. Who Is The Guilty Man?

This is another case where a local authority gets it straight through the heart from the Court of Appeal but there may be little publicity because, although Court of Appeal decisions are delivered in open court, the press show little interest and do not attend.

This does not stop the press running stories complaining about our "secret" family justice system!

Before we get to this particular bad boy/girl social services department it is worth noting Lord Justice Wall's comment that "there are of course, as is always the case, no press in court, even though this court sits in public." In other words, if the press do not attend and do not report the cases they can, their complaints about secrecy ring a little hollow. This is, of course, my inference so it is my fault alone if I have misinterpreted Lord Justice Wall.

Well, what have "Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council Social Services Department" (as they are referred to in the judgment, but not on their own website) done wrong?

For the specifics I am going to leave you to consult the title link. It is the strength of the comments made by the Court of Appeal that are of more general interest:

"The lamentable, totally lamentable, state of affairs in this case is that the local authority have utterly neglected their duty in a way which is worthy of the highest condemnation and that is what I give it."

"On 5 March this year the court ordered the local authority to file a statement by the Young Adults and Disability Team by 14 March. For the second time this local authority cocked a snook at the order of the court. For the third time the court ordered on 25 March that that statement be served by 4 April. For the third time the local authority simply ignored it. In the result the matter was sent to the county court and, as I have already recited, HHJ Mitchell accepted the undertaking from the team manager of the local authority to file their pathway plan etc by 4pm on 4 July and heigh ho, what a surprise, for the fourth time the local authority metaphorically raised two fingers in the air to the court and ignored everything the court has ordered. This is a disgraceful state of affairs. If time had permitted it, I would have directed the director of the Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council Social Services Department personally to attend this court and proffer his explanation and his apology. Instead, I will direct that he writes to this court and to the Wolverhampton Court, giving both his explanation for his disgraceful failure of duty and to proffer his sincere apologies. He is fortunate not to be facing a summons for contempt."

"To make matters abundantly plain, and to demonstrate to the local authority that this is an order which we expect to be obeyed, this order will be endorsed with a penal notice and the director is to be given the assurance by those who represent him today that his contemptuous disregard of this order could lead to an application to commit him and, without prejudging that matter, my preliminary view is that it stands a good prospect of success and he should be advised accordingly."

"It invariably happens in these cases that we never have before us the people who are actually responsible for what has gone on. Some wretched social worker who has just been handed the papers over a few days before is usually put forward as a sacrificial lamb, as a victim to this court's anger and legitimate wrath, and that is what has happened in this case."

Who is the Guilty Man?

These are about the strongest comments I have come across, certainly since Brighton and Hove Social Services were condemned.

I cannot be certain who the director is because there is no-one on Walsall's website who is described as their director of social services.

There is a Mr David Martin:


but he is described as "Executive director for social care and inclusion". I certainly would not want to finger the wrong man.

East Sussex County Council Branded "Disgraceful" By The Court Of Appeal

East Sussex County Council is within my geographic area. Until the government rendered it uneconomic to maintain a legal aid franchise I used to handle child care cases involving them. I rarely came across a lawyer who did not regard their social services department as badly managed and arrogant. The Court of Appeal has now confirmed this opinion and condemned them. See the title link.

In argument, a number of adjectives were used to describe the conduct of the local authority / adoption agency [East Sussex County Council's SS] (henceforth "the agency") in this case. Over the period during which this judgment has been reserved, I have re-read the papers and reflected on the agency's conduct. In the event, I have come to the conclusion that the only word I can use to describe it is "disgraceful". That is not a word I use lightly.

Lord Justice Wall went on to criticise the barrister in the case (Ms Briggs of Crown Office Row in Brighton):

"During the course of argument, we gave counsel for the agency every opportunity to defend and justify its conduct. In my judgment, she not only failed to do so: worse, she did not appear to think the exercise necessary. On her argument, the agency was acting within the letter of the 2002 Act, and in the best interests of the child. Although she acknowledged that aspects of the agency's conduct were likely to be criticised, her attitude came across, to me at least, as – in effect – so what? If the 2002 Act permitted the agency to do what it did, why was the manner in which it did it relevant?

In my judgment, the conduct of the agency in this case demonstrates a profound if not total misunderstanding of its functions under the 2002 Act. Moreover – and this I find particularly dispiriting - it provides useful ammunition for those who criticise the Family Justice System for administering "secret" justice, and who attack social workers as a group for their arrogance and the manner in which they abuse their functions by both removing children from their parents unlawfully, and by stifling legitimate parental responses."

This was an adoption case. East Sussex Social Services forced through the adoption before the father of the child's application to set it aside could be heard. They were fully aware of the application because the father's solicitors had written to them.

"There was no reply of any kind to that letter. Counsel for the agency was either unable or unwilling to offer any explanation for the total failure to reply, but in my judgment, given the agency's subsequent behaviour, only two inferences, both adverse to the agency, can properly be drawn from that failure. They are; (1) that the agency did not wish to give the father or his solicitors any information; and (2) it wished, as the judge found, to "scupper" or "stymie" any application which the father made to the court. These two inferences are, in my judgment, irresistible. Indeed, there is no alternative explanation. Certainly counsel for the agency did not proffer any alternative."

And further:

"Both the agency and the recipient of the letter of 17 January must understand that the failure to answer the letter was not merely discourteous and thoroughly bad practice, but that it can only be seen as a deliberate attempt to keep the father in the dark, so that the agency could proceed to place the child and thus prevent the father from making an application to the court under section 24(2) of the 2002 Act. It is this conduct in particular on the part of the agency which leads me to categorise its conduct overall as disgraceful."

I need not go on but you should read this case if only to discover the full extent of the "abuse of power" and "sharp practice" in which East Sussex County Council's social services are prepared to indulge where the welfare of children is involved.

The SS: Yes, The Acronym Has The Correct Associations For Our Social Services

The title link leads to what is far from the worst Social Services case of which I am personally aware. Fortunately, the Firm gave up its legal aid franchise some years ago and I no longer have to deal with dispiriting child care cases. This case, however, represents at a fairly average level, the arrogance, incompetence and self-confidence of our SS. That is why it is important. It is not an aberration.

It is the "self-confidence" that really grates. They never admit even the remotest possibility that they could be wrong. Once you come on to their radar; you are finished, your life is finished.

AND IT IS A LOTTERY WHETHER YOU ARE TARGETTED OR NOT!

This is the real disgrace. It is not about funding (although, it is about that as well). It is simply about which neighbour picks up the telephone and reports you.

Read the story; for once the Daily Mail have got it right.