The children’s social care sector has reacted to the death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes by telling social workers that they are never to blame for child deaths caused by their carers, in a Facebook post for online magazine, Social Work News.
The post’s headline, which received more than 1,500 likes and ‘thumbs up’ from commenters was also shared more than 2,000 times.
The comment follows the announcement of little Arthur’s death, who was poisoned, starved and beaten to death by his carers over an extended period of time. Social workers who saw Arthur just two months before he died concluded there were no safeguarding concerns.
Social Work News’ website also carried a featured story by “Social Work Tutor” with the headline, “SOCIAL WORKERS ARE DAMNED IF WE DO AND DAMNED IF WE DON’T.”
The rest of the site’s current front page appears to be dedicated to parents who kill their children, with one item reflecting on social media and its part to play in the production and distribution of child sexual abuse imagery.
And while it is fair to say that not every child death will be the fault of a social worker or their team, to suggest that the sector can absolve itself of every death in this context, is astounding. The social care sector’s reaction to Arthur’s death is though, symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the sector.
While social workers have cast a wide net over families nationwide for decades — investigating some 600,000 children every year, and putting more than 50,000 children on child protection plans annually — the concern here is not that social workers are “damned if they do and damned if they don’t.” The real issue is that they just can’t seem to get it right.
The government has since announced yet another review into this latest child death, which follows more than 1,500 serious case reviews already under its belt for child deaths in the UK. The idea that this latest review will allow lessons to be learned — by a sector that refuses to take responsibility for its failures and clearly fails to learn — is a hollow, bitter joke.
But no-one’s laughing.
The narrative too, in the news that lockdown was somehow to blame for Arthur’s death, is a flimsy copout. Arthur had been seen by social workers, he was known to his local authority and he had been maltreated for a long time.
That no-one noticed anything was amiss, should be a warning sign to the sector that its policies and practices have never been fit for purpose.
Responding to Social Work Magazine’s Facebook Post, one children’s social care-experienced parent said, “Too interested in covering their own backs to notice it’s meant to be about the best interests of the child.”
Another care-experienced parent commented, “When you are a public funded body, you very much deserve public scrutiny. With this attitude , why do we have ‘child protection’? They systemically failed little Arthur.”
A separate poster noted, “If social workers were involved in the first place and failed to act in the child’s interests, they would be equally to blame.”
Many thanks to Tum Mum for alerting us to this development.
Researching Reform 
It seems that social workers are are never to blame when they get things wrong, unwilling to accept liability for their mistakes and are not held responsible.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I guess this wasn’t their fault, either: https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/02/baby-killed-adoptive-dad-social-workers-showed-lack-professional-curiosity-7790018/
LikeLiked by 2 people
The point I’m making here is that the problem is not that the system is underfunded, but the simple fact that social workers are incapable of telling the difference between a happy, safe family, and one where their intervention is required.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Personally, I don’t always blame them for not knowing one end of a good family from the other end of a dysfunctional one. I don’t think the answer is simply more funding, or greater invasiveness by social workers, since such involvement in itself inevitably creates a changed (usually worse) situation.
The problem is inherent in thinking that experts can hope to do much more than make inspired guesses.
However, when they ignore emaciation, bruises and babies covered in faeces, an idiot can guess that there is a problem somewhere. Yet while I’m sure many are good, not all social workers seem able to even think like an idiot.
LikeLike
The sectors response to the tragic and avoidable death of young Arthur (tears have been shed in anger as well as sadness) speaks volumes! It’s is illustrative of all that is wrong with the child protection system. The risk adverse culture which prevades today, exists primarily for the avoidance of personal and systemic blame! The social worker (s) who were last to visit the family, after being contacted by concerned relatives, clearly failed to carry out their statutory obligation to investigate concerns and act upon them. I guess they visited the family home, having prearranged the appointment. Thus allowing the father and stepmother time to make the house presentable and hide anything incriminating. SW’s carried out a quick visit, ticked a few boxes and closed the case. Did they speak to Arthur? Did they contact his GP to examine him for the alleged injuries? Clearly not, therein lies the blame…. And it also lies with the police.
LikeLiked by 2 people
and yet when a mother has suffered domestic abuse or perhaps postnatal depression social workers will go to extremes to carry out all of the safeguards you mention …
unannounced visits, interviewing children with not even their teachers or other trusted adults allowed to accompany them, demanding full medical records, invasive medical examinations of children, psychiatric evaluations etc etc.
LikeLike
It’s pretty simple really ……….
When a child suffers significant physical harm few would want to adopt so the child is left to die.
If healthy happy children have parents who do not engage well with social workers
they are ideal adoption candidates and are taken for risk of possible future harm
Yes social workers are rightly DAMNED when they DO take healthy happy children from parents they disapprove of for risk of future harm to be adopted by strangers
AND social workers are rightly DAMNED when they DON’T rescue children who have clearly been badl y beaten up and instead leave them to die (not adoption material )
LikeLiked by 3 people
The social system paid by tax contributors should implement a more efficient surveillance system and focus on the essence of the forming relationships rather than the appearances (after first making sure there’s nothing to be done in order to keep a child into their biological family with the right support).
LikeLike
Reblogged this on tummum's Blog.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t know how many parents are aware of Martin Narey’s work/life history or if you think his views are balanced or correct or not or maybe even biased. But also, not all children do have positive outcomes from adoption no 🤔🕊️🦋 Xx
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/05/dont-be-fooled-by-deceitful-parents-top-child-expert-warns-social-workers
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Guardian are very sticky on making sure the people know about child abuses inside Adoption … I’ve been in contact with them about it (2021) .. They just blacklist me or something like that .. I told them years ago (1993 -) about Missing Adoption Files in Birmingham years ago and they never covered it . It’s Illegal by statute for Adoption files not to be protected in the right secured way .. ..Mine went missing and I got an award of ÂŁ1200 via the Ombudsman… The Ombudsman investigator wrote down in the report other Adoption files were missing ..
That needed proper national coverage .. The Guardian did sod all even though I sent them the Ombudsman report … So figure it out which way they choose to face because in truth they way over-support Social Workers and networks like that ..You cannot cure anything by understating it’s faults ..Letting others marinate in abuses while careers continue on the back of it all ..
That’s not accountability.. It’s sterility of action.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Martin Narey ia waste of space. I personally reached out to him some years back when I was having issues with SWs lying in our private family law case. He declined to interact with me. So I went on to get 6 complaints upheld against our LA childrens services by two independent investigators with NO-ONE’s help, becuase let’s face it, how many professionals actually give a flying **** about the welfare of any individual child unless it meets their own personal agenda. MANDATE BODY CAMS ON ALL SOCIAL WORKERS IN ALL INTERACTIONS WITH CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES.
LikeLike
Well Solihull Social Services have had dramatic failures before .. Social Work staff just do not seem to be reliable in their judgements when it’s really crucial to get children back into other Kinship Care (in this case the Grandmother)..
How could they miss the injuries ? They are so over-reactive usually to so many other people who they claim have abused their kids when they have not .. How could they miss the massive bruise on Arthur his Grandmom had shown them by photograph.. ???
“I do not know how I missed it ?” Responds a social worker in the case… DONT KNOW ???? …
You Pratt you never looked for it …. Oh dear .. This is what we have don’t we … This is reality and another review and then another and another ..
LikeLiked by 2 people
if they stopped removing children for likelyhood of future emotional harm they wouldnt have so many massive caseloads and could concentrate on actual cases of abuse
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally agree if you go on there CQC report you will see who bad they are. LIARS AND JUST UNPROFESSIONAL.
FAIL to protect children in there local in need and taking children who is not even a British citizen with no serious abuse.
GOVERNMENT need urgently to check on Solihull Council Social Services.
LikeLike
The thing is, in the general media, now that Denise Robertson and Christopher Booker are gone, RIP, social workers are not at all damned if they do remove children are they? The reports of 100,000 children in care in the near future have not been met with a response of why are so many children being taken but rather how much more money will be required to pay for all of this.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have understood recently how harmful it is to keep hitting social workers (and police, LA etc.) when they make mistakes. If they are to be encouraged to give parents some slack and allow that the parents might have issues but that the child is still best left with them, then mistakes are going to be made.
But that doesn’t ever mean that any death or other adverse outcome should not be properly and fairly examined. Without such examination, there is no chance to learn from mistakes, nor to determine if any individual member of staff doesn’t come up to suitable standards.
If the result of an impartial examination is “they did all they could given a policy to leaving a child with parents as much as possible,” then as sad as a child’s death is, I could be content. No doctor can get every treatment right. Nor can a social worker. A doctor is open to examination and so should a social worker be.
LikeLike
You seem to forget that in these cases it is not just one mistake, it’s a catalogue of mistakes and I wonder if you would be so forgiving if it was one of your family members that had been killed. Saying lessons learnt gives no solace to those that loved these children and did all they could to protect them by trusting in the system.
LikeLike
Of course my emotions would be different if the people involved were known to me. But that would then be a very good reason NOT to take my opinions into account: policies for public servants have to be made clearly and logically, not made on knee-jerk emotional reaction.
LikeLike
Some social workers can see through disguised compliance 99% can’t
LikeLike
Disguised compliance is a great example of social work nonsense speak as why would anyone disguise compliance. Surely what they mean, is disguised non-compliance!?
LikeLike
Re-Blogged on Families need Fathers (Hastings)
LikeLiked by 1 person
This just boils my water.
i hope the birth mother files a law suit against the social workers who visited the boy but found no safeguarding issues. so suspicious how they find plenty of safeguarding issues when they take children from innocent parents who have committed no crime against their children. Go figure !
LikeLike
@keith brettwood, the birth mother in this case is in prison for a very good reason: she murdered her boyfriend.
Under those circumstances, most people would support the idea of the child being given into the custody of the father – a man, on outward appearances, had a stable marriage with four other children (not his).
Whether that man was still suffering from the abuse of Arthur’s mother or not, I don’t know but he wasn’t nice to his boy, though he wasn’t at home when his son was killed.
LikeLike
I’m well aware that she is in prison for Manslaughter but we dont know what drove her to do it. she may have been subjected to intolerable abuse. also it would seem that Arthur was fine while he was living with his birth mother so that should stand for something. there has been no information suggesting she had a history of violence.
LikeLike
The mother of Arthur, Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow, was in jail for the manslaughter of her boyfriend. (I mis-stated murder in my other post; she was charged with murder and some media reports say she was initially jailed for murder but she seems to have been convicted of the lesser crime).
We know fully what happened, since she claimed self-defence from an abusive man. For once, the judge saw through that and believed the evidence instead. The evidence in court .. note: not just some sexist supposition .. was that it was a mutually-violent relationship {like most domestic violence} and that she was more likely to start physical violence {like most domestic violence}. Whereas normally in such a case, a woman comes off worse, this time, she ended up killing him.
The day has yet to come when we ask why men kill their partners and what drove them to it, in the way we see that question framed the other way around. It is common knowledge that a woman’s sharp tongue can drive a man crazy, so why do people not ask “what drove him to do it”?
It is time to question if public money is well spent when given away to feminist organisations, who by their own admissions after 50 years have utterly failed to do anything about domestic violence. They deny the reality of the breadth and complexity of the issue, in an ideological rush that keeps their coffers full.
It is time to deal with relationship issues with sympathy and understanding, helping couples to understand how to behave with one another and how to be respectful of both themselves and with the other.
LikeLike
At school kids could be taught how to handle their emotions when others are pushing their buttons. I watched a video of an ex Secret Service agent who outlines how best to act in traumatic circumstances. It would help them stay in control & save a lot of heartache in the future.
LikeLike
Arthur’s was murdered but Social Services are to blame for not doing their job. They were tasked with checking if a child was ok. Social services were informed several times by various people, over a period of time, that there were concerns. They decided that there was nothing wrong.
I would ask what were they looking for? How did they expect abuse to manifest itself? Did they ask the right questions? What external investigations followed? Did they check with the school? Is their training at fault? Were they experienced enough? Did they have a bias?
The bottom line is they were at fault & they are to blame. They were responsible for missing all the abuse signs, not once but several times & leaving him in dire circumstances. If they had intervened in the correct way Arthur & all the other kids in similar circumstances, would be alive today.
People have rightly said they are a publicly funded authority that offers a service that should be fit for purpose & it appears they get it wrong repeatedly throughout the child protection spectrum.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well they let convicted child killers around children and don’t act, so what do we expect. The same mistakes in child S serious case review 2015 so no lessons learnt. Causing and allowing comes to mind as this abuse was allowed.
LikeLike