IN PROFESSIONAL life, we all make mistakes from time to time. This is more of an issue in some jobs than others.
Rightly, air traffic controllers and brain surgeons don’t get cut much slack. But a missed sales target is just a missed sales target, and genuinely accidental damage to company property will be picked up by insurers.
If you are a financial adviser and the share portfolio you manage for a client tanks, a bookmaker that overprices a cert, or the publisher behind a hardback that doesn’t recoup advance royalties, that’s just life. Sure, do it too often and you will be out the door. But most of the time, the boss will put the odd balls-up down to experience.
In two decades as a journalist, I have written tens of thousands of stories. Only a small handful have contained what turned out to be significant errors. In one particular instance, an ‘exclusive front page splash’ was – how can I put this? - dramatically wide of the mark.
It wasn’t libellous, it was just plain old-fashioned wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, all this was seriously embarrassing for me. I got justifiably chewed out by the editor, and the newspaper concerned was left with a certain amount of egg on its face.
The chocolate on Baby P’s face, by contrast, was there to hide the tell-tale signs of child abuse that went unnoticed, despite 60 visits from healthcare professionals and others charged with looking after his best interests.
For Haringey Council to lose one infant may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Precisely because the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Baby P occurred in the same unfashionable patch of North London, it was always inevitable that whoever ended up carrying the can would face sudden career termination, with extreme prejudice.
Just to make sure on that point, the rightwing press launched a full-on propaganda drive against the local authority in question and its social services department. I mean, look at the dramatis personae here: Social workers! Labour councillors! Feckless single mums on benefit! Every habitual object of tabloid ridicule and scorn, brought together in one great obvious target for Five Minutes’ Hate.
Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary joined forces, just to underline the message that the government got the message. Their joint report reiterates that many of the procedures in place were ‘inadequate’, ‘unacceptable’, ‘poor’ and ‘unreliable’.
As a direct result, council leader George Meehan and cabinet member for children Liz Santry have resigned; Sharon Shoesmith, director of children's services, has been removed from her post; and two other officials have been suspended, while three social workers are subject to review.
This case happened on their watch, the argument will run. And so it did. But unfashionable though it will be to say this, I am not sure that placating Daily Mail - to which New Labour seemingly at all times defers as the definitive voice of reason on social policy – is the right thing to do here.
Yes, Baby P is dead, when his life could have been saved, in circumstances where competence was an issue. But it is important to stress that no one person was directly culpable. It was a systems failure.
Jean Charles de Menezes is also dead. Yet the Metropolitan Police have been found culpable of nothing worse than health and safety offences, and Cressida Dick is still in post. An inquest jury was today directed that it could not return a verdict of unlawful killing. Meanwhile, no-one at the Ministry of Defence was sacked - or even disciplined - for releasing the name of David Kelly. He’s dead, too, by the way.
If there remains a standard by which we can justify when it is necessary for someone in public life to fall on their sword, as the euphemism has it, it has to be applied evenly or not at all. Otherwise we are reduced to the age old expedient of sacking the manager every time the team undergoes a losing streak.
Sometimes I’m thankful that I’m just a simple hack.
Posted at 14:40, 2 December 2008
Comments (7)
"Yes, Baby P is dead, when his life could have been saved, in circumstances where competence was an issue. But it is important to stress that no one person was directly culpable. It was a systems failure."
But that suggests that systems happen all by themselves. It was somone's job to make sure the systems work, and I don't think it is setting an insanely high standard to require that children being closely monitored by the child care services shouldn't be allowed to be tortured to death. Not even one of them. Ms Shoesmith is paid a huge salary presumably because she takes a huge amount of responsibility, otherwise, why pay her so much? Her job is no more demanding than much more junior social workers, far less demanding I would think. If she was overseeing an organisation where social workers did not bother to wipe the chocolate from the bruises of abused children they were inspecting, had not made herself aware of this and had done nothing to correct it therefore, she should be held responsible for the failings of her department. That is not a witch hunt or a crazily high standard. I would have resigned the day the report was published and I think it is a huge stain on her character that she is fighting on for the money.
I don't think George Meehan should have resigned. I know him personally and I know he is very committed to local politics and Irish people. That the highly paid Ms Shoesmith should have resigned is obvious. Apparently, she has never been a shocial worker and was given the job, originally overseeing educational services because she worked for Capita. Then in one of Haringey's interminable reorganisations she ended up in charge of Childrens' Services or something. Her background is in management. From what I understand, the main really horrific injuries happened to the child in the last two weeks of his life when the 'stepfather's' brother came to live with them on the run from South London. Baby P was neglected before then but not to the same extent, otherwise even a twitty social worker would have noticed.
This government moved children's social workers from Social Care departments to Children's Departments, formerly Education Departments. An awful lot of former Chiefs Execs of Education are now responsible for Children's Social Work, and I bet very few are trained and experienced social workers. This was done as a result of the Climbie case.
Lesson learned - when Govts fiddle with things in an attempt to make the better, they actually make things work. Deming's Funnel.
As best as I recall, a few years ago it was thought that it might be useful if a few authorities combined their education responsibilities with their children's social services responsibilities in a single "children's services" department. After a few had done it successfully, it was made compulsory for everyone. Hence a lot of managers who had run education departments suddenly took over children's social services as well.
PS Hutton concluded, and I think rightly, that the MoD had a duty to disclose Dr Kelly's identity as a possible source of the Gilligan story. He criticized the MoD for incompetence in the way it revealed it, not for the decision to reveal the name. (Imagine what the press would have said if it had been revealed that the source of the story had identified himself but the MoD had covered it up)
Who do you blame Labour it has to be Labour they are in power and they should ensure things like this do not happen even once but twice.
Dave
What a reasoned and well thougt out piece.
I also think that Ms Shoesmith should have resigned, but not George Meehan or even Liz santry.
Ed Balls is leading the defend the Sun reactionary brigade on this one, and just a fraction behind him is our old buddy...SEAN MATGAMNA
see
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/12/04/lessons-“baby-p”-case#comment-17585
What is the world coming to?
Mikey
You've got an interesting, balanced perspective. There's some more stuff here on the impact of systems on this case: http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/socialbrain/sharon-shoesmith-and-karen-matthews-not-totally-black-and-white/