RIP Baby Star Hobson

Sarnia. You aren’t being judgemental anymore than I am. You are speaking from your experience as am I. There’s far too much of this dismissing people’s views. I know a friend’s daughter who’s in sw and when she was studying for her degree she told us she was taught that the ‘lower classes’ don’t have the same standards and not to judge. It’s outrageous. Most of the so called lower classes love and care for their children just as much as anyone else. To casually dismiss a neglected, dirty child because ‘they’ have different standards is not only camouflaged snobbery but displays a mind boggling lack of understanding.

If you vote for a reduction in taxes and a cutback of services,

I believe it was Trisher that said this.

21 years ago myself and a friend contacted Social Services and Police with our concerns that one of my grandaughters was possibly being groomed by her step father. Family Court had forced my daughter to give stepfather access. We couldn't stop that.
The Social services response was to accuse us of making a malicious complaint because we are biased.
Yes we love and care for DGD
Nothing was followed up. no one was talked to.

I have had dealings with Social Workers from being a severely disabled person.
Some Social Workers are lovely but certainly not all.
In fact I was surprised at how many are vindicative and how many are really stupid.......in emotional terms.
They cannot read people and I think they are usually the biased person.

While cutbacks have created lots of hardships it doesn't excuse the way many Social Workers are simply not a good fit for their job.
In reading about Arthur and now Star, I don't see how many times can SW's be excused for not listening to relatives and friends......especially grandparents..
We often do know better than "professional"

I would like to see the way assessments are made so that family and friends accounts are very much taken in to account.
These two recent cases prove the value of grandparents. IMO

It seems SW's nowadays are more keen to take children away who are okay - am in close contact with a family where the Grandmother wanted to look after her sons children and tried very hard, but couldn't manage fully because she had health issues and was distraught when all she needed was some help with chores etc - but no, they were put into a Foster Home, where actually they were happy, and Grandma was able to visit etc and it worked, very well - the lad started to do very well in school and the little girl was happy and they called the foster carers Mummy and Daddy ... THEN some SW decided she was going to put them up for adoption! Some la di dah woman who decided to suddenly want children, picked them out of a book and they went to her. No contact with Granny at all. The boy was absolutely devastated and HATED it, although the little girl was generally ok but wanted to see her Granny and her aunts and uncles and cousins .... the adoption trial period was then up and the woman decided she wanted the girl but not the boy, and the Judge allowed it to happen! They were split! She wasn't allowed to see any of her other family but was allowed to Facetime her brother once a week, which upset her every time as she kept asking where her Mummy was etc and wanted to be back in her bedroom where he was ..... I don't know what has happened since, except the lad is fortunately back with who he called Mummy and is again doing well, and I think they were in the process of adopting him .... I believe that SW was once heard to say - if it's the last thing I do before I leave I will get those 2 adopted .... she literally ripped that little boy's heart out, and not once was he asked what he wanted to do, and he was quite capable of telling them. Just dreadful ....

nightowl

So many generalisations here. I can assure you that middle class people abuse their children too, but they are far better at hiding it and keeping the authorities at bay than the poor and feckless. What horrible judgmental attitudes some people have.

Nightowl more often than not and many is not tarring them all with the same brush. You choose to call my 17 year experience of working on a busy Maternity unit with babies on pre-birth At Risk registers as a horrible judgmental attitude. I am neither horrible or judgmental. I was simply saying how it was where I worked.

Thanks Luckygirl. Absolutely with you on Sure Start and family centres. My poor former mill town had a family centre which was a centre of excellence. It closed because cuts meant the council was unable to meet statutory duties, much less support the centre and the excellent work done by charities.

They do indeed identify similar issues.

The critical thing is to co-ordinate concerns - so often there are individuals who have a concern, but it seems to small to report. But there might be 10 others with similar "small" concerns and if you put them all together a picture emerges that is very serious. The systems in place recognise this and try to make this happen, but somehow it does not.

Money and resources are also an issue. Social workers have caseloads that are of ridiculous proportions and do not make it possible to do the job thoroughly. And so often the parents have warning of a visit and brush up their act for the time the SW is in the house.

It is like the police ringing up and saying "Hello - just wanted to let you know that we will be doing a drugs bust on your house at 2 o'clock."

But finding drugs seems to carry a higher priority than finding child abusers.

Prevention is also key - we need Sure Start and family centres back.

Up to two children die at the hands of parents/carers each week as a result of non accidental injuries or neglect. That figure seems to have been unchanged over many years.

The numbers of children in care increased by 50% during the pandemic.

I hope the awful reports of the suffering of Arthur and Star result result in an overhaul in all the agencies involved with children. The wheel doesn’t need to be re-invented. Each inquiry consistently identifies similar issues.

Typically.
As is usual.

Yes of course but people in this thread arent saying let's sterilise the highly intelligent people.

There are plenty of psychopaths with high IQs, actually.

I work with children with additional needs, and it is these children I think about as well. When people are talking about sterilisation and using the word 'stupid' they are also talking about sterilisation of people with learning disabilities. Let's not pretend any other.
How do we balance this. I think the horrific answer is that we cant.

The thing to remember, whatever approach we take, is that a little baby is dead due to abuse, and that shouldn't have happened.
Of course no system is failsafe, no one person can be held accountable (apart from the bitches who did it) but for it to culminate in a death, caused by multiple outrages over a sustained time is not acceptable.

Just as a bit of diversion Germaine Greer once said that the answer to contraception was to give every male a vasectomy, before the op he would freeze sperm, when a child was wanted the sperm would be used. Now rather than sterilize mothers I'd go for that.

No they don’t.

They never do make a right.

Two wrong dont make a right MissAdventure although I agree with many of your posts on this thread.

As I've said, thanks in part to social services less than proactive approach, my neighbours grandchildren are fast looking likely to end up involved in child abuse cases.
The older one has just abused pets, so far.

I wonder how Johnson's father filled his time between abusing his wife?

Emma Tustin had a hot tub in her garden to while away the hours in between abusing Arthur. Dud she ever work? How did she afford it plus all the McDonalds they enjoyed.

Of the top of my head I can think of 2 people I know well who have experienced domestic abuse, I couldnt begin to tell you how many people I know who have either had an affair or divorced and had new partners. Do you understand what you are saying. Mass sterilisation

Ok 2 out of 3 of those were present in Boris Johnson's childhood. So you would have sterilised the parents (I have no idea why it would be just the mother) of the future PM. My guess is you would be sterilising millions of people.

trisher

This is completely political and yes of course there were cruelty cases under a Labour government, But let's not forget that the Labour government always has to clear up the mess left by the Tories. Any real develpments in care and social services are then destroyed once again by small state Tories. Like the Sure Start initiative which dealt not only with children but with inadequate parents and the extended family. If you cut that, pare social services to the bone and cut all the public services involved in protecting children like education, the police, the NHS you leave vulnerable children exposed. There may always have been instances of cruelty, but so many in such a short period? I think not. Yes the abusers are monsters but it is society which is responsible for failing to protect these children and it is the years of Tory government that are responsible for that failure.

I agree it is political, because of cuts social workers now have many more cases to cope with, up to four times more I believe. But it is also about people who take advantage of discrimination legislation, the woman in question regularly claimed homophobia and discrimination because she was from a family lf travellers. Like the police in Rochdale during the sex abuse investigation the social workers were frightened of being accused of discrimination.

They're all issues that have been aired here on gransnet amongst adult children, aren't they?
Just in nicer terms.

Yes, all of those Galaxy.