Throw away the key??

Mad. Absolutely barking. Common sense has been thrown out of the window. Along with empathy and compassion.

It's happening everywhere; the more senior people are 'too expensive'.

Same here nightowl. I received fantastic training that would have cost a fortune over twenty odd years, and had the experience and confidence to manage large staff teams, very high risk offenders and to train students and all levels of staff in several different aspects of probation work. They paid for some post-graduate research, sent me in a team to various different countries to study their corrections facilities and advise Romanian and Hungarian judiciary about probation systems (not hard when they didn't have a system at the time) and generally invested in me, and in return I gave good value for money. The two people who took over my job were fed up with the pressure within months, so one left and the other gave up her qualification and went to work nights in a hostel. Such a waste of taxpayers' money for short term gains!

Oh when it makes me despair. I too have just been offered a redundancy package in order to reduce the number of qualified workers in our team and to replace them with call handlers who will follow a computer programme. I have 30+ years experience and this authority has invested heavily in my post-qualifying training in all areas of work. In addition to child protection I am experienced in safeguarding vulnerable adults and I am also an AMHP (approved mental health professional). The last training alone costs the authority hundreds of pounds and takes two years to complete. There is a national shortage of AMHPs. The authority also paid for me to undertake a post-qualifying award at Birmingham University only five years ago. Yet they are willing to throw away their investment in two workers in order to save a proposed £40000 in one service area. It seems very short-sighted.

Jingle There has to be a safe escape in case of emergency, and doors are all electronically operated and monitored, although if a child is in a foster family's home that wouldn't happen. But if the children who aren't in secure conditions have not committed offences, they can either walk out through the front door, disappear through a side door, or as in the case of most of these children, simply stay out because they were not going back to their homes after school.

I know what you mean, though. If it was my children, I would be at the school before home time, then taking them home to a locked front and back door, and be watching them like a hawk. But then, our families are not the vulnerable ones that are prone to being preyed on.

What is it about Rochdale?..
Byron was born there, and so was Cyril Smith.
Seems a funny old place, as they say..

Why can't children's homes lock them in? At least in the evenings after a certain hour. Depending on age.

I agree with you wholeheartedly nightowl. The multi-agency Safeguarding training team in Rochdale was disbanded a few years ago. I was one of the trainers, along with another senior probation officer, a police officer, two social workers from Safeguarding Children, and a social services training officer. It was decided they would commission Safeguarding training from Manchester because of budget cuts. The amount of training delivered dropped dramatically, and all three agencies had a hand in agreeing the cuts without preparing for the consequences. This was a disaster waiting to happen. Meanwhile, in both probation and social services, redundancies deprived those organisations of experienced workers, new unqualified staff were recruited and remained untrained for months at a time. Both I and the other senior probation officer retired with a redundancy package as a result of multi-million pounds of probation budget cuts, the police officers went back to their team duties, and only the social workers and trainer were left in the service, transferred to reshuffled teams.

Social workers and probation officers, and their unions, are constantly warning senior managers about moving experienced staff around without making sure that expertise remains in teams. Whilst social workers do get good training in child protection issues before qualifying, it is unqualified front-line staff who often make quick assessments of presenting issues, which they may not always immediately understand. This recent case is full of confusing issues, and over-worked, under-resourced and under-trained staff are being blamed for not protecting children, when police have dismissed complaints. As a practitioner who had first hand experience of the frustrations of reporting children at risk in Rochdale, I really feel for those social workers. If they'd tried to move the children out of area, they would have been told the budget wouldn't cover the cost and relatives would have blocked it. Police would not put these men under surveillance - it can cost nearly £100,000 for a fortnight's targeted surveillance, and that would have to be sanctioned at a high level with substantial evidence of the need for it, which they didn't have at the time. If social workers had driven round to try to find the children, they would have been hidden from them as soon as they appeared. Children's homes cannot lock children in, unless there has been a court order to place them in secure conditions.

We deserve better service from the social workers who are paid to protect children, but for goodness' sake give them the support and resources to do their job. The public and communities can help protect children. No one agency can do it on their own. So many people would have seen these children being picked up from school, or trailing along with known prostitutes. Pimps and paedophiles have been audacious in Rochdale, turning up to seek out children (and teenagers are the children in this case) and simply waiting around corners or in takeaway shops or taxi offices if anyone moved them on. The town isn't riddled with such problems, but Rochdale is gaining a reputation it doesn't want and that attracts offenders. I hope they get the massive shake up they have been saying they need for many years.

How disheartening nightowl for people like you who entered your profession to make a difference and not to meet targets, which mean nothing when these sort of travesties occur.

You are right baNANA I only addressed the issue of girls who are in the care system and there must have been others who were from stable families. I think the failure of children's services to become involved comes from the same place that I spoke about in my earlier post. We have a culture in social care that is target driven. If a referral is made regarding a vulnerable child and an initial assessment is agreed it must be completed within 7 working days. The electronic systems will trigger if the timescales are exceeded. Success is seen as 100% of assessments being completed within timescales. That's it. In theory the team manager is responsible for ensuring good quality assessments but given that their heads are on the block if their team does not maintain a good record of keeping within timescales, it is predictable that they too emphasise speed over quality. The only time the quality of work is analysed is after a serious incident or a complaint.

Within this culture there is no room for social workers who care about the job or their clients. Sadly, the young social workers I come across have never known it any other way and most of them do not see caring as an essential part of the role. I can easily believe that any parent asking for support because their child had become involved with a group of abusers would be told that it was their responsibility to keep their child safe. I am also sure that an appeal to a manager would receive the same response. What I am saying is that the system is rotten at the highest level and therefore individual social workers cannot be held responsible for its failings. I am only glad that I am coming to the end of my career, but I weep for a profession I would once have defended to the death.

JO4 I've come to the conclusion that SOME Muslims are just culturally incompatible with the values and lifestyle of Western countries. It makes me sick the way these men have abused these girls for so long and until recently have got away with it. It also makes me sick the way their crimes have been covered up because it doesn't fit in with a certain political narrative that has been foisted upon us.

I have to agree with baNANA here. I am sick of social workers and the police letting children down. It just happens so often these days.

Perhaps, as nightowl says, it is the present day system. But that can't really be an excuse. Social workers exist and they are getting paid for doing a job.

These men target white girls as they want to make money out of young girls and wouldn't dare do it to muslim girls. Is that racist? I don't think so. Just opportunist.

nightowl, I concede that you having worked as a social worker have a far greater knowledge of the system than I would have, so possibly I'm speaking naively. I think what I found so shocking was an interview with a father, his back to the camera, who said that the social workers he dealt with seemed to perceive these very young girls as something akin to prostitutes. I have indeed read about the goings on in local authority children's homes which you have outlined and I can see ,how as you say, these young girls end up as easy prey. Whilst I know that some of the girls would have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, I believe some came from caring stable homes and were insidiously led into this way of life, sometimes by their young Asian male peer group who they met in Malls on a Saturday afternoon, which would be a normal place where most youngsters gather at the week-ends and wouldn't raise alarm bells for their parents. I read in the Times that one Asian man turned up at a 14 year old's home who was being abused and told her parents to send her outside as he wanted to f**k the a**e off her and if they didn't send her out he would burn their house down. Similarly I believe they would lay in wait for the girls outside their homes and their schools. What the hell would you do if you were a parent in that position and you couldn't get any help from the police or social services? In any case whatever their backgrounds they may well have been damaged beyond repair and I think it's truly awful that a blind eye has been turned towards it for so long and these men seem to think it's acceptable to treat these girls as disposable trash.

baNANA I agree that those in authority and positions of power have let these girls and their families down - and there needs to be an enquiry into the state of provision for looked after children as a matter of urgency. However I cannot agree that individual social workers should be sacked - we have seen individuals like Lisa Arthurworry sacked, deregistered and publicly pilloried as a result of her involvement in the Victoria Climbie case. A single social worker to trying to protect any of the girls in Rochdale would be akin to one person trying to stop a runaway train.

About twelve years ago in the authority where I work, there was a recognition that young girls in residential care were being targeted and groomed as prostitutes by adult men. These girls were all local and there was no race element. An excellent Assistant Director of Social Services pioneered an initiative, in close collaboration with the Police and other agencies, that was very successful and received government recognition.

Fast forward to a very different world. There are no local authority children's homes. The gods of privatisation and profit have taken over the care of the most vulnerable. Social care is run on a business model of targets, performance and cost saving. These may not be bad things in themselves but where are the values of care and compassion that brought most of us into social work in the first place? Looked after children (a misleading term if ever there was one) are placed in small private homes miles away from their home town, with staff who are ill trained and ill equipped to meet their needs. The children are unregulated and unloved. They spend much of their time missing and are easy prey for gangs like those in Rochdale, Rotherham or Oxford. The local authority managers like the one I referred to earlier have all gone - either retired or been driven out by the change in culture. They have been replaced by business managers, often with no background in social work and therefore no understanding of the values of the profession. There is no place for social workers who care in this environment, and no safety net for children. I fear we can never put the genie back in this particular bottle.

Now a large group from Oxford have been at the Old Bailey today, all of them pleading 'Not Guilty'. This is likely to be at least as notorious as the Rochdale trial.

Following the conviction of the Asian Rochdale group of men who horribly abused quite a number of very young white girls does anyone else think it an absolute travesty that none of the social workers who were responsible for handling the girls cases at the time have been sacked, particularly when it was suggested that girls, some of whom I believe as young as 12, were making a lifestyle choice. I don't know if anyone watched Question Time last night but I was reminded how cagey liberals can be when discussing anything adverse surrounding Muslims, and God knows there are more than enough issues that put them in a bad light, Steve Coogan suggested that we were getting into "Daily Mail" territory. Whilst I can understand his reticence, given the way these people over react to practically any criticism, I think it's absolutely ridiculous to pillory the Daily Mail for what has been an issue that had been swept under the carpet for I believe 10 years or more. In any event it has been the Times that have been running with the story for quite a while now giving very in depth reporting on the subject. I believe Jack Straw has said that members of the Asian community in Rochdale knew what was going on but did nothing to stop it. It makes my blood run cold to think of how these young girls were treated and how the powers that be systematically let them and their parents down so badly all in the name of political correctness.

Over the week-end we have reports that another 9 men have been arrested on suspicion of grooming, in Rochdale.The obvious conclusion being this is a totally different group of men.

Equalities chief Trevor Phillips said it is fatuous the idea that there was no racial link in the Rochdale child sex grooming case!.

I refer back to my original comment, I hope this is going to be looked at not only by our police but the Pakistani community itself.

It is my opinion that the 'authorities' are reluctant to suggest the crimes may have been racial because of the backlash their acknowledgement would cause. It does seem easier to claim racism when a white person has committed it than when a non-white has done so. I'm so glad I don't have to make these decisions!

Well the pot is being stirred ...

uk.news.yahoo.com/race-relevant-sexual-grooming-131136074.html

I'm not really sure that this is going to help the police with their on-going investigations

Suspect that he is involved in another case which may or may not be related.

Ah, nice history lesson. That will sort em out mr Starkey!

I have followed everyone's comments with interest ...much of which I have agreed with, learning much too, along the way.

I know "pleased to see" is not really the right phrase ...but at least this doesn't appear to be treated as a one-off event

uk.news.yahoo.com/second-sex-grooming-inquiry-rochdale-144904318.html

This time there seems to be a more varied ethnic mix ...but maybe not a differing religious mix??

One of the things from the first investigation, that I still don't understand ...is why the 59yr old man, involved, could not be named for legal reasons? Unless of course he is involved in further investigations?

Does anyone else have any idea?

I found this on the Archbishop's website:

'The Archbishop made no proposals for sharia in either the lecture or the interview, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law.

Instead, in the interview, rather than proposing a parallel system of law, he observed that "as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law" . When the question was put to him that: "the application of sharia in certain circumstances - if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion - seems unavoidable?", he indicated his assent.'

He may be a very erudite man but he lacks the ability to convey his meaning in a way that most people can understand.

I felt the same when he said that, pogs. Thought: "That man's a fool".

I remember watching the Archbishop of Canterbury and getting annoyed at his comments on sharia law. I thought he was in favour of some aspects of sharia law being introduced in Britain. It was quite some time ago so I could'nt totally acount for my comment.