How could we have let Sara down so badly?

The mother previously worked in a nursery

I'm speechless! 😥

foxie48

I don't think this country is a joke but I do think our public services, especially the ones that protect the most vulnerable people in our society, have been neglected, under funded and used by private companies for profit. I feel it is easier to blame poorly paid, inadequately supported and over worked professionals than accept that although we care it's not enough to put our hands in our pockets and pay for better services.

We need to pay more tax.

Not taxing in dribs and drabs where it might cause more harm than good, but straightforward income tax.

To be fair that means very little. Early years is currently full of a seemingly endless quantity of supply staff who frequently have very little experience.

eazybee

There are two issues being discussed here: home-schooling and the responsibility for Sara Sharif’s death.
Home-schooling needs to be closely monitored for all children, not just those believed to be at risk. The idea that any parent can effectively home-school a child is flawed, witness covid. Some children flourish because most of their tutoring is one-to one and they receive all the attention they crave. But many are let down by this system and reach working age with an inadequate knowledge and poor preparation for the outside world.
These children are failed in their preparation for life just as surely as the victims of abuse.

The case of Sara Sharif has provoked national outrage. It is not a political construct by newspapers apparently intent on demonising 'liberal social workers.' Pretending that this is a case which has been stirred up by a newspaper is unjust, as are the allegations that this is an excuse for an attack on understaffed, over-stressed people.
Sara was failed by the Judge and the social workers who deemed her father a suitable person to take parental responsibility, despite their knowledge of his previous violence against women and children. She was failed by her Headteacher, whose duty in safeguarding it was to report suspicions of child abuse, and who failed to question the conclusions of the social services team (another failure) or raise concerns when she was removed from the school, and from potential monitoring.

This is not a political bandwagon. The actions of the experienced professionals involved in Sara’s care are difficult to justify. Unless the whole episode is scrupulously examined, including the cultural influences at work, and the findings are publicised, this tragedy will be repeated again and again.

Excellent comments.

Home-schooling needs to be closely monitored for all children, not just those believed to be at risk. The idea that any parent can effectively home-school a child is flawed, witness covid. Some children flourish because most of their tutoring is one-to one and they receive all the attention they crave. But many are let down by this system and reach working age with an inadequate knowledge and poor preparation for the outside world.
These children are failed in their preparation for life just as surely as the victims of abuse.

👏👏👏

There are extremely few places in the UK where this might be considered a preferable alternative, as schools in the vast majority of areas are within a reasonable reach.

I also agree with eazybee’s comments.

Professionals need to take full responsibility when things go wrong.
I quoted upthread about a child I taught who was abused by her father, and believe me, she described exactly what he did to her, to me, and yet the judge threw it out on the grounds that five year olds are not reliable!

That judge let a child abuser walk free! He/she was responsible for that!
It was the Criminal Court, not in this case, the Family Court.

She was failed by her Headteacher, whose duty in safeguarding it was to report suspicions of child abuse

The Head Teacher did report it, but then Sara was taken out of school and "home-schooled".

Should the HT have persisted when her concerns had been passed on to Social Services and Sara was no longer her pupil?
Probably not, because she might then have been vilified and accused of racism.

I feel very sorry for the teachers, they must be distressed and feel they failed Sara, but in fact they did follow procedures.

petra

Here is the whole interview.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0025vvj

It's a very good interview, very powerful. (Its the first 17 minutes).

I’m another who appreciated your post eazybee.

Galaxy

To be fair that means very little. Early years is currently full of a seemingly endless quantity of supply staff who frequently have very little experience.

I understand your meaning (I think) Galaxy but, it means rather a lot. Early Years is key to promoting child development. It’s under paid, big staff turnover, low expectations of qualifications when recruiting though some good training does go on for regular staff.
The last daft idea I heard from the previous government t was that staff educated to degree level could care for greater numbers of two year olds than those withiut degrees, like a degree enables yiu to change 5 not 2 nappies at any one time.

We can’t afford not to invest in our chikdren preburth - 18

Iam64

Foster carers do cuddle children, foster fathers do drive children in cars -

We went through a private fostering agency and this is what we were told. We felt as if we (particularly my husband) would not be trusted. We consequently felt we did not wish to pursue fostering.

"A recent report found that the 10 largest providers of children's placements and care made more than £300m in profits in 2021. With most agencies, after allowances for foster carers and staff/support costs, a significant portion of these profits are often distributed amongst shareholders.1 Oct 2022"
"Three private equity firms running foster care agencies have made a combined £40 million in profit out of the plight of vulnerable children, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

They have raked in their millions amid a crisis in the sector. While the buyout barons are cashing in, many foster carers are dropping out, saying that the sums they receive for looking after children are inadequate."

Your tax is going into the pockets of shareholders instead of being used to benefit vulnerable children.

Sky dancer, if I or anyone I know had been assessing foster carers this wouldn’t have happened.

It reminds me of the nonsense that says primary school teachers don’t touch let alone cuddle children. I was at a nativity this week, saw crying children picked up quietly by a teacher, sat on her knee, reassured, re-joined the performance. I saw my daughter respond to a 4 year old who was weeping by lifting him quietly onto her knee as she continued to direct another Nativity.
I’ve seen big male police officers carrying children etc etc. I

foxie48

"A recent report found that the 10 largest providers of children's placements and care made more than £300m in profits in 2021. With most agencies, after allowances for foster carers and staff/support costs, a significant portion of these profits are often distributed amongst shareholders.1 Oct 2022"
"Three private equity firms running foster care agencies have made a combined £40 million in profit out of the plight of vulnerable children, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

They have raked in their millions amid a crisis in the sector. While the buyout barons are cashing in, many foster carers are dropping out, saying that the sums they receive for looking after children are inadequate."

Your tax is going into the pockets of shareholders instead of being used to benefit vulnerable children.

Thanks foxie48 for explaining what privatisation means. Children’s Services should never be for profit.

As an aside, neither should prisons or education for children with SEND

foxie48

"A recent report found that the 10 largest providers of children's placements and care made more than £300m in profits in 2021. With most agencies, after allowances for foster carers and staff/support costs, a significant portion of these profits are often distributed amongst shareholders.1 Oct 2022"
"Three private equity firms running foster care agencies have made a combined £40 million in profit out of the plight of vulnerable children, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

They have raked in their millions amid a crisis in the sector. While the buyout barons are cashing in, many foster carers are dropping out, saying that the sums they receive for looking after children are inadequate."

Your tax is going into the pockets of shareholders instead of being used to benefit vulnerable children.

I had no idea.

it should never have been allowed to happen this way.

petal53 what you describe is shocking, but I’m afraid this illustrates that judges in the Criminal Courts do not have the training or experience of child abuse that Family Court Judges have. And to be fair, it is also significant that the standard of proof in the criminal court has to be ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ whereas in the Family Court the threshold is ‘on the balance of probabilities’.

This is one reason why it is so hard to achieve a criminal conviction in cases such as the one you describe, where the only evidence is the testimony of a child. There can often be situations where the threshold is met for a judge to make a Care Order, but not for a successful prosecution. And then abusers get off scot free, and go to the media to claim their children have been removed by evil social workers when they have ‘been proved innocent in a court of law’.

Wyllow, local authorities were encouraged to use private provision a cheaper. The big buildings / old houses in my town that were used a residential care for older people or teenagers who rejected the idea of foster families were sold off to raise funds for statutory services they could barely afford . 12 years ago one la was paying £2500 a week for a residential placement for a very difficult 13 year old. The quality of care was poor with the child dictating rather than boundaries being set. Pre privatisation the child would have been placed in a small residential unit
It’s worse than Starmer’s government have said
It’s disgraceful

Following nightowl’s post it might sound dreadful but given the unlikelihood of convictions, especially in 7 years and younger, it could be more protective to go for a care order where the family judge could hear the evidence and decide on the balance of probabilities whether the abuse occurred

You're right - I started looking it up Iam. How the privatisation rapidly happened despite warnings of the dangers ahead.

www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/01/07/stealth-privatisation-childrens-services/

I’m afraid the ship of privatisation of fostering and residential services for looked after children sailed some 30 years ago. As far back as the mid 90s local authorities were forced to make cuts and hard decisions had to be made, so recruitment of foster carers was reduced, existing carers were not well supported, children’s homes were closed down and sold off. At the same time, services were deregulated and opened up to the private sector - enterprising individuals already working in the services saw an opportunity and took it. Local authorities with no resources of their own were forced to pay inflated fees and ironically were worse off than when they had their own provision. Since then, these agencies have been taken over by huge companies making huge profits. The staff are still social workers and are not paid any more than their local authority counterparts. The carers are paid more on paper than local authority foster carers but with no extras and I don’t believe they come out much better off. Private residential care homes for children are hugely expensive and standards of care do not merit the fees charged (in my opinion).

I agree that no one should be making a profit from vulnerable children, or from vulnerable older people, or from sick people etc but I’m afraid that’s the world we now live in and it has all happened under our noses, driven by both Labour and Conservative governments.

Iam it took me so long to compose my last post that I missed yours, covering the same ground.

Allira

^Home-schooling needs to be closely monitored for all children, not just those believed to be at risk. The idea that any parent can effectively home-school a child is flawed, witness covid. Some children flourish because most of their tutoring is one-to one and they receive all the attention they crave. But many are let down by this system and reach working age with an inadequate knowledge and poor preparation for the outside world^.
These children are failed in their preparation for life just as surely as the victims of abuse.

👏👏👏

There are extremely few places in the UK where this might be considered a preferable alternative, as schools in the vast majority of areas are within a reasonable reach.

Until we have an education system suited to all children, parents will be forced to homeschool. At the moment we have an almost one size fits all system and it is failing a lot of those with neurodiversity, medical problems and quite a lot of bright, conscientious children. It isn’t the fault of the teachers. The whole system needs adjusting with the finances to support it.
My daughter home-schooled because she was disabled and as she couldn’t get her daughter to the school next to her house, she was unable to take her child to the only available school. Apparently disabled parents aren’t part of the consideration in the admissions policy. It took a year before she was able to get into the local school. My daughter never wanted to home school.
I have met very few parents who wanted to home school but felt forced to for the sake of their child’s mental health.

This poor little girl had teachers, other parents neighbours, why did they not do anything as well as all the other people paid to keep children safe ?
Why was this little girl allowed to be home schooled so the dad, stepmother and uncle were free to abuse without any checks and injuries were able to go unseen. Also why was she allowed to wear a hijab to cover all her injuries ? I really , really hope that the authorities and everyone were pussy footing around the family for fear of being called racist which has been suggested. If this is the case then shame on them all and there must be so many who must or should feel ashamed of themselves.

Wyllow thanks for finding that report, I doubt many will read it but hopefully a few people will and begin to understand why our most vulnerable children are deprived of the care they need and why SW departments are so impoverished.
OH and I were invited to a lovely charity event, we didn't know two of the couples who were on the table taking advantage of the wine and spilling the beans on their role running a private fostering agency. Who knew it could be so lucrative, I certainly didn't! The changes made in 2014 pushed a swinging door wide open and there's always some who see the opportunity to line their pockets at the public expense.

How many social worker have come across racial bias in the profession?

www.communitycare.co.uk/2024/12/03/case-reviews-silent-on-racial-bias-in-child-protection-decision-making/