..... whenever these case come to court and some poor baby is dead, can someone please explain to me why these so called health professionals all close ranks and talk about learning from their mistakes or massive case loads and jack shit happens. Teflon is a word that comes to mind.

If you're on about that case in Harringey, where the doctor didn't spot the broken back, after a catalogue of missed injuries to the poor little mite over eight months of twice weekly visits, there should be wholesale sackings.

But as you say, the inquiry will take three years and they will all go on sick leave pleading stress.

Disgusting. They only have one function. Protect kids. End of.

....and protect their career

....case closed

f.f.s. anyone thought about pointing any blame at the people actually carrying out the abuse.

Well yes, they're in court and convicted. Point being they should have been facing lesser charges and the kid should have been made safe surely??

All I mean is that it should have never come to that.

That is self evident, if I had my way they'd never be free, ...as for the caring professional bodies, a bit less emphasis on qualifcations and theory and a bit more on hard nosed common semse might just nip these things in the bud. The child comes first, not the desire of the professionals to do a bit of social engineering with people you wouldn't let raise a rat.

The horrible truth is at any one time in a town the size of Hartlepool there could be anywhere between 40-100 kids on the 'at risk' register. As the name suggests all of those are believed to be at serious risk of harm. It is impossible to predict everytime where the serious incident will come.

If social workers wrongly identify any case they get a torrent of abuse, 'bloody busybodies, how dare they, no proof etc'

The monsters who inflict harm like this are usually outstanding liars- as they were in this case. The fact that this child had been seen 60 times is a positive not a negative I'd say. He, like all the others, WAS at risk.

You could not remove all of the kids who are at risk. It's just not possible to get the proof when a child cannot speak.

I need to stress here, I'm not a social worker. I'm a teacher who used to have total contempt for 'busybody, useless social workers' until I took a role where I had to do some work with a social services team and realised the immense difficulty of getting the judgement call right of when to remove a child. I can tell you with absolute certainty that children's services teams are not weak. I know of one mother in the town where I work who had her child removed 24 hour after BIRTH because of her previous neglect of her older children.

But as for a doctor who cannot spot a broken spine - that is beyond belief.

I don't believe in executions, I don't believe in locking people up and throwing away the key. I do hope though that the miserable excuses for human beings that have done this never get through a minute of a day in the rest of of their lives without being destroyed by shame and guilt for what they have done.

I do in cases like this and not any quick easy and method either.

I want social workers to be hard nosed busybodies, I don't want what we have now where holding together a rather ropey family has more priority than the childs welfare.

I, and my wife, have brought 3 human beings into this world, without any direct training in how to best do it. We have with our own skills, and help from family members, done (I believe) a reasonably good job of it. I believe that the problem lies in the fact that anyone can bring children into this world, and that there should be some way of controlling those that can do it. What the actual answer is to how to control it is another matter, to which unfortunately I do not have the answer.

How many kids are brought into the world for the financial benefits their little lives guarantee... if you said there'd be no benefits in future for those born after a certain date, the birth rate would go through the floor in certain groups.

You're probably right Snowy, the thought of financial gain was the furthest from our mind with our three, in fact completely the opposite. We had 3 children because we wanted them, not for what they would provide financially to us. How much money could we have had if I had had that little operation 16 years earlier?

Who should decide who can and can't have kids?

In Victorian times there were a lot of 'learned' folk who wished to stop the filthy working class breeding like rabbits, and advocated compulsory sterilisation. I dare say the ancestors of most people on this board come from said working class.

We have a duty to protect innocent children, but not to say who should have them. I know it's highly unlikely, but the offspring of someone like Peter Owens may one day do something which will benefit mankind or the world as a whole, such as finding a cure for cancer, or inventing a coal substitute from cowshit.

You're definitely a glass half full sort of person aren't you PIN.

the biggest problem facing everyone in these situations about whether or not to have kids, is that it's very hard to pull away when you're on the vinegar strokes.

I feel priveleged to have witnessed the greatest triumph of Peter Owens' life.

Aged 10 (and already about 12 stone) Peter won Sacred Heart Junior School's clash of the titans against a similarly tubby Paddy Fawcett.

Both fighter's form is/was good.

Paddy has been a regular star of the Mail over the years- putting the windows out on the Powlett due to being barred etc. Though obviously Peter has the better form. Who can forget the comedy joy that can be had putting his name into the Mail's website search engine and the loss of an afternoon's work that follows.

Anyway out the back of my alma mater in 1980, at the end of school, a fight broke out between the two above-mentioned fattest kids in the school. A large crowd developed, including Paddy's mam who rather than break it up chanted 'kill him Paddy'.

Peter won the short but wildly entertaining contest by sitting on Paddy's head and farting (I kid you not- I heard it but then so did people in Kent).

Quality gentlemen both.

And a conflict only rivalled by the 1982 English Martyrs title fight between TalbotAvenger and a 4 foot midget with bad heart called Tucky to decide who was the softest kid in the whole year. As I remember Talbot carried the day - just. Both Mad John and myself were amongst several relieved to have narrowly missed the title fight.

Great theory and I would go to the ends of the earth to make sure every child gets a fair crack at life. However, the "generational" problem of kids never getting to see what they are capable of because of their parents, and their parents before them etc, is rife and not being addressed by any fooker. You can almost predict who will end up in jail before they are born.

Sadly true

We're getting into the age old discussion of Nature v's Nurture. Is someone’s behaviour a result of genetics or the environment they have grown up in? Greater minds than mine have argued the cases for both side and indeed a combination of both sides.
As has been mentioned by pde 147, it's a no win situation as a social worker (and I hold my hand up as that's my job). If kids are taken into care there is a media outcry, if kids are left in a potentially abusive situation that is also wrong. The lead from successive governments is that children either be left with their natural parent(s) or if taken into care, re-introduced at a later time. With this comes the running down of children’s homes and making conditions in these homes totally false when compared to an acceptable family situation. For example unable to enforce a reasonable curfew as the kids have the right to leave at any time and therefore possibly put themselves in risky situations.
It has to be remembered that social workers do not have the same powers as the police, or in fact the medical profession. Their powers of being able to demand to see a child’s environment are zero although sometimes this can be overcome by using persuasive arguments. However those with something to hide can be cunning. As social workers have to arrange visits first the more cunning usually prepare for this.
There is then the case that many social workers have high caseloads are saturated by bureaucracy and have poor line management. They are also in my opinion poorly prepared for work. They have been taught theories but many have not have the life experiences that others on here have hinted at. And yes some are just bad social workers – it happens in every profession.
The media just love a ‘bad news’ story, preferably one where they can stir up a mass feeling against someone or a group of people who are unlikely to have the platform to retaliate.
What is always forgotten is what about the 1000’s of children that have been helped by good social work intervention? Yes, one life lost is one too many but there is no system that will ever prevent this in our society.

I honestly can't remember writing that.