The death of Baby K.
The death of baby Jaydon Lee Green was a tragedy. Of course it was. The death of any child is a tragedy. Was it an avoidable tragedy? The Serious Case Review has concluded that it was.
I am not so sure. His death could only have been avoided by undertaking actions which would represent a series of tragedies in other families. Yes, you could have saved that one life, but only by putting in place safeguards which would have a detrimental effect on our entire society.
It would be easy to write the blog post along the lines of ‘string ‘em up, not fit to live, monster parents’, and add a couple of paragraphs of ‘sack the social workers, incompetent the lot of ‘em’ – and I am sure that many will do so, but let us take a moment to consider the alternative.
There have been many photographs published this morning of Baby K, as he is referred to in the report. This is not the wan face of Baby P, this is a happy, smiling well fed baby. Dressed in Gap, proudly displayed to the camera on several different occasions. The sort of photographs you will see in millions of houses across the country. You cannot judge on photographs alone.
We are told that ’50 opportunities’ arose by which Baby K ‘could have been saved’.
The parents were Heroin addicts. Prescribed Methadone by their Doctor. Quite correctly, they were monitored by a team of Health and Social Workers – it is what we expect of Social Services these days. What did they miss? Are we to take children away from every Heroin addict? We already have 10,000 children in care, there are over 300,000 registered drug users in England alone. How will we define ‘drug user’ – just class A drugs, or cannabis users too? Those receiving treatment, or those we merely suspect of using drugs? All drugs – alcohol and nicotine too?
On four occasions Baby K was seen to have marks on his face. Explained away (possibly truthfully, we don’t know) as ‘having rolled off his changing mat’. Are they to take every child with marks on their face into care as a precaution? Hands up the parent who hasn’t had an inquisitive toddler with bruises on his face. A bruise on the face plus known cannabis use equals child taken into care? Is that the level of supervision we are advocating?
Not long before he died, Police discovered cannabis plants being grown in his parents house. Whoa, now we are taking the children of all those found to be growing cannabis – see previous comments regarding ‘which drug’.
‘The parents regularly missed appointments’ – as do many people under Social Worker care – they don’t like it, guilty and innocent alike. Would it be OK with the baying crowd if we took some factors together and removed the children of all those who smoke cannabis, miss appointments and have toddlers with bruises on their face – we can’t be too careful!
So far I reckon I have a couple of million children in the care of the State, and some care it is too. In Ireland they are currently investigating the deaths of 200 such children taken into care to protect them from ‘monster’ parents. I don’t have the figures for Britain, but will happily add them to this piece if someone can produce them.
Unfortunately, ‘taken into care’ doesn’t mean you are safe. It may mean that you don’t die at the hands of your methadone addled parents feeding you methadone to get you to sleep, but it doesn’t mean that nothing bad will happen to you. It doesn’t even mean that you won’t die.
It will indeed be a tragedy if the death of Baby K means that ‘lessons are learnt’ of the sort being posited. Lessons that teach that the only way to avoid a media outcry is to err on the side of extreme caution and take into the dubious state care the child of every cannabis smoker who has ever missed an appointment with social services. Best take the children of smokers too.
Bad things do happen – and the State has correctly punished Baby K’s parents; jailing his parents for four years and nine years. Do we need to make things worse by demanding that Social Workers ruin thousands more lives rather than face censure in the popular press for having failed on this occasion to prevent a death? ‘If it saves just one life’ is a popular rallying call, a highly emotive one. It is as though death confers an importance on life over and above the dismal lives lived of those who are taken into care.
The language of the report is chilling. The frequency of ‘inappropriate’ alarming. It was ‘inappropriate’ to hide his can of lager in the baby’s locker when the social worker called round. It was ‘inappropriate’ to still be sleeping (as was the baby) at 10.30 in the morning – the child ‘should have been subject to a regular routine’. State care might provide an environment where nobody ever hides a can of lager when subject to a spot check, it may ensure that everybody is up and dressed at the approved time, but it is a miserable, bloody and soul-destroying environment to grow up in.
Do we really want to subject thousands more children to that environment to ‘save one life’? Spare a thought for the lives that have been ‘saved’ by the State too.
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1
September 5, 2012 at 10:40 -
XX to still be sleeping (as was the baby) at 10.30 in the morning – the child ‘should have been subject to a regular routine’. XX
Tell that to the wee bastard that has kept you awake all bloody night, until just past 6 O’Clock.
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September 5, 2012 at 11:29 -
Talk in confidence to any experienced social work practitioner involved in child protection. they will tell you of grossly inflated case loads. Social workers physically and emotionally exhausted.Young and inexperienced workers being given complex cases way above their competency as there is no one else available. Social workers leaving child protection in droves. Who in their right minds would wish to spend their professional lives in fear of the attentions of the tabloid press?
So before the readership pile in think on. Would you undertake this sort of massive responsibility? Then there is the language problem. I stand to be corrected but didn’t I read of one school where there were some 90 different languages being spoken,with all the resulting. communication problems Look at the costs being born by local authorities. They’re horrendous. So may be it’s understandable that given these constraints, it’s care proceedings first, self preservation first, and worry about the consequences later.Then “Authorities” social services, police, health visitors, teachers can only do so much. The cuts are only making a bad situation much much worse. Expect many more tragedies. I’m afraid they are inevitable.
This is another excellent article Anmna. Tells it as is is.
Blessings everyone,
Jez
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September 5, 2012 at 13:42 -
Seconded – I know a few social workers (socially!) and they all report the same excessive case loads and inadequate back-up and support facilities.
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September 5, 2012 at 18:17 -
Jez, what’s the language problem got to do with the incompetence shown in this case? The parents spoke English, they were English.
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September 5, 2012 at 11:36 -
What significant bit of information about “Child K” is printed on the cover of the “Overview Report” ?
“Ethnic origin – white British”What is the most significant comment inside – that the ‘relevant authorities’ had concluded the parents wouldn’t give the baby any of their drugs.
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September 5, 2012 at 12:01 -
As usual from you, Anna:- a rational, well reasoned discourse, full of common sense and pragmatism, far removed from the emotional but thoughtless knee-jerk reaction of ‘the mob’.
Although I hold no brief for the Social Work industry, there are occasions when I have some feelings of pity for them, thinking “They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”
Theirs is not an easy task – which is why I think recruitment should go far beyond their current pool which appears to be aimed far too much at middle-class left-wing dilettantes. This may appear harsh, but it is only my own opinion.
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September 7, 2012 at 17:51 -
The, now defunct, general social care council reports that a considerably higher proportion of those taking social work degrees are not white (16% black people compared to 5% HESA all student statistics UK). In a country where racism has often been an issue in institutions these figures are interesting because the route to personal power comes from having a social work degree, for which the academic standard of entry is not high or equal to other professions. It is noted many Social Worker’s now come from other countries and are not fluent in English. This mix with career driven, back covering managers does make for a system that would be a problem.
Anna is correct in trying to bring some balance to a problem which is going to have profound affects on society as a whole.. It is time that risk was accepted as a part of life, children play and hurt themselves if their lives are normal. Are those in control / have jobs in child protection saying we must keep children wrapped up so well in cotton wool as to make them unable to deal with the hard edges that life will inevitably throe up? I did not grow up like that and I was never made to fear adults as possible abductors/ abusers. One was brought up to use common sense. I have no doubt abuses were as rife then as now, but no parent feared social services as they do now. If the nuclear family has created parents who cannot rear children so as to make them feel safe, yet robust emotionally, then that is what needs tackling. But ‘baby face’ social workers and jargonistic theory promoting health professionals- middle/upper class- are not up to the job with parent’s whose lifestyles they disapprove..
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September 5, 2012 at 13:24 -
A thoughtfuil and well reasoned piece indeed Anna
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September 5, 2012 at 15:38 -
Anna; I think the problem is that you cannot live other people’s lives for them. No matter how much resource, Social Work, Police, Care homes, you throw at something. This child died in spite of supposedly the full weight of the law and Social Services being brought to bear, and yes, the picture is a flaky attempt at emotional manipulation.
The issue here is that people are not machines. Everyone does the unpredictable, especially addicts, and if they choose to have children….. Well, sometimes it helps turn their lives around because they have to wake up and take notice with varying degrees of success, or they just carry on as if the life they brought into the world is an inconvenience.
The thought occurs that perhaps if the parents had not had so much ‘help’ they might have awoken from their drug induced confusion. On the other hand, perhaps not.
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September 5, 2012 at 16:42 -
Having dealt with social workers in the past things that stick in my mind, apart from the horrendous case loads, is the sometimes bullying oversight of those that have no idea of what the job entails, the sweep it under the carpet attitude to cries for help, advice and leadership by some managers and finally the absence of reasonable funding from government. One day perhaps things will change. Perhaps.
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September 5, 2012 at 18:15 -
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September 5, 2012 at 18:20 -
“The parents were Heroin addicts. Prescribed Methadone by their Doctor. Quite correctly, they were monitored by a team of Health and Social Workers – it is what we expect of Social Services these days. What did they miss? “
According to the report, at least four suspicious injuries, many missed appointments etc
We’ve been here before, and I could have predicted the outcome of this sorry little tale – the State, which extracts vast sums of money from us hard working tax payers, has proven itself to be unable to prevent a couple of drug addicts killing their child by the simple step of removing the poor mite from their ‘care’.
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September 5, 2012 at 18:43 -
I thought they dished out the methadone in the chemist to be taken on the premises, rather than sent the addict home with it these days. I am an advocate of addicts being given their fix in a medical centre so that they can keep their lives together and eventually get off it, rather than spending day and night thieving/risking their life/their children’s lives and generally supporting their dealers in BMWs. Heroin addicts are not warm, connected people to be around when they are stoned, and not trustworthy when they need a fix so are not going to be the best parents to have.
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September 5, 2012 at 19:24 -
Regrettably, I can’t help feeling that this is a problem with no solution. To use an engineering analysis technique, let’s examine the boundary conditions – the ‘extremes’ if you will. Firstly, we could disband the Social Services, and just let people get on with it. That would save a bit of money, and quite probably cost lives; not really a good idea, then. We could increase the Social Services budget so much that almost any child who anybody feels may be ‘at risk’ for whatever reason, is placed in safe care. That’s clearly going to result in a lot of injustices, may backfire because ‘care’ is sometimes not as caring as even a mildly disfunctional family, and anyway where would the money come from, bearing in mind that the country is mired in ever-increasing debt. So we’re stuck somewhere between the two, easing slightly one way or the other depending on the results of the inquiry into the last scandal.
Sadly, I can’t help feeling that this unsolvable problem is going to run on for decades.
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September 5, 2012 at 20:42 -
Exactly right – the boundary technique serves to express the issue well.
Between those two extremes, the ‘Do Nothing’ and the ‘Do Everything’, lies a huge range of granularity – wherever the ‘authorities’ choose to place their cost/benefit position, there will always be some cases which are missed, leading to these unfortunate results. We’ve got to accept that outcome – all of life contains elements of risk, this is just another one of them. It’s not a party-political issue (although many will try to make it one), it’s about reality.
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September 5, 2012 at 19:51 -
I just wonder how we managed to grow up ok without social workers. There were, usually men, who investigated cases of cruelty, mostly ex police or forces who were not afraid of difficult parents as many young social workers seem to be, not that I blame them. I honestly don’t know how we can change things or stop irresponsible people having children they can’t or won’t care for and expect tax payers to support.
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September 5, 2012 at 20:52 -
A neighbour told me she’d given up her Social Work degree because she has found a job fund-raising for a charity. She said that everyone on her course who had managed to find work (in whatever area) had all given up their degrees. Twelve of them. They all only had a year to go. None of them want to be social workers after all.
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September 6, 2012 at 00:34 -
case loads or whatever. The reality that this is what you all meekly have accepted as normal.
The gradual erosion of the customes and doings of the 50s etc result in today – authority everywhere and fear too.-
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September 7, 2012 at 21:26 -
I could not agree more. Unless we ourselves understand we have, unspoken, colluded in bringing the fear and control structures and systems into play we cannot even begin to make inroads to change. I for one feel democracy reversed in Britain somewhere during the last 30 years, after hundreds of years bringing democracy to other countries. I look forward to leaving these shores in due course for a less authoritarian place.
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