This constant invocation seems only to further infuriate press & public alike
Ever since the Maria Coldwell inquiry there have been findings of failure of the professionals to communicate with each other or to consult over the steps needed to protect a child
And so we have multi-agency task forces & a national database to track every child in the country. Rules about the recording of every cause for concern
Procedures
They did not save Baby P.
We must wait to see what the various inquiries have to say, though press & public seem already to have decided that all would be well, or at least the baby would still be alive, if social workers had been less pusillanimous
One commentator talked of ‘a young single mother living in a squalid flat’ but Child P was living in a large household of 3 adults (plus a 15 year old ‘girlfriend’) and 7 children
Incredulity has been expressed that a consultant paediatrician failed to spot his broken spine, failed even to examine him properly because he was fretful & cranky
Well I suspect a spinal injury may not be as easy to diagnose as it sounds, especially in such a young child who was still able to walk
Nor do we know that the consultant had any expertise in the diagnosis of child abuse – or indeed if we have any such still in practice in this country
For the other great headline narrative about child abuse in recent years is the one about arrogant experts who, on the basis of pet prejudices, very little evidence & dodgy statistics, & often in secret, diagnose child abuse where none existed, with its own tragic results
Including disciplinary proceedings by the General Medical Council against 2 consultants
The paediatrician in the case of Baby P was not being consulted about abuse. The appointment was for a developmental assessment which appears to have taken 5 months to arrange (more evidence of a shortage of the relevant expertise). An assessment of a child who was a headbanger – a not uncommon & very alarming habit which might have an underlying neurological or endocrinological cause. It makes a lot of sense to decide not to inflict all the necessary tests on a baby on a day when he is fretful & cranky
None of the doctors who had examined baby P on one of his emergency visits to hospital had been prepared to go further than to say that his injuries could be consistent with deliberate harm
And so the lawyers said there was not enough evidence to apply for a care order
After all, had not the Court of Appeal judged that, at least in the case of mothers accused of cot death, there must be strong supporting evidence. Because even if this means that a few will get away with murder, the idea of an innocent parent being found guilty of a murder she did not commit was unconscionable
The government has already announced moves to strengthen local child protection boards
These are just committees under another name
Have we not learned the lesson which Orwell taught in 1984?
‘There were days when they assembled & then promptly dispersed again, frankly admitting to one another that there was not really anything to be done
But there were other days … when the arguments as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved & abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels, threats even, to appeal to higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out of them & they would sit around the table looking at one another with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow’
Or, as summarised by Fred Allen: A Committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done
Related posts
