love30stm

ok not just New Zealand....god

Please would everyone sign the sun's petition regarding baby P.


For those who dont know the story, Baby P was killed by his mother's boyfriend after 60 visits from social services who did nothing to help him including a doctor who saw him 2 days b4 he died and didnt even notice he had his back broken!!!

This is one of the most dreadful things i have ever read!! No-one helped baby P when he was alive, please spend a few mins of you day signing the petition for the sacking of all those involved who didnt do their job in protecting this innocent child!!

http://www. thesun. co. uk/sol/homepage/news/article1937524

brussels_sprout

I am sorry about giving offence, i was describing what statistics showed regarding abuse/murders of children because i thought that this was relevant, i was not in the slightest saying that ALL women with PND were abusive, one of my relatives had it, she drank disinfectant after giving birth, she recovered over time. Is your sister OK Now ? But ALL personal tragedies are terrible, mens' and womens', things are never the same afterwards are they ?

<snipped as not relevant>

Going back to your point, if i may, the problem is that it is a group of secret powerful Social Workers who is deciding what is "dysfunctional", < snipped>,
.
In NZ CYFS has been known to place kids with caregivers who subsequently have murdered them, and due to all the secrecy they hide it all ! It is the secrecy that needs to change. And they must genuinely work for the benefit of families NOT themselves. I am trying to find reasons for all these recent torture cases, and trying to work out a way to reduce the number in the future.

That must be one of the immediate lessons that must be learnt from Nia Glassie and Baby P's cases

Scouse Dave

What saddens me (tears me apart to be honest) is that a consistent theme in all these cases - Nia Glassie, Baby P, Victoria Climbie - is that loads of people had witnessed the bad stuff, but none acted on it. The neighbour of Nia Glassie was in the Herald today saying they'd seen bad stuff but said and done nothing. In the case of Victoria Climbie, the social workers felt frightened by the step-father, so stayed away - how did they think the baby felt??

The clear message is that we need community - if you see a child being badly treated, don't look away - report it and make sure it's followed up. Worse that can happen is you look daft. So what? You may prevent another child being put in a tumble drier, or punched so hard he swallows his teeth.

Together, we can all stop this crap, can't we?

bourbon-biscuit

You are seeing and interpreting everything with a huge bias distortion. More importantly- where was Nia's father when she was alive? You describe single mothers as slutty, presumably due to their perceived sexual promiscuity- and yet you cast no aspersion on the absent father. You paint a picture that is as untruthful as distasteful- that of the poor put-upon father ejected from the family home so the mother can sleep around. I'm sorry if this is what happened to you BS, but the women I know that parent alone were abandoned by their male partners when their children were small and there was limited sex available to them. I do not then conclude this is the situation in all break-ups; that would be both stupid and immature.

The tone of your posts with regard to women is HIGHLY offensive. I shall repeat myself in case you didn't bother to read my earlier post. I am a feminist married to a man. I love men. I think fathers are essential. I am part of a group of feminists. Modern feminists are still busy trying to bring equality of opportunity to society- for women AND men. I suspect your reading of modern feminism is both sourced inappropriately and biased, and also skewed by your apparent need to blame and hate.

Of course most social workers are women- it's a poorly paid, has low career prospects, enormous burn out potential, inadequate training and supervision, and zero kudos and is also part of the 'caring' spectrum of careers where sadly, men are hugely under represented.

You seriously need a reality check. I'm sorry for your experience, I really am, but you are offensive in the extreme.

You need to deal with your anger issues; they're eating you up and distorting your view of reality.

Just for the record- any family in social deprivation is more likely to experience domestic abuse and violence. It's not because they're Maori per se- it's because Maori are over represented in low socio-economic groups. Being born a Maori doesn't make you more likely to experience domestic violence but being born Maori makes you more likely to be born into a low socio-economic group and being in a low socio-economic group makes you more likely to experience domestic violence.

Stop me if I'm confusing you ...

bourbon-biscuit

I've not had a chance to listen yet (tonight perhaps) but the Moral Maze this week was on "When should a child go into care?", prompted by the recent case of poor baby 'P'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/moralmaze.shtml

Just click the 'Listen Again' button.

southerner

I understand what you are trying to say, but I'm not sure there is any evidence to support, or not support, your theory. My gut feeling (based on being well read rather than direct experience) is that both socio-economic and cultural factors are likely at play, and they are also, as you say, inter-related.

southerner

All social workers I know are happily married, poorly rewarded and wonderful people who are trying to do the right thing. My understanding is they do a huge amount of good that certainly outweighs any errors in judgement they may make. So I too find the attack on them offensive.

Kiwiprincess

Agreed. It was a point I was trying to make in a similar thread. I am maori (& pakeha - blonde, pasty white skin, have about as much music ability as Paris Hilton) but grew up in a comfortable (kiwicomfortable) home as did other people I know. Other maori people. Ok it was a predominantly pakeha suburb at the time - and still is - but it makes me mad as hell some of the things that are said about Maori by some people (not actually referring to this site). There was an article about "middleclass Maori" in the North & South magazine a few editions ago and it was about the large group of middle class Maori who simply were't child beaters, sports heros or politicans. I normally can't stand North & South but this one struck a cord.

Not saying that it hasn't become a cultural issue -any issue which severely negatively impacts on a particular culture is going to become a cultural issue. Being overrepresented in the bad side of the important stats (education, welfare, heath, housing, safety etc) is a problem that has become a cultural problem. That I concede. But it isn't because they are maori.

jennifer45

Rather like a doctor who performs many wonderful operations then through sheer negligence takes out the wrong kidney and the patient dies.


I'm sorry but I take exception to your statement that they do a huge amount of good that certainly outweighs any errors in judgement they may make
They were employed to look after and protect a defenceless little boy, who they knew to be at great risk. They failed abysmally. They should hang their heads in shame.
60 times they visited baby 'p'-60 errors of judgement!
Please don't use poor pay and a heavy work load as an excuse in this case. There are many lowly paid workers who show more responsibility and care in their duties than certain social workers in Harringey.
I too know the inside workings of the social services and have on many occasions had to work with them.
I often thought that if they spent half as much time actually following up on cases instead of having meetings/discussions on what action to take 'if this or if that' occurs, then things would have been sorted out much quicker and often problems nipped in the bud before they got out of hand.
Unfortunately we live in a world of 'Flip-Charts; Brain Storming and the ubiquitous graphs and Bar Charts'
These are used to prove any and everything. The 'subject' (child) becomes a mere statistic, just another entry in the data.
It was quite mind boggling when graphs were brought out in order to show how 'on course' 'successful' Harringey's child protection unit had become.

bourbon-biscuit

I can barely be bothered to read this because not content with causing general offence to women and men who do not share your view, you now seek to patronise first my husband, and then me!!!! (see red parts)

How you can compare your 'struggle' with that of feminism (and I do not associate myself with man-hating feminism, which is all quite old school and boring) and the suffragettes? This only shows the depth of your ignorance and blinkered vision.

You have, in these few posts come across as such a rude, arrogant man; just because someone has a completely opposite view or perspective to you does not mean they lack the knowledge about a situation! Your 'right' is not necessarily the only one! I am now putting you on ignore (the first time I've ever done this on a forum) to spare myself any more of your small minded, ignorant, sexist diatribe

BTW: court and caught are two entirely different words.

Yotty

Which parts of Brussles post offend you Bevs?

southerner

Get off your horse - my comments were about social workers in general, and were directed at another poster who seemed to view all social workers as feminists and useless, which I thought I made clear was not my view.

southerner

I'm sorry Jennifer - I've just realised we are probably talking completely at cross purposes. My interest in this thread is around the NZ situation and then I got sidetracked into commenting on one posters views of social workers in a NZ context. Reading back through your posts your focus seems to be on the British case which I am unfamiliar with (I'll admit now the NOTW link put me off). Its OK to vent, but as always in these cases it is very easy to tar everyone in an industry with the same brush, which is not helpful <<and I'm not saying this is what you were doing>>.

cally49

We all think this is bad now and it is very very bad as bad as it can get BUT with the teenagers we are seeing today in the news running wild and on the drugs and booze its not going to get better any time soon.

The laws are way too slack the only thing thats going to have any impact is to bring in heavier penalties. Man if i had my way the death penalty would return for this sort of crime.

In the case of baby P his mother covered up his bruises on his face with chocolate when the Child protection people went round how the hell did they not notice his fingertips were missing and his fingernails had been ripped off....My god i would love to see the notes on that visit probably went something like "baby P played happily in the corner whilst we had a cup of tea" It should have read "I didnt notice that baby P was'nt very interactive because he was too scared of humans to interact. They obviously didnt take a look at him, unless the poor wee man was so numb from so much torture that he was unresponsive either way these slack people need to lose their jobs for letting this poor little guy down.
Makes my blood boil........

Lets have some Justice for all the little Angels taken at the hands of the people they looked to for safety in their short wee lives....
If you havent already signed the petition for baby P please go to www.thesun.co.uk you will see the story on the front page just click on sign the petition......
Cally

kiwi_child

Personally,in this case, I'm in favour of stringing them up by the balls and disembowelling them. Might make others think twice about torturing and beating to death a defenceless little child!