Star Hobson

Maybe the service should be outsourced where improved performance and standards can be enforced and placed out of local government bungling and incompetence, Most council services that have been outsourced have been cheaper and provided better performance.
The comment " We will learn from our mistakes " should be the councils motto and tattooed on every managers hand

 

"‘Scariest place I’ve worked’: social worker recalls stint in Bradford | Bradford | The Guardian" https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/17/scariest-place-ive-worked-social-worker-recalls-stint-in-bradford

Cutbacks in social services have lead to astronomical workloads on staff already hamstrung with having one arm tied behind their backs. They are not to blame for this.

 

If it’s there’s one thing guaranteed to make things worse, it’s handing the responsibility over to Serco. Jesus.

 

Like the LEA, which was outsourced to Serco by the Tories and had to be brought back in-house after three years because it was performing so disastrously.

 

A slightly different article from the one that says the council spent "just" £17.4m on agency staff last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/14/star-hobson-killing-timeline

I suppose my question really is how much do we have to spend on the service before a kid who is perpetually covered in bruises, has been referred by friends and family 7 times, visited immediately following these referrals 4 times and lives with a self -named local psycho with a history of violence is properly investigated?

Are we talking £50m before these obviously tricky signs of abuse are spotted? £100m? Is there any amount of money we could spend that would make people responsible for the standard of work that has been done?

 

The answer to that is no, not really. The usual stick answer to heinous crimes like this is 'lessons will be learned' when in all honestly there is little social services can do. Damned if they do damned if they don't. I do find it disturbing though that there is more effort put in place to now protect Savannah Brockhill from harm then there ever was to protect Star Hobson from her eventual demise.

 

I don't really care about Brockhill or what she costs to be honest.

All I really care about is that there isn't more Star's out there and won't be in the future. I read the notes of the case and see a chaotic, inefficient and ineffective system with some really terrible decision making running through it. She didn't get caught in a backlog of work, she didn't wait weeks for a visit, she didn't slip through the net. She was seen, she was assessed and despite the absolutely obviously red flags her case was closed multiple times.

I think that reflects poor decision making. It seems others believe it's a lack of money. Either way I don't care as long as it doesn't happen again so how much money do we need to spend before people who make poor decisions can actually be held accountable? If there's a certain sum of money that guarantees it then we should pay it.

 

Easy to blame the social services, pass the buck elsewhere. Where in truth doesn't matter how many supposed red flags they are. The system needs overhauling but also needs properly funding. And with funding needs a system that allows social workers to be able to carry out their work in an efficient and preventative manner.
How about we actually blame the two people whose actions caused the death instead of blaming a service trying to fire fight without a hosepipe?

 

It goes without saying that the 2 people involved are fundamentally to blame. That doesn't help to stop it happening again.

Yep. 100% agree that the system need overhauling. The other part goes back to my original question though, if they truly spent £17m on agency workers as the Guardian claim (I have doubts) then what actually is "properly funded" or is it just one of those things that will always be more, more, more?

 

No one is suggesting that just throwing money at it is enough. Nor that social workers should be exonerated from all blame if they are incompetent. I despise incompetent social workers, and I've seen a few in my time, but that's not the primary issue here.

Even good people make bad decisions when they are stressed out beyond their limits, given unmanageable workloads and have insufficient experience to do the tasks they are being given. You wouldn't ask an apprentice electrician to re-wire a factory with inadequate supervision and substandard tools, but that's akin to what's being demanded of these child protection teams. I've done the job; I know how scary and challenging it can be, even when you have decent resources, experience and supervision. I shudder to think how hellish it must be in the current circumstances.

It's not just child protection services. All social care in Bradford is in crisis. Mental Health and Older People's teams are run off their feet and massively under resourced. It's not a coincidence. The combination of high social deprivation and swingeing budget cuts (much higher than the national and regional average) have created a perfect storm in Bradford.

Outsourcing isn't the answer. There are no private sector companies with the expertise to do this sort of work any better and they'd be more expensive because of the need to make profits for shareholders.

There obviously does need to be a root and branch enquiry into how to improve child protection services in Bradford. But I know from experience that what usually happens is some form of reorganisation - eg going from a centralised hub system to a localised patch system - but that alone won't sort it. It's just shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic.There have been as many reorganisations as I've had hot dinners in the last 40 years and they always end up going back to a system that was tried before and scrapped. And round and round it goes.

Whether you like it or not, money is required for better IT, better pre-school support services like Sure Start, which the Tories scrapped, and to stop the endless recruitment and retention crisis which has gone on for years. They will need to pay over the odds wages to persuade experienced, competent staff and managers, in sufficient quantity to have manageable workloads, to work in Bradford's child protection teams for long enough to turn the failing system around. If they don't do that it wil continue to deteriorate, with further tragic consequences.

 

When I was burgled I didn't blame the police for not stopping it, I blamed the people who did it and a society that brings people up who think it's OK to steal other people's stuff. Yet I know deep down there is nothing I can do to stop it. And i sense this analogy with social services. Cuts in funding, fundamental flaws in the system and a generally badly run department give the footsoldiers on the front line very little chance to effect change. Its very easy in theory to say we didnt want another baby P scenario, in practice it's damn near impossible.

 

I hate to pull bits out of a long post but I'm afraid this is what is being said or implied. Despite the list of failings it all "yeah but look at the funding" . Your second paragraph is a list of reasons why we should expect failings.

I do accept that the government should put more money into things like this however I don't believe it's the main factor here. If SS are genuinely so incompetent that they couldn't spot the red flags here we might as well do away with them?

but it's the same question again. How much do we have to spend on SS for them to be held accountable or is it just a case that no amount of money will ever seem like enough in such an inefficient and ineffective system?

 

Their whole job is to stop it happening!!

It's nothing like a burglary mate.

I'm actually getting the feeling we need to disband it completely if the job is actually impossible.

 

The reason they spent £17 million on agency social workers is because they cannot get permanent payrolled staff to come, or to stay any length of time if they do come. Other authorities in the region pay higher wages for less challenging conditions. Who in their right mind would opt to work in the hellhole that is inner city Bradford when they can earn more money elsewhere in easier conditions?

Bradford Uni has a social work training course in its social sciences faculty. I attended that course in the early 80s (which is why I'm still in Bradford rather than Essex) and have also taught the occasional session on it. In the past there was a steady stream of good newly qualified social workers from that course into Bradford Social Services. Nowadays, having done a child protection work placement in Bradford during their training, most give it a wide berth. Those that do join rarely stay long - once they've completed their probationary year they either move elsewhere or burn out and leave the profession altogether.

So Bradford end up paying over the odds to agency staff, who are on higher wages than in-house employees but can walk away at very short notice. It's a band aid on a gaping wound. It's false economy.
What's needed is a serious upward wage restructure to attract experienced permanent staff and retain decent newly qualifieds. But, by comparison with most council staff (who are not professionally qualified) social workers are seen by Councillors and union officials alike as highly paid, even though they are poorly paid by comparison with other comparable professions (teachers, nurses etc). And social care services already swallow more than half of the council's budget. Getting Councillors to sanction permanent uplifts in pay scales, or unions to campaign for them, in current straightened circumstances, is highly unlikely. So the vicious spiral to the bottom continues apace.

 

What a ridiculous proposition. That's like saying that because Richard O'Donnell fails to prevent a soft goal then we might as well play without a goalkeeper.

The job is not impossible, but it is bloody hard. And in current circumstances in Bradford it's being made a whole lot harder than it needs to be. Yet despite this, incidents like Star Hobson are vanishingly rare. Every year hundreds, if not thousands of kids are made safer by social workers in Bradford despite the disgraceful circumstances they are being expected to work in. Yet you'd disband them because of one exceptional case, would you? There is no such thing as a perfect system. Mistakes are made in all walks of life, but the vast majority we never hear about because they don't result in child deaths.

Social workers cannot control what their clients do. Even if you worked a case so intensively that you visited for an hour, three times per week (which is wildly unrealistic with caseloads of 30+) that would still leave 165 hours per week when the parents can do what they like. If there are obvious facial bruises or other noticeable injuries that have been missed then, undoubtedly, heads should roll. But it's relatively easy for clients to cover up body injuries and put on a show of 'everything's fine'. There are no legal powers for social workers to physically examine a child or require it to be taken for medical examination without getting a court order and to do that you need something more than rumours. Without knowing more about the case I'm not going to either exonerate or condemn the workers involved. But what I do know is that having overworked, stressed out, inexperienced staff and frequent changes of social workers is the ideal scenario for abusers to get away with covering it up for longer than they otherwise would.
You ask how much we have to spend to make it better. I would suggest a similar amount, inflation proofed, to what we were spending in the 80s and 90s, when Bradford had a bloody good child protection service. We are currently spending much less with predictably awful consequences.

 

More on Bradford and its problems in social services
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/17/scariest-place-ive-worked-social-worker-recalls-stint-in-bradford

 

Yes, that's the same article I linked to in post #18 above.

 

There's a lot to cover between those two posts but I'll try to get the 'political' bits out of the way first because it's not that interesting and in general I agree with you more than you'd usually think,

The comment about defunding the service was deeply tongue in cheek in response to the post likening the impossibility of stopping a child being harmed after 5 referrals, etc, etc with a random burglary. If it is truly so impossible then why bother? The truth of course is that it isn't as imossible as stopping a burglary as you correctly point out, they do it often.

In terms of the funding even in my usual 'small government' viewpoint I completely agree that child protection of this nature the job of government whether local or national. In some respects I'd put the necessity for it to be properly funded above that of even the NHS - I just don't actually know what 'properly funded' means in pounds and pence. I see the reference to £17m and £31m in that Guardian article and I actually think "That sounds like a lot" but I'll freely accept I don't know how much it should be.

To be honest I should have know you'd have said "Whatever they spent in the 80s" but what does that mean in £££? I sometimes get the impression that if they spent £20m you'd say £30m, if it was £30m you'd say £40m, etc, etc, but what is actually enough?

Even accepting that they should be better funded there are a number of different aspects alongside that. For such crucial role I would want the department run with a 'start up' mentality. Organised, disciplined, structured, agile and passionate. Everything I've heard about the Bradford servies is the exact opposite and that doesn't always come down to money.

Fully agree and backs up my point about issues being money related but also wider than money, In some respects competing purely financially when all the money comes out of the same pot is false economy though - especially for people who are viewed as higher paid - unless there is an over supply of good case workers, which I don't think there is.

If you spend £17m on 'overpaid' agency staff how much do you actually need for it to become attractive or are they just structurally stuck in going for the lowest common dominator. i'm glad we agree that it's clear that Bradford is getting sub-par employees and needs to improve.

And now we get to the crux. You say you're not exonerating the workers but you already have several times in this thread. You've even assumed they are inexperienced for some reason without even knowing who was working on the case.

So let's just set out some relatively simple facts that have been widely reported.

• Star's great-grandmother had to look after her for 10 weeks
• Unintelligent mother (IQ under 70) living part time with controlling, aggressive partner with no blood ties to the child and a history of violence.
• 5 Separate referrals in a year. Coming from reputable sources in friends and family.
• All of them acted upon including 7 visits with one even the same day as the referral was received
• On the 3rd referral Social Services made an unannounced visit and saw multiple bruises themselves
• There were pictures and videos of injuries that led to two of the other referrals
• Star had a medical examination at BRI
• The poor thing had suffered a broken leg caused by "very considerable force" around two to four weeks before her death. She died 15 days after the last referral was closed.
• She had a ‘crazy paving’ style fracture to the back of the skull caused days before her death

There were no 'rumours' the injuries were seen both live and on media. By Social workers and medical professionals

Now you say 'inexperienced' but I look at that as a layman with not a single day's training and think automatically "This child is in immediate danger". I would be pretty confident you could put the scenario in a GCSE Health and Social paper and pretty much any student would say action needs to be taken,

How "inexperienced" do the people in the referrals need to be where their reaction to this is "Nah, do you know what, I reckon everything is cool there, let's close our files"?

Don't let your feeling on funding generally mask the absolutely shameful procedures followed on this particular case, To do so would put multiple other children who could be in similar scenarios at risk,

 

More money is not the answer, Increasing the wages of incompetent staff does not make them more competent, A root and branch clear-out of top and middle management is required bringing in proven professionals from other authorities with the power to implement better systems and required training, Of course it will not happen because the unions would not allow it and senior management close ranks to prevent it using the old adage of workload and underfunding,
Also should mention that if the buck really does stop at the top the highly paid Chief Exec should go

 

Part of the problem is an obsession with university educated staff, They go from college to university and then in to the field with no life training, If we attracted more older people who had life training as mothers and fathers and bringing up children rather than getting a tick in a box am sure things would improve with appropriate training rather than a university qualification