Very damning article Lynne. They should all go – the senior management team who were accountable failed in their duty of care, and the leading politicians clearly were not in control of their areas of responsibility. To have been in such a position once might be unfortunate, twice is certainly carelessness, if not negligence.

How interesting that every time something goes badly wrong under Labour control, whether at local or national level, nobody will accept responsiblity, but immediately they seek to blame someone else … what price honour for a Labour politician ?

Just one point on your article Lynne, which I wholeheartedly support.
I’m not convinced support from the 61 Haringey head teachers was motivated by genuine concern.
It was too quick, too well-managed, too well-orchestrated and smacks of party politicking and spin.

http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/haringey-heads-letter-smacks-of.html

Are we going to have numerous posters attacking Ms Featherstone for playing party politics with this issue?

I should have added on my previous post to watch out for David Lammy who will milk the head teachers support for all its worth. Too late, he’s done it on BBC R4 World at One.

Just one point Lynne on your article which I wholeheartedly support.
I’m not convinced support from the 61 Haringey head teachers was motivated by genuine concern.
It was too quick, too well-managed and too well-orchestrated.
Maybe they should be given the benefit of doubt – but I reckon it smacks of party politicking.

http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/haringey-heads-letter-smacks-of.html

I was a Labour Councillor in Haringey from 1978 to 1981, and I was very glad wasn’t one when the Climbié case happened. I know in my heart I should have felt it necessary to resign, even though councillors don’t have any control over operational matters of child protection. The buck has to stop somewhere.

One difficulty is that no one knows who should go – it’s easy to say “the lot of them” as Rob does but I think there is at the least a strong case for beefing up the councillors’ Code of Conduct so that they know when they should quit themselves and when to fire a Chief Officer. It is a measure of the confusion on this point that Lynne Featherstone very understandably slides round it.

That would be the minimal solution. The maximal one would be to notice that just as fatal industrial accidents can now lead to manslaughter charges against company directors, we could legislate to allow similar charges to be brought against councilors (elected mayors, cabinet members presumably) where child protection fails. If that is thought too harsh – or too likely to deter people from standing for election in authorities with an education/social services brief – another approach would be to ask what the benefit is in having child protection as a local authority service. Councils already have to work with the Probation Service where errant teenagers are concerned (the Juvenile Justice system) and there must be a case for transferring child protection to such a centrally-accountable body: we expect a national standard – this is not an area where local discretion has any value.

As things stand, Meehan has no honourable alternative to resignation. However, my recollection of my time on Haringey’s Labour Group is that no one ever used the word “honourable” when they referred to him.

Just one point Lynne on your article which I wholeheartedly support.
I’m not convinced support from the 61 Haringey head teachers was motivated by genuine concern.
It was too quick, too well-managed and too well-orchestrated.
Maybe they should be given the benefit of doubt – but I reckon it smacks of party politicking.

The general lesson is that pretended micro-mangement fron Whitehall drains accountability and responsibility from local mangement; and does not place it in Whithall.

There are grounds for resignation in Harringey Council and possibly among members of the responsible NHS Trust. No one expects to see any of those resignations. There are grounds for suspending resposible officials at management levels ‘until the comclusion of the enquiry’. No one expects those either. Still less do we expect to see Ministers considering resignation.

The only general answer is to set out the basis local responsibility for local actions, and to act upon it..

“Saturday was the day Sharon Shoesmith received some support in the form of a letter to the media from 61 head teachers in Haringey. Sharon is Director of Education here in Haringey”- Trust me, Heads of Schools speak their minds and don’t bow to pressure from LA’s and its incediuous of both Ken and Lynee to imply so. I think what Shoesmith said in her initial interview was extremely bad managed- Haringey press dept. must take full blame for that.

Haringey press dept?

Is such a senior – and well paid – bureaucrat not capable of working out what the impact of her approach might be?

Presumably she’s paid (also not especially well, given her responsibilities: she’s in charge of a £200+ million budget; how many people doing that in the private sector only get £100k?) to manage schools and social services, not to be an expert spinologist.

Do you have to be an “expert spinologist” to work out when an apology, as opposed to the opposite, might be a good idea??

Just seen LD councillors on BBC & ITV voicing almost verbatim the points in the article above. Surely, organised political point scoring? I ask again, where is the condemnation from those that criticised Cameron from raising it in the HoC?

Do you have to be an “expert spinologist” to work out when an apology, as opposed to the opposite, might be a good idea??

You have to be an “expert spinologist” if you expect to work out how to deliver a sincere apology that doesn’t make your colleagues or organisation legally liable.

Lynne,

Appreciate you coming on here, but I have to take issue with your views – I think the Lib Dems have to put their hands up to some extent and take responsibility for their part in jumping on the ‘cutting frontline services in local councils’ bandwagon in recent times.

It’s all very well to point the finger at the senior management team at Haringey – and I really do mean that it is all very well to point the finger at them, and the council leader there – but there is a bigger, global picture here in which most of the major parties who’ve slavishly followed the ‘rationalise public services’ vision of recent years have played an active part in pursuing.

As we speak, the SNP (of all parties)/Lib Dem adminstration is under fire for its service cutting programme:

http://stopthecuts.blogspot.com/2008/01/snplib-dems-cut-60-of-home-helps.html

and the cuts programme the Lib Dem administration is pursuing at Camden:

http://cutsincamden.blogspot.com/

has caused great concern among locals since your party made council there at the last local elections. In both, and other, instances, your party stands accused of a slavish devotion to a dated, cost-cutting-through-frontline-service-cuts theory of public service provision, and a lack of imagination on the topic. Labour and the Conservatives are as guilty of that line as your own party, and I’m in no hurry to defend either: last week, I published the first piece in a series about the vicious service cuts being made by Hammersmith and Fulham council as the Tories there hit their stride, and I’ll be following that with further pieces about that dated, costly, and failed approach to service provision to which government across the planet seems irrevocably glued.

What I’d like to know from you is – what’s the Lib Dem plan? What is your vision – except for more of the same?

How do you propose to provide public services to those in need (surely a growing group as the recession bites) while keeping council tax down? Are you going to go after the consultants, top-heavy management structure and Blair-inspired culture of targets and KPIs which somehow allow councils to keep coming up with four stars?

What would the Lib Dems do at Haringey? How would you provide social services there?

chavscum: seeing as you’ve asked, I’ll repeat what I said last week after Featherstone’s “who will resign for Baby P” CiF article:

This is why asking questions like who will resign for Baby P, as the usually admirable Lynne Featherstone does is not the way to go. The Sun puts it even more coldly: “a price must be paid for his life.” This is despite no one now being able to resign for Baby P; the chance to save him has gone. Likewise, pretending that resigning or sacking those responsible is in some way going to bring some sort of legacy from his death is similarly doubtful. The result of a witch-hunt, especially against the social workers, is likely to have the opposite effect: more children taken from families into a care system which often does not merit that very name.

Quite. Equally, if you’re a good manager, then you don’t publicly sh*t on your staff, at least until the results of all investigations and inquiries into their conduct have been published and confirm that they were clearly to blame.

(“quite” directed at ukliberty)

It’s worth being, err, careful about slating the care system for its poor outcomes, by the way.

The children who grow up in care are those who were removed from their families *despite* the strong presumption against that in the current system, *and* whose behavioural/other problems are sufficiently serious that they aren’t able to be matched with adoptive or long-term foster parents.

If council care were run excellently by Mary Poppins, outcomes for people leaving on average would still be far worse than the population at large *and yet* it’d still be better for the marginal child (ie the child with the worst environment under the current system who would nonetheless be left with their parents) to be taken into care than not.

If Haringey voters don’t like certain councillors, they shouldn’t re-elect them.

I too doubt the support letter from headteachers in respect of Sharon Shoesmith. There is a cadre of rather well-paid bureaucrats who appear to have little concern for what is really going on in the lives of ordinary folk. A quick Internet troll reveals many people have not been impressed by Shoesmith, who appears to have been involved in some dubious dealings. I’m worried the head teachers have swallowed some very dubious mastery of bureaucratic rhetoric that she peddles about “integrated services”. It seems to me that a managerialism that cannot manage and has forgotten truth is involved. It would have been more appropriate for this group to have expressed sympathy and concern for the victims, rather than appearing to support one of its own. It seems Shoesmith was involved in the sacking of a head on dubious procedural grounds (a health and safety audit) and yet is responsible for recommendations that no purpose would be served by a rigorous investigation of failings she was ultimately responsible for which led to the death of Baby P.

Kate, are you really trying to argue that the failings in this case had anything to do with lack of money?
This baby was seen once every three days – the visit log is in today’s Indy.

cjcjc- “Is such a senior – and well paid – bureaucrat not capable of working out what the impact of her approach might be?”- probably not. thats not her job- its haringeys press officer to advise her on external issues/briefings.

zaffer – are you really saying that she could not work out when an apology might be a good idea because it’s “not her job”??

Of course she could- but her press officer probably advised her that an admission of guilt would be the wrong approach. And can you really apologize over a death of a baby? If she apologises shes admitting that she’s responsible for the death!

What she should have said is that she will conduct a through investigation of this tragic incident and will take any action necessary to ensure that those responsible are dealt with.

“A quick Internet troll reveals many people have not been impressed by Shoesmith”

…and Neil Terry is that quick internet troll.

Sharon Shoesmith said: “The child was killed by members of his own family and not by social services. The very sad fact is that we can’t stop people who are determined to kill children.”
The true, very sad fact is: She and her department could have stopped these evil people killing that poor sad child !!! Her department’s determination to keep him with his family aided and abetted them in his death.

Hmm – I posted a not especially supportive comment and it’s been deleted. Is it liberal conspiracies policy to accept posts from serving MPs of all parties, or just the one ?

George Meehan has now issued a formal apology saying there had been “failure by all the agencies involved”.

Lets get away from the bureaucracy for one minute and focus on the BASICS.
We have a system in this country that supports vulnerbale children and these children are taken into care if their parents/guardians are not suitable to look after them.
The staggering statistic is that on on 60/70 occasions, various authorities examined the case of Baby P and still concluded that the 3 people involved namely the mother were indeed suitable to look after the child despite obvious cases of abuse made worse by the nurse who could not even detect that the child was paralysed 48 hours before his death!
Sharon Shoesmith appears to show NO GENUINE CARE and as a ‘Boss’ it is her responsibility to lay out the procedures for her borough and ‘Oversee’ high priority cases. The buck stops with Sharon Shoesmith who undoubtedly COULD HAVE PREVENTED HIS DEATH. She must do the honourable thing and resign to avoid a huge public backlash as there are obvious signs of some very angry people. The nurse must never be permitted to practice again.

a child is murdered in a place where he should have not been. yes ’social workers’ do many good jobs, but one job not done properly is ONE too many. let us not beat around the bush, baby P’s murder is entirely Haringey’s fault. Sooner we all, professionals accept the truth we can then move to be constructive!! Why is it that we become so defensive when we know we have made a damn mistake. Why support wrongdoers? Sharon Shoesmith should go. She showed no remorse and the very fact that she tried to cover up on the first day demonstrates that she herself is guilty. sooner we come to a fact that unless local authorities are not made to be accountable they will continue to have many more Baby ps and Climbies. As it remains these senior managers are not accountable to anyone but themselves. Is it not time that we on humanitarian grounds make a stance and make these ‘untouchables’ accountable?