I have just forced myself to sit through the Sharon Shoesmith interview on R4 done by my least favourite seventies femminist interviewer Jennie Murray. I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, as I do not trust Ed Balls as far as I can throw him.
But listening to the self serving,self justifying claptrap I have just heard, and Murray’s very direct questioning, Ed Balls was right, immediate dismissal was the only option.
Shoesmith just talked in local authority speak, situations were ‘challenging’, there were complicated ishoos, every question was met with a protracted mush of psychobabble before any half hearted attempt was made at answering the question. She made much of ‘dip’ samples of files, Christ Almighty we are talking about children, and she was talking about sampling in a something akin to a jam factory.
She talked about ‘quality’ questionnaires, and other utterly useless managementspeak buzz phrases.
The telling thing was that they knew they were in deep deep crap when the child died. They blamed the deceitful parent and boyfriend, instead of all the dip sampling and other pointless activity, they should have treated the parent with the utmost suspicion. It was never clear to me then this story first broke why the child was returned, against the advice of the Police and the carer. Obviously they were not arrogant ‘experts’ like Ms Shoesmith who talks a good talk, but performs molehills.
If nothing else it has demonstrated to all the other social work ‘professionals’ that they have not got a sinecure to sit around contemplating ishoos and diversity, that they are paid to prevent lethal parents killing or harming their children. If they fail they will be sacked.