Robyn Goldie - hard reading article.

[The Rotrex Kid]

What an incredibly sad ending for a child, it really makes me feel sick to my stomach that any child should live and die like this. Utterly shocking stuff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-wes...

[Brads67]

Given the mother had mental health/ drug/ alcohol issues I suspect a huge inquiry into social care / school failings.

Mother was totally at fault but someone was watching this and said nothing about it.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Brads67 said:

Given the mother had mental health/ drug/ alcohol issues I suspect a huge inquiry into social care / school failings.

Mother was totally at fault but someone was watching this and said nothing about it.

Lessons will be learned.

Pay rises all round.

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

Otispunkmeyer said:

Brads67 said:

Given the mother had mental health/ drug/ alcohol issues I suspect a huge inquiry into social care / school failings.

Mother was totally at fault but someone was watching this and said nothing about it.

Lessons will be learned.

Pay rises all round.

Give over. Social care is one of the worst paid, under funded services.

[Triumph Man]

Politics about the farcical "lessons to be learnt" aside, this is incredibly sad, and what an incredibly sad life that poor child lead.

[anonymous-user]

It's no life, is it? Poor lass.

[amusingduck]

Disgraceful.

[mikees]

This has made me really sad

[Electro1980]

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Otispunkmeyer said:

Brads67 said:

Given the mother had mental health/ drug/ alcohol issues I suspect a huge inquiry into social care / school failings.

Mother was totally at fault but someone was watching this and said nothing about it.

Lessons will be learned.

Pay rises all round.

Give over. Social care is one of the worst paid, under funded services.

MPs :”Lessons will be learned”
Report: “the service is over worked and under funded”
MPs: “Squirrel!”

[hyphen]

Otispunkmeyer said:

Brads67 said:

Given the mother had mental health/ drug/ alcohol issues I suspect a huge inquiry into social care / school failings.

Mother was totally at fault but someone was watching this and said nothing about it.

Lessons will be learned.

Pay rises all round.

Useless lot.

[PinkFatBunny]

I suppose the majority of us on here with nice settled lives and a bit of spare cash for interesting cars forget that stuff like this goes on everyday, probably close by to where we live. It's shocking really - but how do you fix it? Apart from taking more children into the care system.

[Camelot1971]

It's an incredibly difficult problem to solve because some families need 24 hour engagement with a social worker for them to function properly. It's a hard thing for people to accept, but some people shouldn't be allowed to have children.

That's really the only way to break the cycle of abuse and misery for so many kids (and this problem is not a UK one, it's a global one). Until society finds an acceptable way for that to happen, things won't materially change.

Throwing money at the problem really doesn't work because it's just not as simple as that.

Social workers generally do their very best under difficult circumstances and it's not a job I would want or could do.

[98elise]

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Otispunkmeyer said:

Brads67 said:

Given the mother had mental health/ drug/ alcohol issues I suspect a huge inquiry into social care / school failings.

Mother was totally at fault but someone was watching this and said nothing about it.

Lessons will be learned.

Pay rises all round.

Give over. Social care is one of the worst paid, under funded services.

Agreed. My mother was a social worker for most of her life. Many positions in the team were unfilled and there was always someone in the office signed off with stress. When you needed to intervene you would be up against a barrister trying to stop you protecting the kids. Due to the staffing difficulties she was often handling twice the caseload she was supposed to have. There was no overtime so that was all on you to deal with.

Nurses and doctors are held in high esteem yet they neglect and kill people in their care. People who have come to them for help, and want treatment.

I have never heard of a social worker killing someone in their care. The neglect and killing is done by the parents who will lie and try to hide what's going on, and the law is very much on their side and will fight you in court to prevent you helping the child.

Then press hate you and therefore most of the sheeple population do to.

For that she got less money than my company was paying call centre staff. I don't think her pay ever went over the mid 20's even with decades of experience, and she had to provide her own car to do the job. Now she's retired she gets around 12k a year in pension. It is not well paid at all.

As soon as I read this thread I wondered how long it would be before someone blamed the social workers.

[greygoose]

98elise said:

Agreed. My mother was a social worker for most of her life. Many positions in the team were unfilled and there was always someone in the office signed off with stress. When you needed to intervene you would be up against a barrister trying to stop you protecting the kids. Due to the staffing difficulties she was often handling twice the caseload she was supposed to have. There was no overtime so that was all on you to deal with.

Nurses and doctors are held in high esteem yet they neglect and kill people in their care. People who have come to them for help, and want treatment.

I have never heard of a social worker killing someone in their care. The neglect and killing is done by the parents who will lie and try to hide what's going on, and the law is very much on their side and will fight you in court to prevent you helping the child.

Then press hate you and therefore most of the sheeple population do to.

For that she got less money than my company was paying call centre staff. I don't think her pay ever went over the mid 20's even with decades of experience, and she had to provide her own car to do the job. Now she's retired she gets around 12k a year in pension. It is not well paid at all.

As soon as I read this thread I wondered how long it would be before someone blamed the social workers.

Well said, social work is a thankless job.

[Gecko1978]

Social Work is often least appreciated by those it seeks to help. We have an odd system in the UK where you can broadly be the worst parent in the world and keep your kids. But a teacher uses the wrong gender pronoun and they are vilified (made up example but you get the idea).

You can have your dog taken away if you mistreat it but your kids suffer for a lot longer before anything happens.

[Trophy Husband]

Gecko1978 said:

Social Work is often least appreciated by those it seeks to help. We have an odd system in the UK where you can broadly be the worst parent in the world and keep your kids. But a teacher uses the wrong gender pronoun and they are vilified (made up example but you get the idea).

You can have your dog taken away if you mistreat it but your kids suffer for a lot longer before anything happens.

When we were near the end of the adoption process to bring our boys home one of the social workers who was a fabulous woman described her exasperation at the limits to which she was bound for removing children from their birth 'family'. She described a policy of "just good enough" which effectively was fed and a bed. The rest was forgotten about unless the abuse was physical and obvious. My boys came from a frightening scenario to us but in SW terms, just below the "just good enough" bar. We were even subject to a final hours appeal from the , ahem, birth 'mother', even when the boys were home with us. This was her 'human right'. My wife wept every day during that traumatic period thinking that we would lose our hard fought for and much loved children.

The system is broken, very broken, whilst children are being severely neglected sometimes to dreadful and heart breaking extremes such as in this example.

If I had the money I'd have 10 more to break the dreadful cycles their little lives exist in.

[MikeM6]

98elise said:

Agreed. My mother was a social worker for most of her life. Many positions in the team were unfilled and there was always someone in the office signed off with stress. When you needed to intervene you would be up against a barrister trying to stop you protecting the kids. Due to the staffing difficulties she was often handling twice the caseload she was supposed to have. There was no overtime so that was all on you to deal with.

Nurses and doctors are held in high esteem yet they neglect and kill people in their care. People who have come to them for help, and want treatment.

I have never heard of a social worker killing someone in their care. The neglect and killing is done by the parents who will lie and try to hide what's going on, and the law is very much on their side and will fight you in court to prevent you helping the child.

Then press hate you and therefore most of the sheeple population do to.

For that she got less money than my company was paying call centre staff. I don't think her pay ever went over the mid 20's even with decades of experience, and she had to provide her own car to do the job. Now she's retired she gets around 12k a year in pension. It is not well paid at all.

As soon as I read this thread I wondered how long it would be before someone blamed the social workers.

Spot on, social work in the UK is extremely tough and completely undervalued by society.

The thing that keeps them going in such working conditions is the knowledge that they are doing their best to make a positive change, but the truth is that they are constantly asked to do more and more, work extremely long hours and deal with issues that would cause distress to the hardiest of us, all the while being told that they constantly need to improve and be more tightly regulated, so that the lessons can be learned to prevent something that was often out of their control anyway.

[andy_s]

I wouldn't pretend to know the solution, but that's very sad indeed.

[Misanthrope]

Camelot1971 said:

It's an incredibly difficult problem to solve because some families need 24 hour engagement with a social worker for them to function properly. It's a hard thing for people to accept, but some people shouldn't be allowed to have children.

That's really the only way to break the cycle of abuse and misery for so many kids (and this problem is not a UK one, it's a global one). Until society finds an acceptable way for that to happen, things won't materially change.

Throwing money at the problem really doesn't work because it's just not as simple as that.

Social workers generally do their very best under difficult circumstances and it's not a job I would want or could do.

This. But how many people are sufficiently honest, incorruptible and resistant to media/social pressure to be entrusted with such decisions? One in a million, if you're lucky. Even worse, all the people in the "chain of command" above them would also need to be equally honest. It's an impossible problem.

[B235r]

Sad story

My mum was a social worker last 20 years before retirement & always seid she loved helping people & watching as thay turned there lives around but each year thay were expected to do more with less staff & less money while the people at the top got a pay rise

& The paperwork she'd spend more time doing paperwork than helping people towards the end, I know she was happy to retire