The Joke That Is "Social Services": February 2010

Birmingham Social Services

Fact File
Birmingham has 2,142 children in care, one of the highest proportions in England.
Some 40,000 live in households where violence is commonplace.
Absenteeism among children’s social care staff is out of control at an average 25 days a year per person.
Tony Howell, Strategic Director for Children Young People and Families, is at the helm of the shamed child protection service and earns an estimated £155,000 a year.
Budgets are continually overspent with the council paying up to £6,000 a week to keep children in residential homes.
Social worker job campaigns haven’t cut vacancy rates of almost 20 per cent.
Much money is wasted by placing children not at risk on the child protection register, to bolster or fake numbers of 'success rates'

Friday 5 February 2010

Doncaster child abuse mum jailed

Not just Harringey and Birmingham Social Services are renowned for poor service. Doncaster too has been lambasted by the courts.

Doncaster social services have again been blasted after a judge was told of four years of hell suffered by two girls.

The sisters, now eight and 10, were repeatedly beaten.

Their mother cannot be named and neither can her partner who called the girls "tarts, scruffy idiots" and "little b*****ds". The oldest girl told police he hit her 50 times with his belt buckle.

Social services took the girls off the child protection register six months after they had been deemed at risk.

Judge Jacqueline Davies spoke of a "horrid process of intimidation" on "defenseless little girls". She said: "It is concerning social services placed them on the register in April 2005 and removed them six months later."

The mother, 31, was jailed for 21 months. Her partner, 26, was jailed for three years and three months.

Doncaster social services apologised last month after two boys were tortured last year by brothers, now 11 and 12, who the department knew had violent pasts.