North East Lincolnshire is heavily criticised in their part in actively failing to deal with Ian Huntley and the allegations about him.

BBC News Story

It is only with feeling for the for the hurt and pain that the parents feel in their loss of Holly and Jessica that the RPSSUK have not yet touched on the Soham debacle.

Watching the news today when the chairman of the involved ACPC made his apologies made me wonder why we allow such inept people to have control over our lives and children.

It comes down again to the point that social services have plenty of time to pursue weak and easy targets but if it involves anything further than that, the job is not being done.

In our demand for evidence based social work, such a situation as above would require social services questioning the police on their suspects, we feel that if social services had to "build" a case as does the police then their investigative techniques would delve deeper into peoples history and find what they are looking for.

This would have a profound effect on social work, firstly it will identify using the tools, the real issues, many families would benefit not from a rogue assessment but from help and advice from someone like a SWA, secondly it would release social workers from being tied down on cases that they are forcing through on "hunches", "personality clashes" and plain snobbery in many cases.

How many more victims to this system will it take before someone, somewhere wakes up and makes the changes that are needed.:

• Make Social Workers legally responsible for their actions
• Make their managers equally responsible
• Introduce independant monitoring of work and practices in every office
• Remove the "self policing" to a central investigations unit
• Reinforce the criminal and civil codes so that a social worker and manager know exactly what they risk each time a corner is cut
• Create a criminal negligence charge with serious punishments to go with it. Reinforce the "Misconduct in Public Office"
• Reform the way assessments and practices are done, remove the dubious powers and abilities that social workers enjoy so they can persecute the weak or the undefendable.
• Creation of a national crisis team in the event of a department breakdown, a team comprised of the very best of the nations workforce that can be used as intervention and crisis management whilst the department undergoes rigorous training and practice reinforcement, this system works very well incommerce and industry, even area managers at McDonalds have this ability.
• Cap Unisons powers of blackmailing departments, make it illegal for social services to strike but give them similar pay deals to the police.

These interventions could make a difference....

It won't make a difference to Holly and Jessica though, or Toni, or Victoria, or Maria and the other children who have died, many campaigns say if we save "one child" then its working, well, what is their response for the many children who have died then.

One death is ONE too many.....!!!

One wonders also in closing....

If the report hadn't slammed social services in this horrendous affair, would their faces on TV have been the same?, it always seems to us that social services are past masters at shifting the blame, as was seen in other enquiries, if the blame had managed to be shifted would it have been that NE Lincoln SS would have stood and pointed with the rest of them, for shame.

Well not this time eh?

Social Services and their practices are in a state of CRISIS, when will the government wake up to this clarion call for action,

Isn't it about time that Mr Blair and Mr Blunkett saw that the families in this country are at their mercy?

Its TIME for action, not reaction, what will happen assuredly is that social services will be given more draconian powers, families will suffer and the issues raised today totally shelved and buried.

And monsters like Huntley will still slip through the net because social services are too busy or too useless to do the proper job that they are paid for.

RPSSUK