Catch 22

How the system works:

Social Services: You're too stupid to look after your child!
Mother: No I'm not, and I'll take this up in court.
Court: You're too stupid to appoint your own lawyer.

It wouldn't be so bad if they (the courts and social services) at least meant well but some aspects of the case make that hard to believe:

After the psychiatrist’s assessment of Rachel, the court has now acknowledged that she does have the mental capacity to keep up with the legal aspects of her situation.

In other words they now accept that their initial assessment of her intellectual* capability was wrong, but they are still going to remove her child on the basis of that assessment.

Incidentally isn't the pretence that these stories can't be reported fully because of the interests of the child especially weak in cases like this? The child is too young to know what the news is and will be given a new identity in a matter of months if the social services get their way.

* Whilst the measured intelligence of the mother is well below average it isn't freakishly so. An IQ of 71 (equal to 71 social workers) would put her in the lowest 2% to 3% of the population. If anyone proposed that there was a case for automatically removing 2% to 3% of children from their parents then they would rightly be considered insane.

Family Values.

Social Workers fear media frenzy will damage Alfie's family.

Yeah because the family was doing so well up until the media took notice.

Update: See what I mean, Alfie goes for a walk and demonstrates his class:

Baby P.

Iain Duncan Smith writing about the Baby P case claims:

A recent US study found that children living with a non-biological adult are 50 times more likely to die from afflicted injuries than those living with their biological parents.

This seems extraordinary. Whilst I was aware that children are at greater risk from step parents than biological ones it is hard to believe that it is on this scale. A lot of child abuse could be prevented simply by discouraging some groups of people from becoming parents, particularly welfare cases who have never had a job and move from one unstable relationship to another.

Yesterday I speculated as to whether the reason the parents weren't being named was because more children were involved, sadly this is the case. Baby P has 4 siblings (or half siblings). I would hope that they are being adopted by a family that has nothing to do with the mother.

Meanwhile the Sun has a report about Haringey's Social Services department which is worth reading:

Baby P’s evil mum was backed by the council’s staff after she gave birth to a girl in March while on remand in jail and demanded access to the tot.

Fearful cops refused — only to be told by one social worker: “She has a human right to see the child. We need to let her bond.”

Words fail me! These aren't the kind of mistakes that could be eliminated with more training or better procedures, it should be patently obvious that you do not give someone suspected of torturing a baby to death access to another baby.

The Independent reports on a whistle blower who alerted ministers to the failings of Haringey over a year ago.

Update: Regarding IDS's point about the relative dangers of biological parents and a succession of step parents, it is an important point to make because some commentators group the two together and give the impression that it is the nuclear family is dangerous, like Mary Riddell in the Telegraph who writes:

In the popular myth, paedophiles and abductors lurk at every corner. In reality, there never was a golden age of childhood. The demons threatening the young are not evil outsiders but, most often, the fathers and the mothers brought up in dysfunctional families and wreaking the destruction they suffered on their own children.

Lessons Will Be Learned (part 3655)

It has been said of the world's pledge of "never again" after the holocaust, instead of meaning that we would never again allow genocide to occur again it actually meant that we would never again allow genocide against the Jews in 1940s Germany to happen again. Our social services work in a similar way, and when they said a case like the Victoria Climbie murder would never happen again, they actually meant that no little girl called Victoria Climbie would ever be murdered again.

Everytime the Social Services screw up the we are always told that "lessons will be learned", even if the failings didn't really require 'lessons' as much as basic common sense. Earlier this year Victoria Climbie's mother said that the lessons have not been learned and it now appears that she was right.

It isn't as if the social services are usually reticent about separating children from their legal guardians so how is that when a child is clearly being violently abused they do nothing?

Update: Does the fact that the media aren't naming the mother and stepfather suggest that there is another minor involved here?