Does anyone feel that Sharon Shoesmith was always treated unfairly in this case.

I can't actually understand why the specific careworker(s) weren't prosecuted, or sacked.

It seems to me to be a huge miscarriage, and I'd really like to know the names of the people who actually did visit Baby P on those 60 odd times. Surely they are the ones who are really responsible for letting this play out to the little guys death.

my understanding is she was dismissed unfairly not because she was incompetent or anything, but simply because she wasn't dismissed according to the rules set out within her employment contract. she should have been sacked in other words, but she was sacked using the wrong procedures if that makes sense.

Why haven't we heard anything about the people who did the visits and wrote the reports. Were they blind, frightened, stupid, incompetent....

Why haven't we heard anything about the people who did the visits and wrote the reports. Were they blind, frightened, stupid, incompetent....

you'll find most of them have been sacked. the doctor who examined peter was struck off the medical register for example. if you haven't heard that's because you haven't checked.

regardless of everything else, the buck stops with the boss. the boss was shoesmith. she WAS incompetent, refused to resign, and then complained when asked, and then sued when fired.

As much as anything I thought it was a case of incompetence, hubris and dreadful knee-jerk politicking from Little Eddie Bollox myself.

As much as anything I thought it was a case of incompetence, hubris and dreadful knee-jerk politicking from Little Eddie Bollox myself.

Yes him too.

I haven't checked on the staff in the department, true... But Shoesmith is being treated as though she actually murdered this baby. Why don't we know the names of his parents, or of the staff members who truly are responsible.

Yes him too.

I haven't checked on the staff in the department, true... But Shoesmith is being treated as though she actually murdered this baby. Why don't we know the names of his parents, or of the staff members who truly are responsible.

we do know the names of staff. it's been widely reported. the BMA hearing into the doctor for example was very public. we don't really know the names of the parents because the judge decided we SHOULDN'T know. probably something to do with the fact one of them raped a two year old and tortured animals to death as well as killed this poor kid. they decided he couldn't have a fair trial if we knew his identity before the other trials had concluded. just read about it. all the info is there.

Does anyone feel that Sharon Shoesmith was always treated unfairly in this case.

I can't actually understand why the specific careworker(s) weren't prosecuted, or sacked.

It seems to me to be a huge miscarriage, and I'd really like to know the names of the people who actually did visit Baby P on those 60 odd times. Surely they are the ones who are really responsible for letting this play out to the little guys death.

Absolutely. Disgraceful trial by media, with political meddling. Glad she's been vindicated at last.

Absolutely. Disgraceful trial by media, with political meddling. Glad she's been vindicated at last.

Quite.

Obviously massive mistakes were made (and, in the case of the social services, mistakes can, unfortunately, be tragic), but if anybody cares to look into the broader problems underpinning care work at local government level you'll see that it is, through appalling underfunding, stretched to breaking point with undertrained and overstretched staff being forced to make incredibly difficult choices about families against a backdrop of nightmarish procedural red tape (which is instigated at much higher governmental level - blackly ironic really).

That, as Tubey states, specific individuals - operating at the sharpest end of society - get scapegoated by the gutter press and opportunistic politicians trying to slime up the greasy pole of public opinion is, in my opinion, an obscenity.

Ultimately, all it succeeds in achieving is to make people considering a career in one the most praiseworthy professions in society severely reconsider even bothering in the first place.

What governments should be doing is funding these things properly and not making disgraceful retrospective knee-jerk decisions designed to play to the gallery - i.e. the right-wing tabloids acting as the self-ordained 'voice of the people'.

Of course why wouldn't politicians do that? It's like beating up a child - the easiest thing in the world to do.

Social work's one of those professions where you only hear about it when it goes wrong... If all social workers are doing their jobs flawlessly and averting abuse and protecting children time after time, you'd never notice (unless it they intervened in your own family I guess).

For every thousand children saved and protected, one slips through the net and becomes a Baby P or Victoria Climbie. These cases typically happen in deprived boroughs like Haringay... I don't know if that borough's social work department was any better or worse managed or more or less stretched than that in the average inner city... I suspect not, especially after the Climbie case and the spotlight that shone.

The furore is indicative of the blame culture and lack of personal accountability in this country... The only people I hold accountable are Baby P's abusers. Hindsight is always a wonderful thing when it comes to pointing the finger at people who failed to miss the signs, but as Nightie rightly points out if you're going to blame anyone other than the abusers, blame the politicians who set the funding levels for local authorities.

Absolutely. Disgraceful trial by media, with political meddling. Glad she's been vindicated at last.

no she hasn't. why don't you read the ruling? the court case had nothing to do on her competence in the job, or whether she should have been sacked, it merely examinded the legality of HOW she was sacked and whether this was done fairly.

the judge was at pains to stress this in his ruling. she was merely entitled to due process when losing her job, and she was deprived of this by the intervention of the secretary of state. if she had any sense of decency or honour she'd have resigned when the head of the council did, she was asked to and refused citing her employment contract. she refused to then accept blame for what happened in her department even though her position meant she was ultimately responsible.

so once again, the trial had nothing to do with the performance of her or her department but simply whether she was dismissed according to the procedures set out in employment law. had the council carried out an investigation it is quite certain from the events after that she would have been removed. this is where it gets stupid though... they'd then have had to pay her the same sort of severance terms they do to other members of senior management who get removed and had they failed to compensate her (say half a million quid for being sacked due to incompetence) she'd have been able to sue them for victimisation instead and we'd be right back here.

she should have resigned. a greater person would have. anyway, look at her declaration today - the former head of child protection services at a local council announces you cannot prevent the death of children, and specifically a child who the authorities had seen 60 times and had 50 injuries!

"I cannot control the fact when a social worker is referring a child for abuse that she rings up and finds that a case has not been allocated to a police officer for four months. I can't control those matters, this is much more complex than saying you are responsible, let's sack you and the whole psyche of the nation will be at peace."

wow. if one of my employees had that attitude i'd sack them at once. you cannot control the failure of someone else, but you can make sure it is followed up, and use your own personal authority to resolve it if you can. instead her attitude is "we sent it to the police so it's not my problem anymore". how can anyone have that attitude when it comes to abused children in particular? regardless of the failure of the police to do a criminal investigation social services COULD have intervened and taken the child into care anyway. it seems they'd rather not do so.

Typical public sector buck passing boss. Shameless.

no she hasn't. why don't you read the ruling? the court case had nothing to do on her competence in the job, or whether she should have been sacked, it merely examinded the legality of HOW she was sacked and whether this was done fairly.

Still, my overriding grievance is with Balls and his lickspittle advisors, who, through their shameless opportunism decided to attempt to sidestep the course of due legal process, a decision that will doubtless lead to Shoesmith receiving a whopping payout in damages - all provided from the public purse.

wow. if one of my employees had that attitude i'd sack them at once.


You can't sack people 'at once'. That's the point. Was it right for her to be sacked? Possibly, but was her sacking it a fair procedure? Nope. That is the problem, and show Balls' ball-up to be a right balls up.

So to speak.

You can't sack people 'at once'. That's the point. Was it right for her to be sacked? Possibly, but was her sacking it a fair procedure? Nope. That is the problem, and show Balls' ball-up to be a right balls up.

So to speak.

you can dismiss with immediate effect if you've made sure the employment contract allows you to :) skilton v t+k home improvements (2000) is an authoritative case on the matter. you'd simply have to pay them in lieu of notice as ours states. i'm guessing however senior management at councils have rather nicer contracts but *i* most definitely can do that if i want because the contract says so.

no she hasn't. why don't you read the ruling? the court case had nothing to do on her competence in the job, or whether she should have been sacked, it merely examinded the legality of HOW she was sacked and whether this was done fairly.

the judge was at pains to stress this in his ruling. she was merely entitled to due process when losing her job, and she was deprived of this by the intervention of the secretary of state. if she had any sense of decency or honour she'd have resigned when the head of the council did, she was asked to and refused citing her employment contract. she refused to then accept blame for what happened in her department even though her position meant she was ultimately responsible.

so once again, the trial had nothing to do with the performance of her or her department but simply whether she was dismissed according to the procedures set out in employment law. had the council carried out an investigation it is quite certain from the events after that she would have been removed. this is where it gets stupid though... they'd then have had to pay her the same sort of severance terms they do to other members of senior management who get removed and had they failed to compensate her (say half a million quid for being sacked due to incompetence) she'd have been able to sue them for victimisation instead and we'd be right back here.

she should have resigned. a greater person would have. anyway, look at her declaration today - the former head of child protection services at a local council announces you cannot prevent the death of children, and specifically a child who the authorities had seen 60 times and had 50 injuries!



wow. if one of my employees had that attitude i'd sack them at once. you cannot control the failure of someone else, but you can make sure it is followed up, and use your own personal authority to resolve it if you can. instead her attitude is "we sent it to the police so it's not my problem anymore". how can anyone have that attitude when it comes to abused children in particular? regardless of the failure of the police to do a criminal investigation social services COULD have intervened and taken the child into care anyway. it seems they'd rather not do so.

But that's the point, she was sacked without any robust inquiry into her performance, it was forced by an MP trying to find a high profile head to stick on a pike (and thus stop the buck from passing any further up the chain).

If I turned up at work tomorrow and was told I'd been summarily dismissed without due process being followed, when I took the case to ET, the judge would care only about this fact. It matters not what my performance had been, because this cannot be properly assessed if due process was not followed in my sacking.

Regarding her comment, if she had intimate knowledge of all cases within her jurisdiction then fair enough, she should have gone. However, if her direct reports are not escalating such concerns up to her... i.e. she had no guilty knowledge at the point of Baby P's death... then it is unfair to sack her for the death.

It's like one of my drivers going through a red signal, over riding the safety mechanisms, crashing, killing people, and me getting sacked for it. If there was a fundamental flaw in this individual's training and I knew about it, or if they had an unmanaged history of poor safety performance, then arguably it would be reasonable for me to get the boot... But the principle is that you don't know what you don't know.

Why just her? Why not the leader of the council who she reported to? Why not the relevant government minister? She was singled out and made the scapegoat to stop the shit trickling any further upwards and damaging or even ending political careers. She was unfairly dismissed without due process... I'd argue that if the dismissal was sound, then due process would have been followed... the short cut was taken because the case against her wouldn't have stacked up.

Why just her? Why not the leader of the council who she reported to? Why not the relevant government minister? She was singled out and made the scapegoat to stop the shit trickling any further upwards and damaging or even ending political careers. She was unfairly dismissed without due process... I'd argue that if the dismissal was sound, then due process would have been followed... the short cut was taken because the case against her wouldn't have stacked up.


the minister didn't have knowledge of it. by her own admission she did... and her attitude as you can see from the interview she gave to the guardian is "we told police so it wasn't my problem" when she was running the department and was responsible for implementing the findings of the climbie inquiry. sharon shoesmith failed to implement them... her personally.

you can dismiss with immediate effect if you've made sure the employment contract allows you to :) skilton v t+k home improvements (2000) is an authoritative case on the matter. you'd simply have to pay them in lieu of notice as ours states. i'm guessing however senior management at councils have rather nicer contracts but *i* most definitely can do that if i want because the contract says so.

Hmm.. Seems odd you can ignore the law on unfair dismissal just by writting something into the contract of employment. But I'm no law, type thingy.

Hmm.. Seems odd you can ignore the law on unfair dismissal just by writting something into the contract of employment. But I'm no law, type thingy.

look up the case :) i've given you the details. if the contract allows you can actually sack someone for gross incompetence or misconduct without any pay whatsoever but proving misconduct can be quite hard and expensive, best to give them three months pay and a nice reference and send them on their way.

I did, but didn't understand it :(

While i have no doubt that Shoesmith deserved to be sacked.

In fact i personally would go so far as to say that if there was any true justice she and some of the others involved in this sordid case, would also have spent time behind bars at her majestys pleasure, as i regard them as complicit in the murder of Baby P.

However it is not for a Politician to summarily dismiss an employed worker without recourse to due process. Doing so raises all sorts of worrying issues.

For a start if a politician can do this with the Baby P trial, then a precedent has been set allowing Ministers to sack anyone they dont agree with.
An extreme consequence of this would be the complete silencing of dissent. Imagine if you disagreed with a ruling parties political viewpoint, and as a result ministers and MP's issued a decree ordering your and other peoples sacking from employment.
We would be entering a state similar to Soviet Russia whereby if you didnt tow the party line, you found yourself excluded from society.

I therefore fully agree with the Judges decision.

The tube gives the fairest summary here. She was made a scapegoat. The care workers who reported to her should have gone to prison for incompetence, negligence, and were ultimately accessories to a murder.

The care workers who reported to her should have gone to prison for incompetence, negligence, and were ultimately accessories to a murder.

Er, I hope Tubey doesn't mind me speaking on his behalf, but I honestly don't think that this is what he was saying.

Apologies if I'm wrong.

That bit was me. The scapegoat bit was him. Which I agree with.

The tube gives the fairest summary here. She was made a scapegoat. The care workers who reported to her should have gone to prison for incompetence, negligence, and were ultimately accessories to a murder.

scapegoat because when the secretary of state asked her and her boss to resign the boss quit and she didn't so she was sacked?

Scapegoat because her staff were ultimately the people who allowed this little fella die

Scapegoat because her staff were ultimately the people who allowed this little fella die

who were disciplined and sacked.

you do realise that shoesmith was personally charged with implementing the findings of the climbie inquiry and failed to. even today she's defending it blaming the police! had SHE implemented the findings of that inquiry it would have been impossible for the child to have died. how could the staff do something when the management had failed to put in place any way of them doing something? there were no suitable procedures to deal with it because shoesmith had failed to introduce them. what were her staff supposed to do when their boss tells them it's not their job and they should leave it to the police? the police didn't deal with it because it actually wasn't their job, it was the job of social services. this has nothing to do with baby P, she failed to implement the necessary child protection rules that it was her job to implement, and passed the buck wrongly to the police. because of her failures, how many children suffered abuse beyond this case?

If you or I were sat in front of a family of scrotes, and they had a baby with an ongoing history of harm, burns, bruises etc... visible marks every time we turned up.... would you or I simply fill in a form, think that our boss knows better, and leave it at that.

Would you, even without any training whatsoever, be able to walk away from that family without doing something meaningful and intelligent, and effective.

Every care worker that walked out of that home without making it their business to get it sorted are the true scumbags of this.

And how many other families did they walk away from.

Twats the lot of em...

that's because the careworkers were wrongly told it was the problem of the police. who told then, and continues to assert so today? sharon shoesmith. who also claims that social services cannot prevent the deaths of children when they are specifically supposed to do so? sharon shoesmith. what would you do if one of your employees went to the newspaper and declared he couldn't do his job!

Employment law and the rights of an employee, particularly in the public sector, make micro management all but impossible. Employees can claim harassment and bullying even if you try to tell them how to do their job these days. What could Shoesmith have done. We don't know what her staff were like to work with. She could have had a office full of bitching arseholes for all we know.

The tube gives the fairest summary here. She was made a scapegoat. The care workers who reported to her should have gone to prison for incompetence, negligence, and were ultimately accessories to a murder.

If they reported to her and she had knowledge of this case then she is equally, if not more culpabale for the death. It is the role of management to step in and prevent something going horribly wrong, not let it happen and then wheel out a whole load of graphs and statistics after the dreadful event to show how well her department was performing.

But yes Ed Balls is guilty of gross incompetence of sacking her without following due process, which has allowed her to win this appeal. Just another odious example of the last government reeling with the media punches and making it up as it went along to generate favourable headlines. There were probably a whole load of things that went wrong at RBS which Fred Goodwin was not in direct control of but he took the big hit and his banking career ended in disgrace. My point being that these people are paid an awful lot of money to oversee large and complex organistions and if things go wrong then the buck must ultimately stop with them.

But yes Ed Balls is guilty of gross incompetence of sacking her without following due process, which has allowed her to win this appeal. Just another odious example of the last government reeling with the media punches and making it up as it went along to generate favourable headlines.

Come on, do you honestly think that this is a problem exclusive to the last Labour government?

The fact is that it's been a massive and insidious problem ever since the gutter press started acting as the self-appointed 'voice of the people' and politicians started kowtowing to it - i.e. under the axis of the Thatcher/Murdoch constellation of despair.

Of course this kind of thing has gone on for ages in countries where wealthy press barons wield ungodly power, but under Thatcher the whole 'assessing-public-opinion-by-reading-the-front-page-of-the-Sun' technique really kicked in. Of course it was then perfected by the slime-ball-shyster lawyer Blair and only under Brown's moribund tenure appeared frayed and pathetic (incidentally a period when the right-wing press had publicly abandoned support for Labour) - something that leads people to cry foul about the last government, but strangely (and sadly) not be able to see things WITH AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE!

I think it became much more of a problem under Labour. After all it was Alastair Campbell who set up the Strategic Communications Unit (SCU) which was effectively a 24-hour media, monitoring unit. Taken to its extreme we ended up with a situation where the Government often seemed more interested in spinning favourable headlines rather than exercising due diligence and doing things properly.

Caving in to angry headlines and sacking someone on live television without following the due process required by Employment Law is yet another sorry example of this.

There is some serious rewriting of history on this thread.

If somebody knew nothing of the case and just read this thread they'd think Shoesmith was sacked the moment there were bad headlines without any inquests. That was not the case.

The timeline is something like this as i understand it:

August 2007 Baby P killed. Arrests for murder happened almost instantly.

Internal inquest held. Later considered a whitewash.

November 2008 convictions over death. Press call for resignation of CPU nil leader councilor in charge of children's services and Shoesmith to resign and all refuse to.

Balls orders external inquest- not over Baby P but over Harringey child services generally.

1 December 2008. Report published and is extremely damning of the whole service in particular over Baby P. The head of the council and the Councillor responsible both resign instantly. Shoesmith refuses to so Balls sacks her based on the findings of the inquest.

Shoesmiths deputy and several employees are suspended and eventually sacked in April 2009.


What the court of Appeal has found is not that the inquest was flawed but that Shoesmith should have had the right to present her defence to the findings of the inquest before being sacked.

Now this is a finding by a court including Lord Neuberger (the Master of the Rolls, former HoL member and excellent judge) so is very probably correct. However, it's a fairly minor transgression by the government of the day, the High Court found that there was no transgression (so it might be pretty borderline), there is still a n appeal to the Supreme Court and Shoesmith would have been sacked along with her deputy anyway. She's yet to offer a decent rebuttal to the findings of the inquest.

Was there politics involved, in playing to the media in sacking rather than suspending her? very likely, yes. Was she a scapegoat? no, I think Balls and the Harringey council were genuinely shocked that she didn't resign.

I think it became much more of a problem under Labour. After all it was Alastair Campbell who set up the Strategic Communications Unit (SCU) which was effectively a 24-hour media, monitoring unit. Taken to its extreme we ended up with a situation where the Government often seemed more interested in spinning favourable headlines rather than exercising due diligence and doing things properly.

Caving in to angry headlines and sacking someone on live television without following the due process required by Employment Law is yet another sorry example of this.

Well, yes, I concur.

The depressing Campbell effect certainly 'did a Barcelona' in terms of fine-tuning the art of turd-spinning off the back of frothing-at-the-mouth headlines.

But then again that was a Bliar-era thing and I already said that di'int I. :yes:

Was she a scapegoat? no, I think Balls and the Harringey council were genuinely shocked that she didn't resign.

Thanks for that Rigadon... it certainly helps to get a full perspective and timeline.

If she wan't at the time, she certainly has become a scapegoat. The media are practically blaming her for the death opf baby p and I don't think that is right. If she feels the sacking was unfair, then it's entirely proper that she should be able to address that.

As has been said many times, the buck has to stop somewhere... but why should she be sacked for failing to resign. Did she do nothing of any value at all for Harringey

Did she do nothing of any value at all for Harringey

Tut tut - Harringay is an area of Haringey centred on "The Ladder" and Green Lanes. :nono:

Haringey apologies...









no P-Points I'm afraid

On reflections, after last night we need to stick together, not viciously turn on one another.

Apologies.

:hug:

Well this thread prompted me to read the CoA decision. It’s err.. complicated. Without knowing much about employment law it seems very sensible but a bit harsh on both Balls and the Council in places. If there is any point that might be overturned by the Supreme Court its likely to be about "accountability" of her position which Ill give an opinion on at the end.

Firstly there are a number of factual errors in my post above and a few important factual things I didn’t know:

1. Shoesmith did not have the opportunity to resign. She was removed by Balls as DCS before she was given the report.

2. The position of DCS was created especially so that each council had a single person accountable for all children services and with oversight of all its operations and errors.

3, Shoesmith’s background was in education not social care and she had a very good reputation in that area.

4. Balls can not sack council employees but the statute that created DCSs in 2004 specifically allowed the Secretary of State to remove and appoint DCSs if required.

5. The external (OFSTED) inquest report was on 30 November. Balls meet the inspects who wrote it on the morning of the 1 December and removed Shoesmith as DCS and appointed a new one in the afternoon. He could not and did not sack her but gave the opinion that he would be surprised if the Council didn’t or if it compensated her.

6. The OFSTED report didn’t name any individuals but was extremely critical of all sorts of management failure. In the meeting with Balls on the 1st the inspectors did name Shoesmith, and were very critical of her principally because she delegated social care to her deputy who had a background in social care (and was later sacked) and did not oversee her in the way a DCS was required to.

7. The council suspended Shoesmith on full pay on 1 December. They sacked her a week later and heard an appeal from her in Jan 2009. The appeal failed.

Shoesmith appealed to High Court on 3 grounds:

a. The OFSTED inquest was unfair because it was done in a very short time frame (not the usual 5 months) and didn’t give her a full opportunity to counter accusations against her nor see and comment on a draft of the report before the final version was published.

b. Balls was unfair in removing her from her post of DCS without consulting her, in being swayed by a petition from the Sun and in directing the council.

c. The council was unfair in relying on earlier unfair decisions (OFSTED and Balls) and in not giving her a full opportunity to give her side of events.


The High Court judge found against her on all 3:

a. Inquests could be speed up if the circumstances justified it. If they were speed up they could depart from some procedures, and that because the report was not to name individuals and was not a disciplinary hearing it didn’t have to get full feedback from accused individuals.

b. Balls wrongly referenced to the Shoesmith specific conclusions that the inspectors had told him that morning as if they were in the report itself. He wrongly assumed that she would have had the opportunity to have expressed her full views to the inspectors (as is normal in a non-speed up inquest). However- because of the nature of the position of DCS, and the importance of the decision it was not unlawful not to have allowed her an opportunity to address the report before acting. Further nothing she could have said could have made any difference so even if he should have heard her- there was still no actual unfairness.

c. The council wrongly applied Balls directions without giving her an opportunity to give her side even though there was time. Consequently the Council probably acted wrongly but that the matter should be left to an employment tribunal not to the Court.


The CoA:

a. Agreed with High Court on OFSTED.

b. Balls should have given Shoesmith opportunity to defend herself before taking actions based on report/verdict by inspectors because she had not been given that opportunity properly by the inspectors. If he had done so there was at least a slight chance it could have made a difference to the decision.

c. Council decision was based on unlawful decision by Balls, Shoesmith had told them she considered Balls decision unlawful and this was ignored -therefore the council’s decision was also unlawful. This could have been avoided if they had asked her to choose whether to fight the validity of the Balls decision in court and suspend her appeal/employment or to continue with appeal on the assumption Balls’s decision was valid.

Where I think they could be wrong on accountability is that the DCS post exists so that there is a single person accountable for failures and the report stated that there were massive failures in management. Given that it seems to me the High Court Judge's finding that nothing she could have said could have altered the conclusion may be sound.


I do think this was a very unusual case and that the mistakes made by Balls and the Council were pretty understandable.

The one thing that the council did fuck up on from a HR point of view was that according to 2 of the CoA judges (including Neuberger) the council could have dismissed her with notice without prejudice to their summary dismissal of her. The reliance in the decision by Balls was only relevant to her summary dismissal and would not have been relevant to her dismissal with notice. Accordingly if they’d done that all that would be at stake now would be a few months pay rather than 2.5 years plus possible damages.

interesting. i had no idea she hadn't actually had the opportunity to resign, that said... if she didn't have it, how did her superior at the council manage to resign? your last paragraph is most interesting - the council could have sacked her and given her a few months pay in lieu of notice, the secretary of state didn't have that power. what an enormous cock up.

Shoesmith could of course have resigned over Baby Ps death or the conviction when the full facts came out. I certainly don't have sympathy for her, she was paid serious money to be in post specially created with national effect because of previous failings of Harrigey social services. The point of the post was to make sure a senior person took oversight of social services and then despite that and the money she was paid she delegated that responsibility.

Her superior was an elected councillor so could be sacked. Whether the councilors resigned before or after Balls acted I'm not sure.

I understand why the council wanted to summarily dismiss Shoesmith given Balls's comments about compensation but it was obviously a mistake to also said her with notice. In fairness it's only with hindsight at this decisions that the importance of doing that has become clear but they probably should have taken Shoesmith's complaints about the lawfulness of Balls's decision more seriously.

Those posts are much appreciated. Thank you.

I've followed this story. I can honestly say she is a coward and a money-grabbing b****

She takes absolutely no responsibility as head and did not even have the balls to sack certain members of staff that lead to the tragedy and then continued to lead to other tragedies. Totally gutless, should never ever work with vulnerable children, never mind heading a department. She should be on a barred child protection list without any doubt

p.s. no pun intended, above ^^

I don't lnow if this is a new phenomenon, but it does seem these days that public servants are utterly shameless, trying to hang on to their job however badly they f*** up, when they ought to resign.

I don't lnow if this is a new phenomenon, but it does seem these days that public servants are utterly shameless, trying to hang on to their job however badly they f*** up, when they ought to resign.

It's the never back down, never admit you're wrong credo - one found at every level of society - from politicians and bankers, through public sectors bosses to the kid who shoots someone for looking at him funny.

Innit. :)