Jail public sector workers who fail to alert police about child abuse, says Cameron - Crime - UK - The Independent
And send them the bill for the cost of their incarceration...... However if the allegation turns out to be unfounded who picks up the pieces of the destroyed lives???
Who'd be a social worker eh? Damned if you act and damned if you don't act. It's got to be the toughest job in the world. Society's civil police with no powers to speak of.
I'm sure it would only be on conviction and as long as it applies to the police as well then it seems reasonable. Nothing else looks like it forces people to do their jobs correctly.
I entirely agree that it must be a very tough job, and the policy being debated here gives the impression (as with so much current politics, from all sides) of being constructed to impress the public that "action will be taken" (although with limited prison places, the likelihood of anyone actually being jailed would be very small). However, I'm not so sure about the social workers having "no powers to speak of" - I think most people are right to believe that you would never want to get into a situation where a Local Authority starts action to take your children into care. There is no way that the current government can ignore the scale and nature of this particular scandal - it seems to have taken a similar form at opposite ends of the country, and "political correctness" (for want of a better expression) does appear to be part of the failure of authorities to have acted sooner: BBC News - Oxford grooming: 'No hiding' from authorities' failures
Pandoras box is open. Social workers must be accountable, its part of the role, but nurses, teachers, police officers? And does that mean a presumption of guilt in all cases until proven innocent? Hope the govt are going to open a thousand more childrens homes, and staff them with 2 staff to every 1 occupier so they can ensure no abuse takes place there...
As far as I can tell, social workers can act when they have a great deal of evidence to work with but in cases where it's "obvious what is going on", they are helpless without proof. Perhaps that is just as it should be but that doesn't help the social worker who feels powerless to help a child in trouble.
Does anyone agree with the report's allegation that social workers were too concerned about offending cultural sensitivities to report Asian men who were grooming girls in Yorkshire, as the report alleges? And if you do, how do you think attitudes were allowed to develop that positively put the welfare of children at risk?
How about we leave "cultural sensitivities" out of this one, Speedos? This phenomenon is not limited to a particular creed, there are micro-cultures that promote such abuse in this country and have been here for many years. It pre-dates any "cultural influx" that you wish us to address so let's keep the conversation generic, yes?
Social workers are told they must move heaven and earth to keep families together. That may be viewed as a cost-cutting measure (à la care in the community) but it is also thought, correctly in my view, that in many cases in the past the child's best interests would have been better served in a familial setting than in an institutional one. After all, children's homes are not without their problems, as we have seen. I doubt your solution will ever happen, Bradders, for that reason and because its completely unaffordable - as you know or suspect.
Don't agree. Here we go yet again, let's take what is a complex problem with many facets, for instance the system, the budget, the workload other extenuating circumstances in a particular case, burden of suspicion (because it can be no more than that), how your boss is reacting. Even the fact your having a bad day and miss summit. FFS we are all human and fallible, how many people will be actually doing the job if one slip and yer in the pokey. Rotheram case was shocking and yes in that case the council chiefs APPEAR to deserve jail time. BUT it's trial by media and I don't know all the facts. The press will not print facts that do not support their case, in effect making them prosecutor and judge rolled into one. To roll it out to everybody is knee jerk politics and just plain wrong IMHO. A few were very very very stupid, so let's put a noose around the whole profession? Then we get to the Orkney and Cleveland if either of these happened under Dave's scheme how many would be wrongly convicted? Sheer bloody lunacy, but then I'm not infallible like quite a few on here
Don't we already have laws that cover this? Anyone would think we're coming up to an election and "vapour" policies like this are intended as vote grabbers...
Cultural differences have made the problem different, probably not larger, and more sensitive to approach. Saying that, how sensitve would it be to say a top MP, or police chief, or pop star groomed and took advantage of under age peolpe.
I think its a brilliant idea. All teachers and social workers are leftie twats anyway. Lock em up!! Erm, can you vote in prison?
You're a nice man Loz, and I would like to be able to say that you've persuaded me to leave it there, but I have to add that it's the reluctance to confront such substantive issues that is responsible for much of the malaise and decline currently being suffered by our country and Europe at the moment. Putin says the whole continent is "sleepwalking to disaster" - and though no one wants to take lessons in diplomacy and building sustainable societies from that war-mongering maniac - history tells us that that is a risk we run unless we take pre-emptive action to negate problems - in this case the failure to integrate immigrant communities - and defend our societies. I was shocked a while back when, after a member of her own long-established community was mugged during a spate of such crimes, a woman was prepared to go on camera and say "they must be caught. It was bad enough when they were mugging white people but they are now mugging black people too". Yes, there are various sections of the community that might have bad attitudes - but they need to be identified and dealt with too. However, where creed is a relevant indicator of criminality, I do not think we should shy away from either saying so or using such information to inform police investigations. After all: not all Muslims are suicide bombers, but all suicide bombers are Muslims (except those who are Tamils but I don't think we need concern ourselves with them!) In broader terms, we need to ensure new arrivals better understand and respect British values and follow that up with the closure of ALL faith schools, the banning of halal and kosher slaughter and the banning of the wearing of ALL religious symbols in schools. If we start by integrating the young they will soon exert their influence on their elders. I would also ban the divisive covering of faces in public places - after all I can't go into a bank or even pay for petrol in many filling stations with my full-face crash helmet on so there is already a precedent. Obviously an exception would have to be made where issues of safety were concerned - for those using power tools and bikers riding or about to ride bikes for example.
ST - I only meant, in this thread. I wanted to see some discussion about the generic issue of social workers dealing - or failing to do so - with child abuse issues. This is an issue that exists outside of whatever the underlying causes of child abuse are. By giving the cultural aspect of this a wide birth, more people in the forum may be encouraged to contribute to it. I'm not saying you're wrong - in fact, I'd say there's a lot of truth in your preceding post - but bringing up those issues here, in this thread, will kill it and I'd like to read more first. No offence meant, it's just that I recognise a little about how this forum operates and it's important to bear that in mind when contributing to threads. I'm not saying, brush things under the carpet, just that one particular issue should not dominate every social commentary thread we have here. Hope you understand where I'm coming from.
