Should the animal that did this be put down?
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You cross-posted me Gareth, but that would be the long and short of it in all probability. The partnership model of service delivery can work, but because it's been enshrined in local authority its become sacroscent and questioning it seriosuly frowned upon. In truth, a bad arrangement becomes part of the problem rather than the solution, and after time they grow complacent and start subtly corrupting themselves as they become a convenient vehicle for people to divide up little parcels of responsibility and abrogate this in such a way as that no one becomes accountable. Not dis-similarly, they can also reward (or even encourage people) not to do anything or take responsibility. Essentially, you get paid the same as whether you contribute or not, and one of the easiest ways of defending a situation is to do as little as you can get away with, whilst allowing the machinary to grind over at its slowest rate. Bt sharing out the remit, and everyone taking a little bit of resposnibility each ther eis also an increase in the propensity to leave the tought decision to someone else. Unfortunately, that someone else has little by way of incentive to take the decision as there is no reward for doing so, but plenty of sanction available if it goes wrong
59 people were killed in the UK on building sites in 2006 Clive, and 77 in construction, 35 killed in manufacturing and 34 in agriculture, forestry and fishing. I'd be surprised if you could give me the name of more than two of them? The reason is simple. "Man falls off ladder" isn't a news item. "Little boy killed by brutal dysfunctional family, looney left local authority to blame" is. I think it most unlikely that Panorama would have been able to run a programme out in less than a week if we were dealing with a run of the mill fall from scaffolding, any more than Victorai Derbyshire and Stephen Nolan would be interested in running inflamatroy phone ins all week.
That's to say that the case isn't worthy of investigation, just that there appears to be certain emotive triggers involved which are more likely to generate a response thus amongst the public. The private sector only really comes under scrutiny when their negligence transmits into a major disaster. By this time though, it's not just their workforce they're after, they seem quite happy to take their customers with them!!!
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How many killed by incompetence leading to the spread of MRSA?
Having lost a very close relative to that, i can tell you right now that the handling of the condition was akin to manslaughter
Its simply not good enough to compare building site accidents to death of Baby P.
Having lost a very close relative to that, i can tell you right now that the handling of the condition was akin to manslaughter
Its simply not good enough to compare building site accidents to death of Baby P.
Hadn't thought of MRSA. Thousands? which makes it truly shocking. Health Authorities are quasi private sector Trusts though, where once again cost cutting is rife in the name of perceived value for money. Many supposed superior private sector management practices were introduced, as indeed many managers and trustees were head hunted in from the private sector. But in many respects it probably illustrates the same point again about the division of culpability. Who do you hold responsible? The board, the management, the accountant, the staff, the matron, the cleaner, the visitors, the government?
I'd agree it was criminal (well lets keep it in context) is, criminal that so many people have died unnecessarily and seemingly without any sense of accountability. Medical cases aren't confined to MRSA of course. We've seen plenty of mis-diagnoses, wrong doses of medicene administered, and botched operations too. Where as I have every sympathy with you Clive, and I'm not seeking to excuse the situation, but just pointing out that its inherently difficult to successfully bring a prosecution. I was given to understand that Leslie Ash was trying to do so though? If true then I wish her luck, but I fear she'll struggle. It took about 30 years before the coal board paid out on asbestosis
I'd agree it was criminal (well lets keep it in context) is, criminal that so many people have died unnecessarily and seemingly without any sense of accountability. Medical cases aren't confined to MRSA of course. We've seen plenty of mis-diagnoses, wrong doses of medicene administered, and botched operations too. Where as I have every sympathy with you Clive, and I'm not seeking to excuse the situation, but just pointing out that its inherently difficult to successfully bring a prosecution. I was given to understand that Leslie Ash was trying to do so though? If true then I wish her luck, but I fear she'll struggle. It took about 30 years before the coal board paid out on asbestosis
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Alright, I'll stop short of that, but thinking about it, I'd be reasonably comfortable that there was a time in our industrial heritage where worker deaths were probably seen as an acceptable price to pay in the name of productive output ranging from the collpase of mine shafts all the way up to children scampering in between looms to fix broken threads in dark satanic mills
What is being reported is that a social worker visited a baby, considered to be at risk, with "his back broken, eight broken ribs, fingernails missing, toenail missing and a nappy full of excrement" , and never bothered to check that the child was ok.
What is being reported may prove not to be true, there may have been extenuating circumstances or there could conceivably be reasoning to indicate the social worker acted correctly in the circumstances. Obviously it is not only that particular Social Worker who is under suspicion. That it may be difficult to prove should not prevent a criminal investigation.
To describe this as a "public service mistake" which might merely suggest it is worth questioning certain peoples ability to do their job correctly and whether the work practices and policies are sufficient, is a gross misrepresentation of the situation IMO. Of course this also should be done but in parallel with a criminal investigation to establish if a child known to be in a vulnerable situation was willfully failed by those who were charged with protecting him.
What is being reported may prove not to be true, there may have been extenuating circumstances or there could conceivably be reasoning to indicate the social worker acted correctly in the circumstances. Obviously it is not only that particular Social Worker who is under suspicion. That it may be difficult to prove should not prevent a criminal investigation.
To describe this as a "public service mistake" which might merely suggest it is worth questioning certain peoples ability to do their job correctly and whether the work practices and policies are sufficient, is a gross misrepresentation of the situation IMO. Of course this also should be done but in parallel with a criminal investigation to establish if a child known to be in a vulnerable situation was willfully failed by those who were charged with protecting him.
My gut reaction is that for the most part you'd be wrong, which sent me scampering off to Google and I came across a few moderately interesting things. Much to my surprise (as I thought MRSA was a recent thing) it was first discovered in 1961, and yes folks, appears to be another British contribution to the globe.
In 1993, 51 people appeared to die from it in UK hospitals. In 2005 this figure rose to 1652. The reforms that heralded in the Primary Care Trusts and Hospital Trusts were introduced earlier, under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, also commonly called the "internal market". It was these Thatcher/ Major reforms that introduced the new procurement and management cultures, which in fairness Tony Blair would do little to reverse until 2005 when he's halved the number of PCT's. The legislation was enacted slightly after 1990, due to timescales, and took a year or two to bed down on the ground. I won't dwell on that other than to say look at the figure for MRSA deaths in 1993 as it is about at this time that the Hospital Trusts started to swing into action, and where they were 12 years later. Coincidence? It would be possible to have died from MRSA prior to 1993 of course, but there can be little doubt that a vast majority of deaths came under the new arrangements.
The bastion of private sector health care is of course the great US of A. If I think our quasi private sector trust arrangements are a stain on a civilised society that we should be ashamed of, than their figures leave me wondering if they haven't put their various private sector bankers and hedge fund managers at the helm of their health care provision!!!
1999 - total number of deaths = 127,000
2005 - total number of deaths = 278,000
My God they go to war for about 1% of that total bodycount!!! It strikes me they'd be better off turning their guns on their own private sector health providers, who clearly represent a statistically greater threat to their well-being, than any terrorist group.
The final piece in the NHS Trust thing seems to relate to the award of PFI cleaning contracts, as there is certainly no shortage of anecdotal evidence that squeezing profits through cutting corners has been a contributary factor. I can't find any precise evidence as to when the first service contracts were introduced but first remember coming across them in about circa 1995/ 96 when Ken Clarke was Chancellor. With that in mind, I suspect they came into play before this, as I wouldn't expect to be at the leading edge of such developments, so I'm inclined to think they emerged at the same time as the internal market and cost centre management was being introduced from 1993 onwards? Again, the introduction of PFI seems to mirror MRSA, (though clearly the Americans have taken that to a whole new level, and decided to wipe out a population the approximate size of Newcastle upon Tyne)
I mean it needs to be investigated whether or not the people charged with protecting him, knowingly/deliberately did not take the necessary steps to protect him. I was not trying to imply suspicion that they may have known he was being harmed and chose to ignore it.
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At the risk of going badly off topic, I think they were driven by very different considerations even if they had similar levels of technology, in that one was very much about capitalist objectives and empire building, where as the other two very much crash courses, in response to an obvious threats to national security and the need to industrialise quickly in the name of defence rather than expansion
I too am taking an educated guess as I don't what the precise procedure is for social work, but all local authroties should have a policy for 'lone working' in line with a 'risk assessment'. Sending a solitary individual into a house under these circumstances would normally transgress this policy if they were expected to insist on seeing the child as it normally requires a witness and if things come to the worst, a second member of staff (usually male) or even a police officer (in very volatile cases) to accompany. Now it could be that the case notes were flawed and the social worker was operating off an incomplete record, it could equally be that the second person either wasn't available that day (sick or other) or its another example of a service trying to function below optimum capacity in the name of budget savings?
I'd be very surprised however, if the social worker was sent out alone with the instruction to try and insist on examining the child. I suspect under the circumstances, they've probably observed the correct procedure, although they should have filed a report to the effect that they were unable to confirm the childs welfare beyond what the parent was saying.
Best put an end to this within this thread, but i cannot accept for one moment that the mass deaths under Mao (for one) during the "cultural revolution" were "necessary" for defence. Who was looking to invade China in the 1960's? Who would have wanted to?
Harbinger
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Lets not forget that there's plenty of vilification of social workers for being over-zealous. If anything, I'd suggest that would be the default criticism of them. Doesn't take too much Googling to find organisations who go so far as to claim that social workers routinely remove children from their homes in order to qualify for monetary bonuses.
The answers almost ironic, but very quickly in answer to your question Clive, (to take it fruther would require a new thread)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split
PRP
Never heard of that being offered yet. Social workers are salaried and get paid no more or no less to the best of my knowledge. I've heard of teachers getting their threshold payments, and in some cases 'market increments' paid to hard to find higher skilled employees. Geographical bonuses for expensive parts of the country are also routinely built into renumeration packages, but to my knowledge no other PRP schemes exist in a local authority. Some contractors will be on performance bonuses.
Harbinger
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From the website of a group called "Mothers Against Injustice UK":
http://www.maiuk.org/reforms.htm
The site doesn't seem to have been updated for a couple of years, so the organisation may be defunct, but it's symptomatic of some of the suspicion and outright hostility that social workers face.
http://www.maiuk.org/reforms.htm
The site doesn't seem to have been updated for a couple of years, so the organisation may be defunct, but it's symptomatic of some of the suspicion and outright hostility that social workers face.
Undoubtedly the job carries with it a high degree of responsibility to get decisions right. I can only go on what's been reported but it sounds like, in this instance, that responsibilty was not taken very seriously. Therein lies the difference between a mistake and neglect. That said, Warbler's last post on the subject (the 2.13pm one) has a whiff of substance about it.
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They'd be better off calling themselves "Mothers with a partial understanding of the issues".
Beacon status is a gong that broadly is awarded for various areas of service delivery where a council department is thought to be performing sufficiently well enough to be considered 'best practice'. Councils can receive a better annual settlement if achieving it, and be given greater flexibility and responsibility in the service area concerned. If they have achieved it, you'll normally see a little beacon symbol somewhere on its letterhead. It would be considered a feather in the cap for the Chief Executive or the Director of the service concerned, but after that it is of absolutely no relevance to the frontline staff whatsoever. If they seriously think the money gets divided up amongst the team or staff as a bonus then they're clearly barking mad. The frontline staff will never see a penny of it, but will probably be exploited into having a few publicity photographs taken with a councillor where they've all got to stick their thumbs up in the air and smile, or perform some similarly sickening choeragphed set piece. You normally get an email at Christmas too thanking you for all the hard work you've done that has allowed some distant figurehead who never gets involved on the chalk face to take credit for your reflected efforts. In truth most are target driven, and the targets aren't always consistant with local needs and priorities, but rather what some Whitehall Civil Servant thinks is relevant. In that respect it becomes a distraction, as soem of the more ambitious serial gong collectors expend a lot of time conducting meetings and devising presentations to convince an assessment panel that you're a worthy reciepient of the accolade.
By contrast, few staff (if any) take the scheme seriously, and most would rather it just go away and combust (as befits its name). It's just another piece of 'hoop jumping' a department has to perform at the behest of the Government, and very few staff will actually allow the pursuit of such a meaningless corporate objective to affect the way they do their own work or otherwise. It's possible that a manager whose swallowed the corporate propaganda might pressurise staff into target driven output achievement, (sometimes of tenuous relevance or value) but this would be in line with what they would perceive to be personal career enhancement opportunities. No money ever finds its way into the pay packets of staff that I'm aware of, and since my last beacon was a corporate one, it would have involved sharing it amongst 12,000 employees anyway.
The only way my last employer would achieve beacon status incidentally would be to pay the local arsonist off and ask him to do the decent thing one evening.
Beacon status is a gong that broadly is awarded for various areas of service delivery where a council department is thought to be performing sufficiently well enough to be considered 'best practice'. Councils can receive a better annual settlement if achieving it, and be given greater flexibility and responsibility in the service area concerned. If they have achieved it, you'll normally see a little beacon symbol somewhere on its letterhead. It would be considered a feather in the cap for the Chief Executive or the Director of the service concerned, but after that it is of absolutely no relevance to the frontline staff whatsoever. If they seriously think the money gets divided up amongst the team or staff as a bonus then they're clearly barking mad. The frontline staff will never see a penny of it, but will probably be exploited into having a few publicity photographs taken with a councillor where they've all got to stick their thumbs up in the air and smile, or perform some similarly sickening choeragphed set piece. You normally get an email at Christmas too thanking you for all the hard work you've done that has allowed some distant figurehead who never gets involved on the chalk face to take credit for your reflected efforts. In truth most are target driven, and the targets aren't always consistant with local needs and priorities, but rather what some Whitehall Civil Servant thinks is relevant. In that respect it becomes a distraction, as soem of the more ambitious serial gong collectors expend a lot of time conducting meetings and devising presentations to convince an assessment panel that you're a worthy reciepient of the accolade.
By contrast, few staff (if any) take the scheme seriously, and most would rather it just go away and combust (as befits its name). It's just another piece of 'hoop jumping' a department has to perform at the behest of the Government, and very few staff will actually allow the pursuit of such a meaningless corporate objective to affect the way they do their own work or otherwise. It's possible that a manager whose swallowed the corporate propaganda might pressurise staff into target driven output achievement, (sometimes of tenuous relevance or value) but this would be in line with what they would perceive to be personal career enhancement opportunities. No money ever finds its way into the pay packets of staff that I'm aware of, and since my last beacon was a corporate one, it would have involved sharing it amongst 12,000 employees anyway.
The only way my last employer would achieve beacon status incidentally would be to pay the local arsonist off and ask him to do the decent thing one evening.
Actually, after re-reading their accusation its more apparent that what they're suggesting is that most staff are so well motivated and so indoctrinated that they would wantonly go out each day with the expressed purprose of earning the beacon status for their employer such is their unswerving commitment to them. Yeah.... right
I'd estimate about 5% might, and another 15% could if coerced. Most won't give a stuff though. Beacon status is basically the local authority equivilant to the 'charter mark'. If the corporation gets it, well I suppose that's ok, but very few staff will be driven by it, and you'll probably find that a bigger percentage would take greater pleasure in trying to sabotage it
I'd estimate about 5% might, and another 15% could if coerced. Most won't give a stuff though. Beacon status is basically the local authority equivilant to the 'charter mark'. If the corporation gets it, well I suppose that's ok, but very few staff will be driven by it, and you'll probably find that a bigger percentage would take greater pleasure in trying to sabotage it
... earning the beacon status for their employer such is their unswerving commitment to them. Yeah.... right
I'd estimate about 5% might, and another 15% could if coerced ... but very few staff will be driven by it, and you'll probably find that a bigger percentage would take greater pleasure in trying to sabotage it
Sounds like NHS targets, Warbler! Consultant surgeons have a league table regarding the number of patients each has on his/her waiting list who are about to breach the 18-week target. The Trust has stopped publishing this as the surgeon at the bottom of the list (i.e. with the most potential breaches) tends to view it as a badge of honour - more like an ASBO than a spur to do better.
On the original subject though, what kind of punishment would hurt such a person most without making the punisher as bad as him/her?
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