My Heart Bleeds For Them, Harry...

...the review rightly emphasises that both children had the misfortune to be in the care of exceptionally cruel parents and step-parents.

And the double misfortune of being 'safeguarded' by hopeless incompetents. 

So, why are you urging us to take out an onion for them? You cannot deny they failed at their basic function: 

Social workers never saw Arthur on his own to hear from him what his life was like, and they didn’t get close to Star either...

Why not? And if they didn't, why did they ignore those who did their job for them..? 

Star and Arthur’s other relatives could see their deterioration and made reports, including sending photos and videos of bruising to the children that were, after investigation, regarded by professionals as malicious.

Regarded by them with no apparent attempt to verify that? But it's OK, 'new systems' are needed (not, apparantly, any enquiry into why the existing ones aren't working...)!

...while huge attention is given to the need to create such new systems, the psychological and emotional impact of doing child protection work does not get enough attention.

Wait, what? Do you perhaps mean the huilt and anxiety when you fail so hard at your job that the child is murdered?

No. No, Reader, he doesn't... 

A consistent finding in more than 40 years’ worth of child death inquiry reports is that what appeared to be straightforward tasks, such as sending a photograph to another professional, simply didn’t get done. This requires us to explain the unexplainable – and why, time and time again, well-intentioned professionals can’t explain even to themselves their inaction in the face of evidence of marks and injuries.

Well, would you believe it's because the poor dears are just so oberwhelmed? 

...careful attention must be given to the impact that the stress and anxiety that pervades the work has on professionals’ capacities to think, or not think clearly. 

I cannot fathom how someone could write this without a single twinge of shame. 

12 years of research, based on observing face-to-face encounters between social workers and families, shows that those who fill professionals with the most dread and anxiety are parents hostile to involvement. Faced with threats, intimidation or passive aggression in parents not answering the door, the intense anxiety professionals experience clouds their judgement and makes it extremely difficult to think about and tune in to the children, or to even recognise that they have failed to do so.

Perhaps, then, that term 'professionals' is the wrong one to use?

So what will help them, if all that expensive training won't? Is it more money, perchance? Of course it is.

The more compassion social workers are shown, the more money the government invests and time practitioners are given to think and understand how they are relating to children, the less likely it will be that these tragic deaths will occur in future.

Who should show them 'compassion', Harry? It's not going to be me, I can tell you that! 

"These Underclass Scum Are Just Smarter Than Us Oh-Too-Caring Professionals!"

Predictably, the 'Guardian' wheels out a stooge (professor of social work, no less!) to try to deflect blame from the state's agents over the horrific Arthur Labinjo-Hughes case:

...it is very important that inquiries take the effects of poor resourcing and the wider impact of austerity into account when looking into how social workers interacted with Arthur.

All that's missing is a whine about 'Thatcher!'...

It wasn't resources they lacked, it was clearly common sence and a desire to put the child's needs first! 

Which brings us to a final hugely influential factor: the parents and their emotional impact. It is clear that they were frighteningly strategic in their abuse of Arthur and no doubt in concealing it. It has become commonplace for inquiries into such cases to conclude that social workers and others lack “professional curiosity” and miss the obvious because they are too “optimistic”; that the “rule of optimism” results in professionals naively and hopefully believing what parents tell them, and denying what is in front of them.

Because once again, that appears to have been the case here. The photo of a whopping great bruise that social workers 'didn't see' proves that! 

What did these fiendishly cunning Moriartys do, hypnotise them? 

But perhaps sensing that isn't likely to fly, he switches tack effortlessly: it's because they just care too much and can't cope, you horrible right-winger press!

My years of practice and research into child protection social work suggests that far from being optimistic, when faced with such aggressive and manipulative parents, social workers’ states of mind are often closer to helplessness. They are outmanoeuvred and overcome by the suffering and sadness in the atmosphere of such homes and in the children’s lives.

Then they aren't the right people for the job, and they shouldn't be in it. If I failed a task because I was 'overcome with hopelessness' I'd be sent for retraining or fired! 

Why doesn't that ever apply to these people? 

Covid, social distancing and the personal risks social workers routinely had to take to see children in their homes increased the complexity still further. The more that is taken into account – along with the emotional demands and funding deficits and systemic problems that mean social workers are faced with obstacles that make their job much more difficult than it needs to be – the more can be learned from Arthur’s tragic death.

We learned all we needed to learn from Baby P, Dylan Tiffin-Brown and Evelyn-Rose Muggleton, Victoria Climbie, Daniel Pelka, Ellie Butler... the list goes on and on and on. 

And it will continue to go on and on and on until social work is overhauled and this kind of incompetence is not tolerated and excused.