Some are having a very good war...

[Tom Joad]

Thought I'd bump this in the wake of the little toddler, Arthur. The title of the thread is something I have said many times in the last 18 months. I know social services, the police and just about everyone has suffered spending cuts but some just need a rocket up them. They need to remember that they still need to do the job they are paid for.
The police, apparently came and went. Social services, the same. This lad came into a situation that the authorities should have been aware of. The details are there for us all to see. The step mother is a walking disaster and has been so since a teenager (maybe before). She must have been flagged many times. Add to that the fact that the authorities  had been told by both sets of grandparents.
Covid is the new now.  People need to stop finding excuses to not do their jobs.

The govt need to find more money to pay social workers a proper salary for the work they are expected to do. Then their departments may just have enough staff to do the job properly and not run at 20% + vacancy rates which can be common in local authorities. They could also keep experienced workers longer and not rely so much on newly qualified social workers in their first job. If they earned just half of what some GP's earn I imagine it would be equivalent of a 20-40% wage increase. This would attract a more talented pool of workers. The service is under resourced, under paid and under trained coupled with a big rise in referrals of children since Covid.

I agree, but that is a separate issue. Many of those already in the jobs simply are not doing them. In this latest tragedy, social workers were informed more than once, the murderer was well known to them, the police didn't do anything. More than one agency let the lad down.