The Laming Report attached ……..laming-report-march-09

The General Social Care Council

Social Care was for many years unregulated but under the Care Standards Act 2000 a whole set of regulatory bodies were set up, starting with The National Care Standards Commission (NCSC) to inspect services such as children’s homes, fostering services and older people services – services which had hitherto been inspected in-house by local authority inspection teams.

The NCSC was quickly replaced by the CSCI (Commission for Social Care Inspection – same people, different name) and in April 2009 the CSCI ceased to exist with Ofsted taking on the regulatory responsibilities in respect to child care services.

It is widely accepted that the demise of the CSCI (and its mother NCSC) is the end of an error, as distinct from an era. They were not distinguished by a long list (if indeed any) success as a regulator. Now the regulation, in child care falls to Ofsted – those nice people who thought Haringey Council fit for purpose whilst Baby Peter was already dead.

I believe there needs to be regulation and indeed it needs to be independently operated, preferably via the private as distinct from the public sector. Public sector folk cost too much – take a look at sick pay costs. Indicative we think of a combination of outrageously generous service conditions, incompetent leadership (i.e. politicians) and indifference (that aint my job mate).

There were and remain several other organisations set up under the Care Standards Act 2000 with the brief to regulate social workers, one such being the General Social Care Council (GSCC). Regrettably they too have a bit of a history of incompetence, a single, very scary but indicative example I set out below – this is the complete Care Standards Tribunal (CST) finding on an appeal against the nice folk at the GSCC. Believe me, they aint that nice and the CST seem to think so too.

This CST finding is published and sourced in full from the CST website. Please note the GSCC have never published anything (publicly) on the case matter. Exposure of other GSCC failings will follow. See the uploaded document attached.

yvonne-brenda-henry

Wilt

May 2009

Rottweiler

What is the difference between a social worker and a Rottweiler?

You can normally get your kids back from a Rottweiler!

Well, the above is true unless of course you are Baby Peter (Baby P) or Victoria Climbe. Neither of them had a chance of being looked after by someone who had their interests as paramount, as is the fundamental principle of the Children Act 1989. And both infants of course had the misfortune of coming (or rather not) under the child protection monitoring of Haringey Council – that place where social workers are generally unmanaged, not supported and victimised by more senior officers when the proverbial hits the fan.

Do not get me wrong, I am sure that some individuals need the equivalent professional experience of being hung, drawn and quartered but I remain to be convinced that (in the fullness of time) those on the frontline actually did require to be sacked, named, shamed and vilified. I prefer to wait a time to see if (assuming the workers do so) any appeals to the Care Standards Tribunal uphold any unreasonable treatment by the responsible employer and other authorities i.e. the General Social Care Council.

Now the Haringey Director (Sharon Shoesmith) was rather dramatically sacked, named, shamed and vilified – for Gawd sake she is a teacher and not (in social care terms) a child care expert. I know it sounds odd, but yes teachers are not child care experts – if they were I would probably be ‘normal’ and never have become a social worker! The fact is, the Education Agenda (a key focus of Government and its fellow idiots Ofsted) overshadows the shared duty of now combined Education and Children’s (Social) Services in exactly the same way that social care was overshadowed (and still is in adult care) by the Department of Health, when it had the remit of social care services.

Shoesmith never had a hope in hell of competently managing, in all places Haringey, a joint education and children’s social care service portfolio. Nor, frankly do most other local authorities, although there are very notable and much admired exceptions across the country, e.g. Worcestershire, Dudley, Solihull, North Somerset, Wrexham and various others. The fact is that one cannot tack onto some other major portfolio (such as health or education) the responsibilities of child welfare or adult social care. There needs to be a social care portfolio, separate, distinct and properly funded – personally I would outsource the whole sector into private (and I distinguish that from so called ‘voluntary’ sector – private business by another name) business people. In fact I would go even further – privatise the whole of local government. However, that is another debate.

Teachers are teachers, are teachers. Although we have dedicated teachers with responsibility for child protection (an improvement on years ago) it remains a fact that they are focused on education (some might argue against that suggestion) and any training (comparative to social care workers) they have on child protection is limited – indeed it is probably an add-on compulsory module rather than intrinsic to the basic programme. They have no idea whatsoever, background training or first notion of operating a child protection service – so why in the hell are they appointed to manage it? Well the answer of course comes down to politicians, the morons who have not a first clue about social care and less so the particular complexities of child protection. They in turn have relied on the former National Care Standards Commission which was very quickly succeeded by the Commission for Care Inspection and which in turn lost its mandate to regulate (on child care) to, those other morons, Ofsted.

The NCSC as reinvented in the form of the CSCI are generally (sometimes unfairly but mostly correctly) deemed as the end of an error, as distinct from the end of an era. Ofsted may have some competence in education matters but they are on social care regulation likely to become the next incompetents who think they can regulate social care, along with the total fools at the GSCC and its sister organisations in the other 3 UK regions (e.g. the Care Council for Wales – equal dorks to the GSCC).

Ofsted of course, whilst inspecting Haringey Council and knowing Baby P was ruthlessly murdered, gave the Council a positive report following inspection. Ofsted said the Council lied or gave misleading information, but it would not have taken much whit or basic competence to give some very special attention to a local authority who were implicated in the death of Victoria Climbe. Shock, horror the Council tried to cover up its failings. What Ofsted were you doing, you absolute Dorks? It is standard practice for many (not all) Council’s to always put their best foot forward and hide that which would reflect badly on their services. That is why we need inspectors, hopefully with some modicum of insight, intelligence and competence to identify problems. You know, doing your job!

Word has it that Ofsted are to outsource inspection work .Well, it cannot get worse unless they retain inspection in-house. Remember the head of Ofsted is married to a Labour MP who (shock horror) fiddled his Commons allowance. It’s incredible how a senior labour MP can find and marry a simple idiot from Ofsted who is not only a public joke but in -house regarded as a complete jerk, or so I am reliably informed. Obviously, in society terms there is some unwritten but magic rule that determines that idiots will meet and copulate with equally idiotic partners – I hate to think what the offspring might turn out like. I cannot go there, the thought is too scary.

This website/blog is dedicated to keeping an eye on the those ‘nice’ regulators who are seemingly not monitored by anyone or are at ‘arms length’ from elected Ministers or just simply left to get on with it without any real scrutiny – Ministers and politicians in general cannot be trusted on fundamental concepts such as integrity let alone summon the brain power to understand complex professional issues, and thus that gap needs to be filled.

Times have changed and the facility of the www now enable greater communication between citizens about issues of governance and in particular regarding those people and institutions who aim to govern our lives with increasing powers and technology to allegedly promote greater good. How do those agents of greater good achieve their stated objectives, and do they actually work in practice? We think not in many cases.

Nameless bureaucrats in Whitehall and elsewhere, politicians of every variety and colour, the media and other sorcerers think they can get a handle on matters but it is a fact that they are simply self-serving. Intuitions by definition are self serving as they need to justify their existence. They claim to be ‘listening organisations’ with a warm and cuddly feel, but you try penetrating their armoured soft furry exterior – their hidden vipers will poison you, usually by personality assassination, or worse.

Regulatorwatch will hold those regulators, sometimes total idiots, to account and you (and they, and their masters – the Ministers) can judge whether in practice they have their ear to the ground, their eye on the ball and a leg to stand on in terms of value for money – in short, are they up to the task they were designed to achieve. In some cases, was their task simply to give a false impression of probity in management of affairs – you know, like the Commons committee’s that ensure compliance of Elected Members of Parliament in the mismanagement of their sordid affairs. Mmmmmmm!!!

This website/blog has a particular emphasis on Social Care, its institutions, particularly its regulators and the political and media efforts at management or opinions on the sector. It is hosted by a social care expert long in tooth and well peeved by politicians, the media and others who foolhardily think they understand anything about looking after children, older people or preventing abuse, or even more preventing crime.

This website/blog represents the professional and wider (reasoned/reasonable) public views on social care – idiots’, social work haters, the average Sun reader and paedophiles (probably interconnected) need not attempt to post messages – all postings are moderated by me (assisted by software) to exclude you.

Furthermore, nothing unlawful will be posted on this website but contributors will need to satisfy themselves that they do not breach any laws.

We pay homage to and acknowledge the Guido Fawkes website http://www.order-order.com/ for inspiration and our motivation.

You know, this site has only been up a week and is not yet listed in google search and yet the police have found regulatorwatch.co.uk – ip address 62.136.100.253 (Mr Plod) has been visiting already! Amazing.

I will be posting them a query but if Mr Plod visits again perhaps he would like to explain in a posting. Mmmmmm we will see if that happens.

Plod, your booked mate. You were found making numerous hits on the site:

visiting 4 pages

making 15 hits (clicks) on the site

Downloading 226.35 KB on 22 May 2009 at 15:15 hrs

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