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WHEN Sharon Shoesmith was ordered out of her job as head of children's services in the borough where Baby P died, the Children's Secretary Ed Balls said: “This kind of failure should not be rewarded with compensation or payoffs.” Yet that is what Ms Shoesmith, previously paid a salary of more than £100,000, is now trying to get.
This was the woman who presided over a department which, along with doctors and police, had contact with Baby P's family on 60 occasions but failed to prevent his death after months of abuse at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger.
An official report for Mr Balls on the child protection regime at Haringey Council found deep-rooted management failings going far beyond the Baby P case, ranging from the lack of proper records to failures to identify children at risk.
Yet this was the borough where the death of Victoria Climbié in 2000 had brought promises that never again would social services make such devastating mistakes. Citing the Climbié case, one of Haringey social services' own staff, Nevres Kemal, had raised the alarm over the department's failings before Baby P's death but was removed from her job for acting as a whistleblower.
And after a now-discredited Ofsted report described the department's work in positive terms, Ms Shoesmith even tried to block a further review, six months after the toddler died. She failed to make any apology even after the council leader, George Meehan, had done so, and refused to resign, claiming that her department had “worked effectively”.
In these circumstances, it seems barely credible that Ms Shoesmith should launch an appeal. It will seem to most people entirely unjust that a public servant should be compensated for loss of office after failure on such a scale.
Ms Shoesmith should have the decency to withdraw her claim.
Boris's beat
Boris Johnson's announcement of an extra 50 police officers to patrol London's rail stations and trains fulfils a key election promise. Better public safety was at the heart of his election campaign last year, a response in part to this newspaper's Safer Stations campaign. While the extra British Transport Police will make only a partial contribution to the capital's overall crime-fighting, it is a highly visible one which should help reassure the public. The extra officers, funded by £6 million from City Hall over two years, will cover more than 100 stations and routes, especially in outer London.
The Mayor's announcement is one indication of his robust approach to crime. Today his deputy in charge of policing, Kit Malthouse, also unveiled plans to free up 550 Metropolitan Police officers over the next three years by bringing in civilian “custody officers” to hold prisoners, releasing police who presently do the job. Such civilianisation is, in principle, a sensible way of freeing officers for the front-line work they are trained for. The front line is also where the public wants to see them, as testified in successive opinion polls. Seeing police around to deal with low-level disorder as well as more serious crimes is key to public confidence in the Met — a point the next Met Commissioner must remember too.
And celebrating...
CYCLE LANES. Plans for a 350-kilometre cycle route between St Paul's Cathedral and Notre Dame in Paris would offer those coming from Europe a fine new way to get to the 2012 Olympics. The ambitious proposal will need funding, following cycle network routes in Britain and the line of the disused Dieppe-Paris railway in France. But it could help green the 2012 Games and encourage more people to emulate Britain's world-beating Olympic cyclists. Less dramatically, it would highlight the need for more dedicated cycle lanes in London: if from London to Paris, why not from Brixton to Bow?
Reader views (1)
This women deserves nothing! But of course she will be compensated, sadly this country has no morals when it comes to those that fail, the higher the salary the less they do whilst their underpaid colleagues who really care get no rewards.
- Sarah Wise, London, 07/01/2009 10:10
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