Finger Pointing….

Police have ordered officers working with child abuse cases to take a much tougher line with social workers after the death of Baby P.

In other words, if someone’s going to be blamed, it won’t be them! Hence, we can expect to see far more nonsense like this case in future…

As relations between police and social services continued to deteriorate, ministers indicated yesterday that they were preparing to send a task force to take over Haringey social services because of the “systemic” failures that led to the death of Baby P.

No doubt Gordon Brown is hoping this will prove to be his ‘Falklands’ moment..

Senior officers from the Child Abuse Investigation Command have been told that if they are not happy with decisions made by social workers they have the “capability to request follow-up strategy discussions during complex or protracted investigations”.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer told The Times: “There have been lessons learnt and one is about the confidence of police officers and staff to challenge decisions made by other agencies.

“One of the recommendations in the review relates to the confidence of the police to seek updates and keep on at other agencies. We have already implemented and given training to officers on this.”

Well, so long as they plan to request ‘follow-up strategy discussions’, we can all sleep safe in our beds. Except the abused kids, of course…

The relationship between the council and police was undermined further yesterday when Haringey claimed that there was a delay in the police investigation of “several months” as the case was transferred between officers.

Officers have responded that the only delay was while they were waiting for advice from the Crown Prosecution Service — and it was only a matter of weeks, not months.

“You suck!” “No, you suck!” Remind me again – this case is about children, isn’t it? Not run by them?

Police and social workers clashed a second time over whether the mother of Baby P should be allowed to keep her newborn child, even though he had been born in jail.

As The Times reported last week, council officials did not want the new baby to be taken into care as they said it was “against the human rights” of the mother, but Scotland Yard officers eventually overruled Haringey on the issue.

Note the reasons given for that refusal – not that they didn’t have sufficient evidence to do this, not that they thought it might cause more problems, simply because of the mother’s ‘human rights’. What about the child’s human rights?

Mr Balls said that he had asked Lord Laming, who is conducting a nationwide review of child protection, to examine whether new safeguards are needed to protect social workers from legal action if they try to remove a child from its parents.

Legislation will be published today to force social workers to co-operate more closely with doctors, teachers and key local figures. Mr Balls said that this would promote the “safety and wellbeing” of children.

Yes, why not, Balls? They’ve hopelessly failed to use (wisely) the powers they already have – let’s give them some more!