The Student Room Group

what is wrong with middle class liberal professionals?

Middle-class liberal professionals have been letting children down for the least 70 years. Here some examples of police, the media, teacher and social workers in the national media.

http://www.questia.com/read/1G1-153368757/when-the-victim-is-white-does-anyone-care

The police did nothing to stop gang crime because of being called racist which lead to the murder of a 15 year old child Kriss Donald.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11469437/Rochdale-child-grooming-7-police-officers-involved-in-failed-investigation-will-not-disciplined.html

Local professionals failied over 1500 children who were being groomied for sex by local men over a 20 year period. At least they did not want to be seen as racist at worst they look at child victims as worthless and too blame for being abused.

http://victoriaclimbie.hud.ac.uk/background.html

Partly allowed to happen by social workers because they through violent punishment toward children is part of Africa culture which it is not part or of any culture. if she was a white British child she would most likely to be put in care and would still be alive.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/baby-p-the-official-files-1023092.html

Baby P failed by protect child professionals "horrifying death" was down to the incompetence of almost every member of staff who came into contact with him, official reports say.
Idk but the guardian readers are always moaning on Twitter.. :biggrin:
I think it's as simple as people are trying to preserve their own lives i.e. they could always abduct babies to save them if the police aren't willing to intervene but that'd ruin their lives (the person breaking the law).

It's difficult to get a job done in helping in this life without getting caught up in bureaucracy.

And so what's left... To campaign, work harder in their safeguarding jobs if they do them, activism, protest, speak out on whatever platform (online, newspapers etc)
Original post by Little Popcorns

It's difficult to get a job done in helping in this life without getting caught up in bureaucracy.

And so what's left... To campaign, work harder in their safeguarding jobs if they do them, activism, protest, speak out on whatever platform (online, newspapers etc)


Thought about that for a minute, and wondered what would happen if someone who worked in the social care office where the Baby P case was being processed had a major falling out with their boss over it.

Boss' hands are tied by bureaucracy, but this one case worker is absolutely adamant that the kid is obviously being mistreated by the parents, and is letting the boss know that s/he's a spineless **** for not doing anything about it because a kids' life is at risk and the boss needs to sort their ****ing moral compass out. Y'know, the standard letting off steam kinda rant fuelled by justified moral righteousness and indignation at inaction.

Sadly, despite being right, that person would most likely not have a job by the end of the day. Why? Because it goes back to the first paragraph of your post: people trying to preserve their own lives. In this case, it's the boss trying to make sure that they keep their paychecks for their cushty office job coming in on time. Can't have mutiny, even if the opponent is correct. Would be bad for business. So you weed out the bad apples, and keep all the yes-men. "Don't worry guys, we're doing all we can. Ignore Dave, he's had a rough day". Etc.

I'm just typing as thoughts come into my head, so apologies if it's a bit of a mess.

So what could the riled up case-worker do instead? Probably go online to social media and post about what's going on, but then they might lose their job for going behind their boss' back anyway. It'd be a lot more fun to tell their boss to **** off to their face, so posting online is out of the window (I mean, if you're going to lose your job over something then you may as well go out in a blaze of glory).

Could do both. The first for personal satisfaction, the second for public awareness. But then, that runs the risk of getting the police involved, and the family of Baby P being made aware of what's happening before someone comes to take the kid away.

Unfortunately (RE: bureaucracy) there's sometimes a limited amount people can do to help others due to the restrictions we've put on ourselves via our working system, and that really sucks. But yeah I totally agree with you, more needs to be done to alleviate those restrictions for the good of morality and humanity in general.
Original post by Drunk Punx
Thought about that for a minute, and wondered what would happen if someone who worked in the social care office where the Baby P case was being processed had a major falling out with their boss over it.

Boss' hands are tied by bureaucracy, but this one case worker is absolutely adamant that the kid is obviously being mistreated by the parents, and is letting the boss know that s/he's a spineless **** for not doing anything about it because a kids' life is at risk and the boss needs to sort their ****ing moral compass out. Y'know, the standard letting off steam kinda rant fuelled by justified moral righteousness and indignation at inaction.

Sadly, despite being right, that person would most likely not have a job by the end of the day. Why? Because it goes back to the first paragraph of your post: people trying to preserve their own lives. In this case, it's the boss trying to make sure that they keep their paychecks for their cushty office job coming in on time. Can't have mutiny, even if the opponent is correct. Would be bad for business. So you weed out the bad apples, and keep all the yes-men. "Don't worry guys, we're doing all we can. Ignore Dave, he's had a rough day". Etc.

I'm just typing as thoughts come into my head, so apologies if it's a bit of a mess.

So what could the riled up case-worker do instead? Probably go online to social media and post about what's going on, but then they might lose their job for going behind their boss' back anyway. It'd be a lot more fun to tell their boss to **** off to their face, so posting online is out of the window (I mean, if you're going to lose your job over something then you may as well go out in a blaze of glory).

Could do both. The first for personal satisfaction, the second for public awareness. But then, that runs the risk of getting the police involved, and the family of Baby P being made aware of what's happening before someone comes to take the kid away.

Unfortunately (RE: bureaucracy) there's sometimes a limited amount people can do to help others due to the restrictions we've put on ourselves via our working system, and that really sucks. But yeah I totally agree with you, more needs to be done to alleviate those restrictions for the good of morality and humanity in general.


I'm going to come back to this, but I think how whistleblowers are treated is an important point that you've picked up on here. For all the corporate bluster there is about how people raising concerns will be protected, often whistleblowers pay for doing the right thing with their careers.
Original post by Drunk Punx
Thought about that for a minute, and wondered what would happen if someone who worked in the social care office where the Baby P case was being processed had a major falling out with their boss over it.

Boss' hands are tied by bureaucracy, but this one case worker is absolutely adamant that the kid is obviously being mistreated by the parents, and is letting the boss know that s/he's a spineless **** for not doing anything about it because a kids' life is at risk and the boss needs to sort their ****ing moral compass out. Y'know, the standard letting off steam kinda rant fuelled by justified moral righteousness and indignation at inaction.

Sadly, despite being right, that person would most likely not have a job by the end of the day. Why? Because it goes back to the first paragraph of your post: people trying to preserve their own lives. In this case, it's the boss trying to make sure that they keep their paychecks for their cushty office job coming in on time. Can't have mutiny, even if the opponent is correct. Would be bad for business. So you weed out the bad apples, and keep all the yes-men. "Don't worry guys, we're doing all we can. Ignore Dave, he's had a rough day". Etc.

I'm just typing as thoughts come into my head, so apologies if it's a bit of a mess.

So what could the riled up case-worker do instead? Probably go online to social media and post about what's going on, but then they might lose their job for going behind their boss' back anyway. It'd be a lot more fun to tell their boss to **** off to their face, so posting online is out of the window (I mean, if you're going to lose your job over something then you may as well go out in a blaze of glory).

Could do both. The first for personal satisfaction, the second for public awareness. But then, that runs the risk of getting the police involved, and the family of Baby P being made aware of what's happening before someone comes to take the kid away.

Unfortunately (RE: bureaucracy) there's sometimes a limited amount people can do to help others due to the restrictions we've put on ourselves via our working system, and that really sucks. But yeah I totally agree with you, more needs to be done to alleviate those restrictions for the good of morality and humanity in general.


Looking at the baby P case specifically, there were massive failings across various agencies, the police, health service and social services. Instead of sharing information about his repeated hospital visits for what were clearly non accidental injuries things were not escalated and sadly, he was murdered by those who were supposed to care for him. There has been many investigations into the failings around his case, and while it won't bring that little boy back, people have lost their jobs and careers over his case, recommendations to improve how safeguarding is carried out has been made, sadly cases like baby P still happen. I don't think any one individual is to blame in cases like this, the system and bureaucracy lead to a breakdown in communication and things are not acted upon in a timely manner to protect children from harm.


Safeguarding children is something there's a huge emphasis on in my work (healthcare) even though it's incredibly rare I encounter children within my role. I've seen a change in how people report concerns now when working in other areas, people don't want to be the one that missed something so sometimes what appears to be the most trivial of things will get reported. In one way this is a positive move, however, social services are massively understaffed and they're the ones who have to follow this up. I work in Birmingham and there's been massive concerns about how their children's services have been operating over the last few years, they're struggling to recruit and retain staff and ultimately, it's children at risk who end up paying the price.

With whistleblowing, people have taken other measures like you've mentioned with social media or the press. The abuse that was happening at Winterborne View in Bristol is a good example of this. It's horrific what went on there, especially when someone tried to whistleblow several times but was ignored by the private provider that ran the home. People who whistleblow get ostracised, often they lose their jobs (constructive ways are often found to do this) and word gets round that they've been the one who rocked the boat. There has been talk of better protections for people who raise concerns, it's needed, as you've said, in the end people do want to look after themselves and their jobs too.
(edited 7 years ago)

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