Sharon Shoesmith and Baby P.

"A child dying does not equal a department in disarray" Sharon Shoesmith said, this week  and she may have a small point but it does go to show that social service heads haven't learnt from past tragedies. When Maria Colwell was murdered by William Kepple her stepfather in 1973 he was given eight years in prison later reduced to four years on appeal.  there was a national outcry not only in the media but throughout the country at her death. People in authority ringing their hands saying that this tragedy should never happen again in a caring society. Since then we have child abuse and deaths on a regular occurrence. We have had child abuse throughout history, but since 1945 we've had Dennis O'Neil aged 13, Toddler Holdsworth 2, in 1956, Michael Buckingham 18 month old in 1967. Since Maria Colwell we've had 20 month old Martin Nicoll in 1991, we had 8year old Victoria Climbie, in that same year we had Lauren Wright 6 years old. The list is endless. What do the people in authority do? They have a judicial enquiry they have endless reports costing millions of pounds. Yet at the end of these expensive reports and reviews, nothing happens the abuse still goes on and people like Sharon Shoesmith greatly over paid says that there is nothing that will stop this kind of happenings occurring again. With that  kind of attitude is it any wonder that these abuses and deaths continue. She and people like her sit in their ivory towers overpaid looking out on the world but do nothing positive, and leave the dirty work to low paid over worked social workers. If nothing can't be done to stop this kind of abuse isn't the system at fault? In the last eight weeks of baby Peters life he suffered repeated injuries even though he was visited 60 times by social workers, police officers and doctors. Surely  some of these so called professional people should have spotted something. Or again were they just going through the motions? Did  any of these people having the slightest inclination that baby Peter was in danger not pass their concerns on to people higher up the chain of command or again are there to many levels of bureaucracy before you reach some body that has the power to act. Sharon Shoesmith  for example. What has angered people about her is her arrogance and her remark about "I don't do blame, I'm not in the blame game." No not blame but responsibility, she was paid big money and that big money was to take responsibility for what went on in her department and as such she failed. Perhaps Ed Balls went about dismissing in the wrong manner  but most people would agree that he was correct in dismissing her.