The Hard faced Cow

[kog]

The former children's services chief who lost her job over the Baby P tragedy lost an appeal against her sacking today.


Sharon Shoesmith, 55, was dismissed without compensation from her senior position at Haringey Council in north London last month after a damning report into her department's failings.

She launched an attempt to overturn the decision to sack her but a panel of councillors rejected her appeal.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/baby-p-chief-loses-sacking-appeal-1331405.html


The woman is morally reprehensible and should never working in this social health care again

[Libby]

This woman makes me so angry i see red every time her name is mentioned! I can hardly bring myself to read anything about her. How dare she appeal! Thank God it was rejected. The woman is beneath contempt and clearly has no conscience at all. The memory of Baby P and his suffering will stay with me forever, and it should stay in this woman's conscience forever too. I despise her.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

At the risk of being thrown to the lions, people who actually worked with her seemed to think she was bloody marvellous and she had a great track record prior to this. Obviously somebody has to take overall responsibility for this and as the one at the one at the top it fell on her, but I'm not convinced she necessarily deserves this ire.

[kog]

Sometime in the distant past she may have been competent in her line of work - but its evident something went seriously wrong

[Foxy]

I was just gob-smacked when she said in an interview that 'best practice' had been carried out.

The interviewer was just as shocked and asked her what did she think the public would feel when they heard she considered it was 'best practice'?

[Libby]

However competent she may have been in the past has been blown completely out of the water with the fate of Baby P. There is no excuse for overlooking the obvious signs of abuse the baby suffered. We are not talking about overlooking one incident, but at least 60 visits to the baby's house that were noted alone.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

Yeah, but she didn't personally make any of them, did she?

I fully understand why she was booted out and given the magnitude of the case, and more importantly the press and public reaction, she really should have resigned rather than wait to be pushed. Also it's quite nice seeing management being expected to take the blame for a change. I just think the reactions above are a bit OTT.

[Libby]

You could be right, but as a mother it's a really sensitive issue to me and most women and i am afraid being at the top of the tree someone has to be held accountable. It isn't so much that Mrs Shoesmith is solely responsible that is the issue, but her seeming dismissiveness and denial about the proceedings of the case that irks people so much.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

As a non-mother obviously I don't care in the slightest when a baby is tortured to death. I suspect though that her reason for not going is that she hadn't done much wrong rather than thinking that the whole issue wasn't really that important.

I dunno, I haven't read the report and I don't work in children's social services and I wasn't involved in any of it. But if what was reported after the verdict was true then it was the legal team who advised there was not enough reason to take the baby into care, and I wonder why it isn't the director of legal services whose head was on the block for it.

Ultimately, someone had to be a scapegoat and I'd rather it was a top bod than an overworked underpaid social worker trying to do their best in incredibly difficult circumstances. I'm just starting to think that the person who screwed up actually getting the blame is a rare happening.

[Libby]

I completely agree with you there, it's a rare occasion when the person actually at fault takes the blame. I apologise if i offended you by saying "as a mother". I didn't mean for one minute that non-mother's didn't care. I think this case has struck a cord with us all.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

No offence taken!

If she has lost her job unjustly (and I guess that she feels this is the case) then it hasn't done the children of Haringey any favours.

[Libby]

Yes indeed! We can only hope that the team that presumably replaces Sharon Shoesmith's social service team is more astute at recognising the signs of these poor children/babies at risk.

[puffin]

I hope they are looking at the whole system, top to bottom, in Haringey. Whilst the buck has to stop at the top social services weren't the only department to make serious errors of judgement. Health professionals and the police also saw the poor little mite.

[kog]

This woman was a liability to children, inspectors found a catalog of serious failings in Shoesmths department, from manegemnt right down the chain, and thats why she was sacked, and rightly so.

The cow should have done the decent thing and resiged, but she was sacked and decided to appeal to save her £100,000 a year job, that she wasn't very good at.

Respect from Shoesmiths co workers came from the education department where she was director of education and did exel in this role.

She didn't even have the decency to appolagise to Baby P's natural father.

She said in one interview: “The child was killed by members of his own family and not by social services. The very sad fact is that we can't stop people who are determined to kill children.”


With an attitude like that no child would be safe on her watch