Sara Sharif.

 This 10 year old child was murdered by her father and stepmother. We don’t want to hear the ridiculous words - never again. The agencies of the state all failed this child, including: social workers, school, police, health services, neighbours and other family members. We have over many years heard the same repeated stories. There are a number of issues here. I will enumerate a few: social workers are not sufficiently skilled and trained in understanding family dynamics. I worked in a specialist setting from 1979 to 1985 - The Marlborough Family Service, in St John’s Wood. I was an expert witness on child protection. The unit had the resources and facilities to observe seriously dysfunctional families on a daily basis. They would attend the unit - for up to 18 months. So we were able empirically to note any changes in positive behaviour. The unit was closed down as it cost so much money to run. However this unique working environment - enabled us to encourage change in patterns of behaviour, that cannot be replicated on a weekly visit of 30 minutes, by under resourced social workers. This scandal will be repeated many more times as political parties are not prepared to put the money into changing the status quo. 

As I’ve said the - central problem is the successive governments are not prepared to put the money behind these expensive schemes - that require a number of highly skilled practitioners. In the unit we had the following: 2 consultant psychiatrists, 2 other training psychiatrists, 2 child psychotherapist, a clinical psychologist, me as the senior social worker and specialist in child protection, occupational therapist and 2 full time school age teachers, for the school unit. Moreover we had specialist in family therapy come and work with us from America. Dr Salvador Minuchin, consultant in family therapy from Philadelphia and Dr Carl Whitaker, also from America. This extra expertise enabled us to greatly improve our skills in diagnosis and treatment of these difficult trans-generational dysfunctional family relationships. There was no cost benefit analysis on a - longitudinal basis of the effectiveness of the unit. As they closed it down.

So unless the public and politicians - are prepared to put money in over a very long period - do not keep crying crocodile tears over these  very complex cases? A report published in 1969 entitled Born to Fail says that these issues of poverty pass down through the generations. The Nation Children’s Bureau report was by Peter Wedge and Hilary Prosser and nothing has fundamentally changed. How very depressing. 

In addition there’s another salient feature of almost all these families referred to the Family Day Until, were working class. This again politicians are not prepared to consider. This is one reason for the continuing underfunding of these facilities. Class has a profound impact on families. They’re generally speaking, less educated, in manual or low skilled jobs, a history of unemployment and with some a history of mental illness, especially depression and drug or alcohol abuse. Child physical and or sexual abuse is another factor. That is why I was - seconded to the unit. So taken all together these families - under normal circumstances - wouldn’t get to a place like this. Now they cannot as it’s been closed down by myopic politicians.