Panorama: Shannon: The Mother of All Lies

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Jetfire
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Panorama: Shannon: The Mother of All Lies

Post by Jetfire »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... _All_Lies/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_Matthews


It's like a microcosm of much of what is wrong with british society. Plus the Social Services are shown to be rubbish again!
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Cliffjumper
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Post by Cliffjumper »

The worst bit is the next time some scrubber does have her kid pinched, this will be the first thing that springs to mind...

That said, the authorities didn't do a bad job, realising something was up fairly early on.
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Jetfire
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Post by Jetfire »

I'm not so sure. They may have known about her quality of parenting but chose not to take action for some years even though neighbours continued to report them.
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Cliffjumper
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Jetfire wrote:I'm not so sure. They may have known about her quality of parenting but chose not to take action for some years even though neighbours continued to report them.
May have. It's difficult to act unless there's something solid.
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Jetfire
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Post by Jetfire »

Nothing solid?

Besides a pysch evaluation which said she wasn't able to look after her kids because she is too selfabsorbed?
Besides the fact her kids were often so dirty her neighbours had to physically scrap dirt off her feet becaus eit woudl wash off?
Despite the fact Social Workers visited the home and it was often in a massive state and without electricity?

I'd say there was a lot of evidence to say she wasn't a capable mother. In fact they were were planning action at some stage but just droped it because of bureaucratic changes to the case.
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Cliffjumper
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Jetfire wrote:Besides a pysch evaluation which said she wasn't able to look after her kids because she is too selfabsorbed?
Besides the fact her kids were often so dirty her neighbours had to physically scrap dirt off her feet becaus eit woudl wash off?
Despite the fact Social Workers visited the home and it was often in a massive state and without electricity?
Seriously, have you ever been on a working class estate? Do you honestly think there are enough resources to tackle every report that says something like that?
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Jetfire
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Post by Jetfire »

I grew up on one and work at an inner city school.

However here was a case where they have everything set-up to deal with the situation and just basically had to put it through and didn't due to technicalities. At that point Social Services would pass the kids on to the right agency and check up on them there ratehr than the family. This was a case of where a family was victim of massive nelgect and Social was aware of it since before Shannon was born. This wasn't just the usual shitty bad families (who at least have caring parents even if they bring them up in a shit way for the rest of society) but children in danger due to years of neglect.

However Social Services should do more. However I do agree that Social Services needs to basically increase in size massively to deal effictively with the families most vunerable. They are constantly working under massive stress, in great part due to the governments stupid target culture, and have never really been as resourced as they should be. Considering the mass load of useless bureaucratic jobs they have created in the services they could have created and invested in a lot more social workers.
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