The recent court judgement rejecting Sharon Shoesmith’s appeal against her treatment by Haringey Council & others reminds us of how, in contrast, one of her predecessors prospered by simply transferring out of Haringey after Victoria Climbie’s death while her political overseers prospered by remaining in Haringey, offering themselves to a gullible electorate, election after election…
Oh, the distractions of Spring cleaning! In the case of carpet laying, admittedly historical distractions. Ripping up a strip of mouldy boxroom axminster this morning I found a yellowing page of The Independent made for a perfect excuse to put off till tomorrow what I didn’t feel up to today. An all too common Haringey failing, ’tis true – though I’m not so sure that Lord Laming wanted it swept under a Haringey (or even Harringay) carpet for quite so long.
“Social services ‘chaos’ before Climbie death: by Terri Judd – Saturday, 19 January 2002
More than 100 at-risk children were waiting to be assigned to a social worker only months before Victoria Climbie’s death, it was revealed.
Haringey Social Services, the last local authority to deal with the eight-year-old before her death in February 2000, was in such a state of disarray that 109 of the children for whom the authority was responsible had not been allocated social workers in May 1999.
Furthermore, the senior councillor overseeing social services was unaware of the state of affairs. Yesterday Gina Adamou, then Lead Member of Social Services, blamed the authority’s senior staff, insisting she had been kept in the dark about the matter.
The Inquiry heard that a report dated 17 May 1999 listed 61 unallocated in the western section and 48 on the eastern side.
‘As the Lead Member you did not know at that time there was (sic) 109 children who the authority had accepted responsibility for that had no social worker allocated to them?’ asked Lord Laming, the inquiry chairman.
‘If I was not told by the director or assistant director I would not know, no,’ replied Mrs Adamou, agreeing with Lord Laming that it was a ‘quite serious’ state of affairs.
‘I was quite upset when I saw this document on Wednesday for the first time,’ she said.
‘I can understand you being upset, Mrs Adamou. The question that the inquiry has to understand is, was that a failure on the behalf of the members of the authority – in particular the senior members of the authority – or was that a failure on behalf of the officers and the senior officers of the authority?’ replied the chairman.
Mrs Adamou insisted the fault did not lie with the elected councillors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A spokesman for Haringey Council said: ‘Victoria’s case was allocated within a matter of days. By November 1999 we had reduced the number [unallocated] to six.’ “
Had she lived, Victoria Climbie would now be a young woman of 18+, possibly living in Harringay Ward and about to exercise her right to vote for her very first Labour Councillor. She just might want to ask the former Social Services Lead Member and later Mayor about that ‘quite serious state of affairs’ in May 1999 – or indeed about those forgotten years and responsibilities at the turn of the millennium.
Haering's Hege 