Sara Shariff

[Tom8]

Strange that there seems to be no topic on this, but apologies if there is one.

Firstly what an awful and tragic story for this poor little girl. I just cannot fathom how anyone can treat someone like this and certainly not a young girl, it is horrific.

Secondly, surely we must do better in caring for at risk children. Yet again we heard that ubiquitous phrase "lessons must be learned" as the wider story is investigated. How many lessons do local authorities need to learn and do they ever learn them as year after year we hear these horrific cases. The story of Sara seems ludicrous, putting her directly back into harm's way with an already known risk family. Did race play a card here meaning they were too scared to act, we saw a case in Leeds earlier this year where intervention caused a riot?

When we had financial issues people called for "bankers" to be imprisoned, we are now looking at criminal prosecutions in the post office. It is incredible we have never seen prosecutions in the child care area where the common themes (lessons learned) are apathy, laziness, ineptitude and brazen stupidity.

What next?

[milesgiles]

Seems the father was a student visa overstayer who had two sham marriages to stay in this country

Home office won’t confirm..

[911Spanker]

milesgiles said:

Seems the father was a student visa overstayer who had two sham marriages to stay in this country

Home office won’t confirm..

Has this got anything to do with the case?

[Gecko1978]

911Spanker said:

milesgiles said:

Seems the father was a student visa overstayer who had two sham marriages to stay in this country

Home office won’t confirm..

Has this got anything to do with the case?

Well arguably if the Home office did its job he wouldn't have been here to murder his daughter. He would have done it on Pakistan so on balance no has no relevance

[Biker 1]

I'm almost lost for words on this one.
Injuries involving a cricket bat, scores of broken bones, bite marks, burns..... Utterly appalling how humans can sink to these depths.
As for the 'lessons learned': I vividly remember hearing the Victoria Cliembe case on the radio as I was driving my car - the details were so horrific I had to pull over to compose myself.
I don't see a racial element to these cases - the whole sorry list from the last 20-odd years includes children from many different backgrounds.
Will lessons be actually learnt this time around?? I sincerely hope so but not holding my breath.....

[vaud]

Tom8 said:

How many lessons do local authorities need to learn and do they ever learn them as year after year we hear these horrific cases. The story of Sara seems ludicrous, putting her directly back into harm's way with an already known risk family.

At face value it would seem to be a massive hole in the process. They intervened numerous times and then asked the school to monitor. She was take out of school, so no monitoring. The flaw seems to be that the authorities didn't intervene again to check on the girl.

She had been in foster care previously due to concerns about her mother's violence.

Poor thing never had a chance. There needs to be a grown up conversation about the thresholds for removing a child from their home.

Sentence? I guess 35 years for both.

[Robertb]

Its a horrific case, as they all are. It always seems obvious in retrospect and its hard to believe that these cases can't be more effectively managed with specific procedures and an audit trail so every case gets dealt with in the same way so that there can then be no accusations of being overzealous, or not taking action, or taking different action because of circumstances etc. I don't understand the rules surrounding child protection enough to make an intelligent comment.

There is a video on the BBC site of her playing the guitar and singing. Absolutely heart-breaking.

[milesgiles]

911Spanker said:

milesgiles said:

Seems the father was a student visa overstayer who had two sham marriages to stay in this country

Home office won’t confirm..

Has this got anything to do with the case?

A family murders a child who quite possibly shouldn’t have been in the country at all and you are asking the relevance?

Is that the question?

[Dynion Araf Uchaf]

these cases are never going to be stopped by social services whilst there is no money in the pot to fund this service properly. And whilst I would agree with anyone suggesting that the calibre of social worker may not be at the highest level, that again comes back to funding.

I would assume that there will be a coroners inquest over this, to apportion the facts and the blame.

However until a jury apportions the blame to the person that has caused the lack of funding, things won't change. In my opinion the route cause is the chancellor of the exchequer, or a senior civil servant ( who ever is responsible for the cut backs)

[tangerine_sedge]

As is always the way with these cases, social services will get the blame. The reality is that social services have been eviscerated over the last 15 years with social care professionals having to handle an ever increasing workload. It's no surprise that regular checks aren't made and cases like this fall through the gaps.

Anecdote : A friend of my wife works in helping children who are struggling at school/not attending and has over 200 cases on her worklist - each child gets less than an hours thought each month - just a line on a spreadsheet.

This failure and many like it are entirely due to the services being run down. Also see the Police, prisons, NHS, immigration services etc. All these services are interconnected and if properly funded all contribute to reducing these events happening in the future and should enable them overall to become cheaper, akin to Colin Chapmans virtuous circle of reducing weight.

Still, "war on woke" and "stop the boats" eh? /sarcasm

[andymc]

vaud said:

Tom8 said:

How many lessons do local authorities need to learn and do they ever learn them as year after year we hear these horrific cases. The story of Sara seems ludicrous, putting her directly back into harm's way with an already known risk family.

At face value it would seem to be a massive hole in the process. They intervened numerous times and then asked the school to monitor. She was take out of school, so no monitoring. The flaw seems to be that the authorities didn't intervene again to check on the girl.

She had been in foster care previously due to concerns about her mother's violence.

Poor thing never had a chance. There needs to be a grown up conversation about the thresholds for removing a child from their home.

Sentence? I guess 35 years for both.

so Joe tax payer footing the bill for an over stayer, hang them both

[milesgiles]

tangerine_sedge said:

As is always the way with these cases, social services will get the blame. The reality is that social services have been eviscerated over the last 15 years with social care professionals having to handle an ever increasing workload. It's no surprise that regular checks aren't made and cases like this fall through the gaps.

Anecdote : A friend of my wife works in helping children who are struggling at school/not attending and has over 200 cases on her worklist - each child gets less than an hours thought each month - just a line on a spreadsheet.

This failure and many like it are entirely due to the services being run down. Also see the Police, prisons, NHS, immigration services etc. All these services are interconnected and if properly funded all contribute to reducing these events happening in the future and should enable them overall to become cheaper, akin to Colin Chapmans virtuous circle of reducing weight.

Still, "war on woke" and "stop the boats" eh? /sarcasm

Have you read the background of this family ?

[milesgiles]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

these cases are never going to be stopped by social services whilst there is no money in the pot to fund this service properly. And whilst I would agree with anyone suggesting that the calibre of social worker may not be at the highest level, that again comes back to funding.

I would assume that there will be a coroners inquest over this, to apportion the facts and the blame.

However until a jury apportions the blame to the person that has caused the lack of funding, things won't change. In my opinion the route cause is the chancellor of the exchequer, or a senior civil servant ( who ever is responsible for the cut backs)

Has funding gone down overall though? Or are more families non nuclear as we lose our traditional values, leaving social workers too thinly spread? Where was the mother in this case?

[Bonefish Blues]

tangerine_sedge said:

As is always the way with these cases, social services will get the blame. The reality is that social services have been eviscerated over the last 15 years with social care professionals having to handle an ever increasing workload. It's no surprise that regular checks aren't made and cases like this fall through the gaps.

Anecdote : A friend of my wife works in helping children who are struggling at school/not attending and has over 200 cases on her worklist - each child gets less than an hours thought each month - just a line on a spreadsheet.

This failure and many like it are entirely due to the services being run down. Also see the Police, prisons, NHS, immigration services etc. All these services are interconnected and if properly funded all contribute to reducing these events happening in the future and should enable them overall to become cheaper, akin to Colin Chapmans virtuous circle of reducing weight.

Still, "war on woke" and "stop the boats" eh? /sarcasm

The Children's Commissioner had some sensible things to say yesterday.

1. Have a common case number for at risk kids and share information across services.
2. Do not allow at risk kids to be withdrawn from mainstream schooling and home schooled.
3. If forget it, but it was equally sensible & grounded.

Agree completely with the pressure on social services, and there's never any credit for the many, many children saved as a result of their intervention, but there's things that can be done. The stats are sobering:

Some 485 children were affected by serious child safeguarding incidents between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel found.

[StevieBee]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

these cases are never going to be stopped by social services whilst there is no money in the pot to fund this service properly. And whilst I would agree with anyone suggesting that the calibre of social worker may not be at the highest level, that again comes back to funding.

I do a bit of work with the team at a large local authority that provides support and intervention for children in abusive situations. This is at county level and they do a lot of partnership working with other counties.

From what I have seen, I'd say the calibre of those working on Child protection are of the highest calibre. What I've deduced from the conversations I've had with some of them, their biggest challenge are the due processes that have to apply that often limit the extent to which they can intervene in certain situations. Their training and experience enables them to instinctively know the difference between robust parenting and abuse but the law does not accommodate instinct.

One worker, a highly experienced lady who'd been doing this for 30 years, said that she could be sat on a bench in a shopping centre and spot the children that are being abused just by looking at their demeanour, how they interact with the adults they are with and vice-versa. But they can only act on cases that are presented to them.

When we hear phrases like 'reform' and 'lessons learned', I'd say it relates more to the processes that apply. I'm sure a bit more funding would be welcomed but I really don't think the lack of it is the primary issue here.

[MickC]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

these cases are never going to be stopped by social services whilst there is no money in the pot to fund this service properly. And whilst I would agree with anyone suggesting that the calibre of social worker may not be at the highest level, that again comes back to funding.

I would assume that there will be a coroners inquest over this, to apportion the facts and the blame.

However until a jury apportions the blame to the person that has caused the lack of funding, things won't change. In my opinion the route cause is the chancellor of the exchequer, or a senior civil servant ( who ever is responsible for the cut backs)

Absolutely right. The OP seems to think jailing social workers is the answer, well that's going to really help recruitment and retention isn't it? They are already working at breaking point and the thresholds of removing children from parents are probably the highest they've ever been. Even in this case if they removed the child, there would be people saying she should be back with her parents - its easy with the benefit of hindsight but if they removed her and she therefore wasn't murdered, would anyone be able to say that saved her life? No.

[Bright Halo]

I was going to start a topic on this but quite frankly I couldn't bring my self to do it as it is so tragic and upsetting.
Maybe others thought the same hence no topic until now.

When you have children and in my case grandchildren of around the same age it makes it even more difficult to hear the details of this case.

I have no words to describe the perpetrators. I only feel numb.

[Dynion Araf Uchaf]

milesgiles said:

Has funding gone down overall though? Or are more families non nuclear as we lose our traditional values, leaving social workers too thinly spread? Where was the mother in this case?

StevieBee said:

I do a bit of work with the team at a large local authority that provides support and intervention for children in abusive situations. This is at county level and they do a lot of partnership working with other counties.

From what I have seen, I'd say the calibre of those working on Child protection are of the highest calibre. What I've deduced from the conversations I've had with some of them, their biggest challenge are the due processes that have to apply that often limit the extent to which they can intervene in certain situations. Their training and experience enables them to instinctively know the difference between robust parenting and abuse but the law does not accommodate instinct.

One worker, a highly experienced lady who'd been doing this for 30 years, said that she could be sat on a bench in a shopping centre and spot the children that are being abused just by looking at their demeanour, how they interact with the adults they are with and vice-versa. But they can only act on cases that are presented to them.

When we hear phrases like 'reform' and 'lessons learned', I'd say it relates more to the processes that apply. I'm sure a bit more funding would be welcomed but I really don't think the lack of it is the primary issue here.

both of these comments relate to funding.

If you increase the bureaucracy you need more manpower to deal with it.

If there are more cases like this, you need more SW's to work on them.

If, as the County Council CEO you decide that more of your budget is needed to tackle climate change by paying for LTN's and you do this by taking money from social care, then you are ultimately accountable for the death of a child, as in this case.

[98elise]

milesgiles said:

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

these cases are never going to be stopped by social services whilst there is no money in the pot to fund this service properly. And whilst I would agree with anyone suggesting that the calibre of social worker may not be at the highest level, that again comes back to funding.

I would assume that there will be a coroners inquest over this, to apportion the facts and the blame.

However until a jury apportions the blame to the person that has caused the lack of funding, things won't change. In my opinion the route cause is the chancellor of the exchequer, or a senior civil servant ( who ever is responsible for the cut backs)

Has funding gone down overall though? Or are more families non nuclear as we lose our traditional values, leaving social workers too thinly spread? Where was the mother in this case?

My mother was a social worker many years ago. Yes funding was cut, vacancies went unfilled, and case loads increased. When you were duty (in early to take early calls from schools etc) any case that came in just became yours to deal with.

At the same time pay was crap, and you had to have a degree. Police were no longer willing to attend visits with potential violent cases (because of their own funding cuts). My mother was threated with a knife twice.

Parents rights were increased when the publics opinion was that that social services had too much power to remove kids.

It's a jobs that's similar to nursing where you have to be well educated yet paid poorly so it attracts people that want to give back to society. Unlike nursing the press hate you, and you are seen as the problem when Parents kill or injured their kids.

I'm amazed anyone would do the job. Many don't last the first year!

Edited by 98elise on Thursday 12th December 11:23

[CoolHands]

It’s obvious any child taken out of school to be home schooled when the family have previously been known to social services is extremely high risk.

Local authority have fked up big time and shouldn’t have allowed the child to be withdrawn from school. Parents have a legal right to home school but the local authority has the duty to ensure the education is of a suitable standard, and thus should have thrown every road block they have in the way of a family like this.