Don't slam the stable door on social workers

The tragic death of Baby P at the hands of his carers is of course an appalling crime. I think everyone would agree that it should never happen again. Which is why it depresses me almost beyond belief to see people using the murder as a political football, and the social worker in question being potentially castigated in the media, and by definition, all social workers.

I know a social worker. Not the sort that has to make difficult, almost impossible, desicions about child welfare, instead she looks after two guys who can't fend for themselves very well. She works 24 hour shifts, including sleepovers, and when she is on call she has to watch out for things like self-harming, and to try and engage with them, oh, and if one of them has an epileptic fit in the middle of the night, she has to administer rectal valium.

She has an acre of paperwork to fill in, mostly to cover the arses of the people in the management structure above her. Risk assessments, individual learning plans, you name it. And, for all of this, last year, she earned under £16,000. Social Work is one of those jobs like being a teacher, where everyone thinks they can do it better than you. You wouldn't dream of standing over a heart surgeon while he was performing an operation on your auntie and saying "Oi, you've sewn that bit up wonky" - but everyone feels that they can do Social Work and everybody thinks they can teach, egged on by government initiatives to foster "choice" in the public services - choice that people really, actually, don't want. They want public services that work and deliver, not to have to choose between two dysfunctional underfunded public services (often contracted out to the private sector, because we all know how good the private sector is at running things, I mean we have only got to look at the financial services industry .... er...oh.)

While today's shenanigans at Prime Minister's Question Time between Broon and Cameron were vaguely entertaining, sort of a bout of "PMT at PMQ's", they will do nothing to help save future Baby Ps. Why the government feels it can run Haringey social services better than the people who are currently running it beats me (unless they have discovered a secret pot of money) and Cameron of course will not hesitate to jump on any passing bandwagon, especially one that allows him to indulge in a little bit of shroud-waving.

So, once again we hear the sound of stable doors shutting all over Westminster with a resounding clang. There will be an enquiry, involving Ofsted, the Chief Constable, Lord Somebody and probably the Keeper of the Queen's Privy Seal, for all I know.

But nobody wants to talk about the real problem, the lack of that secret little pot of money. Everybody's happy to talk about the symptoms, but not the disease. Until social work is properly funded and resourced, you will always have the situation where potentially, a harrassed, lowly and inexperienced public official can make a mistake with tragic consequences. Unless the downtrodden underclass that we seem to be determined to create with our modern way of life with its relentless obsession with money, fame, celebrity and success as expressed by material possessions, all have a miraculous personality transplant overnight, you will still have kids at risk because of the breakup of what Mrs Thatcher once derided as being non-existent - "society". And it's that mismatch between the growing need and the diminishing resources, coupled with a culture of targets and box ticking which has been fostered and inspired by this government almost to the exclusion of common sense, that causes the problem.

It's a common assertion, especially around the dinner tables of middle England, that the public sector is overstaffed and feather-bedded. It's true, there is some wasteful and totally unecessary spending in public life - MP's expenses, for instance, are a complete scandal. There is no way we should be paying David Cameron's mortgage! But, given that MPs aren't about to sacrifice their salary and expenses to make Haringey social services better funded, then there's only one other option: if you want a social services which really makes a difference because the caseload is not overwhelming and the people who work there are properly-rewarded public sector careerists, then the answer is a simple one - higher council taxes, but that is precisely the thing the angry mob fuelled by the likes of the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the News of the World refuse to countenance. You can't rebuild the ravages of sixty years of social decay on the cheap.

And so poor little Baby P, who was, it seems, sometimes treated like a real football in life, will continue to be kicked around after death by the politicians and the media, in a bizarre competition to see who can wring their hands the most and spout the biggest load of sanctimonious claptrap.