Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-28)
SHARON SHOESMITH
15 SEPTEMBER 2010
Q1 Chair: Good morning, and welcome
to this meeting of the Education Committee on child safeguarding.
I welcome Sharon Shoesmith to our deliberations and thank her
for coming in to give evidence. I believe that you would like
to say a few words, and I am happy for you to do so.
Sharon Shoesmith: Yes please,
Chair, if I may. It will only be for a couple of minutes—no
more than that. First, I want to thank you for inviting me here
this morning. I really want to start by saying that there was
never any doubt about how sorry I and everyone else at Haringey
was about the murder of Peter Connelly—absolutely no doubt
at all. To construct a narrative so simple, which told the public
that Peter Connelly died because Haringey was uniquely weak, and
that sacking everyone from the director to the social workers
meant that all would be well, was frankly absurd. The other story
will be told eventually, but I want to start this morning by saying
to you, Chair, that if you and your Committee members believe
the narrative put to the public by some elements of the press
and some politicians, we begin on different pages. The impact
for children has been far-reaching. I think we all know that.
Since 2008, the number of children coming into care has increased
by 30%—that is 60,000 children up to 80,000 children, or
0.5% up to 0.7% of our 11 million children in care. The number
of children subject to a child protection plan has doubled—that
is 30,000 to 60,000. Yet, sadly, this wider net seems to have
had very little impact on the number of children who die. In the
year that Peter died, sadly 54 other children also died. When
I say that and give these numbers, I mean that they died at the
hands of their parents, close family members and wider family.
In the 10 months into 2009, when we had this much wider net, 56
children died—an increase on the year before. Social work
vacancies are high, fostering cannot meet demand, and almost a
third of Directors of Children's Services left in just over a
year. Over 30 years, the rate of child murder has remained largely
the same. In the decade 1999 to 2009, 539 children died in this
way. Those are shocking statistics, which are not known. They
are too abhorrent to contemplate. Hence my saying that that simple
narrative was so absurd. Some would argue that taking more children
away from the parents is the right approach, and I really think
that we need to explore that thoroughly—is it the better
approach? We would have to say that if half the children who are
now subject to child protection plans—that's 300,000—were
to be taken from their parents, it would cost the country an extra
£1.5 billion. Whatever the answer, the whole sector is now,
in my view, motivated by a fear of failure and not the conditions
for success. Clearly, there is much to do and the issues that
stand clear in my mind are around five areas: public accountability,
inspection and development, multi-agency or inter-agency work,
levels of risk, and professional representation. Chair, in closing,
I would like to say that I am as committed as I ever was in the
years that I have worked for children to the care and protection
of those children, and I am here to help you and your Committee
as best I can. Thank you.
Q2 Chair: Thank you very much
for that. You talked about some of the short-term effects. Can
you tell us what you think the long-term effect of the Peter Connelly
case may be and why you described the Minister's response to the
case as "reckless"?
Sharon Shoesmith: There are two
levels there. On the long-term impact, I went to Haringey as Director
of Education and saw the aftermath of the death of Victoria Climbie«
and the huge struggle to put things right. I inherited a service
that had a large of number of children in its teams—these
were the children who had come into care after the same reaction
back then to Victoria's death. One of the pressures I had in my
time in Haringey was to try to bring those numbers back down to
match similar authorities. That was the pressure I was under.
That was the direction of travel—to bring the number down.
Q3 Chair: Do you think that was
right? As a result of the Peter Connelly case, hundreds of millions
of pounds extra a year have been spent by local authorities on
bringing more children into care, as you set out in your opening
remarks. A central question for this Committee is whether we now
have a more appropriate intervention regime, or whether there
has been an overreaction. Perhaps it is too early to say in terms
of the number of children who die at the hands of their families
but, as you say, the evidence so far is not of a material change
for the better.
Sharon Shoesmith: Social care
for children requires a very delicate balance of a number of factors.
One is the confidence of social workers. One of my biggest issues
after the news of Peter's murder on 3 August 2007 was to hold
the service steady, not to see the same impact on that service
that we have seen nationwide. In that period of time, we managed
to stabilise the service, to hold the confidence and go forward.
That was a very difficult process. We had begun to move forward
again. Then—this is why I referred to the Minister as "reckless";
I think you are referring to my interview in The Guardian
in February 2009—I watched the broadcast on 1 December as
I was waiting to hear when I would get a copy of the report, and
I was shocked and horrified that anyone did not realise the impact
that that was going to have across the whole social work sector,
the whole social care sector. It was obvious to me and to everyone
else at that moment that that whole sector would virtually collapse,
and that is what we have seen. It will be a long haul to bring
it back. A lot of things that have been done are good, such as
the Social Work Taskforce and the Munro Commission that you have
set up. I never ever want to use the dreadful phrase, "Peter
Connelly's death was not in vain." That would be a dreadful
way in which to reflect on anyone's death. What is sad for me
is that many of the things that we knew to be wrong in the sector
weren't heard until we had such a tragedy.
Q4 Chair: The second Serious Case
Review into Peter's death concluded that the ethos that informed
the professionals' interactions with his family were inadequate
and that expectations were too low and interventions insufficiently
authoritative. Why was that so, and do you believe that the culture/ethos
of safeguarding, not only in Haringey but elsewhere, has changed
for the better since?
Sharon Shoesmith: I think one
of the lasting issues of this case surrounds why all those professionals—police,
doctors, consultants, nurses, health visitors and social workers—were
caught in the trap of feeling that the mother was being genuine.
Why did they not question that more? I think that has to be the
overriding question, and therein lie research opportunities and
lessons to learn. I was in the room when the police officer came
in and said that the mother had been charged with murder. Remember
that no one was ever sentenced for murder, but I was in the room
when that happened and those who knew Peter Connelly and the mother
were completely taken aback and said, "That couldn't possibly
be the case. You must have it wrong: this couldn't be the case."
That was their reaction, having known this person. I, of course,
didn't know her or Peter Connelly.
Q5 Charlotte Leslie: Thank you
very much for coming along. My questions revolve around responsibility.
I am a layman without great expertise in this issue, but issues
of responsibility strike me as important, both in terms of who
takes ultimate responsibility for an individual child as they
move through the social care system, and of who takes responsibility
at every level up to the top. What did you feel responsibility
meant in your role as Director of Children's Services, and what
was your role of responsibility in the case?
Sharon Shoesmith: I was responsible
as a DCS for approximately 1,300 staff, including about 500 social
care staff. I was responsible for the operation of that service,
both in education and social care.
Q6 Charlotte Leslie: In terms
of your general responsibility for the entire department over
which you presided, for which you were paid as Director of Children's
Services, what did the concept of responsibility mean to you?
Sharon Shoesmith: I was there
to make sure that the quality and provision of education was there
in Haringey. Indeed, the massive improvements that we made in
education are well known. I was also there to provide good quality
children's social care, which included the protection of children.
Once this dreadful news came, I was responsible for understanding
what went wrong—and understanding it in some detail. That
was why I was present at the first Serious Case Review—to
understand fully what went wrong, particularly in relation to
my own staff, the social workers. What I can't be responsible
for—I think this is quite a big issue for your Committee—is
the conduct and operation of other services. I can't be responsible
for health and I can't be responsible for police, although it
has been suggested that a DCS should be responsible for those
services. I wasn't.
Q7 Charlotte Leslie: One thing
that I think is interesting is to look at the future of social
care, at where we go from here. One of the issues that we are
looking at is the parity of professionalism between social care
and, say, medicine. It strikes me that, in medical circles, someone
who is at the top of the pile and at the top of the pay scale—getting
paid a considerable amount for responsibility—is obviously
not responsible for every single individual over whom they preside,
but they are ultimately responsible if something goes wrong under
them. They are paid for that responsibility. If something goes
wrong, they tend to step down as a mark of taking responsibility.
I wonder if you feel that that is something that analogously should
apply to the social services sector. Perhaps this failure to take
responsibility for something that happens is one of the things
that prevents social services from being seen in the same professional
light as medicine.
Sharon Shoesmith: Yes. I don't
know the detail of the cases in the health field that you refer
to, but I know generally that that kind of decision—
Charlotte Leslie: If something goes wrong
on someone's watch, they step down. They say, "I was the
one who was responsible for this. I will step down because it
happened on my watch." That is one of the very important
things about the accountability and professionalism of health
care and medicine, which is why they have such great respect.
Sharon Shoesmith: My responsibility,
as I understood it then, was to understand what had happened,
for the social workers to go through the council's procedures
and to look carefully at what their conduct had been. I said this
on television at the time, and in fact it was the only thing that
the press wanted to run: what came out of that was that there
was not the evidence to sack those social workers. The issue of
where you pin responsibility is to do with the complexity of services
working together—we have health, police and social workers
working together. Quite honestly, if a child has died and you
decide that the automatic route, no matter what the conduct has
been, is that the Director of Children's Services steps down or
resigns, you'll lose all Directors of Children's Services across
the country; there'll be more than a 50% annual turnover. But
I have not, at any point when I have spoken about this case, attributed
blame. That is not the culture that I'm in. But I have to ask,
in response to your question: where were the resignations in health,
if you tell me that this is why the sector is held in such high
esteem? Where were the resignations there, if we had a consultant
and a GP who made some very serious mistakes? I would have to
discuss this in much more depth with you to really—
Charlotte Leslie: I would respond by
saying that the Department of Children's Services is the department
that is commissioned to look after the welfare of that child overall.
That is why it was formed. I would expect, therefore, the responsibility
to lie with the Department of Children's Services, as it is named.
Sharon Shoesmith: Could I comment
on that? I think that you raise a very important point. Again,
I preface my comments by saying that it has never been my approach
to criticise and blame anyone else. So, you're telling me, given
that Peter was presented to health settings on 34 occasions, and
when he turned up to his appointment with the consultant, that
that consultant had not a single record of any of those presentations—only
the letter from the social worker—that I should take responsibility
for a complete breakdown of systems in health? I would say no.
Q8 Charlotte Leslie: Moving on
to Ofsted, when the initial Ofsted report came out on the performance
of Haringey, what did you think of it? Did you think that it was
an accurate or an inaccurate reflection of what was going on?
Sharon Shoesmith: It is very difficult
to answer that in a few minutes. I have written down all my recollections
of these things.
Q9 Charlotte Leslie: But broadly,
did you think, "Yes, that's pretty much what I expected,"
or, "Oh, I'm not sure about that"?
Sharon Shoesmith: The inspection
report did not reflect the inspection itself or my experience
of the inspection—what was said to me in the inspection.
One of the inspectors later in the court case was very clear that
they had not found any cases that made them feel that they needed
to react in an urgent way. That was the wording in his statement.
The written report didn't reflect what I had experienced at all.
I was sitting, on 1 December, waiting to read the report when
I learned of my demise on live television. That was why I was
there, because the experience didn't match the report. Indeed,
the comments made about leadership on that occasion were made
up. They don't actually appear in the inspection report, or in
the inspection evidence. I now have reams of material on the inspection
evidence, and some of the statements that were made are not in
the inspection report, nor did they appear in the record of evidence.
They are not there.
Q10 Liz Kendall: Thank you for
coming today. As Director of Children's Services, you said that
you could not have been held responsible for what happened with
the NHS staff and the police, but you were responsible for your
department and your staff. Do you think you or your department
made any mistakes in handling the case of Peter Connelly?
Sharon Shoesmith: Yes, undoubtedly.
Q11 Liz Kendall: What were those
mistakes?
Sharon Shoesmith: There were errors
of judgment—professional errors of judgment. It is a very
difficult issue for everyone in the professional world who works
in these sorts of services, and indeed for your Committee in considering
these matters.
Q12 Liz Kendall: What was your
error of judgment? You said there were professional errors of
judgment.
Sharon Shoesmith: I didn't have
any personal dealing with the case at all.
Q13 Liz Kendall: Should you have
had?
Sharon Shoesmith: No. Haringey
had 55,000 children—0 to 19-year-olds. We had about 1,000
children—about 600[1]
of those in care. We had several hundred asylum-seeking children—you've
seen "Newsnight"—and we had about 250 children
who were subject to a child protection plan. So I wouldn't have
known the case, and that would be expected. If you ask any DCS,
they will confirm that position.
Q14 Liz Kendall: Coming back to
the question, do you feel you made any mistakes in the case of
what happened with Baby P?
Sharon Shoesmith: The question
is very broad.
Q15 Liz Kendall: What would you
have done differently?
Sharon Shoesmith: That's one heck
of a question, given what I have experienced. I have dealt with
death threats and so on, and brought myself back from the brink.
Q16 Liz Kendall: But I'm sure
you've learnt from the case. What have you learnt and what would
you do differently?
Sharon Shoesmith: I go back to
3 August 2007 when I heard the news of Peter's death. The cynical
view would have been to jump then. I didn't, because I was always
very deeply committed to Haringey, and I still am. I wish them
well as they go forward. I worked very hard for the borough. I
could have gone, and sometimes I think, why didn't I? But I don't
really get into the realms of regret in all walks of life. I stayed.
I did what I did.
Q17 Liz Kendall: Having looked
back at the case, there's nothing that you would have done differently
as Director of Children's Services?
Sharon Shoesmith: I had no contact
with the case at all.
Q18 Liz Kendall: There's nothing
about the way the department was structured or the way the staff
were supported that you think should have changed, if you'd gone
back in time? It was your responsibility.
Sharon Shoesmith: The issues that
social care staff were managing were huge—things that were
way beyond the imagination of the public. I had been in education.
When I took over the social workers, one of the first things that
occurred to me—that I could see—was, why are they
in the department so much? Why are they sitting in front of computers?
Q19 Liz Kendall: Would you have
done anything to change that? Was there anything you could have
done to change that?
Sharon Shoesmith: At that
point, that was how the system worked. We had an IT system that
had to be completed in a certain way. Records and so on were very
important. That's how the thing operated. A number of DCSs were
looking together at different ways of supporting social workers
to get that material on to computer systems so that they could
be released to use their professional skills. Work was going on
to do that—we were very much hoping to see something sensible
coming out of ContactPoint and so on, but I think I heard a cheer
go up across London when you got rid of it. There are massive
issues around the IT systems. Yes, I had expectations of education
staff—that I should not see them in the office. If they
are about schools, then they are in schools. Many education staff
were expected to be in the department only on a Friday afternoon.
To me, this whole thing about having directors who came from an
education background was a red herring. In actual fact, we were
raising some of these issues—indeed, our colleagues who
had been in social care for longer were also concerned about these
things.
Q20 Ian Mearns: This raises an
interesting question about the role of a Director of Children's
Services. Many Directors of Children's Services were former Directors
of Education, and many others were former Directors of Social
Services or of Children's Social Services. Certainly, when the
role of Director of Children's Services was created, to a lot
of people the breadth of the role was very great, and an enormous
responsibility. Has that in itself had any bearing on the depth
of the role that is meant to be undertaken by Directors of Children's
Services, given the different areas of expertise that they come
from? Has that had any bearing on how things have developed in
policy terms and on delivery mechanisms in local authorities?
Sharon Shoesmith: It is a huge
role, there is no doubt about that. The way in which the organisation
is structured, from the director down, is very important. Whatever
background the DCS has come from, most departments around the
country—in fact, probably all departments—would have
a lead for children's social care and a lead for education; people
who are professional in those areas. You have to ask the question,
how do those people then progress to being a DCS? I know that
is being tackled through the NCSL programme, which I think is
very good indeed, but I don't think that therein lie all the answers.
I really don't. For me the answers lie in how we support inter-agency
working on the ground—for me, that's where it is. When you
look at the cuts coming down the line, the tragedy will be that
these different departments begin to sort out the cuts that they
have to put in place as separate entities—they won't actually
work together, as a whole body and as a team around the child,
in an area to support and protect children. The approach has to
be multi-agency. That is where the real answers lie. Add to that
some of the bigger discussions around having 0.7% of children
in care. If we have 2% in care, have we failed or succeeded? If
we have 10% in care, we have definitely failed, have we not? That
would say something very serious about family life in Britain.
Where is the point that we feel is right? How do we compare with
other countries? We need to look at adoption. We know that a large
proportion of adoptions break down if children are adopted over
the age of two. Even if they don't break down in a formal sense,
we know that adopted young people grow into adults who search
for their birth family. We have also seen tragic cases where we
have had children adopted erroneously—we have made mistakes.
There was a case in Norfolk, I think, where that happened. Yet
it is too late, because the law is in place. Is there another
way of supporting children, which is not a permanent adoption
and keeps them in touch with their birth families? We need a serious,
in-depth debate, possibly to run alongside the Munro review, which
I think is very good, although I would like to see it focus a
little more on inter-agency work. Possibly Eileen Munro will do
that—possibly it is already happening. From what I can read,
from what is available to me, those are the things that we need
to take forward. I would also like to ask, if I may, whether the
death of children and the protection of children have to be party
political issues. Can we have an all-party approach that asks
what happens to these children who are murdered? How do Serious
Case Reviews work? Can we look at them all across the country,
and can we ever get a handle on the statistic to draw it down?
Those are some of the big questions that I feel persist.
Q21 Nic Dakin: Thank you for coming,
Sharon. We are cross-party here, looking at this issue in a very
cross-party way, and we're very focused on the welfare of children.
Thank you very much for coming today. You mentioned inspection
as one of your five areas that are important for getting this
right. What do you consider to be the hallmarks of a safeguarding
inspection regime that would be effective, accurate, fair and
command confidence?
Sharon Shoesmith: I wish I could
give you a slick answer. I think Ofsted, like everyone else around
the country, had to work very hard to try to bring two parts of
a service together. I feel that it grafted social care inspection
on to an education model, and I think that's where some of the
problems have been. I understand the need to run with the snap
safeguarding inspections, but again I would say: does that mean,
if you get a clean bill of health, that a child won't die in your
authority, or would we simply have a different narrative if that
happened? So it can't ever guarantee that all will be well. I
always liked the thematic inspections that Ofsted did, looking
in depth across the country at a certain area, and I think that
would be very good. You saw yesterday the report about SEN, which
was a piece of thematic inspection—obviously, there is always
controversy. Thematic inspection can look in depth at some of
these areas, possibly at thresholds or at how agencies work together,
and some learning can be done. So while we have inspection, it
seems to me that we lost some of the development side that was
with CSCI when the whole responsibility went to Ofsted. We've
lost that development side, so where would I, as a DCS taking
in social care, go to have an in-depth discussion about how this
is being developed and what some of our objectives would be? Where
would I have gone to do that? Nowhere, except to other colleagues
and other forums that we've built ourselves, or through the ADCS.
But development is a very important part—the other side
of inspection. Yes, we need inspection. I would like to look at
the thematic approach. I hear that Ofsted now talks to social
workers. Of course, it must talk to social workers. In the inspection
of Haringey, no social worker on any case that was scrutinised
was ever spoken to—going back to pick up your point. I had
no concern about it, but of course it became a concern later when
we saw the impact of that inspection. But the inspectors explained
that they hadn't the time to do that, and they realised that they
had missed that part out. They now talk to social workers. But
get out there, on the ground, with social workers, into the homes,
and see what's happening with the multi-agencies. Get out there
and see it. I think that that's what needs to be done.
Q22 Charlotte Leslie: I would
like briefly to come back to inspection. I'm sorry if this has
been answered, but I just want to make it clear for the sake of
the Committee and the meeting. The initial Ofsted report that
was done, the annual performance assessment in 2007, assessed
the council's services as "good". Did you feel at that
point that that reflected those services, or did you have misgivings
that perhaps things were not as well as Ofsted had said? If you
did, did you do anything about it?
Sharon Shoesmith: When the annual
performance assessment happened in 2007, yes, we got the "good".
I was obviously very pleased with that, as was the department.
Q23 Charlotte Leslie: Did you
feel it reflected accurately the organisation over which you presided
at that time?
Sharon Shoesmith: At the time,
yes, it did, and the council were very behind children's social
care. They put as much money as they could into it, albeit they
were a floor authority; remember they had a very poor financial
settlement during that period. So yes, I was pleased with that,
but there is always some criticism in that. There is an overall
"good" but there were things we needed to work on, which
we were working on, and I always expected my deputy directors
to commission other pieces of work—and there were other
pieces of work commissioned—to help inform me in greater
depth. And that went on.
Q24 Charlotte Leslie: So when
after full inspection the Ofsted assessment was changed from "good"
to "inadequate" were you surprised at its findings?
Do you think there were things that Ofsted picked up, which changed
its assessment from "good" to "inadequate",
that you had not picked up on—if you felt that the original
assessment of "good" was a valid assessment for the
local authority?
Sharon Shoesmith: The two things
you are talking about are 2007, with the "good"; then
they came back, because it is an annual thing, in 2008. What we
do is put in a self-assessment. We always did it thoroughly, so
they had a self-assessment that was kind of an inch thick, with
lots of evidence and so on. We took these matters very seriously.
They came and spent a day with us on 20 October 2008 and the news
broke on 11 November 2008. We had a very good day on 20 October
and we were expecting that we would break through into some areas
of outstanding work; that was around the participation of young
people, in that area—not children's social care, because
children's social care was the one that was taking the hardest
work all of the time to keep it there. We had had a huge wobble
in that year of holding the service steady, and I might have expected
some issues to have been drawn through that, ie some concerns
that they might have had; but overall, as they left that day,
we were expecting an overall "good". There was absolutely
nothing to indicate that it wouldn't be an overall "good",
and Ofsted knew all about Peter Connelly's death. It was informed
one working day after he died, in fact. So we were expecting that.
Q25 Charlotte Leslie: So all the
time that things were going on, you felt things were good—all
the time that the misdemeanours and problems were going on that
caused the tragic death of baby P—you felt the service was
good all the time that was going on.
Sharon Shoesmith: The service
during that time, from Peter's death, took quite a knock, quite
a hit.
Q26 Charlotte Leslie: But your
assessment of it was still that it was good.
Sharon Shoesmith: You are wanting
me to say that, and I can't say that as categorically as you would
like me to.
Q27 Charlotte Leslie: I am just
trying to make it clear for the sake of the Committee.
Sharon Shoesmith: Yes. The service
had taken quite a knock. It was good; we were concerned to try
and hold it there. There were huge issues of confidence among
the social workers. They were deeply distressed. The department
went into turmoil during that period, before the public knew,
and there was a lot of, really, steadying that service. Now, there
are about seven, eight, nine areas that the APA looks at, and
they were all fine; they would stay good. We were concerned that
the "good" recommendation we had on children's social
care could go to "adequate". If anything, that's what
I would have expected, because when you look at the detail of
what happened around Peter, there were a number of errors of judgment—professional
errors of judgment—on behalf of the social workers. They
thought they could keep this little boy in that family, and they
were wrong. It was as simple as that. They were wrong, sadly;
very sadly.
Q28 Chair: Some other local authorities,
including one of the largest, have a systematic record of failure
in child safeguarding, which has been sustained over quite a period,
and would appear, from inspection, to be considerably worse than
Haringey, and of course have also had deaths at the hands of families—some
of them quite horrific—after many notifications. Yet in
many of those other cases the Directors of Children's Services
have not found themselves in the position that you have found
yourself in—that is being seen as the central figure in
the tale. Do you feel bitter about the way things have worked
out in Haringey, and for you in particular, in comparison to other
areas of the country?
Sharon Shoesmith: Do I feel bitter?
Quite early on, once I had got through the stage of being at risk
myself, and, indeed, having dealt with death threats and other
nasty things that come through letter boxes, which I'll not tell
the Committee about, I realised that the No. 1 thing that I had
left was my health; and I decided to look after my health in a
very serious way. So I had a regime of walking, etc. I won't go
into the detail, but I have decided not to go in any bitter or
twisted direction. I want to try to stay that way. In fact my
earlier comments about health are as much as I would have said
to have pointed at anything else. I think it is a very complex
story. Of course I look back on it and there are parts of it where
I cannot believe what has happened, but an awful lot of people
need to reflect on their behaviour in this case. They can do that
quietly themselves. A lot of people need to reflect on how they
have behaved and why we have got here.
Chair: Thank you very much for coming
and giving evidence to us this morning.
1 Witness correction: Haringey had about 400
children in care in November 2008 and this figure included asylum
seeking children, many unaccompanied. Back
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