| Flowers in Gods Garden
- Articles |
16/02/02
- Killed by anti-racism
By Jo-Ann Goodwin
Daily Mail
 |
| Victoria
Climbie |
It was on of Britain's worst child
abuse cases. But as this damning investigation reveals,
the real cause of Victoria Climbie's death was the anti-racist
lunacy of politically correct social workers
YASMIN Alibhai-Brown is one of those ubiquitous liberal
intellectuals who constantly pop up on Radio 4 and BBC1's
Question Time, eloquently attacking the racism and oppression
that we are asked to believe are endemic throughout British
society. To many of a more conservative temperament, she
sums up all that is irritating and self-righteous about
the chattering classes.
But earlier this month in that bastion of political correctness,
The Independent newspaper Alibhai-Brown, an Asian, wrote
an article that must have taken many of her critics by
surprise, containing as it did a passionate and brilliantly
argued attack on two of liberalism's most sacred cows:
social workers and anti-racism.
Her subject was the public inquiry into the murder of
Victoria Climbie. the eight-year-old girl from the Ivory
Coast who was tortured and eventually murdered by a member
of her own family while supposedly under the protection
of Haringey social services. To quote Ms Alibhai-Brown:
'This is one of those investigations which shows us how
uncivilised our society still is, unable and unwilling
to protect the most vulnerable from monstrous cruelty.'
As we are about to see, the case is certainly marked by
bungling and stupidity on an epic scale. But the problem,
according to Alibhai-Brown, is not mere incompetence.
Rather, it is the paradoxical influence of the anti-racist
policies that in recent years have permeated almost all
the so-called 'caring' services.
'A new racism in the public services offers non-white
victims of abuse less protection and lower standards of
care because of an institutional commitment to anti-racism,'
says Alibhai-Brown. 'In this Monty Python world, black
children at risk are left at risk because it is considered
"insensitive" or "Eurocentric" or
"culturally imperialist" to intervene.
And when there are black or Asian professionals involved
the problems become even more intractable. 'Many are denied
the right to interfere by white bosses who prefer to avoid
confrontations with ethnic-minority families. Others aggressively
promote the ideas of black cultural norms which must always
be respected.
'It is my view that these attitudes and practices may
have contributed to the neglect of Victoria Climbie.'
We will have to wait a few more weeks before we learn
whether the Climbie inquiry whose chairman, Lord Laming,
is about to hear the final submissions from the counsels
involved endorses this analysis.
But coming from a commentator whose opposition to racism
and injustice cannot be doubted, it demands serious attention.
And from my own investigations into this worrying case,
I believe that Alibhai-Brown could not be more right.
VICTORIA Climbie's short life came to an end on February
25, 2000.
A pathologist concluded that she died from hypothermia
caused by malnutrition and severe neglect, which included
being tied up in a rubbish bag and left to freeze in a
bath. His report went on to detail 128 injuries on her
bodycaused by razor blades, lighted cigarettes and beatings
with a belt, a hammer and a bike chain.
 |
| Lisa
Arthurworrey |
The pathologist called it 'the
worst case of child abuse I have ever seen'. Marie Therese
Kouao, who had passed herself off as the little girl's
mother but was in fact her aunt, was subsequently sentenced
to life for murder, along with her boyfriend, Carl Manning.
Victoria's parents, who had entrusted her to their relative
in the hope of giving her a better life, will mourn that
mistake for the rest of their lives.
But few would dispute that by far the most terrible mistakes
were made by Haringey social services, who had ample evidence
that Victoria was in danger, but failed to save her. They
accepted Kouao's repeated explainations that Victoria's
injuries were self-inflicted due to her scratching a scabies
infection. The squalid conditions in which she was living
were ignored.
NOR did Haringey ask to see Victoria's passport which
would have revealed Kouao was not her mother or ensure
she was registered with a doctor and sent to school. The
problem, as the Laming Inquiry has revealed, was that
Haringey Child Protection Unit was in a state of chaos.
Everyone knew something should be done and also knew that
nothing would be.
Sorting things out meant sacking people and not any old
people but women, and black women at that. The white liberal
senior management were just not up for it. No one wanted
to take responsibility; no one wanted to face possible
accusations of racism and imperil their career. So the
white bosses averted their eyes and crossed their fingers.
When Victoria died, the top brass reacted in time-honoured
fashion. Important paperwork was 'lost', key people involved
suddenly went to ground and the entire tragic mess was
laid at the door of a convenient scapegoat a 31-year-old
junior social worker named Lisa Arthur-worrey, of whom
more later. But eventually the truth began to emerge.
The evidence of Victoria's ill-treatment had been ignored
because social workers are schooled above all else to
respect other cultural norms and to 'work with families'.
Kouao an assertive and practised liar was able to intimidate
and bamboozle junior social workers while hiding behind
her status as an African woman whose word should not be
challenged.
And key black staff in charge of the case were simply
inadequate, over-promoted and often absent. The problem
had roots going back almost two decades, when two other
child murders in London sent shockwaves through the social
work establishment. First, in July 1984 four-year-old
Jasmine Beckford died in Brent; two months later, Tyra
Henry, just one-and-a-half, died in Lambeth.
Both children were murdered at the hands of their parents.
Both children were black. And both were the subject of
'full care orders' from their respective social services
departments that should have ensured their safety. The
cases caused national outrage and the subsequent inquiries
came to very similar conclusions: the two youngsters had
been failed by whites who were insentive to their ethnic
needs.
The foot soldiers of political correctness went on the
march. Social service departments across the land and
especially in London threw all their energies into the
politics of race and gender, competing to prove that the
rule of blinkered white males was over. ONLY by briefly
revisiting these two grim stories can we understand the
culture that was to doom Victoria Climbie.
Jasmine Beckford had been hospitalised while still a toddler
and subsequently placed in foster care. Her foster parents
hoped to adopt her but Jasmine was black and they were
white. The little girl was dragged screaming from her
foster parents' care and returned to her natural parents.
Eighteen months later she was dead.
But Brent's inquiry into Jasmine death, titled A Child
In Trust, was steeped in self-delusion. It authoritatively
stated that as Jasmine's foster parents were white they
were not a suitable placement for 'an Afro-Caribbean child'.
Hence, it was implied, Brent were entirely right to remove
the child from a safe and loving home into the keeping
of parents known to be violent and inadequate.
Worse still, the report strongly castigated the foster
parents for 'doing nothing to assist social services personnel...
in the delicate task of implementing the decision to return
(Jasmine) to her parents'. In other words, they had refused
to help social services send Jasmine to her death. This
'led to friction between them and social workers'.
The subsequent inquiry in Lambeth into Tyra Henry's murder
is equally disturbing. Tyra was born in November 1982.
Her elder brother was already in care, so severely beaten
that he had been left blind and mentally handicapped.
But, despite this, the white social workers in charge
allowed her mother to take Tyra home. She was beated to
death aged 20 months.
THE inquiry concluded that the white social workers had
made unwarranted assumptions about the ability of black
parents to cope with stress and deprivation. It was agreed
there should be 'a more considered deployment of black
social workers to work with black families'. This, it
was felt, would prevent racial stereotyping and avoid
future tragedies.
No one questioned the thinking behind these dictums despite
their implication that British black people are somehow
utterly different from the rest of the population, unknowable,
and beyond understanding except by 'their own kind'. Instead,
the liberal white middle classes congratulated themselves
on being so in touch, and steps were taken to ensure 'ethnic
diversity' was properly represented among the ranks of
professional social workers.
To help the process along, the old post-graduate qualification
of the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (or
CQSW) was supplemented by the new Diploma in Social Work.
As usual, however, the liberals felt black people needed
a helping hand to make the grade. Postgraduate qualifications
were a bit demanding and intimidating, after all, so everything
was made a bit easier.
In 1993, sociology academic Robert Pinker fulminated in
the Daily Mail against the resulting drop in academic
standards. Social work courses were, he said, 'neglecting
core skills in favour of ideology'; students were instructed
to 'sharpen their perceptions of oppression in the outside
world' and encouraged to 'come clean' about their own
latent prejudices.
A woman who has worked with abused children for more than
20 years supports Pinker's claims. 'In the mid-Nineties
I knew quite a few people studying for the Diploma in
Social Work,' she says. 'The entire course seemed to be
about role-play, group discussions and exercises in empathy.
Academic it wasn't.' Pinker's final verdict was prophetic.
Students of social work, he warned, would emerge 'ill-prepared
to deal with people's real problems'. As social workers,
they would 'end up hurting the very people they set out
to help'. LISA Arthurworrey would agree with every word
that Pinker wrote in that Mail article. The young black
woman who became the Victoria Climbie scapegoat completed
her Diploma in Social Work in 1997, having already gained
a BA from Luton University.
Lisa Arthurworrey's academic, professional and personal
references were exemplary. She loved her job and was totally
committed. Idealistic, as most social workers are, Lisa
was also sensible and straightforward. She had the potential
to make a real success of her chosen career. She arrived
at Haringey Child Protection Unit in November 1998 with
ten months' supervised work experience under her belt.
Within a few months she had been allocated 19 child protection
cases. Then, on August 2,1999, the file for Victoria Climbie
arrived on her desk. As Lisa Arthurworrey soon discovered,
Haringey Child Protection Department seemed to exist in
a parallel universe. Commitment was derided: 'Oh look
at you, all you do is work,' said her colleagues.
Meanwhile, there was no induction course for the new arrival.
Child Protection flies were simply dumped on her desk
and she was advised to 'get started'. Both Lisa Arthurworrey
and her one-time colleague Roxanne Ali agree that Haringey
was an utter shambles. The two women were shocked by the
aggressive racial politics permeating the office.
'It's hard to describe how mad it was,' says Ali, who
now works in Wandsworth. 'There were some black staff
members who wouldn't speak to white people. 'And because
I'm black my pigeonhole was constantly stuffed with political
pamphlets about black women empowering themselves.'
The unit was supposedly managed by Angella Mairs and Carole
Baptiste, both black , who were in turn supervised by
Dave Duncan, who is white. Both Arthurworrey and Ali describe
Duncan as helpful and well-intentioned; they also say
he was perfectly well aware of the shortcomings of Mairs
and Baptiste and did nothing about it, a claim borne out
by evidence given to the inquiry.
'Dave Duncan was a nice white liberal,' says Ali. 'But
he was a wuss (a wet or drip). There was no way he was
going to take on two black women.' Yet, by Arthurworrey's
account, and Baptiste's own evidence to the inquiry, the
problem with the child support unit managers cried out
for action. There was Baptiste's erratic timekeeping 11am
starts, two-hour lunches all of which she airily put down
to 'childcare problems'.
Then there were the supervision meetings, or lack of them.
ARTHURWORREY constantly requested such sessions but Baptiste
granted just four in seven months, and even these proved
bizarre in the extreme. Baptiste would begin by lighting
aromatic candles, after which she would perform a short
dance and perhaps read aloud from the Bible or recite
the work of black women writers such as Maya Angelou.
Athurworrey says that as she tried to return to the agenda
and her child protection cases, Baptiste would often begin
a political harangue on the oppression of black women.
Sometimes she would try to recruit Arthurworrey as a member
of the fundamentalist church to which she belonged. It
sounds like a scene from a sitcom, but the reality was
profoundly serious. One of the cases Arthurworrey was
so desperate to discuss was that of Victoria Climbie.
Arthurworrey had never carried out a full investigation,
nor held a case conference, nor overseen a case involving
working with police. She was inexperienced and searching
for guidance. Carole Baptiste was supposed to be her mentor
but instead she was a liability. If all this isn't enough,
it transpires that in January 2000 Baptiste's own child
was placed under a supervision order by Lambeth social
services after police were called to an altercation at
her home. In other words, the child protection manager
couldn't look after her own child.
Baptiste was made redundant from Haringey in February
2000. But the question is why wasn't she sacked long before?
Nor was she the only inadequate at Haringey. Along with
other boroughs it was suffering from a noticeable drop
in the quality of social work recruits. A Haringey insider
admits: 'It is a nationally recognised problem. The Diploma
in Social Work is simply not turning out social workers
up to the required standards of literacy.
'It's not publicly admitted but people privately acknowledge
that there has been a general decline in standards over
the past 15 years.' In fact, the situation is so bad that
some boroughs, such as Southwark in South London, are
giving literacy tests to applicants for social work posts.
It beggars belief. Social workers regard themselves as
'professionals' on a par with teachers or lawyers.
But can you imagine asking your solicitor to prove he
can read and write? In their conversations with me, both
Lisa Arthurworrey and Roxanne Ali named Haringey social
workers who had struggled with literacy. NEIL Garnham
QC put the issue to Anne Bristow, Haringey's director
of social services, when she appeared before the Laming
Inquiry.
'Difficulty with literacy or numeracy is a problem with
trained social workers, is it?' he asked. 'I believe that
does in some cases occur,' was Bristow's disheartening
reply. A senior social worker from the South of England
concurs, and lays the blame firmly on political correctness.
'There is a drop in standards, and it's exacerbated because
examiners are simply scared to fail black students.
'Two years ago I had a very poor black student on my course.
I failed him and I got into a lot of trouble over it.
Something like that can end your career.' The patronising
stupidity is typical of the 'PC' approach. Its advocates
proudly congratulate themselves on supporting ethnic minorities
when, in fact, it's simply the new racism infantilising,
supercilious and utterly insulting.
In 2003, the Government will bring in a degree-level social
work qualification intended to push standards up again.
But if examiners continue to bend the rules in the name
of positive discrimination, it will all be a waste of
time. There are many social work insiders who are optimistic
that something good will come out of the Laming Inquiry,
which will not report until the summer.
Lord Laming has a solid social work background and is
widely respected. The inquiry has wider powers than its
predecessors, and Laming has already shown he is not afraid
to use them. Exasperated by the non-appearance of Carole
Baptiste he has ordered criminal proceedings to begin
against her over her failure to co-operate.
He has also been considering proceedings against Anne
Bristow after Haringey submitted 71 'mislaid' documents
at the last minute, which Lord Laming described as 'absolutely
unacceptable'. Neil Garnham QC, the inquiry's leading
barrister, said it was hard to decide whether Haringey
was guilty of incompetence or of a deliberate attempt
to avoid responsibility.
Brent social services who are also involved in the case,
because Victoria lived there before moving to Haringey
have been similarly accused of 'drip feeding' information
to the inquiry. Angella Mairs, one of Haringey's child
support unit managers, is accused of destroying evidence.
And police child protection officers accuse Haringey social
services of withholding information, blocking police initiatives
and being aggressive and hard to work with the latter
referring to Mairs in particular.
Laming's report will have the power to make recommendations
on individual social workers including sackings. 'I hope
he does,' said one social worker. 'And more. It's time
people faced criminal charges instead of more inquiry-itis.
Why does no one ever go to prison in these cases?' Meanwhile
the chaos at Haringey social services seems to be continuing.
The Government's Social Services Inspectorate published
a highly critical report of the borough in November 2000.
The inspection investigated ten Haringey child protection
cases in detail. In three cases inspectors couldnt be
sure the child's safety was safeguarded. In a further
three cases inspectors had 'concerns'.
Only the remaining four cases were satisfactory. In January
last year the Department of Heath intervened and placed
Haringey on 'special measures' a final warning of the
kind given to failing schools. But it's unclear whether
the warning has been heeded. 'It's getting worse,' said
a London social worker. 'They can't recruit and things
are still crazy.'
She went on to tell me of a complaint against a social
worker who had sent six of her 'clients' to attend her
local fundamentalist church. Her colleagues were appalled
and sent all the evidence to their manager who allegedly
promptly destroyed it, being a member of the same church
himself.
It all adds up to a terrifying dossier of evidence that
suggests, if anything, that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown rather
understated her case in that surprising Independent article.
Lord Laming has seen 155 witnesses and read 262 written
submissions. He has much to think on. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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