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The case of "Baby P", who died with over 50 deliberately inflicted injuries on his body, is being called "tragic". It's not tragic at all. It's a bloody disgrace.
It's emerging that Baby P's death was occasioned by a catalogue of failure involving too many parties fighting each other, and which left a toddler in the care of people who were deliberately harming him. A foster place was found to take Baby P out of harms way as early as December 2006. He was actually placed in care for a while, but a social worker then returned him to his abusive parents after what ITN calls "a frank exchange of views". That implies office politics. If true, ask yourself who plays office politics with a child known to be being beaten up by his parents?
At a case conference, the police, who wanted Baby P placed in foster care for his own safety, actually allowed themselves to be overruled. They even signed a care plan that sent him home for further abuse. The BBC's "Panorama" programme even discovered documents that show social services had been over-optimistic about his mother's ability to care for Baby P, and had focused on the needs of the parents rather than a child who had been admitted to hospital several times with deliberately inflicted injuries.
There's a full timeline of this poor little sod's short and painful life on the BBC news site. If you can bear it, take a good look at the graphic of his facial injuries.
In the UK, people are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. While that's a standard that must be upheld in any decent society, I find myself on the brink of hoping the parents get what they bloody well deserve - but also hoping that the people who should have cared for Baby P don't get to walk away from their "mistake". I'm certain I'm not alone.
