The ‘blame game’ – perhaps our MPs could take a leaf out of Lord Sugar’s book?

England Professional Officer Nushra Mansuri explains how the treatment of social worker Steven Ugoalah in the first episode of The Apprentice is a reminder of how scapegoating and wtich-hunting blights social work.

History was made on 14 October when for the first time a social worker was one of the contestants in the BBC series The Apprentice. 

Sadly, it did not take long for for the social worker to find himself on familiar terrain as he was singled out by the majority of his team mates for the failure of the task. Words like ‘witch hunt’ and ‘scapegoat’ were bandied around.

However, thanks to the intervention of Lord Sugar and sidekick Nick Hewer, he was not made the ‘sacrificial lamb’, with Lord Sugar booming: “If a person is brought into the boardroom for the wrong reasons, I will frown upon that”.

What I found more painful than this piece of television pantomine took place back in September when we encountered a very different ‘boardroom’ scenario in the guise of the House of Commons' Home Affairs Committee. We witnessed Keith Vaz in his role as chair using all of his power to go after Joyce Thacker, former director of children's services in Rotherham, and publically humiliate her, ultimately calling for her resignation.

Not long after that, we learned that Joyce was on sick leave and Vaz quipped that she seemed to be in perfect health when she had appeared before him. Many of us in social work I am sure would have been thinking the same thing – haven’t we been here before? Yet again, a senior politician was sealing the fate of a children's services director and using their privileged position to by-pass the usual protocols and conventions that should be utilised to determine whether or not an employee is still fit to hold office.

I remember writing an article following Sharon Shoesmith’s efforts to seek re-dress through the courts for her dismissal and saying it was time for a line to be drawn in the sand in terms of scapegoating individuals, but we clearly have not yet arrived at this point.

So what exactly, I ask myself, are the lessons that have been learned following the Peter Connelly tragedy which proved to be something of a watershed moment for the profession with the assembling of a Social Work Taskforce and, two years after that, an independent review into child protection led by Professor Eileen Munro? Munro's words of wisdom exhorting us to move away from a ‘blame’ culture to a ‘learning’ culture seem very distant now.

Even more recently than Munro, we have had Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Ofsted giving evidence to a select committee and stating “We can’t go around sacking a third of children's services directors "even if there is a high profile child abuse tragedy".

Yet then we hear Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan has appointed an independent commissioner to oversee children’s services in Rotherham compelled, she says, by a note from Sir Michael raising concern about the lack of leadership in the authority. Now there’s an interesting trend – another independent commissioner appointed as saviour. We live in sad times when blame is very much the order of the day and heads inevitably will roll.   

I read the report about sexual exploitation of children by Professor Alexis Jay from cover to cover. It is a measured report and comments favourably on some of the improvements that had taken place in Rotherham on Joyce Thacker’s watch. My fear now is that the sanctions that have been deployed in the aftermath of the report will do even more to destabilise children’s services in Rotherham and inevitably have a devastating impact on the morale of those committed workers who are giving it their all day-in and day-out.

This is surely not the answer. While it would be naïve to under-estimate the tensions between central and local government and also the influence of the media in the politics of child abuse, I still firmly believe the sector and its partners have to come together and hold their nerve even in the midst of such an onslaught and say that we keep our faith in certain individuals where merited and will not sack them to satisfy the agendas of others.