Blame, accountability, and Sharon Shoesmith

There's a short, but very arresting article tucked away in Professional Social Work magazine on the baby P tragedy this week. It' an opinion piece written by Sue Ross, who has a top social services job for East Lothian Council in Scotland.

It's a bit fiddly to find on line, but if you follow this link and flip to page 8, it's there in the 1st of April edition, headed up "The can Sharon Shoesmith had to carry."

Sue Ross says that she "listened very hard, and with increasing discomfort" to Sharon Shoesmith's recent interview with Radio 4, where fundamentally, she absolved herself of any responsibility. Sue concludes that Sharon Shoesmith was responsible for a system designed to protect children, she failed, and she should have resigned.

Sue continues: "Please don't be drawn into the indefensible by blaming the politics"

As Sue very frankly says, this is about being able to distinguish between 'blame' and 'accountability'. Sharon Shoesmith might well have felt she wasn't personally to blame for the tragedy. Yet it's pretty clear she also felt she was not accountable for it. If that were the case, the system of accountability, weak at the best of times in local government or anywhere else, would cease to function at all.

I think the Labour council leaders who stepped down pretty much felt the same immunity at first, and were forced into resignation by their own Government Minister, who got the point.

I was Liberal Democrat group leader at the time of the death of Baby P, and from my own dealings with everyone involved at Haringey, there's no doubt that the notion of accountability for such a failing will have come as a huge revelation.

But most of all, it's good to see a peer of Sharon Shoesmith state so clearly that public opinion, the media, and the Government got this point right.