Plus ça change

The excellent Janet Daley on the Telegraph comment section eloquently questions whether more government bureaucracy will make a difference to social services.

We are to have yet another "shake-up" of the social services. Because, after all, having allowed one child to be tortured to death and another to be held hostage by her own mother, the social services are clearly in need of an intervention from central government, right?

As Daley points out, Haringey social services received a glowing report from Ofsted just before the Baby P story broke and the grim reality of the "3 star" department was exposed as an inept bunch of arse-coverers.

The government seem to think that better "qualifications", more "on the job" training and closer scrutiny by more box-tickers will solve the problem - but they fail to consider, as usual, what the problem actually is.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough social workers or not enough well-trained social workers or not enough motivation for social workers or insufficient checks on social workers - the problem is that the vast majority of social workers are infected with a socially liberal progressive ideology which makes them incapable of making proper judgement.

Indeed, along with political correctness, cultural equivalence and moral relativity, being "non-judgemental" is a required attribute of a social worker - but it is these very things that make these people unfit for the job they do and ensures that all social service departments will be unfit for purpose.

What social services really need are people who are judgemental and who make those judgements from a solid moral base with a clear understanding of what is, traditionally, considered right and wrong - you can not be "objective" about the potential abuse of a child as it is a very subjective issue.

And that means you do have to be judgemental about the people you visit, you can not be constrained by politically correct opinions - yours or others - and you do have to make a call on what is morally reprehensible.

Any amount of "shake-ups", reviews or restructuring of social services will not address the fundamental issue which is at the root of the problems inflicting social services - liberal progressive ideology. Until that changes .... plus c'est la meme chose.