Sharif murder: ‘No-one expects families to harm children’ says expert

We spoke to Dr Julie Taylor, Professor of Child Protection at the University of Birmingham.

Cathy Newman: Given all social services knew about Sara and her father, what on earth stopped them removing Sara from the family?

Julie Taylor: If we knew the answer, it wouldn’t happen again. I don’t think, though, it’s as simple as people just not doing their job or people just ignoring facts that are before them. Child protection, especially frontline child protection by social workers and other professionals, is really complicated. And none of us expect families to harm their children in such horrific ways.

Cathy Newman: Is there in some ways a sort of optimism bias that the authorities didn’t expect a woman in the household to be violent? Didn’t expect that he would go on these, the dad would go on these domestic violence courses, and that wouldn’t make a difference.

Julie Taylor: I don’t want to pre-empt what will be coming out in a case review for this, an investigation that will be held soon. But you do have to look at the fact that even before Sara was born, there had been real questions asked about whether she was safe in that family and so on. And I think people sometimes give people too many chances. ‘Okay, they seem to be better, she’s going to be safe, there’s other family there, they’re going to look after her.’

Cathy Newman: And when you look at the multiple concerns raised with lots of different agencies, police, social services, the school, where do you think the biggest failure lies?

Julie Taylor: I think the biggest failure lies in her father and her stepmother. And I don’t think we should forget that they were the ones who killed her. And we can look for blame elsewhere. But she was killed within her family. But I think there are lots of systemic things that we ought to be questioning. So, you know, the whole thing, the school saw that Sara had been injured and hurt and had bruises. And so then the family took her out to be electively home educated. And we don’t have a system that says we keep a register of that or that we can check up on them. And that’s an absolute travesty. I mean, most people…

Cathy Newman: The government says it will introduce that, but it’s taking its time.

Julie Taylor: Well, it’s taking its time for sure. You know, most children are not hurt in that way. But it is a fundamental failure, I think, that we’re taking so long to deal with that. I think all the cuts that we’ve had to frontline services mean that those practitioners at the frontline are burnt out and are not able to  offer the right interventions because we don’t have the money to prop those up. So I think we’ve got to look at that as well.

Cathy Newman: Is there individual failure, a lack of professional curiosity?

Julie Taylor: I wouldn’t say that’s individual. It’s because, even the teams within which we work are so driven by other pressures, that we don’t have the time to go through those questions with people and to supervise them to a point where we’re saying, well, ‘when you saw that, what did you think?’ And challenge it. So we’re very reactive and if we think things are okay, we move on without necessarily asking the right questions. But lots would ask the right questions and just won’t be listened to.

Cathy Newman: Surrey County Council said that the perpetrators went to extreme lengths to conceal the truth from everyone. Is that any defence from the council there?

Julie Taylor: No, I don’t think so, because we’ve known for a long time that parents, or families, who harm their children can be very devious.

Cathy Newman: I’ve been remembering names of other children this afternoon. Baby P, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, Star Hobson, Khyra Ishaq, I mean, I could go on. Now of course Sara Sharif. Every time this happens, everybody says, ‘well, never again’ and then it happens again. What needs to change to ensure that we have the best chance of this not happening again?

Julie Taylor: I wish I could answer that. We would have saved a lot of lives if we had found those answers. I do think that we need to be much more preventative in our approach, as we need to be very much looking at early intervention. Why children are being thrown in a river and not just hoiking them up further down as they go past, when they need resuscitation or they’re already dead. We need to be looking at who’s throwing them in, is the riverbank crumbling, why are they in that river in the first place? And actually putting our efforts in and interventions much, much earlier.

Cathy Newman: Is there an onus on all of us to look out for these vulnerable kids and spot warning signs in communities?

Julie Taylor: Absolutely. I think that some of the most effective things that we’ve seen around the world at protecting children is when a community is really aware of what’s going on. When neighbours care enough to notice and to report what’s going on, to actually be really worried about that child and to think, well, what’s the life of that child like? They live next door to me and I never see them playing. I only ever hear mum shouting or dad yelling or whatever. We’re all fairly sensible people, you know, we can spot when something isn’t right for a child.