How will children taken into care learn to parent?

Hard messages could not be and were not misunderstood. Nor was one of the social workers wryly observed comparison between the response of the state to the Baby P case (the summary removal of Sharon Shoesmith, Haringey's Director of Children's Services) or the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (the tiered ranks of the state closing around the Metropolitan Police Service). Governments understand how to position themselves when it comes to the police. None has known what to do without social workers. Or with them. 

I had cause some years ago to undertake a review of the hierarchy of risks in child protection. Anyone observing the agonies of the impoverished and wrecked lives of the drug or alcohol dependent parents filmed stumbling through lost lives will not be surprised that substance abuse is the quickest route to parenting disaster. Likewise, there's not much evidence to suggest that paedophiles, also featured in this episode, when left to their own devices do other than arrange their lives and relationships to deliver up more victims.