Thrown to the wolves?

The baby P case was indicative of just how badly a bureaucracy of the state at local level can get things wrong. Peter Connelly - known as Baby P - was 17 months old and had been on the “at risk” register for months when he died at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend, and their lodger, after suffering more than 50 injuries back in August 2007, it emerged at the trial that Baby P had been seen by a string of social workers, police and health professionals who failed to take him into care.
Naturally heads had to roll and naturally this is where the state at local level bodged things up... again.
Telegraph.

Sharon Shoesmith, who was director of children's services at Haringey Council when Baby P was killed, has been awarded almost £680,000 for her unfair dismissal claim.
The north London council’s accounts reveal that Ms Shoesmith, who earned £133,000 a year, was awarded £679,452 in compensation following an agreement between their legal teams.
The council has previously revealed it had spent £196,000 trying to fight Ms Shoesmith's case for unfair dismissal, which culminated in the Appeal Court ruling in 2011 that she had been unfairly sacked and “scapegoated” over the death of Peter Connelly.

Now it may well have been that Haringey didn't follow the rules when sacking her, but this sort of obscene payment is an utter abomination when you consider that it was with Shoesmith that the buck should have stopped. A more honourable person would of course have fallen on their sword so to speak, but in local government lala-land honour is an alien concept. Others of course should have followed her into oblivion, every single one of the string of social workers and police save perhaps the first ones (unless they visited more than once) should have been sacked or rigorously retrained.
Naturally of course lawyers got involved and Shoesmith ended up with an obscene amount of public money for her failure because she fought it on the grounds of wrongful dismissal. The judge agreed with her, but this is where the minimum of 1p could have and should have been awarded with costs not given. The Council however negotiated a secret deal and Shoesmilth got a small fortune.
There was no justice for Baby P, in the end even his memory has had its metaphorical face rubbed into a pile of poo by the likes of the legal system and Sharon Shoesmith, may god damn their souls to an eternity of suffering.