Ingeniously, Mary O'Rourke is using the Baby P card in her rigorous defence of Southall, I say ingeniously, because Mary O'Rourke is the barrister for both Southall and Al-Zayyat. "Damned if they do - Damned if they don't" argument as well as saying paediatricians don't know what to do and these cases have undermined child protection. Legally arguing both cases at the same time!
What crisis in child protection aside from the Baby P backlash placing too much pressure on local authorities. Certainly the paediatricians I know, ones who work in CP find that the only pressure that they are under, eminates from the hysteria being whipped up in the media about child killers and babies! So there you have it, the Royal College of Paeds and PACA can scream as much as they like, every single day in the country, paediatricians quietly and dilligently go about their work protecting children, without once drawing adverse comment or attention, the reason they don't draw any attention is because they do their job properly!
Thing is, there are plenty of guidelines out there, Safeguarding Children Guidelines, Children Act local CP protoclos and finally guidance on the duties of an expert witness. All widely avaialable. Any paed wanting to know how to do their job when it comes to child protection can e-mail me I'll send them to you! Not to mention the obligatory training you have to undertake in child protection if you choose to take up that baton and run with it. So what is Ms O'Rourke saying? They can't read or understand and implement the training they have to undergo? Sorry Mary, nice try, however just not tenable really!
The trouble with David is there is no middle ground, it's full out, all or nothing and that means there are margins for huge amounts of error. You cannot just go around accusing people of murder because you feel it is murder, you can raise the concern and have an appropriate investigation by the appropriate agencies, like the police, first and foremost though, David needs to learn that he has limitations, he is not policeman, judge and jury and certainly not a forensic scientist.
As a campaigner I never say never - there are cases in which there has been a mixture of abuse and underlying medical causes that have contributed to the death of a child, where David says "Guilty" I say "not sure let's explore this further and let's make sure we have crossed all the t's and dotted the i's". Which is a lesson David badly needs to learn. Shame really because his early work in relation to breathing problems in children was seminal, he will never be remembered for that though even if he is reinstated onto the register. There is no going back to those heady days for David Southall.
