Disgraced Shoesmith demanded £1.5million: As backlash grows over pay-out to woman at centre of Baby P tragedy, her greed is revealed

Provoked fury: Sharon Shoesmith will benefit from a total pay-out of around £700,000 after winning her unfair dismissal case

Sharon Shoesmith demanded £1.5million in compensation after she was sacked over the death of Baby P.
The revelation prompted a fresh wave of fury yesterday, as it also emerged that the disgraced social services chief wants to start working with children again.
Shoesmith, former head of children’s services at Haringey Council, will benefit from a total pay-out of around £700,000 after winning her unfair dismissal case.
Yesterday children’s charities branded the taxpayer-funded deal ‘absolutely disgraceful’, with one former government minister saying: ‘It stinks.’
A source close to the family of Peter Connelly, who died when he was only 17 months old, said: ‘It’s not right – she should not get a penny. And she should not be allowed to work with children.’
Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles condemned the deal and accused Haringey Council of ‘bankrolling a state-sponsored cover-up’ by refusing to reveal details of the six-figure settlement.
Shoesmith prompted further anger after she posted a statement online which said: ‘A final farewell to Haringey as my case concludes.
‘I wish those of you in children’s services, especially in Haringey, success, strength and courage in all that you do. Children have been my life’s work and I hope to continue in some capacity soon now that my PhD is almost complete.’
Shoesmith began studying for a doctorate at the University of London in 2010.
Baby Peter died in August 2007 after months of horrific abuse at the hands of his mother Tracey Connelly, 31, her sadistic paedophile boyfriend Steve Barker, 36, and his brother Jason Owen, 40.
The family had been visited by professionals, including Haringey social workers and doctors, 60 times.
Shoesmith was removed from her £130,000-a year job by Ed Balls in 2008 after a damning Ofsted report on Haringey’s children’s welfare services.

Tragic case: Baby Peter died in August 2007 after months of horrific abuse at the hands of his mother Tracey Connelly, 31, her sadistic paedophile boyfriend Steve Barker, 36, and his brother Jason Owen, 40

But she launched an appeal claiming unfair dismissal and in 2011 the Court of Appeal concluded Shoesmith had been ‘unfairly scapegoated’ and that her dismissal by Mr Balls, the then Children’s Secretary, had been ‘intrinsically unfair and unlawful’.

'Coming after the release of Baby P's mother, there doesn't seem to be much justice for this poor child'
Claude Knights, director of child protection charity Kidscape

Lawyers representing Haringey and Shoesmith had been in lengthy discussions since that ruling. She had been due to return to court this week seeking a declaration that she remained employed by the council, but that action has now been dropped.
A statement from Haringey Council confirmed it had reached a settlement with Shoesmith but that the terms were confidential and it could not comment further.
In the 2011 ruling, senior judge Lord Neuberger suggested Shoesmith was entitled to a minimum of three months’ salary plus pension contributions.

'It's shocking given the tragedy'

Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb

But sources familiar with the terms of the pay-out said her deal will cost taxpayers ‘approaching £700,000’.

One said: ‘She was seeking more than £1.5million. It is ridiculous.’
She will get a cash payment of between £450,000 and £500,000, but the package also includes pension contributions, plus tax and National Insurance payments.

Opinion: Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles accused Haringey Council of 'bankrolling a state-sponsored cover-up'

The High Court ruled that the Department for Education must pay for some of the settlement. It is likely to be as much as half, according to government sources.
In an attempt to shame Haringey Council into revealing details of the pay-out, Downing Street said the Government would reveal exactly how much the department will pay when the amount has been agreed.
Government officials accused the authority of seeking to conceal the true scale of the pay-out and placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Ed Balls.
A senior government source told the Mail: ‘This began with Ed Balls and Haringey covering up the truth of the case.
‘Balls compounded the cover-up by botching Shoesmith’s removal. And it has ended with Haringey covering up the pay-out. The whole thing is abysmal.’
Mr Balls said the pay-out ‘sticks in the craw’ but defended his behaviour, saying he would act the same way again over what he branded Shoesmith’s ‘terrible failure’.
He said: ‘An independent report said there were disastrous failings in Haringey children’s services, they said that the management was at fault.

‘Sharon Shoesmith was the Director of Children’s Services so of course it leaves a bad taste in the mouth that the person who was leading that department and responsible ends up walking away with, it seems, a large amount of money.

'This is the ultimate reward for failure and taxpayers will resent every penny they contribute to it'
Jonathan Isaby, TaxPayers' Alliance

‘In law I had the right to remove a Director of Children’s Services from his or her post if they had failed. The independent report showed clearly there had been a terrible failure and I acted in the public interest.’
Mr Balls said he was given legal advice that Shoesmith could be sacked without him holding a meeting with her – a claim that the High Court rejected.
He said: ‘Whether I had had the meeting or not, at the end of that report it would have said that Haringey and Miss Shoesmith totally failed. They failed Baby Peter and the children of Haringey, and I was right to act.’

'It stinks. This'll leave a bad taste in the mouths of taxpayers'
Former Children's Minister Tim Loughton

'It's absolutely disgraceful she's been given that amount of cash'
Mor Dioum, Victoria Climbie Foundation

I CAN'T FIND WORK AND LIVE ON BENEFITS, SAYS SHOESMITH

Since her sacking in 2008, Sharon Shoesmith has expressed anger and self-pity at her treatment.
In an interview earlier this year, she said: ‘What I didn’t know before, but I have learned over the past four years, is that you don’t recover from this – it stays with you. Your entire past is just wiped away and your future is utterly gone.’
She told Public Servant magazine: ‘People I used to know ask me what I’m doing now, and they’re shocked when I say “Nothing”. They can’t quite grasp that my life hasn’t moved on at all – that I can’t find any work and I’m living on benefits.
‘I used to have a £130,000-a-year job running my own department and was a national reference point for Ofsted for special educational needs, but no organisation will take the risk of employing me because of who I am.’
She added: ‘I was certainly no softy, but being held directly responsible for the brutal murder of a child was something that I found impossible to live with.’
She also claimed she wasn’t concerned about compensation, telling The Guardian: ‘I was never in it for the money. People will want to put noughts on it and all the rest of it but I was never in it for the money. I never discussed money. I wanted to win the case, I wanted the truth to be told.’

 

Not a shred of humility. Not a jot of contrition

By JULIE BINDEL, Left-wing writer and feminist

Incompetence: In her arrogance, callousness and self-righteousness, Sharon Shoesmith is a disgrace

As a feminist who is firmly on the political Left, I often fundamentally disagree with what I perceive as the unfair criticism of those in the voluntary sector and the caring professions in general.
I count a number of senior social workers and other child protection professionals as dear friends and colleagues, and regularly pick their brains when I am researching a newspaper article about child abuse or vulnerable adults.
But in her arrogance, callousness and self-righteousness, one member of that profession, Sharon Shoesmith, is a disgrace.
As the director of Children’s Services in the London Borough of Haringey, she presided over one of the most notorious child abuse scandals in modern British history, when her chaotic department failed to prevent the torture and killing of 17-month-old Peter Connelly in 2007.
Yet Shoesmith has never displayed a single shred of repentance for the role that her mismanagement played in the tragic child’s death. She has accepted not a jot of responsibility, shown not a scintilla of humility.
Instead, after a public outcry, she has fought a despicable campaign against her dismissal from her £133,000-a-year director’s post on the instructions of the then Labour minister for children, Ed Balls.
Her self-serving antics have been grossly offensive not only to the public but also to the memory of Baby Peter.
Her job was to care for children, but she revealed that all she cared about was her own status and money.
It is a rich irony that, in her lack of compassion and her contempt for public decency, she showed precisely why she was so unfitted for her job.

Unfortunately, her long campaign has produced the result she wanted.
This week, it emerged that she has reached a settlement with the Government and Haringey Council, following a verdict from the Court of Appeal in 2011 that her dismissal was unfair because the correct employment procedures were not followed to the letter.
The judge in that case, Lord Justice Kay, emphasised that he did not consider Shoesmith ‘blameless’, and suggested that she might be entitled to three months’ pay, plus some pensions contributions.
Yet now, it seems that her settlement could be worth as much as £700,000.

Her job was to care for children, but she revealed that all she cared about was her own status and money

That figure is an absolute outrage.
If it is true, Shoesmith is being rewarded on an epic scale for her own incompetence. Despite lethal failings in her job, she has won a pay-out that means the 59-year-old probably need never work again.
Such a financial settlement represents an affront to justice and a complete inversion of basic morality. Essentially, she is profiting spectacularly from a sickening death that her own mismanaged department helped to cause.
The award is particularly insulting at this time of austerity, with pay squeezed and living standards falling.
Other workers, paid only a small fraction of Shoesmith’s salary, lose their jobs and receive hardly anything in compensation, even after years of service.
My own father, a North-East steelworker who suffered serious injuries in his demanding job, was laid off with a redundancy payment of just £15,000.
That is 47 times less than the package Shoesmith is estimated to have received.

Involved: Shoesmith has fought a despicable campaign against her dismissal from her £133,000-a-year director's post on the instructions of the then Labour minister for children, Ed Balls (pictured)

Brimming with her sense of entitlement, Shoesmith will now have riches far beyond the dreams, not only of the Haringey teachers and social workers she used to employ, but also of the taxpayers who will have to fund this tainted settlement.
If Shoesmith had any humanity, she would give the money to the NSPCC. But then, if she were more humane, she would not have behaved like this in the first place.
What has been particularly nauseating about her conduct has been her absolute refusal over the past six years to give any apology for the death of Baby Peter.
Given the enormity of the systematic, fatal abuse that Baby Peter endured — at the time of his death there were more than 50 injuries on his tiny body — the public needed to hear her say ‘sorry’.
That is what other senior public officials have done in recent years. But not a  single word of contrition has passed  Shoesmith’s lips.

If Shoesmith had any humanity, she would give the money to the NSPCC. But then, if she were more humane, she would not have behaved like this in the first place

Instead, she has moved in exactly the opposite direction, parading through her courts and across the airwaves in her egotistical, misguided quest for vindication.
When she first won her appeal against her dismissal, she declared on the steps of the court that she was ‘absolutely thrilled’.
Those words again illustrated her monstrous lack of self-awareness. How could anyone be ‘thrilled’ by any aspect of the harrowing Baby Peter saga?
Shoesmith has failed to apologise because she refuses to take any responsibility for the episode.
The buck, it seems, never stopped with her.
During yet another of her offensive media appearances, she claimed that, ‘I’m not in the blame game. I don’t do blame.’
But apportioning blame is exactly what she does. Frontline social workers, other managers, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), Ed Balls, and the media have all been her targets in this endless process of buck-passing.
Most shamefully of all, she even blamed her own deputy, claiming that the woman should have been more responsible because she had more expertise in child protection than she herself did.
But if Shoesmith was really anxious about her own lack of competence in social services — for most of her career, she worked in the field of children’s special needs — then why on earth did she take on the post of director in the first place?
This goes to the heart of one of the central problems with Sharon Shoesmith.
She is fond of saying that she has been ‘scapegoated’ for the Baby P scandal, but a scapegoat is someone unfairly saddled with responsibility for failure so that others can avoid the blame. But that is not what happened in her case.
For Shoesmith was extremely well paid because of the responsibilities she accepted. In return for that large salary, the buck was meant to stop with her. Equally absurd is her pose as a victim, reflected in her endless complaints about the vitriol she has suffered from the public or the media.
But the truth is she has been the focus of anger because she so noisily grieved for her own career instead of for Baby Peter.

Baby Peter is the victim of this saga, not the cold, calculating, greedy Sharon Shoesmith

Throughout her campaign of self-justification, Shoesmith has shown herself to be a typical, box-ticking bureaucrat.
Her career in management appears to represent the triumph of regulations over humanity and a victory of process over compassion. At every stage of this saga, she has been obsessively focused on procedure.
When the scandal first broke, she declared that ‘all the action taken was correct’, but, after Ofsted produced its damning report on her department, she did not dispute the findings but bleated that the inspectors had not followed the correct procedures.
Similarly, the entire thrust of her claim for unfair dismissal has been based on technicalities of employment law rather than any real concept of natural justice.
Indeed, in moral terms, it would be laughable for her to pretend that there was anything remotely ‘unfair’ about dismissing the boss of a dangerously dysfunctional department.
I am all in favour of employment laws that prevent staff being sacked or victimised by their employers, but Shoesmith has ruthlessly exploited the rules for her own selfish ends.
The employment tribunal system and the courts were never meant to cocoon useless directors from the consequences of their failures.
Baby Peter is the victim of this saga, not the cold, calculating, greedy Sharon Shoesmith.
She may have won her case, but my only hope is that one day she will gain some redemption by realising, however belatedly, that she should never have accepted what is effectively blood money.
If only she had invested as much energy in running her department as she did into fighting for cash, Peter Connelly might still be alive.