The murder of Sara Sharif: do ‘experts’ really understand child protection?

Sara Sharif was ten years of age when she died on 8 August 2023 following years of physical abuse perpetrated by her father and stepmother. Her murder led to concern among professionals and the public as to how this case could have come about, especially when various agencies knew Sara was at risk.

The media reporting on the case has been extensive. Besides reporting on the facts of the case, the media also carried a good deal of comment from ‘experts’. Such reporting is wholly appropriate, as the media has an essential role in holding those in positions of authority to account. But it is important that the media too is open to scrutiny. 

It is for this reason that I examined some of the post-trial media coverage of this tragic case. The programmes I analysed comprise some of the BBC’s ‘flagship’ news and current affairs outputs: BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Six O’ Clock News, and The World Tonight, and BBC 2’s Newsnight (11 December), and BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and World at One (12 December).

Unlike the vast bulk of the media, the BBC is charged with being objective and neutral in its coverage of news and current affairs. If there are issues with the BBC’s reportage on child protection, then this should ring alarm bells as to what the rest of the media might be saying in respect of this topic.

The BBC and its experts

The BBC programmes featured six guest interviewees, all of whom could be described as very experienced, distinguished and high profile. They comprised: Dame Rachel de Souza (children’s commissioner for England), Sir Mark Hedley (former High Court judge - Family Division), Annie Hudson (chair, Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel), Lord Herbert Laming (former senior leader in social work), Dr Naomi Murphy (consultant clinical forensic psychologist), and Sir Alan Wood (former senior leader in social work). 

Before embarking upon a breakdown of the BBC’s and the experts’ responses to the murder of Sara Sharif, it is worth stressing that neither the journalists in question nor the experts had a proper understanding of what had happened in this terrible case. This will be available only after the local child safeguarding practice review has been completed. 

It is also worth emphasising that a single child abuse case should not be taken as a proxy for the entire child protection system. Moreover, it must be recognised that every day social workers and other practitioners keep tens of thousands of children safe. And, finally, it should be underlined that the BBC and its experts were assessing this case with the benefit of hindsight.

These considerations did not, though, appear uppermost in the minds of the BBC and some of the experts. Without exception, BBC journalists assumed that those who had been involved with Sara were at fault.

Evan Davis (Radio 4 PM) referred to “the danger being overlooked by social services or other authorities” and Daniel Sandford (BBC home affairs correspondent) appeared to be personally aware, somehow, of “all the warning signs that foretold her [Sara’s] death”. 

The overarching conclusion of the BBC – and it must be said a vast amount of other media – was that services had failed. Davis cited “the failings of the local authority” and Newsnight’s headline was “The failure to protect Sara Sharif”. 

These themes were readily picked up, and reinforced, by the children’s commissioner, with her assertions that the abuse of Sara was “allowed to happen” and that “there is no question in the Sara Sharif case that the services that were meant to be the safety net …. failed”.

Problems and solutions

Moving beyond these somewhat gratuitous judgements, and as the interviews with the experts progressed, the BBC’s audiences did begin to be provided with a more thoughtful insight into the nature of child protection.

The problems identified by the experts included: parents/carers being allowed to use corporal punishment on their children; the absence of a register of home-educated children, such provision not being inspected, and vulnerable children being home-educated; children’s social care taking inadequate notice of reports from school; not enough child protection expertise among practitioners; and insufficient data sharing and working together. 

The solutions proffered by the experts included: a ban on parents/carers ‘smacking’ their children; a register of home-educated children, the inspection of such provision, and a veto on the home-education of at risk children; social workers being placed in schools; multi-agency child protection teams; and child protection specialists.

There was some consensus between the experts as to what they thought were the issues in child protection, particularly around home education, and data sharing and working together. But there was also considerable divergence with most issues being highlighted by only one each of the interviewees. These included corporal punishment (de Souza), expert child practitioners (Wood), multi-disciplinary teams (Hudson) and early intervention (Laming). 

Indeed, the children’s commissioner gave something of an impression of disagreeing with herself: on the eve of her appointment in December 2020 she expressed uncertainty as to whether there should be a ban on corporal punishment – and this in spite of her, by then, 30 year career in education. 

Some of the experts (and virtually all of the journalists) tended to convey a very simplistic and superficial understanding of child protection. Yet the number and diversity of the issues they put forward, plus the differences between them, indicates that this work might be far more complex and challenging than they implied individually.

‘Profound weaknesses’

The children’s commissioner released a statement on 11t December claiming that there are “profound weaknesses” in the child protection system. Although de Sousa and most of the other the experts might have highlighted valid issues with the child protection system, they tended to display little cognisance of the true extent and depth of the challenge involved in this work.

A quite potent insight into this challenge is readily gleaned from even a brief search of the internet (and for just this year): Research by Kingston and Sheffield universities, along with the National Children’s Bureau and Ofsted, found that child protection cases are becoming more complex. 

The Guardian reported that children’s social care services have become so “over-stretched” that they have raised their thresholds and are asking schools to take the lead role in monitoring even quite serious child protection cases. The Department for Education has raised the level of risk surrounding the shortage of social workers from ‘moderate’ to ‘critical’. 

Ciarán Murphy, from Edge Hill University, and colleagues, conducted a major survey among 201 child protection social workers and argued that one of the main ways in which workforce instability could be addressed is by the government countering the negative portrayal of child protection. 

There are numerous other challenging issues that could be listed: children’s social care faces an unending deluge in child protection referrals; social workers routinely face an acute tension between keeping families together and keeping children safe; the shortage of foster carers is growing; and the cost of children’s residential care is “spiralling”. 

And what some experts and many journalists appear to be blind to is the sobering fact that the large majority of child abuse and neglect cases never come to the notice of any agency.

Understanding and resources

Lord Laming was one of the few experts to recognise that child protection work is “extremely challenging” and to state he was “full of admiration” for frontline workers. 

Laming was also the only expert to acknowledge that “over the last decade and a little more”, the “quality of [the child protection] service …. has gone down” and that this was due to “continuous cuts in real terms to local government, the police service and the health services”. (Interestingly, when Adam Fleming, for Newsnight, raised the question of resources with the children’s commissioner she basically batted it away.) 

A good deal of the expert (and media, including BBC) debate surrounding child protection is either negative and/or is focused upon reorganising the existing system. What is needed, however, is a truly radical overhaul in terms both of societal awareness and appreciation of the intense difficulty of this work, and above all, central government adequately funding child protection. 

When asked by BBC’s Davis, Lord Laming denied that the child protection system was “broken”. I would readily defer to Lord Laming’s judgement but it has to be accepted that the system – like all public services - is in crisis. 

Until experts, but also the media, politicians and the public, take on board these issues, then children like Sara Sharif will continue to be abused, tortured and murdered.

Dr Bernard Gallagher is a visiting fellow in social work at the University of Central Lancashire’s Connect Centre for International Research on Interpersonal Violence and Harm