Baby P social workers lose Haringey council appeal over sacking

 
Victim: Haringey council was criticised over the death of Peter Connelly
Paul Cheston12 March 2013

Two social workers who claimed that they were unfairly sacked over the Baby P scandal today lost their appeal.

Maria Ward and Gillie Christou said they had been wrongly dismissed by Haringey council after 17-month-old Peter Connelly died in Tottenham in 2007. The council claimed it had acted reasonably because of serious failings by the women over Peter’s care.

Ms Ward was his nominated social worker from February 2007 until his death that August, and Ms Christou was her team manager. Peter died after being beaten. He suffered more than 50 injuries in the eight months before his death despite more than 60 visits to his home by social workers, police and health professionals.

The women went to the Court of Appeal after losing an employment tribunal and an appeal tribunal.

Both women claimed they had been victims of double jeopardy because they had faced two Haringey misconduct panels examining the same allegations against them.

The first had concluded they should receive written warnings but a few months later after the political and media storm over the case the second panel decided they should be sacked.

But the Appeal Court judges backed the decision of the disciplinary panel to reopen the case on the grounds that the first hearing had been “seriously flawed” and the second hearing had raised a different grounds of complaint.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in