Sharon Shoesmith: risking £50,000 to show she was unfairly treated

She may have been sacked 16 months ago, but Sharon Shoesmith is not going to go without a fight. The former head of children’s services at Haringey Council is not only using the employment tribunal system to seek financial redress, but also the High Court to seek a judicial review on what she sees as the unfairness of her dismissal.

It is a move that has lifted the lid on the political panic that erupted when news of Baby Peter’s death came to light and a media campaign began.

It has also revealed the chaos at Ofsted as it was presented with demands for paperwork on how it conducted the fateful review into Haringey Council. Documents were stuck in photocopiers, deleted and then suddenly uncovered, requiring the inspectorate to apologise in court.

Ms Shoesmith is taking a considerable financial risk in pursuing the case. Although the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives is funding her legal action, its powers do not extend to covering full legal costs if she loses.

However, it is a sign of how strongly Ms Shoesmith, 56, feels about her treatment that she is prepared to take the gamble, which could cost her up to £50,000 of her own money.

She also has nothing to lose. She has already lost her career and fears that she will never work again.

The High Court has been told how she contemplated suicide in the months after she was was vilified in the press and hounded by reporters and photographers. She was made a virtual prisoner in her London flat, with the curtains drawn all day and using the stairs for her only exercise.

She had numerous death threats and witnessed her younger daughter hounded out of her home when the hate campaign switched to her. Even her elderly mother has not been spared and had photographers turn up in her garden.

Her daughters have been a constant source of support for her, attending court to watch as her mother put forward a case that should have ended many months ago but for her determination to uncover documents that she knew, as a former schools inspector, that Ofsted must have.

Having first said that they were irrelevant to the case, and then that they could not be found, Ofsted revealed in November that it had the 17 drafts of the review crucial to Ms Shoesmith’s case.

That meant that the case had to be reopened. It has also meant many more months of waiting. At a special hearing in December about the documents the stress began to show.

Tony Child, Ms Shoesmith’s solicitor, said that it had been “disappointing” to go to court and hear from Ofsted that there were yet more documents to be disclosed. “The person who the delay impacts on the most is Sharon,” he said.

Ms Shoesmith could not stop herself adding: “And my family.” She went on to say of Ofsted: “No other organisation would have got away with so many mistakes.”

Ms Shoesmith, 55, from Co Antrim, has spent most of her professional life in education, rather than social services. She rose from being a teacher to a school inspector and worked in the school improvement division, monitoring schools with serious weaknesses and those that required special measures.

When she was appointed by Capita, the private company that oversees Haringey’s schools, to be the director of children’s services in the borough in 2005, she promised to reduce the number of children who were taken into care by stepping in earlier with help if needed.

Although key whistleblowers said that that there was bullying in the department, they have never made personal attacks on Ms Shoesmith, saying that in all their dealings with her about complaints she was polite and respectful.

At the height of the storm more than 60 head teachers wrote a letter in support of her. “The exceptional rate of improvement of many of the borough’s schools would not have been possible without the support of the service that Ms Shoesmith rebuilt, revitalised and led,” they said.

“Should the Child P case result in her loss from the borough, then our children and young people will lose one of their most effective, determined and committed champions.”