I’ve decided to be brave (or foolhardy — probably the same thing) and say something about the sad case of Baby P and the apparent failure of the child protection services in Haringey to prevent his death from prolonged abuse. I am writing this before the reports into what went wrong are published. What I have to say is therefore premature because there are lots of facts that I don’t yet know (see why I said I was being foolhardy?).

All avoidable mistakes result from a combination of factors. There is never one simple cause. I’m sure you have read about social workers being overworked, undertrained, bogged down by procedures and insufficiently supported by their managers. But what has interested me most in trying to understand how these things happen (whether or not it applies in this case) is the suggestion that social workers – just like the rest of us – may sometimes succumb to a mental-set that distorts their judgments. It seems that early on in Baby P’s short life, the decision was taken that he was being neglected, but not abused, and this view stuck despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems unbelievable that tell-tale signs of physical abuse could have been missed or misinterpreted. But is it really so surprising? Have you ever made an assumption that you believed to be so true that it blinded you to reality? I certainly have. I once drove the wrong way up a dual carriageway utterly convinced that it was my right of way. I once swept into the ladies’ toilet in a hotel I knew well, absolutely convinced that it was the gents’. It turned out that the hotel had been refurbished and the toilets had been swapped over. But the point is that I was so convinced I was in the right place that I maintained my belief despite all the signs that I was in the wrong place. This even included an innocent woman whom I accused of being in the gents’.

Mental-set — in effect a faulty belief — explains why it is so easy not to see what is really there. I’m the first to admit that I would make a hopeless social worker; an erroneous assumption, sustained by group-think, plus a trusting nature, plus a wish to avoid confrontation, plus explanations from a manipulative mother… I’d be finished!

The antidote is a questioning attitude, where everything is challenged and nothing is taken at face value. As someone once said: “The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.”