After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care

Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service — and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified

I spotted Sarah immediately, though I’d never seen her before and she was tucked in among the commuter crowds ebbing and flowing through Marylebone station. She walked differently from the rest, less preoccupied, more determined, and she carried, as she had said she would, a big black folder under her arm.

Sarah had told me about the contents of the folder already, so I knew what it contained: a detailed account of an injustice done to Sarah and her partner, John, by the private foster agency who employed them, and further evidence (if any more were needed after Baby P) that our vast, complicated national child-care industry is more concerned with saving face than with saving children from harm.