A couple of
general points: social workers usually get the flack for anything, but they're frequently snowed under with paperwork (not by their design or desire) and not the only ones involved in cases. So for instance, in the Baby P case, it was not social workers who wouldn't remove him from his family, but the legal team that wouldn't
let social workers remove him. Unfortunately, for most of the media in this country, social workers are just a target to demean, which equally gets the kneejerkers going.
Gove is a buffoon. Only a couple of weeks ago, he was making grandiose and sweeping demands that far more children be removed into council care. His gob moves before his brain cell kicks into action.
On the surface, this looks like an utterly idiotic decision. Via social media, however, I've seen comments that there was 'previous' involved. So I'm trying to find more detail before commenting on the specifics.