Sara Sharif: Britain’s latest child murder tragedy – what hope of change?

By Jamie Roberton

Sara Sharif, in the words of her headteacher, was “an absolute chatterbox” who would come to her office to sing and dream of appearing on The X Factor.

Hidden behind the smiles and songs, however, was a life defined by brutality at the hands of her murderous father and stepmother.

A 10-year-old girl whose injuries and suffering were described by one of the country’s most senior prosecutors as the worst she has ever come across.

But Sara is not the first child to be murdered by those meant to love and protect; just the latest innocent young face to be held up as a symbol of this country’s child protection failings.

Pictures of Victoria Climbié, Peter Connelly, Daniel Pelka, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson still fresh in the public consciousness – as well as the inevitable “lessons will be learned” rhetoric.

But what hope, this time, of change?

The latest national outcry came shortly before as it was revealed that 485 children died or were seriously harmed by abuse or neglect in the past year.

The Child Safeguarding Review Panel’s annual review again identified the need to urgently improve how agencies work together and share information about children at risk.

”One of the obvious challenges that we face is the fact that these parents or guardians are rarely honest,” Simon Bailey, former lead for child protection at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told Channel 4 News.

“They will manipulate the situation – and possibly teachers, social workers, police – to present a united family front and convey that their child is safe with their environment.

“And of course, we now know in Sara’s tragic case that that wasn’t the case.”

The full extent of authorities’ involvement in Sara’s short life is continuing to emerge, with the release of family court documents after a legal challenge by ITN and other media organisations.

Sara was subject to a child protection plan as soon as she was born in January 2013, with her family already known to the police and social services in Surrey.

Urfan Sharif, Sara’s father and her now convicted killer, had a long history of domestic abuse, while reports of violence and neglect inside the family home were commonplace.

Growing questions are now being asked about how authorities responded to these reports, as well as a family court system that sent Sara to live with her father and new stepmother Beinash Batool in 2019 – despite being fully aware of past concerns.

How Sara was allowed to be withdrawn from school and home-educated in the lead-up to her murder will also inevitably be a focus of future reviews.

Dr Julie Taylor, Professor of Child Protection at the University of Birmingham, said: “I think the biggest failure lies in her father and her stepmother – I don’t think we should forget that they were the ones who killed her.

”But I think there were lots of systemic things we ought to be questioning.“

Dr Taylor said the lack of current safeguards around home-schooling was “an absolute travesty”, and that cuts to frontline services had left “practitioners burnt out”.

“People sometimes give people too many chances, ’Ok they seem to be better, they seem to be safe, there seem to be other family there to look after her’.

“We are very reactive and if we think things are ok, we move on without necessarily asking the right questions”.

The government pledged on Thursday to introduce stronger safeguards for children being taught at home alongside other measures “to stop this type of terrible crime happening again”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described Sara Sharif’s case as “just awful”, saying “questions need to be answered”.

A spokesperson for Surrey County Council said an independent review was underway to “thoroughly understand the wider circumstances surrounding Sara’s tragic death”, adding that it was “resolute in our commitment to protecting children”.

Child protection enquiries stand at a record-high, with an estimated 600 opened every day in England last year.

Mounting pressures on children’s social care is predicted to lead to costs increasing by an estimated £600 million every year, according to the Local Government Association, with eight in 10 councils said to be already overspending their child protection budgets.

Channel 4 News has previously reported on how social workers are buckling under the increased pressure, with many considering leaving the profession.

“It’s a complex world and we as a society didn’t get it right with this particular family, this particular child and that’s really, really sad – we must all take some level of responsibility for it,” Julia Ross, from the British Association of Social Workers said.

Asked how child protection workers decide whether to keep a child within a family flagged as a concern, Ms Ross said: “You can’t apply science. It’s not black and white. We live in a grey area in social work and that becomes quite difficult for us.“

She added: “It’s very important that social workers and people who work with families not only see but hear the children – and you need to have time to do that”.

The Child Safeguarding Review Panel has called for multi-agency child protection teams to be introduced in every local authority, creating one single team to improve understanding of what is going on in a child’s life.

Asked whether he believed child safeguarding was currently fit for purpose, Mr Bailey said: “There are tens of thousands of children that are currently on child protection plans across England and Wales that are being managed and kept safe so I think we have to place Sara’s tragic case in that context.

“However, we have to look back at the last 50 years – going back to Maria Corwell in 1973 – and ask why is it that we still have cases like Sara’s, Arthur’s, Star’s? Why is it that there are a small number of children – and it is a small number of children but it is still too many – are failed because of those perennial issues?

“We can never, ever let a case like this pass without asking those difficult questions and what more we should be doing to ensure that this is never, ever repeated again.”