Charli Thompson of Barnet Greens on why Barnet’s social care crisis Is about more than one tragedy

Barnet Council's Colindale head office — Barnet Council’s Colindale head office

Like many people in Barnet, I watched the Sky News documentary Unseen: A Girl Called Nonita with a mixture of grief and anger. But sadly not disbelief.

The death of Nonita Grabovskyte, and the subsequent revelations that two more care-experienced young people have died, should have stopped the borough in its tracks. Much like the deaths of five elderly residents who died just weeks after being moved out of Apthorpe House in 2021.

In the days since, we’ve heard a great deal from Barnet Council about procedures, learning processes and whether statutory duties were technically met. What has struck me most, though, is not just what happened in one case, but the complete lack of ambition that seems to underpin our social care system, for children and adults alike.

Over and over again, we hear the same message: the council didn’t have to do more, but it chose to. As if going beyond the bare minimum legal duty is some kind of exceptional moral achievement. In a Barnet Post article, Councillor Pauline Coakley-Webb explains that because Nonita was over 18, the council was not required to carry out certain reviews, but did so anyway. This is presented as evidence of openness and care.

I find this deeply depressing.

In a society that genuinely valued children, care leavers, disabled people and older residents, learning from a death would never be framed as optional. It would be automatic. It would be expected. It would be the floor, not the ceiling.

This mindset is not confined to children’s services. In adult social care, statutory legal duties have become the entire offer. Anything beyond the minimum required by law is treated as unrealistic, unaffordable or even unnecessary. Need is calibrated to what can be funded, rather than funding being shaped around real, human need. The result is a slow but relentless race to the bottom.

There is also a glaring disconnect between what the council says and what it actually does. We hear warm words about care, learning lessons and putting children first, yet at the same time Barnet Council recently increased the rent on Rephael House, a charity providing vital mental health support to children and families.

Rephael House delivers thousands of counselling sessions each year, often stepping in where statutory services have long waiting lists. If the council truly believed mental health was a priority, it would be doing everything possible to stabilise and promote services like this, not treating them like commercial tenants.

The same contradiction runs through adult mental health services. The council is pressing ahead with plans to close The Network, a preventative service that helps adults stay well and out of hospital, and has failed to resolve a long-running dispute with mental health social workers who are asking for fair pay and safe workloads. These are concrete decisions that undermine mental health support across the borough.

Taken together, these actions tell a very different story from the one presented in council statements and interviews. You cannot claim to be learning lessons from tragedy while simultaneously dismantling the very services that prevent crisis in the first place. Warm words are not enough.

There is another uncomfortable truth we need to face: the imbalance of power between senior officers and elected councillors.

Officers are paid, often very well, to design systems, write reports and frame options in ways that appear controlled and compliant. That is their role. The problem arises when councillors stop doing theirs. Too often, scrutiny is replaced with deference. Reports are waved through because it is easier, safer and politically more convenient not to challenge them.

We saw this clearly in the way council leaders accepted the officers end of year report without scrutiny and went on to justify their actions by saying “this is how things have always been done” under previous administrations, under different political leadership. But continuity is not a defence. If you are elected to represent residents, your job is not to manage the status quo, but to change what isn’t working.

Senior officers do not set the moral or political ambition of a borough. Councillors do. Or they are supposed to. When they fail to interrogate they are not being neutral. They are choosing not to know.

And while Labour and Conservatives now trade accusations across the council chamber, the people I hear from every week are not interested in political football. They are parents of care-experienced children. Disabled adults fighting for basic support. Daughters worried about what is happening to their parents in care homes. Families whose children have lost school transport overnight because eligibility criteria have tightened yet again.

These stories are not abstract. They are the lived consequences of a system that measures success by legal compliance rather than human wellbeing.

We are repeatedly told that these issues should not be “politicised”. I disagree. They are political at their core. You cannot depoliticise decisions about who gets support, who waits, who falls through gaps, and who is protected. You either choose to stand with residents, or you choose to stand with bureaucracy.

As a Green, I believe things have to be done differently. That means rejecting the idea that the minimum is enough. It means honest conversations about unmet need. It means councillors educating themselves, challenging officers robustly, and refusing to accept polished reports without scrutiny. And above all, it means putting humanity back into systems that have forgotten who they are meant to serve.

If we do not raise our ambition now after lives have already been lost, then when will we?

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else. £84 annual supporters get a print copy by post and a digital copy of each month's before anyone else.