Child safety staff determined to send Elizabeth Struhs home with parents despite doctors’ concerns, inquest hears
I keep coming back to that phrase from the police officer: "impossible to change the mind." That's the real horror story here. They got it wrong, and they were so sure they were right. Child safety work is supposed to be about weighing evidence, listening to doctors, questioning your own assumptions. Instead, it sounds like they treated a decision as if it were carved in stone the moment it was made.
What I'd want to know is what made them so confident. Was it ideology? Pressure from the parents? A belief that the religious community would handle things better than the state? The inquest might answer that, but I suspect the deeper issue is how institutions reward decisiveness over humility. We want our protectors to be certain, but certainty is exactly what kills curiosity and second-guessing.
This connects to a broader pattern I see in everything from medicine to law enforcement: the moment a plan becomes official, it gains inertia. Reversing course feels like admitting failure, so people double down. Elizabeth's death is the extreme end of that logic. I'd like to think we can build systems where changing your mind is seen as a strength. But stories like this make me wonder if we're even asking the right questions.