Manager denies removing Victoria Climbie case file

The social work manager accused of removing pages from Victoria
Climbie’s file after her death wholeheartedly rejected the
allegations today (Friday) during her evidence to the inquiry,
writes Lauren Revans.

Angella Mairs, who was duty investigation and assessment team
manager, told the inquiry that she had never denied closing the
case so there would have been an “no reason and no purpose” to act
in such a way.

“I would never do something like that in all my years of doing
social work and managing social work,” she said. “I do not accept
it whatsoever”.

Mairs also denied that she had directed Victoria Climbie’s
allocated social worker Lisa Arthurworrey to prepare a provisional
closing summary “without proper reference to the case file and
before an adequate assessment of Victoria’s needs could be carried
out”.

She went on to reject further allegations that she failed to
offer any proper supervision in relation to Victoria’s case during
the time she was Arthurworrey’s supervisor; that she knew of the
second strategy meeting, but failed to ensure Arthurworrey acted on
the tasks that arose from it; and that she allowed senior
practitioner Rose Kozinos to supervise Arthurworrey without
appropriate supervision training.

Although Mairs accepted that she had been in breach of
case-recording guidelines by failing to read Victoria’s file, she
insisted this was due to insufficient resources, and that her
senior managers where aware that these guidelines where not
followed in practice.

She also admitted that she and her team where “not that
familiar” with the Haringey area child protection committee’s
procedures handbook, despite its intended purpose as a “working
tool for professionals involved with children”. “It did not have
that much relevance to the day-to-day operation,” she
confessed.