News

Brent Council's social services department was operating in an environment of administrative chaos in which case files went missing daily and faxed referrals from the One Stop Shop were left to pile up on the floor, at the time Victoria Climbie's case was being dealt with in June 1999, eight months before her death.

The inquiry into Victoria's death heard this week from Edward Armstrong, manager of the intake duty team responsible for receiving, logging and allocating referrals in 1999. He told the inquiry that there was a backlog of between 200 and 300 referrals waiting to be inputted into a database. He said he had complained each week about the backlog because "it was getting so high it was actually hiding the administrative staff from the rest of the team".

But senior managers, although aware of the problems, did nothing to remedy them, said Armstrong.

Armstrong has been suspended on full pay while the council investigates his handling of the case.

The inquiry heard that the intake duty team was made up of seven social workers who had trained abroad and had not been inducted at Brent.

It was overwhelmed by the amount of work and became demoralised to the extent that one member of staff had walked out and was later persuaded to return.

In June 1999, extra pressure was put on the team when they were told by senior managers that they had to close as many cases as possible because the Social Services Inspectorate were due to visit and they could not have case files piling up on desks. Armstrong closed 190 cases.

It was during this time that a referral regarding Climbie was faxed to the intake team by the council's One Stop Shop.

In his statement, Armstrong explained that Victoria's was one of the case files that went missing.

There was a two-week delay between the referral being received and it being put into the database.

Armstrong arranged for social workers to make two unannounced visits to Kouao and Victoria but nobody was in.

It was classified as child in need case and Armstrong said in his statement: "I had no information to suggest that the child was at risk."

On the day that two social workers tried to make a visit to Victoria and Kouao, 14 July 1999, a worker in the duty team received a referral from Central Middlesex Hospital concerning Victoria, which was passed to the child protection team.

No connection was made between the workers' visit and the referral because only administrative staff had access to the referrals database. Two months later Armstrong closed the case after confirming family had moved from Brent.