News

Chairperson of the Victoria Climbie Inquiry Lord Herbert Laming issued a summons requiring the director of Haringey social services to appear before him on Monday morning to produce missing files, writes Lauren Revans.

Laming took the unusual step after it emerged that at least four reports relevant to the independent inquiry had not previously been made known to Laming and his team of experts.

Their existence was only discovered during the evidence of Rose Kosinos, acting senior manager on the investigation and assessment team for the north Tottenham office.

The missing material is believed to include an audit report of the child protection review service, a report by Terry Burns, the acting commissioner for north Tottenham, an urgent memorandum to the commissioning manager, Dave Duncan, and an action plan resulting from another report, also disclosed to the inquiry at "the 59^th minute of the 11^th hour".

Laming said it was "deeply disturbing" that new material was emerging in this way and at this late stage.

"It is totally unacceptable," he told Haringey Council. "This is an important inquiry. It is a difficult inquiry to conduct and it is an inquiry which is of immense importance, not just in respect of previous practice but in learning the lessons for the future.

"In the circumstances in which I now find myself, I do not think that I have any alternative but to issue the summons to the director of social services of Haringey."

Bristow is expected to produce the missing documents at 9am on Monday, but is not due to give oral evidence to the inquiry until later this month.

Yesterday, the inquiry heard that a review of child protection work at Haringey’s north Tottenham and Hornsey offices carried out after Victoria’s death "revealed masses of serious concern".

Dawn Green, child protection adviser and co-author of the report, told the inquiry that the audit team were "appalled and shocked" at what they found.

The report said that the audit team was "struck by the repetitive and basic nature of the management actions on file" in the north Tottenham office, that checks were not always carried out, that office appointments were used instead of home visits, and that there was "some inconsistency in the dealings with family support cases and that lack of event may create aimlessness".

The situation in Haringey’s Hornsey office appeared even worse. The report found evidence of child protection files that had "little or no work for very long periods of time", that procedures were not followed and timescales did not appear to exist, that the condition of many files was "confusing", and that initial assessment forms were "almost never used".

"We were actually saying at that time we thought the (Hornsey) office was unsafe, which is about as far as you can go as a child protection adviser, in terms of our concerns," Green explained. "We were very shocked by it and that is why we illustrated it with some examples of some of the things that really worried us about the practice at that time."