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Child protection cases were not adequately managed in Haringey, the council’s assistant director of children’s services told the Victoria Climbie Inquiry, writes Jonathan Pearce.

Asistant director Carole Wilson said: "I am not for one minute suggesting there was adequate management control. There wasn’t."

At the beginning of her evidence to the inquiry, Wilson ducked questions over whether Haringey had handled Climbie’s case "inadequately", claiming that she had not yet "come to a conclusion".

"I don’t defend and never have defended areas of bad practice," she added. Wilson pointed to management policies, procedures and practices that were in place, but failed to protect Victoria, who died at the hands of her great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao and boyfriend Carl Manning in February last year.

But when questioned by Laming at the end of her evidence, Wilson was less equivocal in her answers. "[Haringey’s] practice was poor. Procedures were in place," she said. "The monitoring was in place, but it failed Victoria. We all bear a collective responsibility at different levels and in different degrees."

"I don’t think we served Victoria well," added Wilson. "But there are so many unanswered questions in the service I knew."