News

I am surprised that Lord Laming did not call evidence from the joint review team that inspected Haringey Council during the period covered by the Victoria Climbie Inquiry. Surely, if it is the brief of the inquiry to explore systemic failings, then it must address the inspection process.

The fact that the SSI inspection reported positively suggests that the process is flawed, particularly in light of the evidence submitted to the inquiry. Did the inspectors meet social workers? Did they formally meet operational managers? Did they read any files? Did they meet any service users? If they did not, then clearly the inspection process is meaningless and cosmetic.

However, if, as is more likely, they did do these things, then this is an issue of national significance. It may be that inaccurate information was reported back to strategic managers. Had a more accurate picture been presented, might more decisive action have ensued?

I would like a full explanation of why the Laming inquiry has not summoned the SSI.

DA Harrop
Newcastle-upon-Tyne

System not to blame

I am amazed that a majority of your readers appear to favour a wholly new agency for child protection in the light of the death of Victoria Climbie (News, page 8, 28 February).

One case of bad practice does not make a bad system. If people do their job properly, child protection works and it works every day for countless children.

Children have never been safer or better protected than they are today. Awareness has never been higher. If society wants no child ever to die then it must give us, not a new agency, but a wholly new level of authority over people's lives, in which agencies would determine who has children and how they are cared for.

Short of that degree of invasion into individual privacy, no system can offer the kind of certainties that even professionals seem to want. This only destroys morale and leads to impossible expectations.

Ben Whitney
Training and development officer
Social inclusion unit, pupil and student services
Staffordshire education department

Choice is not an option

The trend to replace medium-sized local authority homes with smaller private homes ("Smaller, but better formed?", 7 February) is sadly not always to do with choice.

It is because many local authority homes need large amounts of capital investment to bring them up to standard: a standard that has applied to the private sector for many years. The article clearly fails to accept that the physical environment is a key factor for all young people in residential care.

Second, the mechanism to improve quality in the private sector has been in place for some time, which has not been the case for local authority homes.

It is absolutely right that fewer children should now live in children's homes compared with 1997. That is a trend based on good child care policy and practice and should continue. This must surely be true, regardless of whether it is private or local authority provision. Only those homes or organisations which provide Best Value and the best service to children should survive. I will welcome that date.

Alan Laming

Director
Croham Care Services

Price is right on fights

I work in the private sector ("Smaller, but better formed?", 7 February) in residential provision for children who have suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse and also have a history of failed placement.

My post is concerned with managing aggressive and destructive behaviour. I have developed and now deliver a training package covering both the theoretical aspect of handling aggressive and destructive behaviour and a restraint training package, Protecting Rights In a Caring Environment (Price), in order to protect clients and staff as well as complying with various legal obligations, policies and guidelines.

All staff attend between one to three days' training on Price within their induction. I have also designed several risk assessments to measure issues such as as the practical risks involved in delivering a programme of physical restraint training. We have also adopted the British Institute of Learning Disabilities Code of Practice for Trainers in the Use of Physical Interventions.

I also monitor, analyse and interpret the recording of all incidents of physical intervention and provide unit-based workshops to create a closer relationship between training and practice.

Thank you for raising this issue, but some further research into the good practice that exists within the private sector would be appreciated.

Felix Morris
Price instructor
Leaps & Bounds Child Care
Shropshire

Embrace change

I too am excited by primary care trusts ("In whom we trust", 28 February) and this is not just because I am one of a number of ex-directors of social services recently appointed to chair a new PCT.

PCTs offer real opportunity to bring together fragmented health and social care, and their professional groups, into more effective local arrangements: focused on enablement and health improvement for people in their own homes; challenging assumptions about secondary health care and the funding needs of acute hospitals; and engaging with local partners in the tradition of social services at their best.

My emphasis is on "arrangements" not a single organisation. I want the primary care trust I chair to embrace both health improvement and social care - in a meaningful way for patients and users, regardless of how we organise, who we employ and whether or not there is still a local social services department.

Brian Parrott
Chairperson
Central Suffolk Primary Care Trust