News

• MPs renew pressure for a children's commissioner
• Directors give Laming's management boards cool response
• Victoria Climbie's parents to sue authorities
• Debate over Laming report rages on
• Milburn urges rethink over discipline against senior staff in Climbie case

FOR ALL THE BACKGROUND ON THE VICTORIA CLIMBIE CASE CLICK HERE

Lord Laming

Main points in Lord Laming’s report:

• a new national agency for children and families should be set up
• chief executive of agency to take on role of children’s commissioner
• area child protection committees replaced by new inter-agency boards
• child must be seen and interviewed within 24 hours of allegations of abuse being made

        and national database of all children under 16

For a more detailed list of recommendations click here

Lord Laming has called for fundamental changes to be made to children and families services in his inquiry report into Victoria Climbie's death, writes Clare Jerrom.

The chairperson of the inquiry recommends an overhaul of the system both at a local and national level.

A children and families board should be established at the heart of government and chaired by a minister of cabinet rank.

In addition, a national agency for children and f amilies should be created to service the children and families board. The chief executive of this agency would take on some of the responsibilities of a children's commissioner for England.

The agency would advise on the implementation of the United Convention of the Rights of the Child and on setting nationally agreed outcomes for children.

However, at a local level each local authority with responsible for social services should establish a committee for children and families with members from local authorities, police authorities, and relevant boards and trusts of health services.

This committee will oversee the work of a management board for services to children and families, which will be made up of chief officers from police, social services, health education, housing and probation. The board will appoint a director of children and families services at local levels, and this person will be responsible for ensuring service delivery including the effectiveness of inter-agency working.

"The purpose of these proposals is to secure a clear line of accountability for the protection of children and the wellbeing of families," Laming said.

"Never again should people in senior positions be free to claim - as they did in this inquiry - ignorance of what was happening to children."

The new structure at a local level should replace area child protection committees which have generally become "unwieldy, bureaucratic, and with limited impact on frontline services".

However, Laming dismissed the idea of a national child protection agency arguing it is not possible to separate the protection of children from wider support from families. This support is a multi-disciplinary task, he added.

The report makes 108 recommendations, 46 of which are social care related. These include recommendation 20 under which directors of social services must ensure staff in their children and families intake teams are experienced in working with children and families, and that they have received appropriate training.

Under recommendation 35 directors of social services must ensure that children who are the subject of allegations of deliberate harm are seen and spoken to within 24 hours of the allegation being communicated to social services.

Recommendation 52 says directors of social services must ensure that no cases are allocated to a social worker unless the manager has ensured the person has the necessary training, experience, and time to deal with it properly.

Laming concludes "sadly the report is a vivid demonstration of poor practice within and between social services, the police and health agencies. It is also a stark reminder of the consequences of ineffective and inept management.

"It is the hope of the full inquiry team that the horror of what happened to Victoria will endure as a reproach to bad practice and be a beacon pointing the way to securing the safety and wellbeing of all children in our society."

Laming also recommends: the government should issue guidance on the Data Protection Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998, and common law rules on confidentiality where they are preventing information sharing between agencies, and a national children's database on all children under the age of 16.

To download a full copy of the report click here