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The last months of Victoria Climbie's life are too appalling to contemplate for long. It is almost impossible to reconcile the details of Victoria's suffering with the photograph of a smiling, optimistic child, trustingly looking forward to all the opportunities a life in the West could offer, taken only a few months before her death.

It is, of course, impossible to prevent every murder of a child. And if the public do not accept this fact, professionals are being set up to fail. But we must never forget that it was possible to protect Victoria. Those who were charged with doing so, on behalf of us all, failed utterly and repeatedly. Yet public accountability for that failure remained largely in one profession - social work - and largely at the front line.

Lord Laming's report fiercely criticises the senior managers in all agencies who did not appear to consider themselves accountable, while the careers and in many ways the lives of more junior staff were destroyed. This must be the last tragedy in which blaming a front line social worker replaces a genuine search for solutions in the public arena.

It is clear, however, that Lord Laming has conducted a genuine search for solutions, despite the sometimes alarmingly adversarial nature of the inquiry process. He has accepted that when the system works, it works well, and has managed to temper his shock and shame at Victoria's fate with his knowledge that radical structural change always exacts a heavy price.

Lord Laming has recommended important changes which, if implemented, should improve the way children in danger are protected. But unless the same sense of shock and shame - both in government and among the public - impels the government to take radical action in support of sensible change, these new accountability and standard-setting mechanisms will not of themselves ensure others are not failed as Victoria was.

For radical action is needed, not in terms of structures, but in resourcing the infrastructure Lord Laming has proposed. Lord Laming has so comprehensively and clearly explained why a new national child protection agency will not work, that even Paul Boateng will now find it difficult to recommend one. We will have to wait until spring, when Boateng's green paper is expected, to find out for sure. What we know is that chronic under-resourcing played a part in the failure to protect Victoria, and will undermine the success of Lord Laming's proposals, if the government decides to implement them, as it has undermined the collective desire to do better in the past.

As far as social work is concerned, the mechanism for the regeneration of the profession - and nothing less will do - is already in place. A recruitment campaign exists, the three-year degree starts in September, registration and regulation of the profession has started, and work is under way to set standards and establish a credible knowledge-base. But if a new recruit, despite all this, can still end up in the position in which Victoria's social worker Lisa Arthurworrey found herself, children are not safe. Significant extra investment is needed, over and above the existing funding Health Secretary Alan Milburn made much of in his response to Laming's report.

Milburn's response begs other questions too, for it relied heavily on the new children's trusts, and we do not yet know how - or if - they will absorb child protection.

Lord Laming's recommendations rely on local authorities as the lead agency, held accountable by a National Agency for Children and Families. If all commissioning trusts are led by local authorities, who also assume responsibility for Sure Start, as is planned, it is easy to envisage a context in which Laming's measures to promote greater inter-agency co-ordination can work, if the necessary resources are assured.

A lot of ifs, which the green paper must resolve – but in the right way.