News

• Laming calls for fundamental reform
• Milburn urges rethink over discipline against senior staff in Climbie case
• Comment and analysis on the Laming report
• Parents may sue over mishandling of Victoria Climbie case

TO READ TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH LORD LAMING CLICK HERE

With Lord Laming’s scathing criticism of services still ringing in their ears, few within the world of child protection have been prepared to put their heads above the parapet and publicly review the implications of the Victoria Climbie report in detail, writes Mark Hunter.

With 108 recommendations to wade through, covering policy at both national and local level, the leadership of social, health and police services have all restricted themselves to a general welcome for the report and expressions of sorrow and regret at the failings that led to the tragic death of the eight-year-old.

Nevertheless, amid the hand wringing and protestations that “this must never happen again” there are some who have dared to suggest that Laming’s report, for all its worthy intentions, may, at best, be an opportunity missed, and at worst, it could plunge child protection even deeper into crisis than it is already.

The crux of the matter is whether a demoralised, underfunded and understaffed service can withstand Laming’s radical reforms. These include the replacement of child protection committees by new inter-agency boards; the establishment of a children’s commissioner-type post to head a new national agency for children and families; the creation of a national database of all children under 16, and a ruling that children must be seen and interviewed within 24 hours of allegations of abuse being made.

Certainly within social services’ academic sector, there is a belief that the Laming report risks meeting the fate of some of the other 35 public inquiries into child abuse since 1973.

At Nottingham Trent University, senior lecturer Jim Wild believes that Laming has blown the “best chance we had to transform child protection services”. Instead of radical modernisation, the report offers just “another line of overbearing management structure in a vastly under-resourced service”, he says.

At Birmingham’s School of Public Policy, Martin Willis criticises the report for blaming social services managers, while failing to take account of government targets that “drive managers to focus on procedures rather than whether children are safe". “Failure to achieve these targets results in naming and shaming, more bureaucratic reporting, low morale and staff leaving.”

Eileen Munro, lecturer in social policy at the London School of Economics, believes that the restructuring called for by the Laming report could actually make things worse, hindering recruitment and causing demoralised staff to leave the profession.

“The most serious problem for the child protection service at the moment is the recruitment and retention of staff,” says Munro.

“Child protection agencies have been subjected to countless re-organisations at either a national or local level.  Research shows that they have not had a significant impact on the quality of frontline work, but they are inevitably expensive in staff time and energy.”

“The Climbie inquiry will make even more experienced workers decide they are in a no-win situation, and it is time to leave child protection teams.”

Munro blames much of the demoralisation within child protection services on the new culture of “guidelines, protocols and frameworks” that are designed to improve the quality of service, but often end up doing the opposite.

“The Laming Report quite rightly stresses the need to ensure that effective, high quality services are provided, but fails to recognise that current measures to audit practice are seriously limited,” she says.

Munro claims that “the accountants” who have developed performance indicators in child protection have chosen factors that are easily measured rather than those that give a true picture of the quality of the care received.  This increased emphasis on paperwork has distorted both the practice and supervision of social work.

“Research shows that, for most people, it now concentrates on managerial aspects not on the professional issues of the case.  But frontline workers need someone to help them stand back from a case and re-evaluate the information they have. Otherwise, as happened in Victoria’s case, they make new evidence fit the picture they have formed.”

Meanwhile, others affected by the Laming proposals are also beginning to express their reservations.

The Children's Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) has criticised the fact that the head of the new children’s and families agency will not be independent of government. This, according to CRAE’s Veronica Plowden, means the new appointee will be unable to act as a true children’s rights commissioner.

“Victoria's appalling suffering and death provided Lord Laming with an ideal opportunity to urge the Government to establish an independent human rights institution for children, which has sadly been missed" she says. The charity is also disappointed that the report does not recommend that smacking children should be outlawed.

The Local Government Association, while welcoming most of the report’s recommendations, has described the timetable for bringing about the changes as “challenging”. Of 108 recommendations, Laming has demanded that 46 are implemented within three months, a further 38 within six months and the rest within two years. The LGA has also expressed concern about whether local government has the capacity to provide a specialist child protection reaction service within 24 hours, seven days a week.

“Capacity is the key,” says the chairperson of the LGA’s social affairs and health executive Alison King. “None of this will be possible unless there are sufficient numbers of social workers, of sufficient calibre and with sufficient training.”

The public sector union Unison has welcomed Laming’s plans to develop clear national standards and to strengthen inspections. However it has questioned whether the new national agency for children and families will be able to achieve these functions.

"We will study these proposals carefully, but we will need to be convinced that setting up a new national body will promote more effective child protection services,” says Unison’s senior national officer Owen Davies.

The union is concerned that unless their relationship is made absolutely clear, social services departments and the new agency may end up “passing the buck” between themselves while vulnerable children remain unprotected.

Inevitably there are also concerns about staffing levels.   

"At the heart of Alan Milburn's response to Lord Laming's proposals must be a commitment to break the cycle of underfunding, understaffing and overworking in social services departments, the common feature of inquiry after inquiry,” says Davies.

"Without a big investment of extra money, services will not improve because even the best policies and procedures in the world will not work if you still have the same demoralised and stressed-out people, working in teams with 30 per cent vacancy rates.”

For all the background of the Victoria Climbie case click here

To read Lord Laming's report click here