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Institutional racism and the stereotyping of ethnic minority social workers as cultural experts could have been a factor in the death of Victoria Climbié, the director of anti-racism body the REU has said.

Ratna Dutt said institutional racism in social services departments caused staff from ethnic minorities to be treated as experts on black and Asian clients - something that put them under tremendous pressure.

"Often this is the only time black workers have status in their departments because they can share information about culture," Dutt said. "But this is flawed because it is a diminished vision of culture where it becomes tick-box stuff."

She was speaking at a conference on race and child protection in London last week.

Dutt said expecting social workers to be cultural experts did a "great disservice" to clients but also deprived the workers themselves of the chance to develop because their views went unchallenged. Mistakes made by the black social worker Lisa Arthurworrey, who was allocated Victoria’s case, may have been a consequence of cultural ignorance.

During Lord Laming’s inquiry, Arthurworrey said she was wrong to assume that Victoria stood to attention because of what the social worker said was a sign of the "respect that was found in African-Caribbean families". Victoria was from west Africa and her behaviour in the presence of her aunt Marie Thérèse Kouao was an expression of fear, not respect.

Dutt added that there were other examples of the failure to deal with race issues in Victoria’s case: such as Haringey Council’s inability to address the problems with Arthurworrey’s manager, Carole Baptiste, who was having a mental breakdown.

She said Victoria’s case would have been treated differently had she not been black.

She also said that there was plenty of evidence that racism played a part in relation to outcomes for children, such as in the over-representation of ethnic minority children on the child protection register. But although she said institutional racism could be detected in outcomes it was difficult to identify where it occurred.

The conference was jointly organised by the REU, Bridge Child Care Development Service, which works with families, and Haringey Area Child Protection Committee.