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Victoria Climbie's death was an accident waiting to happen, social worker Lisa Arthurworrey said this week as she broke her media silence to outline plans to clear her name.

Lisa Arthurworrey was allocated Victoria's case in August 1999 after joining the council the previous November. She had just 18 months' post-qualifying experience.

She was suspended from Haringey in October 2000 and sacked for gross misconduct in November 2002, two months before Lord Laming published his report into Victoria's death.


Although Arthurworrey admits she made mistakes, she argues that she was also failed by a lack of supervision and flawed procedures. She believes she has been scapegoated and is preparing to take Haringey to an employment tribunal.

Arthurworrey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this week that, at the time, front-line social workers were given directions, then left to carry them out. "There was a small group of us that used to work closely together but we were mainly inexperienced and it was like the blind leading the blind," she said.

"Managers were pre-occupied with their own careers and were just not accessible to discuss cases with. Nobody seemed to care about the work that we were doing or how we did it. The emphasis was on progressing cases as quickly as possible."


Arthurworrey is also appealing against her name being included on the Protection of Children Act List, held by the Department for Education and Skills and against which child care organisations must check names before offering jobs.

"I don't present as a risk to children," Arthurworrey said. "There was never any wilful neglect on my part in Victoria's case. I got it wrong because I didn't receive the supervision or the resources to get it right."

Arthurworrey claims that she did her best to follow guidelines, but said Haringey's turned out to bear "no resemblance" to the Working Together guidelines that she should have been following.

"I made serious mistakes. But at the end of the day, I was following flawed procedures."