How many vulnerable children will die before these lessons are finally learnt?

Thus speaks a Daily Mail comment piece today in relation to the tragic case of Khyra Ishaq, a seven-year-old girl who died in hospital over the weekend in Birmingham.

This much we know: that Khyra died at hospital over the weekend and the cause of death is as yet unknown; and that two people have appeared in court charged with neglect. They are named as Angela Gordon, 33, and Junaid Abuhamza, 29, and are believed to be Khyra's mother and step-father.

Beyond this point begins the speculation in today's press: that she died of starvation (unproven, ahead of the postmortem); that Khyra and her siblings were taken out of school several weeks ago and then received a visit from "an educational social worker" and that no follow-up visits took place.

These claims come from the local MP, Khalid Mahmood, who has used them to launch a stinging attack on Birmingham children's services, which he says suffer from "structural issues".

However, Beverley Hughes, the children's minister - who for some reason has been called upon to comment on a local child protection case ahead of any serious case review - has said that the family was not known to social services.

Back to that Daily Mail piece.

It contains a summary of the Victoria Climbie case and the Laming inquiry - the implication being (given the headline), that lessons haven't been learned and that this case illustrates it.

All of which may be true, but is impossible to say at this stage ahead of any trial that takes place and the serious case review.

The piece then, bizarrely, lists a number of cases "involving the wilful abuse or neglect of a child". Given the nature of the article, you would have thought that each would have involved failings or at least question marks concerning the role of agencies, be they children's services, the police or whoever.

But nothing of the kind is mentioned, quite bizarrely.

All of which seems to imply that any act of extreme cruelty against a child is the fault of child protection agencies, regardless of their role (or lack of role) in a case - a singularly absurd proposition.

While the news stories on this case can't be faulted from what I can see - we news journalists are entitled to report speculation so long as we make clear that it is speculation - comment pieces like this do not appear to contribute to anything other than an anti-social work agenda, which we can do without. 

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2008/05/jumping-the-gun-on-childs-deat.html