News round up: What the papers said about Laming

By Mithran Samuel on March 13, 2009 in Child safeguarding

Peer on Baby P: Now just do it

A despairing peer who probed the Baby P tragedy recommended 58 ways to keep kids safer yesterday — and told child protection staff: “Now just do it!”
Lord Laming revealed that reforms he ordered seven years ago after little Victoria Climbié’s terrible death are still not in place.
Read more on this story in The Sun

Devastating critique of the failings that doomed Baby P

Lord Laming delivered a devastating critique of child protection in the wake of the Baby P scandal yesterday as he called for a far-reaching package of reforms from the cabinet table to the most junior frontline social workers.

He expressed his frustration at the failure of the government and social services to implement policies designed to keep children safe, telling professionals to “just do it”.

Abused children being failed by councils’ obsession with bureaucracy, says damning Baby P report

The highly-paid town hall managers who are supposed to protect the lives of children in troubled homes were yesterday savaged for failing youngsters and dodging blame.
A report called for ‘personal accountability’ from the £100,000-a-year plus council chiefs in the wake of the killing of Baby P.
Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Report: Children at risk for sake of targets

A £4,000 court fee for taking a child into care that was introduced last May could be scrapped under reforms to avoid a repeat of the Baby P tragedy.

A government-commissioned report into child protection said that the fees should be abolished in April 2010 unless there was “incontrovertible evidence” that they were not not deterring local authorities from moving children out of danger.
Read more on this story in The Times

Urgent shake-up of child welfare system

An urgent shakeup of child protection services in England was set in motion by ministers yesterday after a report by Lord Laming drew attention to system failures at every level.

In a review commissioned by the government after the Baby P tragedy, Laming found ministers, local authority chiefs and service managers were failing to give a high enough priority to child protection. He said it remained a “Cinderella service” with a demoralised workforce and an unsustainably high vacancy rate.