Archived Transcript for 19 April 2002: Pages 1 to 50

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1 Friday, 19th April 2002

2 (10.05 am)

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, my name

4 is Herbert Laming and I am delighted to welcome you to

5 this the fourth seminar of Phase II of the

6 Victoria Climbie Inquiry. I apologise to those who have

7 their backs to me but this little bit of the proceedings

8 will not last long.

9 You will recall our terms of reference -- and you

10 have a copy in the small pack, not the big pack, the

11 small pack you have been given -- you will recall our

12 terms of reference says as follows:

13 "To reach conclusions as to the circumstances

14 leading to Victoria Climbie's death and to make

15 recommendations to the Secretary of State for Health and

16 to the Secretary of State for the Home Department as to

17 how such an event may, as far as possible, be avoided in

18 the future."

19 This is this latter section of the terms of

20 reference, about how these terrible events might be

21 avoided, that this series of seminars is intended to

22 address. I and my colleagues are extremely grateful to

23 you for the interest you have shown in this part of the

24 work of the Inquiry and for the time that you have

25 devoted to the Inquiry. I have no doubt that we, on

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1 this side, as it were, will be much better informed

2 because of the written statements that you have already

3 made and the discussions that are now to take place.

4 I am extremely grateful to Counsel to the Inquiry who is

5 Mr Neil Garnham QC, sitting in the middle on my left,

6 for being able to chair this series of seminars.

7 I would like before I hand over to Mr Garnham to

8 introduce formally my colleagues, who are sitting with

9 me throughout the Inquiry. On my immediate right is

10 Dr Nellie Adjaye who is a consultant paediatrician with

11 special interest in community child health and is

12 currently working for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells

13 NHS Trust.

14 On Dr Adjaye's right is Mr John Fox, who is

15 a Detective Superintendent with the Hampshire

16 Constabulary and who has played a significant part not

17 only in investigating child protection matters but also

18 in working with the Home Office and with the Department

19 of Health in matters relating to the care and protection

20 of children.

21 On my left is Mrs Donna Kinnair who is a qualified

22 nurse and health visitor and more recently a Senior

23 Nurse Manager with the Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham

24 Health Authority Children's Services. She also has

25 considerable experience both in practice and in the

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1 management of child protection services.

2 On her left is Mr Nigel Richardson, who is the

3 Assistant Director, Children and Family Services for

4 North Lincolnshire Council and is the Vice Chairman of

5 the local Area Child Protection Committee. Like each of

6 my colleagues he also has great experience in child

7 protection matters.

8 I should add that having been together now for what

9 seems to be a very, very long time, I should say that

10 I do not believe that I could have been blessed by

11 a better, more experienced and talented team of advisers

12 to sit with me on this important Inquiry.

13 Inevitably an inquiry of this kind attracts a very

14 wide range of responses, and for that I am grateful, but

15 although all are good and important in their own right

16 they are not all relevant to our terms of reference and

17 I am sure you will understand that we have to always

18 keep in mind our terms of reference. Any issues that

19 are beyond the scope of the Inquiry, however important

20 though they are, cannot be considered. So as I said

21 when we began these seminars, I will be identifying the

22 contributions which we have received which seem to me

23 both relevant and valuable to the Inquiry. Those

24 contributions will be treated as evidence to the Inquiry

25 and published on the Inquiry website. Others that are

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1 not considered to be relevant to the work of the Inquiry

2 will not be taken as evidence to the Inquiry.

3 I should say that my colleagues and I look forward

4 very much to joining you during the breaks and over

5 lunch, but that comes with a warning, which is that

6 I must make it clear that evidence to the Inquiry must

7 be in public in this room. So it is better that you do

8 not discuss with us any matters which you wish to put to

9 the Inquiry, or which will be the subject of debate

10 during the seminars.

11 That said, this series of seminars is proving to be

12 enormously valuable to the work of the Inquiry. Neither

13 I nor my colleagues will comment during the course of

14 the seminar, but we will reserve some time at the end of

15 the day when we will be free to ask questions of

16 clarification. I would be grateful, and this applies to

17 everybody in the room, if you could now ensure that

18 mobile telephones, pagers and any other kind of

19 distraction is switched off so that that will not be

20 a distraction during the course of the discussion.

21 Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will gladly hand over

22 to Counsel to the Inquiry Mr Neil Garnham.

23 MR GARNHAM: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Can I add my welcome

24 to that of Lord Laming's. All of us involved in this

25 Inquiry are grateful to the busy and distinguished

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1 people who have given up their time to be here today.

2 Thank you all for coming. Can I too begin with some

3 instructions. I am Neil Garnham, Counsel to this

4 Inquiry. To my left is Neil Sheldon, Junior Counsel to

5 the Inquiry. To my right sit Dr Valerie Brasse and

6 Dr Susan Shepherd who have been advising the Inquiry on

7 social care and health matters respectively. To my far

8 left is Mandy Jacklin, the Inquiry Secretary, and to my

9 far right is our stenographer who will be keeping a note

10 of everything you say for use later in the proceedings.

11 First a few housekeeping points. We will break for

12 coffee at about 11.15 and lunch about a quarter to one.

13 Both will be served in the room where we served

14 you coffee where you first arrived. There is a gents

15 loo adjacent to the lift and ladies on the floor below.

16 We will aim to finish the seminar at 4 pm or shortly

17 thereafter.

18 I wonder if I can go around the table and ask each

19 of you to introduce yourselves. We have circulated

20 brief biographical notes in the pack, which you received

21 when you arrived, but perhaps you could tell us the name

22 by which you would like to be called during the course

23 of today, and the nature of your work. I should say

24 that we have had a note to say that Glen Mason is going

25 to be ten or fifteen minutes late so we will get him to

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1 introduce himself when he arrives. Can I start with you

2 Mick Hopwood.

3 MR HOPWOOD: Good morning. I am Mick Hopwood, Detective

4 Chief Inspector and the head of the Department of West

5 Yorkshire Child and Public Protection Unit. That has

6 a staff of around four detective inspectors, eight

7 sergeants and something like 50 detective constables

8 dealing with all the intrafamilial referrals of child

9 abuse in and around West Yorkshire. I have been with

10 the department for a year.

11 MR BATES: Richard Bates from Bradford Social Services,

12 a colleague of Mick's. My particular role as relevant

13 to today is to do with performance management and the

14 use of information systems to support that.

15 MS YOUNG: Frances Young and happy to be named Frances. I

16 am the Lead Nurse for Child Protection for Maidstone and

17 Tunbridge NHS Trust in Kent covering four hospital sites

18 and working closely with adjoining primary care trusts.

19 I have been involved in Part 8 reviews within the Kent

20 area, both as a reviewing officer and also with

21 implementing recommendations locally. I have a health

22 visitor and midwifery background. I am responsible for

23 ensuring that my NHS Trust fulfils its statutory

24 obligation in respect of safeguarding children.

25 MS BARNETT: Good morning. My name is Anne Barnett, I am

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1 an Assessment Team Manager in Middlesborough. I have

2 22 years experience in social worker based mainly in

3 Cleveland and the Middlesborough areas and I am

4 responsible for the supervision and management of 14

5 social workers. I deal with all referrals from one half

6 of Middlesborough which involves children in need and

7 child protection.

8 MR DAWSON: Hilton Dawson MP. I am Chair of the All Party

9 Group for Children, in Parliament. I have been an MP

10 for five years before that, 15 years or so as

11 a childcare social worker, manager in Youth Justice,

12 family placement, residential care.

13 MS STONE: Rhian Stone, Child Protection Policy Advisor at

14 the NSPCC. Prior to that I worked for Barnardo's for

15 some time running a service for families in the child

16 protection system in London borough. I am also

17 a qualified social worker and worked not quite as long

18 as Hilton but 6 years on the Children and Families Team.

19 MR JOHNSTON: Ian Johnston, Director of the British

20 Association of Social Workers, which is the professional

21 association for social work in the UK. As such, we

22 promote high standards of provision for people who need

23 services and it is our task to support those who provide

24 the services.

25 MR GARNHAM: Thank you. Everybody is doing well so far but

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1 can I suggest people direct their voices to the

2 microphones because it is easier for the public to hear.

3 DR YORK: My name is Dr Ann York, happy to be known as Ann.

4 I am a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist

5 working in an out-patient service in Richmond in Surrey

6 and work with families and young people under 19 with

7 mental health problems.

8 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

9 PROFESSOR COOPER: Andrew Cooper, Professor of Social Work

10 at the Tavistock Clinic which provides

11 multi-disciplinary child mental health services and has

12 a lead role in the multi-disciplinary training of mental

13 health and social care professionals.

14 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

15 MR KINGS: Andy Kings, Detective Constable in the Child

16 Protection Unit at Greater Manchester Police based at

17 Thameside. I joined the police 20 years ago.

18 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

19 MS SIMPSON: Viki Simpson, a Chartered Forensic and

20 Counselling Psychologist. I work as an expert witness

21 and go all over the country assessing parents and

22 children in child protection cases where they are

23 subject to court action. I have also chaired Part 8

24 reviews and carried out audits of Social Services.

25 MR GARNHAM: Thank you very much.

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1 PROFESSOR THOBURN: June Thoburn, a Professor of Social Work

2 at the University of East Anglia and Director of the

3 Centre for Research on the Child and Family. I am a

4 qualified social worker since 1963 and I teach

5 qualifying and post-qualifying childcare social workers.

6 My particular interest in terms of the Inquiry is to

7 think in terms of the generality of the research in this

8 area and I am part of making research count, consortium.

9 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

10 MR SKINNER: James Skinner, children and families social

11 worker. I work for the London borough of Kensington and

12 Chelsea. I qualified in 1997. I work with a range of

13 cases, including children in need and child protection

14 cases.

15 MR HUTCHINSON: Rob Hutchinson. For the last six years I

16 have been Director of Social Services in Portsmouth and

17 prior to that responsible for Children's Services for

18 9 years in Hampshire. For the last three years I have

19 been chair of the Association of Directors, Children and

20 Families Committee. I prefer to be called Rob.

21 SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER: Louis Blom-Cooper. No claim to be

22 here, other than the fact in the 1980s I chaired two

23 child abuse inquiries. I think I bring no practical

24 experience at all but I would hope that some conceptual

25 thinking may flow from what I have to say.

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1 MS SHEPHARD: Gillian Shephard, Member of Parliament for

2 South West Norfolk. I am here representing an All Party

3 Group of Norfolk Members of Parliament who have prepared

4 a submission to this Inquiry, drawing lessons from the

5 Lauren Wright case in our county. I became an MP in

6 1987 but before that was, for 20 years, involved with

7 work in local authorities both as an officer and also as

8 an elected member, chairman of Social Services,

9 education and of two health authorities.

10 DR HOBBS: Chris Hobbs, Consultant Community Paediatrician

11 and I work in St James Hospital in Leeds. I have

12 a special interest in child protection and worked as

13 a frontline child protection doctor for about 20 years

14 now. I am Vice Chairman of the Leeds ACPC, designated

15 doctor for child protection in Leeds. I chaired the

16 National Child Protection Interest Group associated with

17 the Royal College for 10 years and I have trained in

18 support of professionals in this country and in several

19 other countries in the development of child protection

20 systems.

21 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

22 MS PEYNSER: Penny Peynser. I would like to be known as

23 Penny. I am head of the Children's Service in Sheffield

24 Social Services Department. I have 31 years experience

25 as a social worker, social work professional, 15 of

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1 those in Children's Services. I have 500 staff group

2 working in the area of child protection and Family

3 Support and looked-after children, and I am overall

4 responsible for ensuring the safety of children in

5 Sheffield.

6 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

7 MR STURGE: Mark Sturge, the General Director of the African

8 and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance. We are based in

9 Kennington on Kennington Park Road. Our work basically

10 is to reflect and promote the work that black majority

11 churches are doing and provide representation on their

12 behalf. We have our Children in Youth Commission and we

13 provide a number of training and lots of other things

14 for churches, encouraging them in the area of child

15 protection and working with children and young people as

16 a whole.

17 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

18 SIR WILLIAM UTTING: Bill Utting. I am a retired social

19 worker and civil servant, some time Chief Inspector of

20 Social Services, still active in voluntary work.

21 MR THOMAS: Ian Thomas, Chief Superintendent with the

22 Metropolitan Police, 25 years experience in operational

23 policing. My role was to lead the Met's response to

24 Part 1 of this Inquiry.

25 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

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1 MR MASON: Glen Mason, Assistant Chief Inspector of the

2 Social Services Inspectorate for Trent and I share the

3 national lead for Children's Services. Prior to joining

4 SSI my career has been in local government culminating

5 as Assistant Director for Children and Families with

6 Manchester City Council.

7 MS ROSS: Julia Ross. I would like to be known as Julia.

8 I currently run as Director of Social Services and Chief

9 Executive, Primary Care Trust, integrated health and

10 social care model in Barking and Dagenham. As part of

11 that I run an integrated child health service, so I have

12 interest at the interface of health and social care and

13 I was, for some time, a senior child protection worker

14 and social worker in London.

15 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

16 MR RANSFORD: I am John Ransford, known as John. I am

17 Director of Education and Social Policy at the Local

18 Government Association which represents all Councils in

19 England and Wales, including 150 with Social Services

20 responsibilities. I am a social worker and was formerly

21 Director of Social Services and Chief Executive in two

22 separate local Councils.

23 MR TUCKER: Colin Tucker, Assistant Director within the

24 Children and Families and Schools Department within

25 Brighton and Hove which is a merged education and Social

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1 Services Department. I have a range of responsibilities

2 that include some childcare Social Services and some

3 previous education ones, including fostering and

4 adoption and the long-term childcare teams and the youth

5 offending service.

6 My particular written contribution, albeit very late

7 yesterday I am afraid, was about the advantages of the

8 youth offending service model applied to child

9 protection because I am a keen advocate of that.

10 MR GARNHAM: Thank you.

11 MS BROOK: Gill Brook. I would like to be known as Gill. I

12 am a Paediatric Nurse, currently in a post of Clinical

13 Nurse Specialist in Paediatric Liver Transplantation.

14 I am not an expert in child protection but my interests

15 come from working in acute care, general paediatrics and

16 neonatal and I have a key role in the development of

17 multi-disciplinary care, indeed set up our service from

18 that perspective in assessments of children, just

19 holistically, and also a special interest in hearing

20 what children have to say as well as focusing on what

21 parents have to say.

22 MR GARNHAM: Thank you very much.

23 Before we begin, I want to say a little about the

24 purpose of these seminars and the way they will operate.

25 First, the purpose. It became apparent from a fairly

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1 early reading of the documents generated by Victoria's

2 case that Lord Laming and his colleagues were likely to

3 have to consider making recommendations of two rather

4 different types. The first type would be addressed to

5 the particular circumstances of Victoria's case and to

6 the events that occurred in Ealing, Brent and Haringey

7 whilst Victoria lived there. But it was recognised

8 early on that there might need to be recommendations of

9 rather wider potential impact, recommendations that

10 might affect the relevant agencies right across the

11 country.

12 We are not charged with conducting a review of the

13 entire child protection system in this country, but

14 Lord Laming's brief is to make recommendations as to how

15 a tragedy such as Victoria's might so far as possible be

16 avoided in the future. That direction recognised the

17 impossibility of guaranteeing that there will never be

18 another Victoria Climbie but it plainly requires us to

19 consider the need for change beyond the borders of the

20 London boroughs where she happened to live.

21 Inevitably, some of those recommendations are likely

22 to be to the effect that certain new steps should be

23 considered, rather than that they should be immediately

24 put into effect. But it seemed to us that it could be

25 dangerous even in those circumstances to move from the

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1 particular to the general. In Phase I we learned

2 a great deal with practices and procedures in certain

3 London boroughs but it would be an obvious mistake to

4 assume that the same things happened elsewhere in the

5 country.

6 Phase II of this Inquiry has been designed as

7 a vehicle for exploring those wider concerns and for

8 generating and testing amongst say rather wider

9 constituency ideas that might serve to improve child

10 protection arrangements across the country as a whole.

11 As Lord Laming has just explained, there are two

12 elements to Phase II, two means of trying to understand

13 where change might be necessary in child protection

14 arrangements. The first is by inviting written

15 submissions from the public and Lord Laming has

16 explained how we will consider that material. These

17 seminars constitute the second element of that process.

18 Now a word about the way in which this seminar will

19 operate. We are particularly grateful for the written

20 submissions prepared by the participants in each of

21 these seminars and by many others. As will soon become

22 apparent, they have served as a prompt for many of the

23 questions on which I am going to invite discussion

24 during the course of today. Together with those of the

25 public submissions chosen by Lord Laming, they will be

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1 treated as evidence to this Inquiry and posted on our

2 website.

3 That does mean that there is no need for you to feel

4 that you have to speak to every one of the points made

5 in your paper, because we will have read and carefully

6 considered them in any event. But what is said in this

7 Inquiry will also be treated as evidence. The verbatim

8 note that is being prepared by our stenographer enables

9 the panel to reflect further on what is said in the days

10 and weeks that follow, but that, I hope, and, on the

11 basis of the last three seminars, confidently predict

12 will not and should not inhibit the free flow of

13 discussion once we get going during the course of today.

14 I will be happy to receive suggestions for further

15 lines of questions from members of the public who are

16 here today and although I do not guarantee that we will

17 debate every question that is passed up to us, if people

18 want to put suggestions to me, there are supplies of

19 pro-formas scattered around the room and if you would be

20 kind enough to put your question in the basket, they

21 will be collected up and passed to me during the course

22 of the day.

23 Each participant at today's seminar has been invited

24 in a personal capacity. None of you are here as

25 representatives of your employers or of any professional

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1 body. What we want is your honest views, your honest

2 personal views about how the child protection system in

3 this country might be improved. There are a number of

4 topics that I would like to cover during the course of

5 the day, and we have put out on the tables in front of

6 you a sheet listing the topics that we would like to

7 cover.

8 I will invite contributions from various members of

9 the panels here today but please feel free to join in

10 with the discussion when you feel you have something

11 useful to say and I will do my best to keep an eye open

12 and if you nod I will try and bring you in as soon as

13 the moment arises. In order to approach this task that

14 we have been given systematically, we have attempted to

15 break down the process by which children are protected

16 into its constituent elements.

17 This is the fourth of five seminars, each one

18 focused on a different stage in that process. We are

19 well aware of the fact that there is something slightly

20 artificial about breaking down the process in precisely

21 that way, so it may be that discussion in one seminar

22 leads into or out of discussions that we have had in

23 others, but we will try and concentrate on the

24 particular issues that arise for today.

25 I do not want to inhibit the full and thorough

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1 discussion of these issues by sticking dogmatically to

2 our themes, however given the limited time at our

3 disposal, I am sure you will forgive me if occasionally

4 I have to bring you back to the main topics of

5 discussion for today.

6 In the previous three seminars we have discussed how

7 we discover children and include them in the universal

8 services to which they are entitled, how we identify

9 that they are in need and how that need should be

10 assessed. Today we are to consider what we do in

11 response. Who should provide what sort of service to

12 which vulnerable children?

13 That will necessitate considering both the mechanics

14 of delivery of services and the approach to identifying

15 the services needed. I doubt -- I may be proved

16 wrong -- if there is anyone in this room that thinks the

17 present system for delivering services is perfect but

18 before we discuss what needs to change, can we see if we

19 can identify the defects in the present system.

20 For now I want, if we may, to leave solutions to one

21 side and I will come back to that. Can I begin with

22 you, Rhian Stone, if I can find you. One of the things

23 you will find is it takes me about half the seminar to

24 work out where everyone is sitting. Can I begin with

25 you Rhian. The NSPCC submission for this seminar begins

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1 with an analysis of the problems in the current system.

2 What do you personally see as the principal defects?

3 MS STONE: I think the problems are incredibly complex and

4 I do not want to simplify them too much but I am just

5 going to outline some of the problems as we see them in

6 the Working Together structure. We have a very clear

7 framework for interagency and multi-agency working. We

8 have the Children Act and we have the guidance, but

9 within that, I think what we see is sort of perhaps

10 confusion over role and responsibilities and perhaps

11 an imbalance in how the agencies work together. We have

12 the lead role of Social Services. I think perhaps that

13 has become more of a dominant role. We believe that

14 there should be a more even spread of responsibility.

15 MR GARNHAM: That is an interesting distinction, lead as

16 opposed to dominant. What is the subtlety there?

17 MS STONE: Within the legislation, Social Services local

18 authorities have the lead role for example in Section 47

19 investigations. But talking to other agencies, they

20 find that perhaps Social Services have become more of

21 a dominant agency on the ACPC forum as well where other

22 agencies feel they could play more of a part in

23 delivering services to children and families. So one of

24 the problems as we see it, or perhaps issues that need

25 to be addressed is how do we play to the collective

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1 strengths of all the agencies and develop more

2 collaborative working? I think that is one of the

3 issues.

4 The other issue -- on three levels really -- is one

5 in terms of collaboration at an operational level.

6 There is also I think a need for, at a local strategic

7 level, arrangements to be much stronger. We have an

8 ACPC structure, but as we outlined in our document,

9 problems around resources and staffing affects the

10 ability of the ACPCs to deliver and, where they are able

11 to deliver, do excellent work, make sure that

12 interagency arrangements occur. But that is not uniform

13 across the board.

14 On a third level, I think there needs to be much

15 stronger national focus for safeguarding children's

16 issues. I do not think we have safeguarding children or

17 child minding treatment at the top of the political

18 agenda and I really think that that is a problem. We

19 hear a lot about -- whenever government is asked about

20 child protection we hear a lot about Quality Protects

21 but actually within that, where is the priority for

22 children at risk who are living at home with their own

23 families? There is more of an emphasis on looked after

24 children -- not that that should not be the case. So we

25 would like to see perhaps a much more aspirational

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1 approach to set out some principles about what we want

2 to achieve at national level as well.

3 MR GARNHAM: Are those views that you share, Colin Tucker?

4 MR TUCKER: To some extent. I personally feel that the

5 biggest problems at the moment are structural around the

6 staffing and the profile of our staff has changed

7 dramatically in the last five years. We have social

8 work teams in Brighton unfortunately that have

9 40 per cent vacancy rates. The staff are younger than

10 they were in the past. They are less experienced. And

11 it becomes very difficult to deliver a good service

12 within that context.

13 When we get on to procedures, I think the procedures

14 are very good actually. The planning and review

15 mechanisms are very good but if you do not have the

16 staff to deliver and to intervene and to spend the

17 appropriate amounts of time with children, with the

18 families engaging them, using their assessment and

19 observations skills properly, it becomes a very

20 difficult task and I personally would like to see social

21 workers put on the same footing as teachers have been

22 put on politically in the last five years and I would

23 like to see when we get to solutions some real concrete

24 proposals around recruitment and retention.

25 It is very severe, and when I see 22-year-old social

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1 workers doing a job that I do not want my own children

2 to do at that age, that I was not equipped to do at that

3 age, that is what we are expecting them to do at the

4 time.

5 MR GARNHAM: Ian Thomas, police perspective, where do you

6 see the defects?

7 MR THOMAS: A lot of it around joint working and how that

8 has developed in the past. In the paper that we have

9 submitted we have looked at national standards for the

10 way that we deal with children, a national Child

11 Protection Agency, joint agency reference centre. So

12 just joining things up more, putting different standards

13 in and having a code of practice.

14 MR GARNHAM: I will come back to you on solutions Ian.

15 Problems first of all in the way it works at the moment

16 so we know where we have to start focusing our

17 attention.

18 MR THOMAS: If we look at London with the London boroughs,

19 32 ways of dealing with children.

20 MR GARNHAM: Because there are 32 boroughs?

21 MR THOMAS: Absolutely and I think they are the areas we

22 really need to get into. That is what we are trying to

23 co-ordinate at the moment so we get a standard response

24 to the way we deal with children.

25 MR GARNHAM: Penny Peynser, I am going to mispronounce your

23



1 surname, probably already have. How do you see it from

2 Sheffield?

3 MS PEYNSER: I suppose I would outline issues around there

4 is severe pressure on frontline staff, really. I do not

5 think that is on frontline staff just in

6 Social Services, I think that is across the board.

7 I think there is pressure in education, in schools.

8 I think there is pressure in the health services.

9 I think one of the issues for us all is the vacancy

10 rates, the increasing workloads, the volume issues in

11 terms of those workloads, coupled with I think

12 inadequate IT systems, ineffective admin systems,

13 inadequate training across the board -- and I mean that

14 in both internal training for social services

15 departments but also external training, multi-agency

16 training and the resources to put that on.

17 I think clearly the negative image that social work

18 has, both in the national media, and currently with

19 government, when there is really a position where we

20 have a naming and shaming of local authorities'

21 social services departments rather than celebrating and

22 valuing and supporting, I think it is very difficult for

23 us to encourage the right calibre of staff to come and

24 work in the social care field.

25 We do absolutely need people of the right calibre to

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1 work in social care, particularly in children's

2 services, because these are very very difficult and

3 complex jobs that people are doing, and I think I would

4 share my colleague's view down the end there: I have

5 three children, all in their early 20s. When

6 I discussed with them a career option of going to social

7 care they said to me, "No thank you, mum. We would not

8 give you a 'thank you' to go into that profession. We

9 can see just how hard you work in it, just how little

10 reward you get for it".

11 I think there is a very big issue for us in terms of

12 the image and we need to be very much doing something

13 about the image of social work but also I think that we

14 do have the mechanisms in place and I know you do not

15 want solutions at the moment but I think the assessment

16 framework, if it is implemented in a multi-agency way,

17 does give us the opportunity to engage everybody in the

18 process of protecting children.

19 MR GARNHAM: Talking of groups that are overworked and

20 underpaid, Hilton Dawson I heard a "hear hear" at one

21 stage which made me think I was two miles due north. Do

22 I detect a degree of agreement?

23 MR DAWSON: That was certainly in response to Colin and

24 subsequently Penny's point about the pay status and

25 training of social workers. I think a fundamental issue

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1 though which underlies a lot of what has been said

2 already is that we actually do not like children in this

3 country very much. We certainly do not respect

4 children, we do not see them as individuals with rights,

5 we do not listen to them properly and until we actually

6 value children much more profoundly in this country, we

7 are going to continue to have enormous problems.

8 Now, there is a structural way of addressing this --

9 there is an educational way of addressing these sorts of

10 issues which is to actually ensure that the

11 UN Convention of Children's Rights gets a much wider

12 hearing and is made much more available to everybody in

13 this country, but the structural way is to bring in

14 a Children's Rights Commission.

15 MR GARNHAM: I am going to interrupt you because I want to

16 try and identify the problems first before we turn to

17 solutions. I will remember that. I will come back, if

18 I may.

19 Gill Brook. Gill, how good are we at getting

20 services to the children who need them, do you think?

21 MS BROOK: There are several issues and I will perhaps

22 reflect what most people have said already. There is

23 an issue about, certainly picking up Hilton's point

24 there, about how do children feel, and young people,

25 about how these services are delivered and where is

26



1 their perspective in that? I think they do have some

2 interesting solutions.

3 There is the issue about staff support, certainly in

4 acute care, about how people feel, about addressing and

5 sort of intervening into a family set-up when you are

6 actually -- the views of parents are taken as paramount,

7 and where are the voices of children again in that; and

8 supporting staff in the emotional impact on the clinical

9 practice, going back to staff who have less experience

10 in that area as well. And the clarity of clearly

11 helping people to understand who does what and who

12 really understands that it is everybody's responsibility

13 to look at children from their perspective of all their

14 needs.

15 I would also reiterate really the issue of training.

16 How do we integrate that? It is a really mandatory part

17 of people's clinical practice in the care of children.

18 MR GARNHAM: Inevitably during the course of this Inquiry we

19 have been concentrating on what happened to one little

20 girl in north London. But we have been reminding

21 ourselves in Phase II first of all that there are many,

22 many children who are well looked after by the system

23 that is already in place, but also that there are other

24 children for whom the system fails.

25 Gillian Shephard, we are not able in the course of

27



1 this Inquiry to consider the detail of Lauren Wright's

2 case, but to your mind what did the facts of that case

3 demonstrate about the defects in the present system for

4 delivering services?

5 MS SHEPHARD: A number which have been borne out by the

6 evidence that I have read in other people's submissions,

7 in other words they were not necessarily particular to

8 our case. In the first place a failure of communication

9 between the different agencies, a failure between

10 Social Services and Education, Education/Social Services

11 and Health and Health and Social Services. This of

12 course is reinforced I think in the administrative

13 structure which is imposed on the way child protection

14 is carried out and I do not think it is made any easier

15 for the professionals involved that they have to work in

16 a multi-agency way. Quite often without the

17 administrative structure to back it up.

18 I believe we have new problems of mobility of staff,

19 increasing numbers of experienced staff as people have

20 already said, and I think it is difficult to know

21 exactly how to put this but increasing sensitivity about

22 the difficulty of intervening, of getting it wrong, all

23 of that which I do not believe was quite as much of

24 a problem 15 or 20 years ago.

25 But the other issue that we feel we have identified

28



1 in our case is a weakness in education law, because

2 although there are guidelines which require heads and

3 assistant teachers to have regard to local authority

4 instructions for identifying children at risk and then

5 doing something about it, these guidelines are only

6 guidelines and ignoring them, taking no notice of them,

7 doing nothing about them --

8 MR GARNHAM: It has no consequence.

9 MS SHEPHARD: It has no consequence at all for the

10 professionals involved and that is why we are actually

11 pursuing that in another place.

12 MR GARNHAM: One of the salutary things that seem to us to

13 emerge from Lauren Wright's case was that despite the

14 fact that she was registered and seeing a GP and was in

15 school and regularly attending a school, she was still

16 missed. Now neither of those factors were present in

17 Victoria's case and we had wondered whether that was the

18 key failure. But it sounds from Lauren's case as if it

19 might not be.

20 MS SHEPHARD: We certainly think that -- I think that the

21 key failure in Lauren's case was the schooling. She was

22 at school for 16 months before her death. She was aged

23 6 and lost 4 stone in that time and quite a lot of her

24 hair and presented at school with bruising, as is all

25 evidenced in the trial. Yet the staff did not report

29



1 any concerns to the Education Welfare Service, which

2 they were required to do with the guidelines which were

3 in operation at the time.

4 MR GARNHAM: Was there a designated teacher at Lauren's

5 school?

6 MS SHEPHARD: There was no designated teacher and that was

7 the only quasi legal thing on which the LEA could hang

8 any kind of approach to the governors and to the head,

9 but it really did not get very far. I think the public

10 locally and indeed nationally find it literally

11 incredible that a child should have deteriorated in this

12 way without the attention of the relevant other

13 authorities being drawn to that deterioration.

14 But, and if I -- I must not go on.

15 MR GARNHAM: I will let you.

16 MS SHEPHARD: Can I just say this is a very small school and

17 contrary to public belief, in a way it makes it more

18 difficult because it is more intimate. The stepmother

19 who killed Lauren was on the staff as a welfare

20 assistant, but nevertheless the intimacy and the sort of

21 sheer embarrassment of tackling these kind of issues

22 with people with whom you live cheek by jowl in

23 a village I think presents a special aspect to this

24 case. I am not saying an excuse or anything but I can

25 see how it might have happened in that intimate

30



1 atmosphere.

2 MR GARNHAM: Still exploring and trying to identify some of

3 the defects. Mark Sturge, from your standpoint what are

4 the defects that you can detect from the way services

5 are delivered?

6 MR STURGE: I think one of the issues is that there do not

7 seem to be any shared values in terms of what are our

8 aspirations for children in general so that at least you

9 have a benchmark which you are working to positively and

10 then you deal with --

11 MR GARNHAM: Shared values across the services or across

12 geographical areas?

13 MR STURGE: Nationally about children, there is not a shared

14 value of what is decent for bringing up a child. What

15 we should aspire, what every child should have. It is

16 now being done by the Home Office Children and Young

17 Persons Unit but we have not got that, therefore

18 parenting for example is about hit and miss, do as my

19 parents did or do the opposite, and so in between that

20 then we try to find out what goes wrong in the process.

21 So because there is a lack of shared value, it is

22 difficult to make any proper assessment as to, you know,

23 some issues.

24 The other thing about shared value is about

25 deservedness of each child. We cannot put our children

31



1 in ranks in terms of priorities or opportunities, so for

2 example parents might be asked about their immigration

3 status before the Social Services would look at the

4 needs of the child, so the parent influences whether the

5 child gets any provision rather than the circumstances

6 for which the child actually existed. Equally, the same

7 could go for travellers and so forth. They are just

8 seen as an imposition rather than children who might

9 have specific needs at a given time.

10 MR GARNHAM: It sounds Mark as if you, like Hilton, are

11 talking about benefits of some nationally agreed

12 outcomes for children. Mark?

13 MR STURGE: There must be. If you do not have something to

14 aspire to, what you do not give parents you do not give

15 society as a whole, is something to work towards. So if

16 they fall short of that they do not know how badly they

17 are doing in any given case. Equally, what you find is

18 when you look at the work that is being done by the

19 multi-agency teams, it seems as though for a significant

20 number it is not working at all. It is not working

21 because its profession is very protective of themselves,

22 and if you look at the crisis in the other services, or

23 wherever the crisis lies, you will find people do not

24 want to go beyond their boundary or what they should do

25 and the lack of that kind of support means that a lot of

32



1 people fall through the net in a sense.

2 One other thing I would like to put is that I think

3 the network is too small. People are asking for more

4 social workers, more people professional, more skill.

5 The problem is, and we must recognise it very early on,

6 that this should not be an attempt to create a massive

7 industry of social work, we should be trying to get rid

8 of it and get rid of it by empowering communities,

9 empowering a lot of other people to be involved in the

10 care and a smaller nucleus to manage the drop-out if

11 need be.

12 MR GARNHAM: Are we confident we know for whose benefit the

13 child protection system is run? Viki Simpson?

14 MS SIMPSON: If you are actually looking for problems, and

15 I do take the view that until we make children

16 a priority we are not going to see any improvement of

17 any sort in the child protection system.

18 MR GARNHAM: Who is the priority?

19 MS SIMPSON: Adults, because adults have the votes, do they

20 not?

21 MR GARNHAM: You are not suggesting that politicians are

22 influenced by that in any way, are you?

23 MS SIMPSON: I am. I believe politicians are influenced by

24 the fact that adults have the vote.

25 MR GARNHAM: And the consequence in terms of the way

33



1 services are delivered?

2 MS SIMPSON: Children are always left in second place.

3 Children simply are not a priority. I mean, I can

4 actually -- if I could add to some of the comments

5 I have heard around this table, in particular the

6 gentleman from East Sussex, a situation I do happen to

7 know and yes I do know they have a 40 per cent vacancy

8 rate. Have you asked yourself why you have this vacancy

9 rate? Is it something to do with the fact that social

10 workers feel they cannot protect children within the

11 present system so they leave? Is it because the

12 thresholds are too high?

13 MR GARNHAM: Colin Tucker, it sounds like an invitation to

14 you.

15 MR TUCKER: Yes, of course we have; we have looked in

16 detail, and when we get to solutions, we have actually

17 developed a very impressive recruitment and retention

18 proposal that have been implemented now which will

19 address that.

20 Basically, it is to do with the fact that they do

21 not feel valued. It is to do with the fact that most

22 social workers want to do a good job and then get very

23 frustrated when the thresholds have to be so high

24 because they have a workload that is so demanding that

25 they cannot achieve the kind of service delivery that

34



1 they would want.

2 MR GARNHAM: That is interesting. We have heard in earlier

3 seminars about the effect of raising eligibility

4 criteria. Ann York, you say something about that in

5 your paper.

6 DR YORK: Yes. I work in Richmond in Surrey in the Child

7 and Adolescent Mental Health Service and we work very

8 closely with our local authority, but what has happened

9 locally in response to pressures Social Services have

10 been under is that they have raised their eligibility

11 criteria for young people and families to access their

12 service, so at the moment it is really children that are

13 in absolute dire straits who are seen, which I can

14 understand of course, which means there is a whole other

15 layer of children and families who fall through a gap

16 and those children also are not able to access other

17 agency services because of other eligibility criteria.

18 MR GARNHAM: And that has what effect?

19 DR YORK: It means there is a whole group of children in

20 need who are not able to receive anything. Some of them

21 are picked up by voluntary sector agencies, and I think

22 one of the other things that I had not heard around the

23 table is that I think there are very different systems

24 within voluntary agencies for picking up children in

25 need and child protection concerns, and some of the ones

35



1 that I have worked with directly may have policies, but

2 their actual views in some of the counselling services

3 about what confidentiality means about what young people

4 are saying about experiences they are having in their

5 family means that counsellors may feel they cannot share

6 that information, so we mainly seem to be talking about

7 the statutory services and it is easy to forget there is

8 a whole voluntary sector out there who are often not

9 included --

10 MR GARNHAM: Viewed together, voluntary and statutory

11 sectors, do you think together they make an adequate

12 safety net?

13 DR YORK: No, I do not think they do.

14 MR GARNHAM: Where is the problem?

15 DR YORK: I think the problem is resourcing. There are not

16 enough physical bodies around. There are not enough --

17 it is very difficult at times to work together when

18 different agencies have different funding arrangements,

19 different priorities that they are being pressurised to

20 deliver on from above, and I think practical things like

21 that can make it very difficult.

22 MR GARNHAM: I heard some more what sounded like "hear

23 hears" from this corner. Was that you John Ransford,

24 can you comment on that?

25 MR RANSFORD: I think the first point made was this is

36



1 complex -- and I think this debate proves it -- but the

2 spine of the problems is clear. Children are not valued

3 enough therefore the profile of these services is not

4 high enough therefore we do not put enough on support

5 and understanding and just resourcing the people doing

6 the job. Resourcing is not only about money,

7 organisations like mine often translate it as that but

8 it is not. Resourcing is about an entire support

9 system.

10 I think we always need to remember that these

11 services are always going to deal with the minority.

12 The majority of children will never come near even

13 preventative services in the way that we commonly

14 understand them and a very very small minority of

15 children will need intervention and support and it is

16 how we find ways of making sure that works and how those

17 dealings with the majority, health visitors, schools,

18 preschool work, voluntary organisations, community

19 groups can feel comfortable about working with the

20 minority, those agencies working with the minority.

21 I think the Gillian Shephard example shows how

22 difficult it is to enable communities -- I think it is

23 a very, very important concept and so we must build it

24 into the system, but people have very strong subjective

25 values about this.

37



1 MR GARNHAM: What is it you would like to see built in?

2 MR RANSFORD: I would like to see a greater trust both ways.

3 MR GARNHAM: In who?

4 MR RANSFORD: Trust in those that are charged by society

5 with this very difficult job, who have to ask the

6 awkward questions, have to really say: "Why is this

7 child using weights? I do not believe the story you are

8 giving me." That is a very difficult task to perform

9 and you are damned if you do and damned if you do not

10 because there will always be people who criticise

11 you both ways.

12 Equally I think those agencies must have trust in

13 those people who are not involved professionally, are

14 not involved in the sort of techniques that we have come

15 to believe, and just accept, or use the word

16 commonsense, local sort of subjective feelings and find

17 a way of positively engaging with that, so the

18 intervention agencies are not seen as against the

19 interest of the society, they are acting on behalf of

20 society.

21 MR GARNHAM: Thank you. Bill Utting, you say in your paper

22 that you see problems in the extent to which

23 Social Services can count on support from other

24 agencies. Have I got that right?

25 SIR WILLIAM UTTING: Yes, that is right. I do not believe

38



1 that other agencies with responsibilities in this area

2 necessarily give this work the priority it ought to have

3 or devote to it the resources that it needs. If one

4 looks at child protection in the context of the

5 responsibilities of the Health Service for example, or

6 education or the jobs of general practitioners, it is in

7 fact difficult to see how this work can receive its

8 proper priority without a determined effort to ensure

9 that it does. Because of that I am in sympathy with

10 some of the proposals that we might get on to later

11 about what to do about that.

12 Going on to another point which is really about

13 individual competence. We know a great deal more about

14 child abuse now than we did 20 years ago. I am not

15 persuaded that the education and training and

16 qualifications that the frontline workers now possess is

17 really sufficient for them to deal adequately with the

18 complexities of the job that have been revealed. So

19 I would, I think, flag that up, the question of

20 individual competence, not only education, training and

21 qualification but also the nature of the professional

22 supervision that workers receive. I would also like to

23 query the competence of the management in some of these

24 organisations as well.

25 Could I just conclude by rather cheekily coming in

39



1 to support the points that have already been made about

2 cultural attitudes towards children in this country.

3 I believe these are extremely important, and in

4 particular I would point to the undue tolerance of

5 violence to children on the part of the people who are

6 supposed to care for them.

7 MR GARNHAM: Can I ask Chris Hobbs first and then come to

8 June Thoburn on this question of identifying the defects

9 that exist at present. Chris?

10 DR HOBBS: I would agree with everything that has been said

11 so far. I think there are some other issues I want to

12 bring in. Firstly, I am interested in this area because

13 I see this is now the major health morbidity for

14 children. There is substantial literature that supports

15 that we are still only seeing the tip of an iceberg --

16 and I refer to the NSPCC's prevalent study which Colson

17 & Colleagues published in 2000 which gives a much

18 broader view of maltreatment in this country of

19 children.

20 So I consider it in point but I also see the system.

21 It is an enormous colossus of a system now that

22 I suspect is probably beyond some kind of overall

23 management but clearly it has failed to protect large

24 numbers of children and these are children who enter it,

25 not children who fall through the holes.

40



1 For example, a paper presented just this week at the

2 Royal College meeting that I was at, these are battered

3 babies, babies with fractures, head injuries and so

4 forth. With the current philosophy most of these

5 children go home and of those children going home in

6 this particular study, I think the study was about 70,

7 80 children, 30 per cent of them are reinjured,

8 including fractures; reabused.

9 MR GARNHAM: An issue we were exploring during Phase I

10 I would like your view on is whether paediatricians see

11 child abuse as a disease process like any other disease

12 process or is it something else in their view? Because

13 if it is, the last thing you do is send the sufferer

14 back to the source of the disease.

15 DR HOBBS: I do not want to go too much into medical versus

16 social models but I think we would certainly see that

17 children suffer as a result of child abuse enormously

18 and that it damages their life potential. It damages

19 their development probably in more profound ways than

20 just about anything less. The long-term effects of some

21 kinds of abuse, for example sexual abuse, are so

22 profound on the developing brain that they are not

23 things you can do very much about once they have

24 happened, and I think many psychiatrists are coming

25 around to that view now. But I think what we are seeing

41



1 really has been a change in philosophy in the way in

2 which children are protected and clearly there are a lot

3 of issues around where children should be looked after,

4 and at what point the threshold is reached where

5 children can no longer be safely looked after in their

6 families.

7 But I think paediatricians -- and I am certainly not

8 alone, there was a recent discussion in paediatrics

9 about whether the Children Act is working -- are

10 certainly very involved in those kinds of debates about

11 whether the pendulum has swung too far in favour of

12 rehabilitation and the soft approach which is happening

13 now.

14 Set against that, we have very low rates of

15 prosecution, particularly of course with sexual abuse.

16 We have a very much diminishing visible problem in terms

17 of sexual abuse and I do not think the problem is going

18 away. In the States they are debating why it is

19 disappearing, I suspect it is disappearing for similar

20 reasons to here. But in addition, we do not have the

21 figures and we have this massive system, but we really

22 just do not know what is going on with it. All we have

23 are returns that are giving us overall figures on the

24 register but in terms of the amount of work that is

25 going on, it is quite difficult to get hold of the

42



1 relevant figures, and we know the number of children in

2 care is going up. When the NSPCC used to keep the

3 statistics years ago you got a much better feel of what

4 was really happening within the system. So I would put

5 in a plea for that.

6 MR GARNHAM: I will come back to you. June Thoburn, your

7 views on the present state of play?

8 PROFESSOR THOBURN: Yes, we talked a lot about systems.

9 Whatever system we have, however good our definitions or

10 wonderful our assessments, it all depends on

11 professional discretion and judgment of a whole range of

12 professionals and, therefore, looking at cases that have

13 gone wrong, looking at cases that have gone right which

14 is what research does, where it goes well it goes well

15 because professionals know each other, trust each other

16 and families know their professionals and trust them.

17 Now, what I think has gone very badly wrong recently

18 is we are not using the professionals we have as well as

19 we should. I go back to Bill Utting's report on

20 safeguarding, the safeguarding report which said that

21 relationship is very important. At the moment every

22 reorganisation we have means that social workers and

23 health visitors and doctors have to get to know

24 another lot of other workers, but so does the family.

25 So how are we going to develop trust when people work in

43



1 these very large teams? It is for that reason that I am

2 not in favour of moving towards multi-disciplinary teams

3 because multi-disciplinary teams will cover bigger

4 geographical areas. Just on the youth offending teams,

5 frankly they have not been there long enough --

6 MR GARNHAM: Can I say we will come back to that and I will

7 come back to you on that as well if I may.

8 The discussion so far has given us a reasonable

9 picture of the problems as those who practice them see

10 them. I think Mark wishes to add something so let me

11 bring him in before we go on.

12 MR STURGE: The area of suspicion between the service

13 provider and the clients is also a major issue in terms

14 of delivery of service. If you look at minorities,

15 ethnic communities for example, they are very suspicious

16 of any of the major institutions. That is because of

17 the way their experiences have been. For example,

18 people do not forget easily; so in the past, for

19 example, bruise spots used to be seen as parental abuse

20 for example, those messages are passed on and it is not

21 yet erased. Or social workers who are being seen as

22 being mindless, and they are just following process and

23 procedure with no sense of you speaking or you working

24 with another human being who may have certain ways of

25 looking at the world or different world views, or you

44



1 are insensitive to the needs of people, thus continuing

2 to promote this sense of suspicion.

3 Having listened to a number of the second phase,

4 I suspect if we were to lift this Inquiry as a public

5 inquiry and put it into the marketplace, in the square,

6 where people from the general public can come and listen

7 in, they would be appalled at the issues that we are

8 discussing here about how to protect children. Their

9 issues might be totally different and they would want to

10 see a different kind of service in order to better

11 protect children in the future.

12 MR GARNHAM: That rather neatly leads me on to the next

13 topic that I want to talk about, so thank you Mark. Of

14 course any system is only going to be as good as the

15 people it employs and we must come on to how we can

16 enhance the performance of those who are involved in the

17 system. Can I first ask a more fundamental question.

18 Is the problem -- do people around the table think --

19 structural? Will we ever get the delivery of services

20 right with the present system or do we need a radical

21 re-think? Louis Blom-Cooper, you produced Child in

22 Trust 1985, six years before the Children Act came in

23 force.

24 SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER: I think it is Child in Mind rather

25 than Child in Trust. Beckford was the Child in Trust

45



1 which I think identified institutional problems. It was

2 in fact in Child in Mind that we came to the conclusion,

3 I and my colleagues, that there should be at least

4 consideration of a national Child Protection Agency.

5 Could I just put this into a historical perspective

6 because it seems to me, like most issues about social

7 policy, if you want to know where you are it is quite

8 useful to look back and see where you have come from and

9 to see what change if anything has taken place which

10 modifies your view.

11 Could I say that the structure that we saw in 1987

12 in Child in Mind very much is as described by Gillian as

13 being flawed, whether fatally flawed or not is another

14 matter and no doubt we will come to the question of

15 that, but flawed in the sense of the diversification of

16 the various agencies involved in it.

17 Could I just put the historical perspective because

18 I think it is really rather important. At the time that

19 we saw a fatal structure that needed changing, there

20 were several items that were missing. Firstly,

21 specialism in social work. At that time we were still,

22 I think, undergoing the effects of Seabow(?) in which

23 specialism had been relegated and people in social work

24 did not have the specialism which I fancy now today they

25 clearly have.

46



1 Secondly, there was no general social work council

2 to set standards. We now have got that in place.

3 Thirdly, there is the question of the qualification

4 for social workers. It is only just now, indeed in the

5 earlier inquiry we recommended very strongly three years

6 for qualification of social workers. It has taken

7 15 years to get that.

8 MR GARNHAM: Because we are about to get it, three years.

9 SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER: Well it has been promised now, at

10 long last. But that is a major change and, of course,

11 at the time that we were writing the Children Act, had

12 not come into place, but of course the Children Act

13 itself, good though it was and good though it is, was

14 based upon the existing structure. It did not accept

15 the sort of line of argument that we were running.

16 Of course one of the problems now that I think faces

17 Lord Laming and his assessors is of course we have now

18 recently had a House of Lords decision in which a great

19 deal of the Children Act has now been nullified because

20 the courts say they have no control over the work which

21 social workers do for children in care. And I think it

22 is worth just recalling, and I think it very important,

23 that in the House of Lords case, Lordon MacKay of

24 Clashfirm(?) -- and Bill Utting will confirm -- he was

25 very much involved in the setting up of the Children

47



1 Act. He said this:

2 "Over the years since the Children Act took effect,

3 there have been far too many cases in which the system

4 has failed children in care."

5 Now, I think that is perhaps an important flag to

6 put up.

7 MR GARNHAM: So what now, all these years after those

8 reports, where would you take us?

9 SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER: It is not for me to make a judgment

10 on it. All I am simply saying is that the proposition

11 of a national Child Protection Agency of some sort must

12 be seen now in the context of the improvements that have

13 taken place that I have indicated. Whether they are

14 sufficient to justify the existing structure, I leave

15 that for others. All I am simply saying is those are

16 the features that we ought to be looking at in coming to

17 some sort of conclusion.

18 MR GARNHAM: Hilton Dawson, you speak in your paper about

19 the advantages of a multi-agency child protection