Lord Laming's report into the murder of Victoria Climbié, published five years ago, was meant to herald a new era in child protection. But, says Liz Davies, his reform plan has led to many tried and tested systems being ditchedIt is five years since Lord Laming wrote his 108 recommendations in the Victoria Climbié inquiry report. It is also eight years since Victoria was murdered and Lisa Arthurworrey, Haringey council social worker for Victoria, still awaits her appeal hearing against the decision not to register her as a social worker. Victoria's killers, her great aunt, Marie Therese Kouao, and the woman's boyfriend, Carl Manning, were convicted; practitioners and managers, from various agencies and authorities, were criticised and one social worker remains the scapegoat. Since the inquiry, more children have died as a result of criminal acts of child abuse and I have no doubt that key errors evident in the Climbié case are being repeated. However, rather than blame individual incompetence, I would challenge the steer of government policy which, prior to the death of Victoria, had already moved professionals towards a family support practice model which encouraged the assessment of children's needs rather than intervention to protect. This trend was vastly accelerated on the basis of Laming's recommendations and as a result further tragedies were not only predictable but inevitable. Following Laming's report, the government used the findings to justify a policy shift away from the proactive protection of a few children at high risk of harm to intense state surveillance of every child and family though technology and broad based strategies to address child concerns. The language of protectionWith the subsequent launch of the Every Child Matters agenda, the phrase "children at risk" gained new meaning. Children were now defined as at risk of becoming future criminals, rather than victims of abuse, and professional attention was diverted away from the investigation of child abusers and their criminal activities. A set of five outcomes included the ill-defined "staying safe" and the language of protection became almost obsolete.In BBC Radio's File on Four last week Laming was questioned about numbers of recent child death tragedies where professionals had placed the needs of adults over and above those of the children, had not responded to allegations of serious child abuse and had failed to implement child protection protocols. Histories of violence or mental ill health in families had not been collated and key information which should have raised alarm had gone unnoticed. Laming told the programme that he despaired because child protection agencies were still ignoring the children's interests and blamed agencies that had not implemented his numerous recommendations. But surely Laming hasn't forgotten that it is some of his recommendations that led to very sound, tried and tested, child protection systems being abolished? Instead of overwhelming the new local safeguarding children boards with demands to reconfigure services and develop new systems, the most important recommendation would have been to retain the effective existing child protection procedures and enable a focus on the lack of implementation. In the shadow of one tragedy, the vast majority of cases where children had gained protection went completely unnoticed. I had hoped that Laming would admit, on this programme, that he had made a very serious error in recommending, on the basis of no research findings at all, the abolition of the child protection register - the most important protocol for protecting children. Lacking clarityBy April this year, there will be no such register and the names of children defined as at high risk of harm will no longer be flagged up for the attention of the emergency services. Children at risk of abuse will, instead, be labelled as the subject of a child protection plan and the threshold for intervention will lack the previous clarity. Scarce resources will be focused on a wider range of children rather than a relatively small number of those known to be highly vulnerable to abuse. The register would have been the one protocol that might have saved Victoria, had she ever been defined as a child in need of protection. Similarly, in the recent cases, children had not been recognised as requiring a protective response and there was no multi-agency planning in place. The importance of the register should have been a central message of the Climbié inquiry but instead, given the shift away from proactive protection measures, we will inevitably witness far more tragedies before Laming's recommendation and the subsequent policy will be reviewed.It was one of Laming recommendation's that led to a complete change in the police role in protecting children. Whereas police and social workers used to work together to investigate allegations of child abuse, now the police will only become involved if there is evidence of a crime. This is a far higher threshold for police intervention than was previously the case, leaving social workers commonly on their own responding to child abuse referrals.
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