Council Leaders Respond To Laming Report Into Child Protection - LGA

12 March 2009

Following the publication of Lord Laming's report to review progress on the recommendations of his landmark review into Victoria Climbié's death in the wake of the Baby P case, Chairman of the Local Government Association, which represents councils in England, Cllr Margaret Eaton, said:-

"We are not here to make excuses and striving to maintain the status quo is not nearly good enough. As a nation, we must reduce the number of children suffering abuse and neglect, and must seek to eliminate the uncommon but tragic cases where children die as a result. We must never be complacent about the need to do more to improve services for children at greatest risk.

"Poor performance needs to be driven out, in this area above all, and where good support does not result in improvement it has to be dealt with firmly.

"Lord Laming's report is both timely and pertinent, and will be studied with interest and in great detail. What is clear is that while all organisations which work to protect vulnerable children, whether the health service, police, teachers or councils need to raise their game there is not a need for a potentially dangerous and damaging reform of the entire system.

"The report shows that while child protection has improved since his last inquiry, there is still a long way to go if we as a society are to reduce to a minimum the chances of children dying at the hands of a small number of sick individuals.

"These sad events surrounding the death of Baby P shine a light on the enormous responsibility councils bear in working with the most vulnerable children and families, and the equally difficult responsibility we ask children's social workers to carry on our behalf. It is a tough job to do and for councils it is the toughest job to fill.

"Being a children's social worker is one of the hardest jobs in Britain. There are real difficulties for councils in recruiting and retaining high calibre child social worker staff. We must look to the future and recruit and retain staff so that they can protect the most vulnerable children in society and stop preventable deaths.

"There are no simple or easy answers to the challenge of protecting the most vulnerable children, only a relentless focus on doing the best we possibly can, at every level and in every service."

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