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Climbié reforms fail to stop new tragedy
Martin Bentham, Home Affairs Editor11.11.08
THE fate of Baby P raises new concerns about whether the reforms put in place after the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié - which were meant to prevent such abuse - are working.
The cases have striking similarities, with social workers, police, hospital staff and others either failing to identify maltreatment or failing to act so that the victim was removed from danger.
The chain of events that led to the killing of Baby P is now likely to be the subject of a prolonged inquiry in which those responsible for his care come under close scrutiny. After Victoria Climbié's death in 2000, Lord Laming led a year-long inquiry which recommended 108 reforms, including a new national supervisory system - comprising a Children's Commissioner and a board headed by a government minister - plus similar local committees that would work together to ensure that vital information about children at risk was shared.
The changes were intended to counter the problems exposed by Victoria's murder, also in Haringey, which followed months of "truly unimaginable" abuse by her great-aunt, Marie Therese Kouao, and the woman's boyfriend Carl Manning.
Both killers were jailed for life for the systematic torture, which left Victoria with 128 separate injuries including cigarette burns and scars from hammer blows to her toes. Lord Laming's inquiry found that police, doctors, and social workers had all had contact with her while she was being abused.
The peer said their failures, which included not reading reports or asking basic questions, had been a "disgrace" and suggested that Victoria's life could have been saved if information about her treatment had been shared between the agencies involved.
Earlier this year, Lord Laming declared that he still did not have "full confidence" in the ability of social services to protect children at risk and warned of a "patchy" approach to child protection across the country.
That warning appears all the more pertinent in the light of today's case.
