Action urged on child protection (Lord Laming Report) (BBC News)

Child protection must be given higher priority to protect vulnerable young people from abuse, a report has warned.

Lord Laming's review told those working in children's services most of the necessary reforms were in place and that they should "now just do it".

The peer also called for a step change in the way services are run following the deaths of Victoria Climbie and Baby P after months of abuse.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls said he accepted all the new recommendations.
No barrier or bureaucracy should get in the way of keeping children safe, he told MPs in the House of Commons.

Mr Balls, who promised a detailed response to all of Lord Laming's recommendations before the end of next month, appointed Barnardo's head Sir Roger Singleton as the first chief government adviser on the safety of children.

He also announced that ministers would be taking control of Doncaster children's services and appointing a new management team because of concerns over the deaths of seven children through abuse or neglect in the past five years.

In a separate move, the BBC understands the Welsh Assembly is also to intervene in the running of Swansea council's children's services department following two critical reports into its child protection procedures.

'Impatient'

Lord Laming's review of children's services in England concluded that child protection issues in England had not had "the priority they deserved" and many of the reforms brought in after Victoria Climbie's death in 2000 had not been properly implemented.

Other findings included:
•There had been an "over-emphasis on process and targets", resulting in a "loss of confidence" among social workers, who were overstretched and undertrained
•Progress was being "hampered" by the lack of a centralised computer system and an "over-complicated... tick-box assessment and recording system"
•There was a lack of communication and joined-up working between agencies
•A lack of funding made social and child protection work a "Cinderella service".
Lord Laming - who headed the Climbie inquiry - said the key services involved in child protection agreed the reforms introduced after that review were necessary.
And his report stressed the key message in capital letters, saying: "In such circumstances it is hard to resist the urge to respond by saying to each of the key services, if that is so, 'NOW JUST DO IT!'"

"I'm just impatient to make sure that we get ahead and just do it now. It can be done and we could, in these circumstances, have the best child protection services in the world," Lord Laming said after the report's publication.

His review made 58 new recommendations on how to protect children from harm.

They included:
•The introduction of targets for child protection, similar to school targets
•Ensuring directors of children's services with no background in child protection have a senior manager with child protection experience in their team
•School inspections to assess how well they carry out child protection duties
•A national strategy to address recruitment and retention problems in children's social work
•National guidelines setting out maximum case loads for social workers
•Increased quality of degrees in social work and the introduction of a children's social worker post-graduate qualification.
Child protection has been under the microscope since details of Baby P's case came to light last year.

The 17-month-old died in August 2007 in the London borough of Haringey having suffered months of abuse, despite being seen 60 times by various professionals, including doctors and social workers.

Lord Laming had previously made 108 recommendations after his inquiry into the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie, also in Haringey, who was abused by her aunt for months before she died in February 2000.

Most of the recommendations were adopted in the 2004 Children's Act and Every Child Matters policies.

But following the death of Baby P, Children's Secretary Ed Balls asked Lord Laming to examine whether his recommendations had been properly implemented in England.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own systems to monitor child protection and are not covered by the review.

Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove told the Commons the events that had led to the publication of Lord Laming's latest report were "horrific" and haunted the nation's conscience.