The Baby P Effect and Social Services

The start to the BS of Social Services

Baby P the prelude to his tragic Death

Social workers in the borough of Haringey in North London had decided he was safe living with his mother and that her major difficulty as a parent was poverty.

Getting tougher: Social workers in the borough of Haringey in North London, led by Children's Service Director Sharon Shoesmith, had decided Baby P was safe living with his mother

Numbers of children removed from their homes rose rapidly in the wake of the death, and shot up even faster after Peter's mother and two men were jailed for causing his death at the Old Bailey in November 2008.

In April 2008 some 380 children were taken from their homes into state care.

Last month the figure was 903, and in the first ten months of the financial year which started last April 8,403 children were taken into care.

The total being looked after by the state is more than 65,000.

In the past, social workers have often tried to return children to inadequate mothers or left them to languish in children's homes or with rapidly changing foster families.

The result has been many children have left state care with no educational qualifications and gone on to lives of crime or single parenthood.

The head of the CAFCASS court assistance service for children, Anthony Douglas, said yesterday after the organisation released the figures: 'All agencies need to factor these much larger increases into their planning systems, resource allocations, workforce development strategies and service contracts, so that the most vulnerable children in the country continue to receive strong public services.'

Anne Marie Carrie, of the charity Barnardo's, said: 'While the increase in the number of children being referred into care might cause alarm, I am pleased that decisions are being made more quickly to remove children from harmful environments.

'Care can and does transform the lives of vulnerable children. This is why it is essential that we ensure that there are foster or adoptive parents ready to provide them with a stable and loving family.'

Coalition ministers have pushed through rules intended to dismantle artificial barriers used to stop children finding new parents, such as demanding that adopters are of the same race or do not smoke.