In the wake of the Daniel Pelka tragedy Coventry Council has
announced that it is to appoint a retired high court judge to advise it on
child protection. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-24487953
I do not know the judge in question, but clearly what went
wrong in Daniel’s case was not of a legal nature. It was much more about how to
spot children who are in difficulty as a result of abuse and neglect at the
earliest possible opportunity. That seems to me to imply that the kind of help
most required is either of a technical working-with-and-listening-to-children
type or of a more general organisational
safety type.
So I am not sure how the judge is going to help.
It is also reported that Coventry councillors have decided
to ask a House of Commons select committee to look at safeguarding children
issues. I don’t think that that is the right approach. It is not so long since
the Education Select Committee looked at child protection and seemed to wander all
over the place, including a lengthy un-productive discussion about the
definition of neglect. http://chrismillsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/definition-of-neglect.html
I don’t think that child protection will ever improve if it
is left to councillors and judges and MPs to come up with ‘bright ideas’ about
how to reform systems.
Responsibility for improvement has to be located at the
‘coalface’ with those who do the work and who understand how business and
professional processes operate. Such people also need to understand how active
errors occur during the course of practice and how latent conditions contribute
to failures in systems. So there is scope for input from people who understand
organisational safety in other industries to become involved.
We need to create the conditions for improvement, not create
the opportunity for yet another poorly focused public debate. The role of
Government, both central and local, is not to get involved in the detail of
service provision. It is to set the broad objectives, to resource services
adequately and to hold those delivering services to account – not for being
right all the time, but for ensuring continuous improvement in quality and
safety.
