Report: Milburn

Victoria Climbie died as a result of a "lamentable failure" in child protection services, Alan Milburn has said.

The government has announced a series of reforms to prevent a repeat of the tragic death of the eight-year-old girl.

The health secretary said that he would deliver "fundamental reform" of the health and social services available to children.

Welcoming the report of Lord Laming's investigation into Victoria's death, Milburn announced plans to establish local "children's trusts" to pull together all services for children.

"Services must be centred around the interests of the child," he said.

"We cannot undo the wrongs done to Victoria Climbie. We can though seek to put right for others what so fundamentally failed for her."

The health secretary said he wanted to see an end to "people passing the buck" but was lukewarm about creating the post of a children's commissioner.

"Let's forget the right symbolic policies. They don't save lives. What saves lives is good practice and that is the focus of the Laming report," he told MPs.

Victoria was killed after months of horrific abuse by her great-aunt, Marie Therese Kouao and her aunt's boyfriend, Carl Manning.

The report slammed "widespread institutional malaise" and Milburn said the government would take on board its 108 recommendations.

"These reforms cannot be the end of the matter. If some good is to come out of this, some change must come out of it too," Milburn said.

Tory spokesman Dr Liam Fox said Climbie died after a "shocking tale of individual professional failure and systemic incompetence".

Paul Burstow, the Liberal Democrat social services spokesman, said the report revealed the same weaknesses which led to the same mistakes in other notorious cases of child abuse.

"Child deaths occur when the professionals involved are inexperienced, poorly trained, overloaded and under supervised. There is a chronic funding and recruitment crisis eating away at our child protection system," he said.

"The law must now be changed so that all agencies involved in child protection have to take a pro-active part in the work of the Area Child Protection Committees, and support the local authority in delivering an integrated children and family service."

Ahead of the report, groups working with children at risk called for tough action.

They insisted that robust, well managed, well-staffed and fully resourced social services would prevent a repeat of the eight-year-old's death.

The Association of Directors of Social Services, the Local Government Association and charities including NCH called for children to be put at the centre of any assessments of whether they are at risk.

They also called for all statutory agencies working within child protection to have clear service level agreements with other agencies that are legally binding, and which state the contributions they will make to protect children.

"Child protection is essentially a local activity. It is about assessment, decisions, and the actions of local workers and the investment in staff who undertake this work," they said.

"The availability and quality of the front-line response is likely to be as important as the structural arrangements for delivery."Children's charity Barnardo's warned that changing the structure of social service departments had to be linked to recruiting specialist social workers.

"It is still possible for social workers to qualify and apply for posts in children's services without undertaking any detailed training on work with vulnerable children,' said Dr Chris Hanvey of Barnardo's.

"We must recognise that child protection work is skilled, highly stressful and requires years of experience.

"The current situation of staff shortages and many departments operating with high numbers of overworked, inexperienced and locum staff can only lead to further tragedies."