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1. Editorial 75
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 75–79 (2004)
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 75–79 (2004)
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/car.842
A Year On from the
Climbié Inquiry
This themed issue of Child Abuse Review marks the first
anniversary of the publication of the Climbié Inquiry
(Lord Laming, 2003) in the UK with a number of papers
which explore the themes and legacy of that report for policy
and services in England and Wales. The Climbié Inquiry was
billed as ‘the inquiry to end all inquiries’: it seems unlikely to
achieve that end, not least because there is as yet no definitive
agreement about the form such inquiries should take in the
future. However, the inquiry has contributed to significant
policy shifts from government and, while some of these, such
as the introduction of Children’s Trusts, were evident prior
to the publication of Laming’s report, others constitute a
direct response to its findings. The inquiry report has also been
instrumental in giving the final decisive push to the long
campaign to appoint a Children’s Commissioner for England.
The recently published Children Bill announced the estab-
lishment of this post, of Children’s Commissioner for England,
although it appears that the Commissioner’s remit will not
extend to dealing with individual cases or complaints.
The call for an end to inquiries conveys a weariness with
the old format and a concern that the messages of inquiries
into child deaths, while becoming increasingly repetitive, were
achieving little in the way of significant change. Laming’s
report did much to break the mould of inquiry format: as
Parton’s article in this issue notes, publishing the ongoing
proceedings and report on the web transformed the inquiry
into a global event and made it widely accessible. The intro-
duction of the ‘expert seminars’ in the second phase of the
inquiry served to broaden its remit and the range of evid-
ence which was considered. However, in many respects, the
Climbié Inquiry remained dominated by a legalistic in-
quisitorial model which allowed little opportunity for either
frontline practitioners or members of the community to
contribute their views and experiences in a way which would
promote learning rather than blaming.
The inquiry took a ‘broad brush’ approach to allocat-
ing blame, emphasizing the responsibilities of both middle
and senior managers for shortcomings in practice. The
Government’s response (Her Majesty’s Government, 2003;
Editorial
Nicky Stanley
‘The Climbié
Inquiry remained
dominated by
a legalistic
inquisitorial
model’
‘The long
campaign to
appoint a
Children’s
Commissioner
for England’

2. 76 Editorial
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 75–79 (2004)
Department of Health et al., 2003) to the report goes some
way towards implementing Laming’s proposals for new struc-
tures which will increase accountability in child care services.
However, it is not immediately apparent how increased ac-
countability will serve to improve the quality of practice and
its supervision. The danger is that tighter structures for scru-
tinizing and monitoring child care work will result in a focus
on procedure rather than increasing practitioners’ capacity to
engage with families: more boxes will be ticked, but children
will still go unheard. Likewise, the Green Paper’s proposals
for systems for flagging and tracking children may serve to
reinforce the current tendency to prioritize identification and
assessment of both need and risk over services and interven-
tions to meet those needs.
Public inquiries have been criticized on a number of
grounds: their length and expense (Corby et al., 2001), the
spotlighting of negative rather than positive practice, their re-
liance on hindsight vision (Stanley and Manthorpe, 2001) and
the extent to which their evidence has supplanted that pro-
vided by research studies. However, their strengths are often
neglected. One of the achievements of inquiries in health and
social care is to foreground the experiences of children and
families whose stories are not often told in the public arena.
Parton’s detailed comparison of the Climbié and Colwell
Inquiries in this issue highlights the social circumstances of
the families depicted in these reports and notes the extent of
change in the 30 years which separate them. He identifies the
challenges encountered by practitioners who work with shift-
ing family structures in the current context of cultural diver-
sity. His paper also emphasizes the lack of trust both between
agencies and in the inquiry process itself, both of which were
apparent in the evidence to the Climbié Inquiry. This lack of
trust can be seen as mirroring the general public’s increasing
doubts concerning the knowledge and authority of profession-
als in health and social care, doubts which have been fuelled
by inquiries such as the Climbié Inquiry, but also by others
such as the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry (Kennedy, 2001)
and the Shipman Inquiry (Smith, 2002, 2003).
Parton’s analysis of the two inquiry reports also serves to
demonstrate the considerable extent to which the responsibil-
ities of local authorities with regard to the welfare of children
have broadened. Professionals in health, social care and, as
Goldthorpe’s paper emphasizes, education now carry more
responsibility but have relinquished much of the public respect
which previously facilitated their access to families and to in-
formation. This issue needs to be more openly acknowledged
and addressed in both national and local contexts.
‘A focus on
procedure rather
than increasing
practitioners’
capacity to engage
with families’
‘Foreground the
experiences of
children and
families whose
stories are not
often told in the
public arena’
‘The lack of trust
both between
agencies and in
the inquiry
process’

3. Editorial 77
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 75–79 (2004)
Reder and Duncan’s discussion of Laming’s findings em-
phasizes the demands made on practitioners in terms of their
skills and experience. They stress that increased guidance,
checklists which aim to ensure that tasks have been undertaken
and more sophisticated technology will not ensure the quality
of professionals’ communication with children nor the clarity
of their communication with other professionals. They argue
that training for child care professionals needs to promote
the ‘healthy scepticism’ advocated by Laming and to develop
styles of reasoning which integrate subjective and intuitive
approaches with objective and ‘scientific’ ones. They also high-
light the need to invest in training and improved salaries:
measures that might have the effect of enhancing the status
and retention of staff. The significance of these issues is
acknowledged by the Green Paper, although it is not as yet
evident whether additional resources will be allocated to
address them.
Goldthorpe’s paper provides a wide-ranging discussion of
the legal implications of the Green Paper’s key proposals. She
identifies some of the barriers which impede the transfer of
information between professionals and notes the law’s lack of
clarity in this area. However, while arguing the necessity for
clearer guidance to promote communication between profes-
sionals, she stresses the need to seek out and hear the views of
children. Children’s rights to express their views are enshrined
in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, although
the Convention is, as yet, not incorporated into English law.
When consulted, children frequently emphasize the import-
ance they attach to confidentiality, as the final paper in this
issue demonstrates. Children’s demands for confidentiality
may, of course, conflict with professionals’ needs to share
information. Currently, concerns about disclosing informa-
tion usually relate to adults’ rather than children’s rights to
privacy. Once we begin to fully acknowledge children’s human
rights, discussions about how and with whom information
is shared will need to involve them as well as parents and
professionals.
The last two papers in this issue report the perspectives of
parents and children. Dale explores parents’ views of child
protection social work. Many of the findings recall those of
earlier key studies in this field (Department of Health, 1995),
which identified parents’ experiences of being excluded from
key decision-making processes such as child protection case
conferences. However, of particular relevance to the Govern-
ment’s proposal to phase out child protection registers (De-
partment of Health et al., 2003), are the perceptions of parents
in this study that registration conferred stigma but delivered
‘Training for child
care professionals
needs to promote
the “healthy
scepticism”’
‘Children
frequently
emphasize the
importance
they attach to
confidentiality’
‘Registration
conferred stigma
but delivered little
in the way of
resources’

4. 78 Editorial
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 75–79 (2004)
little in the way of resources. In common with some of the
other articles in this issue, Dale’s research provides evidence
of the value of practitioners possessing well-developed skills
in communicating with families when working in contexts
of fear and mistrust and having the time and resources to
deliver practical and therapeutic support to families. However,
parents also described social workers as overburdened with
work and, in the absence of tangible resources, passing cases
back and forth between one another. Such criticisms echo
those of the Climbié Inquiry and suggest that families’ lack of
confidence in parenting may be reinforced by the impression
that they are being offered under-resourced and undervalued
services.
Vincent and Daniel’s paper describes a study of calls made
by children to ChildLine Scotland over a period of a year; the
research included more detailed qualitative analysis of calls
made during a 2-week period. Nearly a third of the children
ringing ChildLine about abuse or neglect had not told anyone
else about the abuse. However, among those who had told
someone else, friends were the most likely confidantes. The
proportion of children who had talked to professionals was
small and some of this group found professionals unrespon-
sive. Such findings reinforce Reder and Duncan’s emphasis
on the need for child care practitioners to be sufficiently skilled
and confident to both listen to children and act on their testi-
mony. However, they also remind professionals that they
are not the only source of support and advice available for
children and suggest that preventive programmes aimed at
encouraging all children to identify and respond appropriately
to those who are experiencing abuse or neglect may have
considerable benefits.
Conclusions like these draw attention to the extent to which
the vision of the Green Paper is circumscribed. The consulta-
tive document confines its focus very much to professional
interventions and communication and has little to say about
the role of the wider community in preventing or respond-
ing to abuse. Victoria Climbié’s history demonstrates that
members of the community can encounter an abused child
but fail to recognize and respond to the abuse. Other indi-
viduals, such as Victoria’s childminder, can recognize signific-
ant harm but may be unsuccessful in eliciting an adequate
response from professionals. Much abuse continues to go un-
recognized and many children never come to the attention
of statutory agencies. Broader approaches which seek to
educate the whole community and raise awareness of both
children’s rights to protection and the means to secure it
need to be developed.
‘Friends were
the most likely
confidantes’
‘The role of the
wider community
in preventing or
responding to
abuse’

5. Editorial 79
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 75–79 (2004)
References
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