WE LOSE about 75 children a year to fatal abuse. Each of these cases, the subject of public inquiries, come up with proposals for greater vigilance and more extensive stores of information (All children to go on ‘big brother’ computer, News, July 25).

Public policy regarding children at risk is, unfortunately, driven not by academic research (we have plenty of it) but by the impact of dramatic though untypical single cases.

We are, as it were, driving with our eyes fixed on the rear view mirror. Thus, if we were to apply the best forensic evidence from these sad cases to the general population (it profiles young, isolated, single parents, probably with a bad childhood behind them, with few sources of extended family support, and in contact with an unrelated person with a history of drugs/alcohol abuse, or a history of domestic violence) then about a quarter of our inner city populations would be candidates for having their children taken away.

Away to what? For a life in care carries very serious side effects. We intervene much too late in most cases; the front-line staff, particularly foster parents, are underpaid and under-supported, and are demoralised by largely uninformed media criticism.

Could we not usefully spend this money elsewhere; for example, on preventative childcare schemes? Social services staff would like to undertake this work, but they are forced by government initiatives to spend 80% of their working week filling in forms, ticking boxes for target attainment returns, and preparing their records for a defence in some imaginary future inquiry. In other words, they are doing “virtual reality social work” — as in health and education.

This misguided proposal will introduce the surveillance techniques of the Stasi into our national life.

Professor Brian Sheldon
Centre for Evidence-Based Social Services
Exeter University

FAILURE: Civil liberties criticism of child “unique identifying numbers” as a back door to ID cards is at odds with government performance to date. The 9/11 Commission, the Laming Report and the Bichard Inquiry all cite the failure of government to act on intelligence which might have prevented killings.

Take the death of Victoria Climbié — three housing authorities, four social services, two police child protection teams, an NSPCC team and two hospitals failed to intervene, despite 12 separate opportunities to save Victoria’s life.

All used unique identifiers to let end users knit disparate data together to get the full picture. But the IT failed. For example, ministers have revealed 83m NI numbers for a UK population of 60m, and 2m more patients registered with GPs in England than the 50m population — a problem known of for 25 years. So much for unique identifiers.

Adrian McKeon
Infoshare Limited
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey