When Berthe Climbie voiced her frustration this morning that some local authorities have not learnt the lessons of her daughter’s death, she was reflecting wider concerns about the child protection system felt by many working with vulnerable young people.

Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie eight years ago concluded the major failing of the old system was the inability of all the different professionals who come into contact with a child to communicate and work together. That means teachers, GPs, hospital staff, nursery or youth workers being able to voice even minor concerns to one another and to social services just in case, when taken with other evidence, they add up to a picture of a child at risk of neglect or abuse or worse.

The 2004 Children’s Act, which followed Lord Laming’s inquiry, placed on these professionals a ’duty to co-operate’ with one another, but there are still apparent failures in the system.

Lord Laming said yesterday this was his major frustration - social services were still ’too reactive’, waiting for a major incident before removing children from their families, rather than getting involved at an earlier stage. “Agencies need to be more ambitious. Services should not be waiting until something awful happens before taking action,” he said.

It is clearly a difficult balance to strike for those involved with children. Professionals are rightly eager not to burden already over-worked social workers with spurious concerns that could turn out to be nothing. Neither can any system be completely foolproof. Very occasionally, cases of shocking abuse come out of the blue.

However as Lord Laming also pointed out yesterday, most children who suffer serious injury or are killed by their parents are already known to social services and even on the ’at risk’ register. That suggests there is still some way to go before his vision of a more ambitious system taking greater preventative action is realised.

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