Will lessons ever be learnt?

Their faces have stared out from our newspapers and TV sets down the years, the children whose violent deaths at the hands of parents or guardians have appalled the nation. From Maria Colwell in 1973, to Jasmine Beckford, Victoria Climbié, Daniel Pelka and Baby Peter Connelly, their names serve as a reproach to those who failed to save them from their evil killers.

After each of these crimes, inquiries have been established that invariably discovered the child was known to social services and suspected by other family members, teachers and neighbours of being abused, but the system designed to protect them failed to work properly. Now the Government has ordered another review, this time into the murder of Arthur Labinjo-hughes, who was just six years old when he died at the hands of his father and stepmother. Their jail terms are now being challenged as too lenient.

Arthur had been tortured and subject to sustained abuse to which social workers had been alerted by his grandmother only to conclude that there were “no safeguarding issues”. This is despite the fact they were shown photographs of bruising on his body. One obvious issue that arose with Arthur’s case is that he was out of school for long periods because of the lockdowns. Had he been seen regularly by teachers, perhaps the authorities could have been alerted more forcibly and earlier. It is another reason why whatever happens with the advance of the omicron variant of Covid, shutting the schools must not be contemplated.

However as Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, has observed, although the closures weakened the support systems for vulnerable children, Arthur did have home visits and was seen by professional social workers. It is hard to see how a national review will cast light on what occurred here if individual social workers or local teams simply failed to do their jobs properly.

After every one of the cases listed above, the cry has gone up “could more have been done, who is to blame (other than the perpetrators) and how can it be stopped from happening again?” Ministers promise that lessons will be learned and yet they never are or are rapidly forgotten. Scapegoating is not the answer. But it is essential that the systems put in place to protect at-risk children are followed and the warning signs of impending catastrophe are picked up and acted on.