The Guardian reports today on the horrific state of child protection. The evidence it has uncovered suggests that the failings that led to no one intervening to protect Baby P are hideously common.
“More than 80% of children who are killed or seriously injured as a result of abuse or neglect are missed by the national child protection register, the Guardian can reveal. … The figures, obtained from unpublished government-commissioned research, show a widespread pattern of missed opportunities where police, social workers and health professionals fail to communicate or act on evidence of potential abuse. Postmortem case reviews included in the research where children died in the care of their families reveal that midwives, hospital staff and social workers saw evidence of abuse while the children were still alive but councils did not place them on the child protection register.
Despite signs of the abuse being clear to authorities, infants who died from forced starvation, broken ribs and smashed skulls were all missed off the register, which lists 29,200 children “known to be suffering harm”.
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