Gove demands child protection reform in wake of tragic deaths

Education Secretary Michael Gove has highlighted a series of cases, including Bradford four-year-old Hamzah Khan who was starved to death by his alcoholic mother, to show the need to introduce a watershed in care.

The serious case review into Hamzah’s death is due to be published today, and Mr Gove’s comments send out a strong message that more needs to be done to tackle the problem of child neglect nationally. He admitted that after each of the children’s deaths there have been “sincere protestations” that such tragedies must never happen again. But officials have not been “systematic, radical or determined enough” to reform social care in this country, he said.

In a speech to the NSPCC, Mr Gove pledged “three pillars of reform” to change the system.

He said the training of social workers must change to ensure it is a rigorous as for any other profession; those who work with children need to be able to innovate and “break out of bureaucratic ways of working”; and there needs to be tougher accountability for those involved in child protection.

He said: “Peter Connelly, Khyra Ishaq, Hamzah Khan, Keanu Williams, Daniel Pelka – all children who cried out in pain – and we never listened. And never acted.

“After each of these children’s deaths there have been – I am sure, sincere – protestations that lessons must be learned, that those in power must act and that such tragedies must never happen again.

“But have lessons been learned? Have those of us in power acted in the right way? I don’t think we have – yet.”

Mr Gove said he wants to end teaching which encourages social workers to see the people they work with as the victims of social injustice and economic forces rather taking responsibility for their own lives. A forthcoming review by his adviser on children’s social care, Sir Martin Narey, will identify areas for improvements, including “varying educational standards” at universities and a failure to be clear about what social workers need to know, he said.

“In too many cases, social work training involves idealistic students being told that the individuals with whom they will work have been disempowered by society,” he said.

“They will be encouraged to see these individuals as victims of social injustice whose fate is overwhelmingly decreed by the economic forces and inherent inequalities which scar our society.

“This analysis is, sadly, as widespread as it is pernicious. It risks explaining away substance abuse, domestic violence and personal irresponsibility, rather than doing away with them.”

Mr Gove added that accountability in the child protection system must be “sharper” and called for professionals such as police, doctors or local government chief executives to be held to account rather than individual social workers.

He said courts have made it “more difficult” for social workers to ensure that children can be taken into care, and added that judges must also be held to account “just as much as any other public servant”.

“A wig and gown should be signs you serve the public, not a way of shielding yourself from accountability,” he said.

The Yorkshire Post reported last month that Hamzah Khan’s mother, Amanda Hutton, had been jailed for 15 years after being convicted of his manslaughter.

The youngster’s mummified remains were found in a cot in his mother’s bedroom 21 months after his death.