Camden News: Baby P | referrals | Haringay | Janet Grauberg | Rhys Bigg's death in 2006 | social services

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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 26 March 2009

Baby P case has caused ‘marked increase in referrals’ – council

THE number of children being referred to social services has increased sharply in the wake of Haringey’s Baby P case, and councillors are ignoring their responsibilities towards them, Camden’s children service chief said on Tuesday.
Liberal Democrat councillor Janet Grauberg fought back as she was being quizzed by the council’s scrutiny committee over the Town Hall’s handling of the separate case of two-month-old Rhys Biggs, whose mother was involved with Camden social services in the weeks before his death from abuse.
“We are seeing a marked increase from all agencies in terms of referrals,” Cllr Grauberg said.
“We are at risk of focusing on questions of process and not thinking about how we together protect our children.”
Although Rhys Biggs’s death in 2006 prompted a “serious case review” which led to changes in social services, no councillor, including Cllr Grauberg as chief of the department, was briefed about the case until Rhys’s mother Claire Biggs was in court in January this year.
Labour committee chairwoman Councillor Heather Johnson demanded that councillors, under confidentiality rules, should be informed of key cases.
She said: “There is nothing more important than the death of a child. I do think that something as major as this should have been picked up.”
Cllr Grauberg conceded that “undercurrent arrangements there’s no opportunity for scrutiny”.
She added: “There are genuine issues about how you understand what is going on when, legally, information is not allowed in the public domain.”

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Although I live in South Africa. A country known for it's violence. I have never been so disturbed and heartbroken as when I was forwarded an email about Baby P. I have lain awake many nights since, devastated by the cruelty this little child had to endure.

Everyone looks up to Britain's welfare and social services, but to have something this awful happen makes me wonder how good these services really are? Baby P should have been removed from his mother's care very early on when the first signs of child abuse became apparent. No amount of "parenting classes" will ever teach an abusive, uncaring and vile adult to care for a child.

I could rant on forever, this has had such an effect on my spirit, but one thing I do need
to know is the identities of these monsters!

Why have they been kept secret? What purpose does this serve? Surely it is in the interest of British society that they know who these people are! Do child murderers have
the right to "protected"?

The death and torture of innocent Baby P needs to see some level of justice take place. Releasing the identities of Baby P's murderers would be some consolation.

Devastated
A. Walker