The Abuses Faced by Children in the United Kingdom Essay

The Abuses Faced by Children in the United Kingdom - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that the story of Victoria Climbie may simply be seen as the story of two cruel adults, one innocent child, and a breach of trust of savage, unimaginable proportions. Entrusted by her parents in the Ivory Coast to her great aunt Marie Therese Kouao so that she could be given a better life in the United Kingdom, little Victoria instead found herself in the hands of sadists --- Kouao and her boyfriend Carl Manning. When she died on 25 February 2000, she had 128 separate injuries on her body, cigarette burns, scars where she had been hit by a bike chain and hammer blows to her toes. The investigation also disclosed that she was forced to sleep in the bin liner in the bath. And yet, it is also the story of institutions that have failed our children, a bureaucracy that has neglected the most vulnerable members of our society, and individual officials whose individual omissions have resulted in collective negligence. In the hearings subsequent to the death of Victoria Climbie, it was discovered that she was seen by dozens of social workers, medical practitioners, and police officers but all of them failed to either detect signs of abuse or failed to act on them until it was too late. The inquiry revealed that there were as many as 12 opportunities were the authorities could have intervened but failed to. For example, when Dr. Mary Schwartz, a pediatrician, looked at Climbie’s cuts wounds, she dismissed it as scabies and sent her back home to her abusers. Police officer Karen Jones refused to inspect the home of the Kouao and Manning, where Climbie lived, because she was afraid she would catch scabies from the furniture. Bickering and backstabbing the child protection service in the Haringey area had also contributed to the failure to provide immediate and adequate response to the abuse. Despite a major tell-tale sign, i.e., Victoria was not enrolled in school, which is one of the indicators that an abuse could be taking place, social workers took the word of Manning and Kouao at face value and did not probe any further. Though Victoria’s abusers were eventually sent to jail and sentenced to life imprisonment, the hard questions still remain. How could this kind of abuse – so horrible and grotesque – to a child of tender years have gone undetected? Is the system so decrepit, so shot full of holes that despite many warning signs and many opportunities to save Victoria’s life, she still ended up battered and dead, with 128 injuries on her frail body? And perhaps the most troubling question of all: could this happen again? Dare we allow this to happen again? In response to the widespread shock and indignation resulting from the completely avoidable death of the eight-year-old child, an inquiry was conducted, headed by Lord Laming, who called the Victoria Climbie affair â€Å"the worse case of neglect (he) has ever heard of.† Notably, Laming found that the legislative framework was intrinsically sound,, the problem was mainly one of implementation. Health secretary Alan Milburn said, â€Å""Victoria's death was a tragedy. It is vital that all agencies dealing with children learn the lesson from this terrible case.† The Laming report came up with several recommendations, including the following (Batty, 2003):  · The creation of a children and families board chaired by a senior government minister to coordinate policies and initiatives that have a bearing on the wellbeing of children and families.  · A national agency for children and families, led by a children’s commissioner, should be established to ensure local services meet national standards for child protection and implement reforms.  · Committees for children and families should be established by councils, with members drawn from social services, education, housing, the NHS and the police.  · New local management boards – chaired by council chief executives with members from the police, health, social services,