Child protection – Another indictment of services

THERE can’t be a person in the country who does not recognise that we must dramatically improve our child protection services.

There can’t be a person who would, even in these slash-and-slash-again times, begrudge a single cent spent on trying to protect or rescue young, unformed lives in terrible jeopardy, often for no reason other than random circumstance.

A comprehensive range of reports — many heartbreaking, all shaming — have made it impossible to pretend that this society’s relationship with children caught up in some of life’s desperate situations is functional. We might like to pretend that the difficulties are historical and that things have improved. They may have but there is still a distance to go before we can be satisfied that we are doing all that is necessary; that we have procedures and services vigorous enough to make a real, life-changing difference for a young person in crisis.