Kim Holt (along with three other senior consultant paediatricians) tried to warn about serious failings in the unit which were, in their view, putting vulnerable children at risk. However, the hospital’s reactions ranged from suspending her through to blocking her return to work and failing to follow up on the recommendations of an investigation into her case.

The belated apology has taken Kim Holt three years to secure and once again raises questions about the judgement of Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Chief Executive, Jane Collins.

Jane Collins previously avoided a GMC investigation into her performance over the death of Baby Peter because she left the medical register shortly before any investigation could start and who has also been under fire for Great Ormond Street’s withholding of key information that was critical about its performance from two outside inquiries into Baby P’s death.

However, what has been less commented on in the coverage in the last few days is the way Jane Collins escaped being investigated by the General Medical Council last year:

The chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital has escaped investigation over the Baby P scandal by removing herself from the medical register.

The General Medical Council today confirmed they are now “powerless” to act against Dr Jane Collins since she erased her name. A GMC spokeswoman said: “Once someone has gone off the register then the GMC no longer has powers to investigate that person. Our powers only extend to erasing someone from the register.” (Evening Standard)

Not exactly a reassuring state of affairs is it?

See also:-

• Richard Morris – who points out that last year between 40 and 50 consultants at Great Ormond Street Hospital called on Jane Collins to go.
• Lynne Featherstone’s post about Kim Holt, the Great Ormond Street Hopsital whistleblower who was ostracised for three years after she raised concerns at the hospital – and now finally has received an apology.
• Dan Falchikov whose great aunt has a ward named after her at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
• Jonathan Calder’s blog post on Jane Collins and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
• There’s been further media coverage in the Hornsey Journal and the Daily Mail.

Today The Guardian has a damning verdict from the author of that first inquiry, Edi Carmi:

The author of the serious case review, Edi Carmi, said she was shocked by the BBC’s report and that much of the edited material concerned issues fundamental to her inquiry.

So the author of the first inquiry says fundamental information was withheld from her and the chair of the second inquiry says that Great Ormond Street Hospital is wrong to say it handed over the full information to him.

And the reaction of the hospital trustees to all this? So far, they say they can’t see that the hospital has done anything wrong. Hmm.

An investigation by BBC London found that Great Ormond Street Hospital did not pass on to the first Serious Case Review into the death of Baby Peter several key findings of its own review into the St Ann’s Clinic, which had an important and tragic role in the failures to protect him.

As the BBC says of its Great Ormond Street Hospital investigation:

The BBC London investigation reveals the following key findings and criticisms were left out:

• the head of the unit Dr Sukanta Bannerjee considered it a “clinically risky situation”
• the arrangements for seeing child protection cases there caused “grave concern”
• there was a “clearly unacceptable” four-month delay in Peter’s appointment
• the doctor who examined Peter should not have been appointed by Gosh because she had “little experience and training in child protection”
• there were “significant concerns” in two of only four previous child protection cases she had seen there.

Even worse, Great Ormond Street Hospital responded to the BBC claiming that the full findings were passed on to the second Serious Case Review into the death of Baby Peter, ordered after the first one was revealed to be deeply flawed. Yet Graham Badman, who chaired the second inquiry, told the BBC that he had never seen them.

Alas, the reaction of the Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Chairwoman to all of this has been to say there’s no problem: “The trust board has complete confidence in Dr Collins, she is a first class CEO”.

Moreover, Lynne Featherstone has accused the hospital of issuing a misleading statement to the press, writing on her blog today that:

In their statement they say they met me about my concerns. No – they met me about concerns about one of my constituents (one of the four paediatric consultants who was put on special leave because she raised concerns about the danger to children in St Ann’s Hospital). That meeting was not about the withholding of information from the Serious Case Review. And moreover – even that meeting was only granted after Baroness Blackstone (Chair of Great Ormond Street Board) had refused to meet me on my own without Dr Collins present. I have the emails!

Haringey was rightly in the spotlight as the lead agency in the wake of the Baby P tragedy – but perhaps that spotlight detracted from the terribly dangerous conditions in which vulnerable children were being left by the management failures by GOSH…

I have called for an investigation into the withholding of this vital information and wait to see whether real justice will be done.

A mother has been jailed for the abuse of 10 children in her care in Haringey, the borough at the centre of the Baby P scandal.

She left the children starving, smelly, crawling with head lice and covered in ingrained dirt.

One child was so hungry that when a foster carer fed her she pressed the milk bottle hard against her mouth, leaving a red mark. The skin beneath her nappy was red-raw.

Police, who were alerted by a member of the public concerned about the children’s condition and the “inappropriate” adult nature of their conversations, discovered rotten food in the home and cockroach infestation.

The abuse happened over four years, from 2005 to 2009. It will prompt renewed concerns about child protection standards in Haringey, where 17-month-old Peter Connelly – Baby P – died at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and her lodger in 2007, despite 60 visits by social services, police and health professionals…

[A Haringey spokesman said:] ”The Local Safeguarding Children Board is content that our decision to pull together lessons for future best practice is right and that no other process is needed.”

As the paper’s leader puts it,

The case was not brought to trial as a result of the concerns of social workers. It took a civic-spirited neighbour to report the children’s situation to the police before action was taken.

Haringey Social Services is being notably reticent about the case but reticence will not do for a council notorious for its mishandling of the cases of Victoria Climbié and Baby P. Were social services involved in these cases of neglect, going back four years? And if so, why did they not deal forcefully with the abuse? We need answers and explanations.

Absolutely. Perhaps this time the council is right, but after the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Baby P Haringey’s initial response on both occasions fell woefully short of tackling the numerous failings that subsequent investigations uncovered. It’s too big a risk simply to trust that third time round its judgement is right.

Two social workers sacked over the Baby P tragedy have lost their claim for unfair dismissal, it emerged today.

Gillie Christou and Maria Ward claimed they were unjustly fired by Haringey council in response to the public outcry about the toddler’s horrific death.

But an employment tribunal panel ruled that the local authority acted reasonably in dismissing them because of serious failings in their care of the child.

You can read the full report here.

The whistleblower who warned that Haringey social services were failing to protect children just six months before the death of Baby P is to stand for election there as a Liberal Democrat councillor.

Former social worker Nevres Kemal, above, who will contest the Noel Park ward, said she will try to rid the council of a culture of “lying, deception and cover-ups”.

Best of luck Nevres.

As the November edition of Public Servant reports:

An attack by two ministers on parliamentary reports revealing waste and incompetence in their departments has provoked the Treasury to warn that ministers will face public censure if they make immediate statements to the media on future reports.

Statements by defence minister Quentin Davies and higher education minister David Lammy have led to a new Whitehall member to accounting officers banning attacks on Public Accounts Committee (PAC) reports before the Treasury can make a considered response.

In other words: don’t rush to the media saying PAC reports are rubbish before the Treasury has even had time to work out a proper analysis of their reports.

It’s not just when presented with new information though that David Lammy’s actions are suspect. It’s often forgotten that Baby Peter was a constituent of his (rather than of Lynne Featherstone’s) given how quiet he has been about both the tragedy itself and the chaotic and flawed management within Haringey’s social services department that inspections have uncovered. As I wrote in December:

David Lammy was warned by a whistle blower of severe problems in Haringey six months before Baby P’s death. Yet as Paul Waugh pointed out in the Evening Standard, David Lammy was happy to defend Sharon Shoesmith and Haringey Council even after this warning and after Baby P’s death.

And the least said about David Lammy’s Celebrity Mastermind appearance the better… All in all, David Lammy seems to be accumulating a rather unfortunate record as an MP even if he’s managed to escape the expenses scandal by virtue of being several years early with his second home claims.

Now we know for sure the reasons:

There were two reasons behind the veil of secrecy. The first being the need to protect the identity of Baby Peter’s four siblings.

Connelly has three other children by Baby Peter’s father and gave birth to her youngest, who is Barker’s child, in prison.

The anonymity order was lifted because all four of Connelly’s remaining children are now being cared for.
Barker and Connelly could also not be named initially because they were involved in another trial and there was a risk of prejudice.

On 1 May, Barker was convicted of raping a two-year-old girl but Connelly was cleared of a child cruelty charge. (BBC)

In other words: they were kept secret to protect other children and to allow another prosecution to go ahead. There’s no real surprise there, given those are two of the most common reasons for secrecy to be imposed. The only slight surprise (and tragedy) perhaps is that it was for both such reasons rather than only one of them.

Here’s hoping that at least some of the people who expressed such utter certainty that the courts were wrong to have issued that secrecy order are having second thoughts…

Under fire councillors opt to take pay freeze
The recession is about to hit councillors in the pocket, after both Haringey Labour and Liberal Democrat parties decided NOT to take a pay rise …

Councillor Claire Kober, Leader of the Labour-controlled council, said, “… This move will mean any savings can go straight into providing essential services for the people of Haringey.”

So, do you think that Labour voted through changes that resulted in the council’s allowances bill:

a) Staying the same, or
b) Increasing by £44,751 (7%)?

I’ll give you a clue. It’s not (a).

The changes produced a sneaky stealth allowance increase because, by shuffling round who held what post, Labour was able to increase the amount of money its councillors receive whilst also claiming that the headline allowance figures were unchanged.

(Some councillors held more than one post which entitled them to a Special Responsibility Allowance (SRA), but could only receive one SRA payment. By giving up their other SRA post to someone else, they still receive the same amount in allowances but the other person gets a boost in their allowances.)

This increase comes at a time when Haringey has recently had its rating drop to one star, a report has just been published into the death of Baby Peter which concluded that his death could and should have been prevented, and there are one or two other expenses stories around. So you can see why Labour might want to try to hide an allowances increase…

The original Serious Case Review concluded that essentially nothing too significant was done wrong by those involved in protecting Baby P, but was rapidly discredited once its finding were publicised. This new review paints a very different picture, including the key conclusion that the death of Baby P “could and should have been prevented” (BBC).

It is perhaps reassuring to know that – for all the heinous and deceitful behaviour involved – a well-run social services system should be able to protect children in such circumstances. It also rather undermines those who have sought to defend Haringey Council on the basis that, “evil happens and you can’t stop it” or variants thereof. In this case, the conclusion is that it could and should have been stopped. And it makes the judgement of Tottenham MP David Lammy – who initially defended Sharon Shoesmith and her record at running Haringey’s social services, despite having been warned six months earlier by a whistleblower – look all the poorer.

As The Times reports:

Rape verdict strengthens call for Haringey public inquiry
The failings of social workers at Haringey Council have again been exposed in a criminal trial.

The local authority, which is still reeling from the criticism it received after its failing in the Baby P case, confirmed the two-year-old rape victim was known to social workers and was on its “at risk” register…

Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, said that more questions about the performance of the council needed to be answered. “We desperately need a public inquiry to get to the bottom of this,” she said.

One final detail is worth highlighting. This conviction has made clear why the names of those involved in the trial over the death of Baby P were kept secret – it was (at least in part) in order to ensure that this second trial could go ahead:

The Attorney General investigated an internet ‘name and shame’ campaign which risked derailing the trial and led to the defendants being given false names. (Daily Mail)

An ironic footnote indeed that those who were demanding names to be named in the interests of justice would in fact, had they had their way, have derailed justice and most likely caused the man to therefore receive a lighter jail sentence than he now will with these two convictions.

The head of the council at the centre of the Baby P scandal faces questions today over a series of other child protection failures.

Haringey chief executive Ita O’Donovan has held senior positions at three councils that were condemned for failing children so seriously that the Government was forced to intervene.

Dr O’Donovan has worked in authorities embroiled in some of the country’s most shocking child deaths. She has said she considered resigning over the Baby P tragedy but decided the council needed stability.

She was in charge of Stoke-on-Trent council when 15-year-old Gareth Myatt choked and died while being restrained by guards at a privately-run secure training centre in 2004.

Shortly after Dr O’Donovan left, ministers decided a taskforce should be sent in to take over Stoke’s children’s services.

Dr O’Donovan also held a senior post at Newham council when two-year-old Ainlee Labonte was killed by her parents after suffering months of abuse in 2002, although she was not responsible for social services at the time.

Liberal Democrat Voice, 3 December 2008:

Haringey Council Chief Executive Ita O’Donovan turns out to have held a senior post at three different councils where the children’s services were so poor that the Government had to intervene directly.

It’s good to see the media picking up on this point, as Ita O’Donovan’s record certainly merits scrutiny.

I’ve only really had direct experience of her qualities once, though she was less than impressive on that occasion. It was at an election count where she was insisting on the count being carried out in a way that was in fact in breach of the law, and our team there rang me for advice. Eventually she agreed to carry out the count in the way the law stipulates, though not before she made a series of erroneous claims about what the law said and how counts had previously been conducted in Haringey.

Compared to something like running Children’s Services properly, this is a relatively minor issue, but for me it certainly raised questions about her judgement and expertise.

The counter-arguments tend to be a mix of principle and pragmatism. Principled arguments around issues such as rights that we have as humans and the restrictions there should be on what governments can do. Pragmatic arguments such as the costs (e.g. spend money on ID cards or on police?), practicalities (e.g. what odds that the ID cards database will really work?) and side-effects (e.g. the increasing number of errors as the DNA database grows). Or in other words – put the resources into catching the guilty rather than hassling the innocent.

But further than that – and I think this is sometimes neglected by those arguing to protect our liberties – we all benefit from the liberties that any one of us has. Most obviously, if a journalist is free to investigate government wrong-doings – we all benefit from that. But this benefit comes in more subtle ways too, as the tragic death of Baby P in Haringey has exposed.

Whatever else one case say about Haringey, it hasn’t been short of whistleblowers with credible, relevant concerns about the way children were being looked after by Children’s Services and the health authorities. Yet they have repeatedly been injuncted and gagged, prevented from speaking out and pressured into silence. Even now, many people are not willing to go on the record to get their concerns into the light (one of the reasons why I believe we should have a public inquiry – so such people can be given the assurance that speaking out will result in being listened to).

We know, though, that inspectors were misled – fed information that suggested all was well, when it wasn’t; that the first Serious Case Review into Baby P’s death was carried out badly and wrongly airbrushed out the serious blunders that the authorities had made; and that concerns raised about the quality of services were repeatedly rebuffed with the answer that all was well and in hand.

This could only happen because of our culture of accepting tight restrictions on freedom of speech in employment situations. It’s the normal thing that if a member of staff is seriously unhappy with how a department is being run, their contract stops them speaking out. Often they will get paid off and required to sign a promise of secrecy. And if they wish to stand their ground and fight? There’s precious little protection for whistleblowers and a hugely lopsided legal system that benefits those with the big pockets (the state) against those without (the employee).

This is not though an issue only about the individual rights of those whistleblowers. It’s about how public services are kept on track and public servants held to account. Anyone who uses those services may be the victim of the service blunders that flow from a whistleblower being silenced.

The idea that if you work for an organisation you should keep quiet spreads far and wide through society – it’s even the normal state of affairs for members of sports teams, who face sanctions if they criticise in public the sport’s authorities. But imagine the outrage there would be if a rule were introduced that MPs are not allowed to criticise the Parliamentary authorities in public.

So when people talk about civil liberties – and cherish, rightly, the many freedoms we do have – let us not forget that freedom of speech is still a hotly contested area, where far too often corporate and bureaucratic self-preservation wins out.

After Baby P: what can be done?

Recently, Lib Dem Voice has been snowed under with hits and comments from new readers, all expressing their anger in the face of the Baby P tragedy. (If you’re a regular, you won’t find anything in this post you don’t already know – fear not, normal LDV service will soon be resumed, but this does seem something of a special case).

If you’re one of those new readers, I’d like to suggest ways you can put your anger to good use. We can all talk endlessly about who’s to blame, what should be done with killers, what should happen to the social workers. But the reality is that none of that will bring Baby P back. You cannot change what is already done by talking.

But you can help prevent this from happening in your town. You might feel powerless. But believe it or not, you’re a citizen. You have the power to hold your own local authorities, your local councillors, and your local MPs to account – whether you’re a mother, a father, a grandparent, or even still a child yourself. You’ve probably never thought about getting involved in local politics before. Perhaps you’ve never even voted because you don’t believe you can ever change anything.

I’m asking you, bearing in mind that there may be children in your neighbourhood who are suffering and are still very much alive and saveable, to give it a try. If the government isn’t doing something right, you need to be the person asking why. You have a vote for your local council and for your MP, you pay your council tax, the council and its services are there to serve you. You have the right to demand answers of them.

Here are a few suggestions (regulars might like to contribute others in the comments):

1. Find out the names of your local councillors. You can do this here. All councillors should hold regular sessions where their constituents can approach them about any worry or problem they have. Talk to your councillor about your concerns and ask him or her to find out about the record of the Child Protection Services in the area. Or, you could go straight to the services yourself and then approach your councillor if you find anything that worries you (see 2 and 3).
2. Get in touch with your local Child Protection Services (they ought to be in the phone book under “council”) explain your concerns and ask how they can reassure you that nothing like the Baby P tragedy could ever happen in your town. They ought to be able to tell you about their ratings system – whether they’re Excellent, Good, Satisfactory or Inadequate.
3. Of course, ratings can be wrong – Haringey itself was rated as “Satisfactory”. So get a fresh perspective. Find your local newspaper website (they probably come through your door; if not google the name of your town along with “local newspaper”) and do a search on it for “child protection”. That ought to find any past articles about local mistakes or serious cases. Call the newspapers and ask them what they know about the case, and what happened afterwards. Were lessons really learnt? Were any mistakes dealt with properly? If the newspapers don’t know, they might be able to point you towards the right people to approach to find out.
4. Write to your MP. You can find out who they are and how to contact them here. Ask them to sign the two Early Day Motions on child protection put forward by Lib Dem MPs John Hemming and Lynne Featherstone.
5. Go to the local campaigning section of the NSPCC website. The NSPCC has ten local campaign co-ordinators who run campaigns about problems in their area. Find out if your nearest co-ordinator is running any events, petitions or other campaigns that you could donate time and skills to.
6. Join the Facebook groups for Baby P and encourage others to take practical action as well – tell everyone about your local investigations on the Facebook wall.
7. Don’t give up until you’re satisfied. You have rights – exercise them.

Just a note: it’s very important to be firm but polite. This is an emotional issue, but keep it professional. You have a right to demand answers, but you don’t have a right to be rude or abusive. If any local officer is rude or unhelpful to you, ask to be told about the complaints procedure (all councils have one) and complain. If any elected representative (MP or councillor) is rude or unhelpful to you, make sure you vote in your next local elections and in the next General Election to get them out of office.

Lastly, please come back to this site and tell us what you’ve done, and how it went. Any result, however small, is a step in the right direction. We can’t ever stamp out incompetence and mistakes altogether. But the more we hold our public services to account and demand they do a good job, the better they will be, and the less likely it is that any other child will be failed by the system as dismally as Baby P was.

Ofsted’s assessment of local authorities’ children’s services last year consisted of a checklist of the information managers had to provide to demonstrate, among other things, that they had adequate social workers and were assessing children promptly. Managers in Haringey misled Ofsted by providing inaccurate data, the chief inspector said.

Tactics used by the council included claims that managers had assessed children promptly when the files revealed that those assessments were in fact incomplete. The same files showed that such assessments of children were routinely and wrongly made with their parent or guardian in the room, when they could have been the ones harming them.

It wasn’t until inspectors in this week’s review [caused by the death of Baby P] began pulling children’s files from the office shelves in the town hall that they realised the extent of the deceit.

This culture of complacency and evasion still very much lives in Haringey with the news that Labour in Haringey is refusing to hold a council debate on the report Ed Balls ordered:

A special meeting next Tuesday will currently only include the formal appointment of a new Leader of the Council and Children’s Services member after the resignations on Monday. Requests by opposition councillors for a statement and discussion on the damning report have been rejected…

The Liberal Democrat opposition says that Haringey is slipping into a disastrous ‘business-as usual’ amnesia over the case. Cllr Robert Gorrie points out that only last week, the acting Leader of the Council, Lorna Reith, had defended the now removed Labour councillors Liz Santry and George Meehan, by saying she had “seen how effective they had been”…

Liberal Democrat Leader Robert Gorrie comments: “There is immense anger that Labour are already showing signs of business as usual. It is extraordinary that Haringey Council’s leadership and its Chief Executive are actively avoiding the opportunity to set out a clear plan of action in response to the devastating Ofsted report. Their behaviour sets the culture and context for council officers in the future, and the first signs are not encouraging that the necessary root and branch changes necessary will be made to the services that protect our most vulnerable citizens.”

It’s a good example of why I think people such as Angela Neustatter are very wrong in their criticism of the general public outcry against Haringey. Whilst some of it has been distasteful and wrong, her complaint earlier this week in The Guardian that, “it is appropriate when people fail in their jobs that they may be quietly removed. But discreet is not what the media likes on these occasions,” misses the point.

Quiet acceptance of responsibility and removal of people from post isn’t what Haringey does.

It isn’t what it did after the Victoria Climbie tragedy – where only the most junior of staff were scapegoated, with everyone else getting off scott free despite Lord Laming’s damning conclusions that senior staff and management had failed. And it isn’t what Haringey Labour wanted to do this time – with their initial insistence that no councillor should take responsibility, no senior staff should go and that nothing serious had been done wrong by any of them. Left to their own devices, Haringey Labour would have seen all the blame heaped on a handful of junior staff. Public pressure and intervention of Ed Balls were crucial to stopping that.

The reliance on national and local performance indicators is too great and does not enable understanding of the quality and effectiveness of service provision on the ground.

A warning about what can go wrong which applies to many areas of councillors’ work, and not just the tragic circumstances of Baby P’s death.

David Lammy was warned by a whistle blower of severe problems in Haringey six months before Baby P’s death. Yet as Paul Waugh pointed out in the Evening Standard, David Lammy was happy to defend Sharon Shoesmith and Haringey Council even after this warning and after Baby P’s death (a defence that was prominent on both his website and in the links on his Facebook profile – both still there at the time of writing).

Yesterday Iain Dale also looked at David Lammy’s record, this time comparing it unfavourably with Lynne Featherstone’s:

In a crisis some people come into their own. They ask the right questions, find the right words, keep calm and lead from the front. Others keep their counsel for worry of getting it wrong. They appear like a rabbit caught in the headlights and wait for others to lead while they play catch up.

In the Baby P case, LibDem MP Lynne Featherstone falls into the first category whole local Labour MP David Lammy belongs in the latter…

Five years ago I tipped Lammy to be Britain’s first black Prime Minister. Just goes to show. Never trust my tips!

Not only is she currently the Chief Executive of Haringey Council, heavily criticised over the death of Baby P,  but she was previously City Manager (the most senior staff role) at Stoke-on-Trent where the Government warned children were being put at risk in the month she started at Haringey, and before that she was Assistant Chief Executive at Newham Council (1998-2001). In February 2001 the Government ordered the council taken into special measures:

Health minister John Hutton has written to the council ordering it make improvements across a range of social services, including child protection.

Mr Hutton wrote: “There remains a substantial professional and managerial change agenda which is needed to bring your services up to a safe standard.”

He added: “It is essential that services for children are protected and immediate action must be taken.”

A council is added to the special measures list when there are serious concerns about the quality of its social services. The council must then develop an action plan and submit monthly monitoring information to the social services inspectorate (SSI).

The social services department, which was the subject of a daming report by the SSI and the audit commission in January, has until the end of February to produce an action plan. (The Guardian)

November 19, BBC Radio 4′s World At One programme:

“Over the course of the weekend, 61 headteachers that have more experience than you or I, or Lynne Featherstone, have offered their reassurance that they feel Haringey has been protecting children.“

December 1, BBC News 24:

“Clearly lessons have not been learned.  I think it is right that there is new leadership in Haringey.  This is a very dark and sad day for the people of Haringey. In relation to young, vulnerable children who need protection, there have been deep failures.  The report was littered with the words, ‘inadequate’, ‘poor’, ‘management failures’. Against that backdrop, we need change.  Change that must now come as a result of this inquiry.”

And in that same month, March 2006, the then Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes wrote that council failings were putting children in Stoke at risk:

In one letter, dated 15 March 2006, the minister wrote to [Stoke Mayor] Mr Meredith saying a report into care provided by Stoke City Council showed there were “critical weaknesses” which could contribute to children being put at risk. (Source: BBC)

Those weaknesses in children’s services were therefore there whilst Ita O’Donovan was in post. It looks to me that there are some serious questions for Ita O’Donovan, especially given the response to warnings made directly to her about problems in Haringey’s care for children, as Lynne Featherstone MP recounts:

I then asked for a meeting, and finally managed to get one with George Meehan on 31st January 2008. Ita O’Donovan (Chief Executive of Haringey) was in attendance at George’s request – so it was Haringey’s more senior politician and most senior member of staff at the meeting.

I brought the case histories and the letters with me and went over my extreme concerns with them both. They assured me they were as concerned as I was and Ita O’Donovan said she was looking at this in particular and commissioning an expert examination (I believe that is what she said).

But chasing letters following the meeting asking what had happened were not responded to.

Hat-tip: an anonymous comment on Lynne Featherstone’s blog for highlighting Ita O’Donovan’s Stoke background.

UPDATE: Ita O’Donovan was Assistant Chief Executive at a third council which had failing Children’s Services.