"Birmingham City Council still in deep denial over Khyra Ishaq tragedy".
"Mrs King's (the judge's) judgment in Family Court proceedings totally demolishes the council's claim that nothing more could have been done to save Khyra because her mother had withdrawn her from school to educate her at home.
This was the line relied upon by Birmingham children's director Tony Howell and cabinet member Les Lawrence, who told a media briefing that legislation giving parents the right to withdraw children from school gave local authorities no powers to enter houses to inspect the arrangements for schooling at home.
In fact, as Mrs Justice King points out, the council had sufficient powers under the Children Act to enter the house where Khyra was being held."
UPDATE
News in the Telegraph of the crippled social services department in Birmingham. We have been saying it all along. Social services are woefully underfunded and not just in Birmingham and there would be no point wasting money on a universal inspection service of all HEors when social services can't even manage families known to be at risk.
My heart really goes out to Mr I H in this case. He has been the fall guy when frankly he made a minor error. He defensively (who can blame him) told the Judge he had over 300 families on his case load and not so much as a secretary to help him keep things organised.
ReplyDeleteEven if Angela Gordon had never removed the children, I think it likely poor Khyra would have died because no IA was done.
And Mr I H would still have that case load and then if the Bill had passed and he was still the EWO (He has retired) he would suddenly have an even bigger case load. How on earth would that prevent another case like this happening again?
Umm I need to blog on this I think.