Every child matters / presented to Parliament by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Command of Her Majesty, September 2003.

  • HM Treasury
Date:
2003
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Every child matters / presented to Parliament by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Command of Her Majesty, September 2003. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/112 page 1
    For most parents, our children are everything to us: Our hopes, our ambitions, our future. Our children are cherished and loved. Some children’s lives are different. Dreadfully different. Instead of the joy, warmth and security of normal family life, these children’s lives are filled with risk, fear, and danger: and from what most of us would regard as the worst possible source — from the people closest to them. Victoria Climbié was one of those children. At the hands of those entrusted with her care she suffered appallingly and eventually died. Her case was a shocking example from a list of children terribly mistreated and abused. The names of the children involved, echoing down the years, are a standing shame to us all. Every inquiry has brought forward proposals for change and improvement to the child protection system. There have been reforms. Things have got better for many. But the fact that a child like Victoria Climbié can still suffer almost unimaginable cruelty to the point of eventually losing her young life shows that things are still very far from right. More can and must be done. Responding to the inquiry headed by Lord Laming into Victoria’s death, we are proposing here a range of measures to reform and improve children’s care — crucially, for the first time ever requiring local authorities to bring together in one place under one person services for children, and at the same time suggesting real changes in the way those we.ask to do this work carry out their tasks on our and our children’s behalf. For children for whom action by the authorities has reduced the risk they face, we want to go further: we want to maximise the opportunities open to them — to improve their life chances, to change the odds in their
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3