Letter used courtesy of The Sentinel

The tragic case of two-year-old Ainlee Labonte, who was tortured and starved to death by her parents, is an exceptionally rare one. In my experience of 20 years of childcare, I have never personally come across such a systematic and cruel level of abuse.

Quite rightly, there is a lot of public shock and outrage when something like this does happen. But we have to see the bigger picture. The child protection system in this country is among the safest in the world. Of course, that is little comfort for this little girl in London. The system has failed her.

The one thing to remember is that it is not social workers or health visitors or police officers who kill children. For Ainlee, it was her parents.

That does not exonerate the agencies - the report by the Newham area child protection committee report is fairly damning.

In Stoke-on-Trent, we too deal with violent people. The safety of staff is a concern, but it is never an excuse not to fulfil your obligations to a child. You have to look carefully at the risks.
Most of the time when children are hurt or abused by a family member it is in the context of the parent being under stress.
Other situations might involve a child being neglected - there might be parental substance misuse, for instance.

In those cases, you might draw together a plan that would be monitored regularly and had targets for the parent to meet. Things never come down to an individual judgement. An individual social worker may well have made a recommendation having pulled together a whole set of information, but the judgement would not be made without consultation with managers and a multi-agency forum.

At this current time in Stoke-on-Trent, there are 151 children on the child protection register and they are there because they are considered to be at risk of harm. Their safety is managed by agencies such as social services, health, police and probation. But we can only support children if we know about them.

Staffordshire Police have a special child protection unit and our social workers will work very closely with them. There are only occasionally communication issues. By and large, the policies and procedures are working well.

I can confidently say it would be extremely rare for a case like Ainlee's to happen in Stoke-on-Trent. Yet I would be foolish to say it never would happen here.

Child protection is not an exact science. Social workers are not magicians and they are not God. When a tragedy like Ainlee Labonte's death occurs, all social services staff get tarred with the same brush.

It is the job of all of us to protect children, not just social services. There might be friends, relatives and neighbours who have much more contact with a family and can see a situation where a child might get hurt.

In terms of looking at improvements to the system, we would be missing the point to see it just as a child protection issue. It should be about preventative services and alleviating the stress families are under. There are also a host of issues surrounding adult mental health services.

The risk factors in a child's life are not going to simply be solved by a child protection system.