Warrington health service crticised in wake of Baby P case (From Warrington Guardian)

Warrington health service crticised in wake of Baby P case

4:18pm Tuesday 21st July 2009 in News By Joanna Lean

NHS Warrington has been criticised in a national report examining the safeguarding of children in the wake of the Baby Peter case.

The health body was one of 29 hospitals and primary care trusts that were not compliant with existing legislation – something it declared itself earlier this year.

Last week the Care Quality Commission published a report on standards of child protection in the NHS.

Its report highlighted shortfalls in the numbers of staff up to date with mandatory training, designed to help them identify and respond to concerns.

Cynthia Bower, CQC chief executive, said: “It is clear that safeguarding has not been as high on the agenda of trust boards as it should have been. And that has meant, in some cases, that NHS staff have not been given the support they need in terms of training and clear procedures for handling concerns.

“If that were to change, it would be an appropriate legacy for Baby Peter,” she added.

NHS Warrington declared it was non-compliant with the legislation in April.

“We took a highly critical approach and although we did not identify a ‘significant lapse’ in 2008/9, we felt that a combination of less significant but important findings from internal and external reviews highlighted a range of issues which we wanted to address and therefore made the decision to declare the standard not met,” an NHS Warrington spokesman said.

The NSPCC reviewed the case notes of the most high risk children in Warrington to assess work being done with them, the spokesman said.

An action plan to ensure children were being protected was implemented in April and NHS Warrington should be able to declare compliance by the end of this month.