Daniel

The recent revelations around Daniel Pelka took my breath away.

This 4-year-old lived with his mother and her boyfriend. During his short life he was beaten, tortured and starved. At primary school he scavenged in bins for food — on one occasion he tried to eat a scrap of jelly that had been dropped in a sandpit.

Teachers were told by his mother that he had a rare disorder and that he should be discouraged from scavenging. But Daniel was fading away. One beating six months before he died resulted in a broken arm. Then after a blow to the head, he died. Both Daniel's mother and her boyfriend were sentenced to 30 years.

The report on Daniel's murder was published last week. So what do we learn? The police were called to Daniel's home 27 times. The doctor who treated his broken arm was not informed of his previous injuries. The police did not speak with Daniel after his arm was broken. In fact, he was not spoken to by anyone at any time about what was happening at home.

The report talks of the need to review process (which so often results in more paperwork and less engagement) — but surely this is about responsibility? That of his mother and her boyfriend, of course, but also of our public services. The fact is that not one social worker had overall responsibility for Daniel.

Surely, every vulnerable child should have a single person assigned to their monitoring.

The NSPCC estimates that there are 55,500 vulnerable children in the UK. With 87,000 social workers can't we make someone directly responsible for each of them? Vulnerable children need this additional protection and society should be confident that where things go wrong all of those responsible are held to account.