---

Safeguarding Children

The Secretary of State is asking Lord Laming to consider three questions. I suggest that the most difficult of them is about how to strike the right balance in applying the process when children are taken into care. I am sure that the Secretary of State does not want to replace one inhumanity with another. A few years ago, I had a heartbreaking case in which there was a forced adoption of a child who was at no physical risk. It happened because the social workers considered the child's parents to be stupid. I looked at the casework, which was riddled with inaccuracies and misinformation. It was clear to me that the principal motivation was to cover the social workers' backs in case something went wrong. Will the Secretary of State make sure that the balance is addressed precisely? Believe me, the admission a few years later that social workers might have overreacted in that case was no consolation.