Child Protection and Risk-Management: The Death of Victoria Climbie

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This paper looks at the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘safety culture’ within a Social Work context, specifically in relation to child protection. Discussion is made of the systemic and organisational issues that are apparent in many inquiries into child death from abuse, and the authors argue that these issues need to be given a higher profile to ensure avoidable tragedies do not occur as a result of organisational failure. The concept of ‘safety culture’ is described as a tool of best practice used by some organisations in the commercial sector to ensure their risk, for example communication failure, in relation to organisational issues is both understood and controlled. The parallels between an organisational breakdown resulting in a disaster and those relating to the breakdown of childcare services are outlined in relation to two high profile examples, the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster and the tragic death of Victoria Climbie respectively. The authors discuss how the lessons learnt from such disasters and the ways in which high risk commercial organisations give organisational issues such high priority can, and should be, successfully transferred into other sectors, namely Social Work and Child Protection services.