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26 J. Soc. Welfare & Fam. L. iii (2004)

handle is hein.journals/jnlosclwl26 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 26(1) 2004: iii-vi R td Editorial This edition of the Journal comes at a time when children's issues have returned to the legislative agenda in the wake of the Climbi6 inquiry (Lord Laming, 2003) and the UK government's subsequent Green Paper on children at risk (Department for Education and Skills, 2003). The Climbi6 inquiry, as most readers will be aware, followed the death in February 2000, at the age of eight, of Victoria Climbi6. In 1998, Victoria had been sent away from the Ivory Coast by her parents, to be cared for by her Great Aunt, Marie Therese Kauo. She lived first in Paris and then in London. Her subse- quent death in London at the hands of her Great Aunt and her aunt's partner, Carl Manning, was facilitated by a long catalogue of errors by various professionals. These errors - by the police, doctors and social workers - were at the centre of the Laming Inquiry. That inquiry and last autumn's Green Paper, 'Every Child Matters' (Department for Education and Skills, 2003), promised significant change to both child protection processes and to children's services more generally. The result of that promise, in March 2004, is the Children Bill. There are a number of notable features of the Bill, which in most respects follows on from the Green Paper. The most high-profile feature is the plan to introduce a Children's Commissioner for England. This follows the earlier establish- ment of commissioners in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and has been broadly welcomed by those commissioners and by other child welfare organisations. However, the Welsh Commissioner expressed early misgiv- ings about the potential for confusion over areas of responsibility in some areas of his work and a large number of relevant charities view the proposed powers and role of the English Commissioner as somewhat weaker than those of commissioners elsewhere in the UK. The Commissioner will not, for example, be able to take up individual cases (although Charles Clarke, the relevant minister, has already tried to reassure critics that the government is willing to expand the Commissioner's powers where necessary). Some organisations have also been critical of the Bill for failing to address the existing 'reasonable chastisement' defence of physical punishment by parents. A bizarre omission, some would say, given the Bill's origins in the Climbi6 case, but one which reflects long-standing government nervousness whenever the abolition of physical punishment is proposed. Nevertheless, media coverage of the Bill suggests that the government will be willing to use this opportunity to abolish the 'reasonable chastisement' defence so long as it does not lead to a complete ban on physical punishment. David Hinchcliffe, a senior Labour backbench M.P. with a long-term interest in this area, is already planning an amendment to the Bill on precisely those lines. Other measures in the Bill, such as the introduction of Children's Directors in local authorities, responsible for both education and children's services, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law ISSN 0141-8033 print/ISSN 1469-9621 online © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals D0I: 10.1080/01418030410001694369

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