Reducing the impact of early abuse and neglect: the emerging scale of the challenge

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, responded to The Edlington case: A review by Lord Carlile of Berriew (Department of Education, November 2012) by seeking a more `assertive' approach to child protection by recommending that children at risk of neglect or abuse should be taken into care more quickly (The Guardian, 16 November 2012). Over time there have been alternating views about how best to respond to children at risk and this comment is potentially the start of the next pendulum oscillation back to larger numbers of children in local authority accommodation, after a period when the drive had been to reduce them.