Child deaths highlight the case for doing better

Hard cases make bad law. This adage has been rattling around in my head recently, prompted by the debate about whether our child protection system is fit for purpose.

Practitioners grapple daily with uncertainty, ambiguity and transient risk: there is no handbook to give them definitive and lasting solutions to family problems. If every decision they took was guided by the principle of avoiding, at all costs, the mistake they least want to make, they would become paralysed – and spend their days working out how to navigate thresholds set by specialist teams, reducing still further their ability to provide expert support to families that are struggling.

Great piece by Andrew Webb. Read in full at source: Child deaths highlight the case for doing better