§ Dr. TongeTo ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many children on the Child Protection Register have not yet been allocated a social worker. [145724]
§ Margaret HodgeThe information requested is not held centrally.
The Government accepted Recommendation 54 of the Victoria Climbie Inquiry Report which stated that "Directors of Social Services must ensure that all cases of children assessed as needing a service have an allocated social worker. In cases where this proves to be impossible, arrangements must be made to maintain contact with the child. The number, nature and reasons for such unallocated cases must be reported to the Social Services Committee on a monthly basis, (paragraph 6.589)".
The allocation of social workers was included in the checklist of good practice recommendations issued on publication of the report. The resulting Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) audit revealed that a small number of local authorities had children who were not allocated a social worker. The SSI will follow up this issue as part of its performance assessment of councils.