The statement made by Julie Morgan, the Welsh Deputy Minister for Social Services, on 29 November 2022.
Diolch, Llywydd. The death of any child is a cause of great sadness and I want to start by expressing my own deep sorrow at Logan Mwangi’s death, and to take this opportunity to offer my sincere condolences to Mr Ben Mwangi and Logan’s wider family for their awful loss.
The publication last week of the child practice review following the murder of Logan has, I am sure, been an extremely difficult time for Logan’s father and family, especially as it has brought to public attention further details regarding the events that resulted in Logan’s life being taken at such an early age. My heart goes out to him and to everyone affected by Logan’s death.
I have read the report very carefully and I understand and accept the learning themes and recommendations made. At this stage, it would not be appropriate for me to respond in precise detail to all of the recommendations made, as further conversations are necessary with service providers. However, I am wholly committed to doing everything in my power to protect children and to pursue through the courts those who inflict such dreadful pain and misery on the most vulnerable in our society, and I will keep Members informed as work progresses.
The purpose of the child practice review is not that of investigation, but to consider our services and help us to learn what we can to improve what we can do to protect children. I am grateful to the review panel for ensuring that they considered areas of learning that have been identified in other reviews throughout Wales and England while conducting this child practice review. It is right that we continue to consider the learning from other such tragic incidents in formulating the approach that is required to make improvements to ensure the protection of children in Wales.
It is, however, a sad and recurring fact that such reviews share, in many cases, similar themes, particularly regarding challenges in sharing knowledge and information across agencies, issues regarding systems and processes, and concerns about leadership and culture. We would all wish for a world where such events as these could never happen and that this would be the last case of its kind. That we cannot always identify individuals who could act like those convicted of Logan’s murder would suggest that it won’t be. However, that must not prevent us from doing everything in our power to reduce the risk as much as we can and provide the help that children in Logan’s position need and deserve.
The review clearly demonstrates that there is scope for practice improvement. Our focus must be to concentrate on the four key learning themes identified within the review that must be considered with the same care and urgency as the 10 local and five national recommendations identified. The learning themes identified are described in the report as being systematic and not isolated instances of individual error or poor practice. It is clear to see from the review that the recommendations are not allocated to one single agency. Child protection requires a multi-agency approach and, as such, all actions required to address these learning themes and implement the recommendations must be taken forward together, based on shared responsibility.
The National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006 and the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 set out the statutory duties for local authorities and local health boards in Wales. While these agencies, of course, must always adhere to such legislation, I will be looking to strengthen the ways in which agencies in Wales work more closely together to deliver our essential services. We all have a responsibility to implement the learning identified within this child practice review and to work together to carry out the actions required to effect change in the systems in which our professionals work and to support them in delivering their work. I expect all relevant agencies to consider the child practice review in full, to take immediate steps to consider how each theme and recommendation applies to them, and to identify how the learning themes and recommendations can be acted upon within the areas for which they are responsible. I will be contacting the senior leaders of agencies who have a responsibility in taking forward the recommendations of the review to ascertain their intended course of action in terms of their response to the child practice review.
Welsh Government has a key strategic role in protecting children, especially the most vulnerable, and I fully accept my role as a Minister in that. In the light of this review and following the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and work already under way in relation to our children’s services transformation programme and elsewhere, I will be accelerating work on a national practice framework to help inform decision making in children’s services. The framework will be a key foundation for how we work in Wales to ensure the best outcomes for our most vulnerable children. It’ll help us achieve greater commonality and more seamless working at local, regional and national level so that we can support children to remain with their families, and provide them with the support they need as we transition to fitting services around people, not people around services.
Care Inspectorate Wales have agreed to undertake a rapid review of structures and processes in place to inform decisions about how a child is added to or removed from a child protection register, and I will act on their findings, as necessary. I am aware of the calls for an independent inquiry into children’s services in Wales. Having now read the child practice review, I remain convinced that the time is now for action and not for further review. The findings and recommendations of the child practice review have been generated with consideration of other reviews in England and Wales, and it must be our priority to do what we can now and not wait for another report to tell us what we know already that we have to do.
To improve the multi-agency approach that I have outlined today, I want to remind Members that we are in the final stages of developing the single unified safeguarding review, which has been developed jointly with stakeholders across Wales. The single unified safeguarding review has been developed to reduce the need for multiple reviews against a same single incident, enabling the swifter completion of reviews, such as child and adult practice reviews, to identify and implement all learning more quickly and on a pan-Wales basis. The draft statutory guidance to support the single unified safeguarding review will be subject to a public consultation exercise, which is planned for early in the new year.
Whilst it’s not routine practice to respond to child practice reviews, I and my Cabinet colleagues felt that it was entirely appropriate to recognise the publication of this review, and I’d like to take this opportunity to personally apologise to Mr Ben Mwangi and his family for the failings that contributed to the tragic loss of Logan’s young life. Diolch.
