Mark Pack

From the Evening Standard: The whistleblower who warned that Haringey social services were failing to protect children just six months before the death of Baby P is to stand for election there as a Liberal Democrat councillor. Former social worker Nevres Kemal, above, who will contest the Noel Park ward, said she will try to rid the [...] »

Rapid criticism of Public Accounts Committee reports from Quentin Davies (defence minister) and David Lammy (higher education minister) have resulted in the Treasury issuing a memo warning that such behaviour can result in ministers being censured. As the November edition of Public Servant reports: An attack by two ministers on parliamentary reports revealing waste and incompetence in [...] »

Paul Evans's blog piece on the pros and cons of local councils in effect challenging the role of local newspapers with their own publications highlights many of the issues. There's one that I'd add to the list, and it is about holding councils to account. It's understandable that many councils are sufficiently frustrated by the [...] »

At the time, there was stringent criticism from a vocal minority expressed online (such as in the comments thread on this site) of the court’s decision to keep secret the names of the adults involved in the Baby Peter case. Now we know for sure the reasons: There were two reasons behind the veil of secrecy. The [...] »

Bit of a legal blunder at the Daily Telegraph website today, with a story appearing about the sentences handed down following the death of Baby Peter. One problem: the story includes just under a big photograph, "PLEASE LEGAL (esp, can I say Baby P's killer?)": The answer, by the way, I think is "no" as [...] »

A quick quiz for you. One of the Haringey local newspapers, The Hornsey Journal, had this story on 14 May: Under fire councillors opt to take pay freeze The recession is about to hit councillors in the pocket, after both Haringey Labour and Liberal Democrat parties decided NOT to take a pay rise … Councillor Claire Kober, Leader [...] »

The awful news about the second case of child abuse involving someone Haringey Council was meant to be protecting - with the conviction of the boyfriend of Baby P’s mother for raping a two-year old - has rather pushed to one side the publication of the second Serious Case Review into Baby P’s death. The original [...] »

It's not often that you sit down to watch a film first released a quarter of a century ago and feels like you are watching one that could have been released yesterday, but such was my experience with Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The nightmare future it paints seems as apposite now as it did in the [...] »

Evening Standard, 12 March 2009: The head of the council at the centre of the Baby P scandal faces questions today over a series of other child protection failures. Haringey chief executive Ita O’Donovan has held senior positions at three councils that were condemned for failing children so seriously that the Government was forced to intervene. Dr O’Donovan [...] »