Last year, Narey argued that birth families are not always the best place for a child to grow up because some families cannot be "fixed".
Speaking at a conference, Enver Solomon echoed Narey's point. "In recent times there appears to have been a rule of optimism in decision making," he claimed. "In particular the message from research and serious case reviews is that agencies are poor at addressing the impact of chronic neglect and intervening at an early stage to prevent the problems escalating."
Solomon added that a manager of a Barnardo's parenting service, who has worked in social work for many years, told him last week that social services "have not cracked neglect".
"Social workers and legal staff are reluctant to make proactive judgements to remove children living in chronically neglectful circumstances," he said. "There is a tendency to wait for a catapult or decisive event – a clear worsening of circumstances or seeing injuries or bruises that are clear evidence of significant harm."
But Solomon stressed that neither he nor Narey is criticising social workers for the current situation. Instead he blamed the expectations placed on social workers by managers, politicians, the public and the media.
