Laming isn't just about social work

I'm actually quite relieved the handcuffs were finally clasped onto the world's biggest fraudster on the very same day as the Laming report came out. It meant Bernie Madoff managed to topple Laming's anxiously awaited offering from the lead news slot. So a little less heat and hysteria over children dying than would otherwise have been the case. And the opportunity for a little more consideration.

Given his Climbie report paved the way for Every Child Matters, Laming was never like to declare the system which bears his fingerprints is broken. It is of course, now all about the implementation of those reforms.

Credit to Laming in that his report has given due weight to all the agencies involved in child protection - health, police and schools, not just social work - and the need for them all to up their game and work better together. Thirty-seven of the 60 visits paid to Baby P in Haringey were from health agencies.

Trouble is you wouldn't know this from the media coverage. The BBC was not alone in conflating child protection with social work. The other agencies barely got a mention between them. This is despite the tabloids' vilification of social workers post-Baby P. Or perhaps it is because of it. Maybe the thinking was that social workers have been cast as the pantomime villains through this tragedy in the biggest selling newspapers, so why change their roles in this tragedy on Laming's judgment day.

I'd hoped our publicly funded broadcaster would be a little more enterprising in its coverage of the biggest stock-take of protection for years.

But social workers continue to be the easy target. When a fireman saves a life, he's an overnight hero. When a social worker saves a child's life we never hear about it and that's partly because of the nature of the work.

Moves are afoot to repair the damage to social work. CYP Now is a media partner at next Tuesday's World Social Work Day special event in London which will bring together frontline staff from across the country. They will hear from the lead singer of the band Glasvegas, which released a track 'Geraldine' based on the help the he himself got as a teenager from a social worker.

Hopefully the message that social workers are unsung heroes will start to seep through to the public, morale will improve, good people will want to enter and re-enter the profession, the tide will turn. Hopefully.